Androgyne

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An androgyne is a person who does not fit cleanly into the typical masculine and feminine gender roles of their society. Many androgynes identify as being mentally "between" male and female, or as entirely genderless. The former may also use the term bigender or ambigender, the latter non-gendered or agender. They may experience mental swings between genders, sometimes referred to as being gender fluid.

Intergender is also a word that androgynes can use to describe being between or beyond genders.

Androgyne used to be primarily used as a synonym for hermaphrodite (a term since replaced by the word intersex), but this usage has fallen out of favor.

1 Traits
2 Famous androgynes
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Traits

Androgyny can be either physical or psychological; it does not depend on birth sex. A person who identifies as an androgyne may have been born intersexed, or may have typical sexual organs, either male or female.

Occasionally, people who do not actually define themselves as androgynes adapt their physical appearance to look androgynous. This outward androgyny has been used as a fashion statement, and some of the milder forms of it (women wearing men's pants, for example) are not perceived as transgendered behavior.

Various alchemical, magical and metaphysical traditions had an allegorical figure named variously the Alchemical Androgyne <ref>Alchemical Androgyne</ref> and the Divine Androgyne. All these concepts are derived from the sense of unity that a combination of femininity and masculinity in one being implies.

A recently-coined word, often used to refer to androgynes, is genderqueer. However, this term can be used to refer to anyone who identifies as transgender, or even someone who identifies as cisgender but whose behavior falls outside the standard gender norms. An androgyne may be attracted to people of any gender, though many identify as pansexual or asexual. Terms such as bisexual, heterosexual, and homosexual have less meaning for androgynes who do not identify as male or female to begin with. Infrequently the words gynephilia and androphilia are used, which refer to the gender of the person someone is attracted to, and do not imply any particular gender on the part of the person who is feeling the attraction.

Androgynes sometimes refer to themselves using gender-neutral pronouns or the singular they.^{[citation needed]} A few even take steps toward transitioning from their birth gender into a physically androgynous form.