The Importance of My Androgyny
[Judgements 10] A retrograde planet signifies disobedience, and contradiction, and turning back and taking back, and diversity or discord.
[BW VIII.31] A retrograde planet signifies antagonism (Epstein: revelationem) and the dissipation of everything considered.
[BW VIII.92] Retrograde: like one returning, and pulling back. (Epstein: "rebellious and defiant.")
"Introduction to Traditional Astrology: Abu Ma'Shar & al-Qabisi", pg 107, translated and edited by Benjamin N. Dykes, PhD
I never wanted to be like everyone else.
Recently, I remembered a rare time when, as a generally well behaved kid, I annoyed a gymnastics coach by telling him "both" when he asked which hand was dominant for me. In school assignments when I was older, I would respond wanting to go somewhere local to an assignment prompt because it inferred it wanted an answer more exotic, which the other kids' dutifully responded. As I got older, my natural inclination to divert from the general populace became less accepted and less fun. My peers, of both binary genders, bullied me for being a quiet, weird outsider. Even adults who should have known better joined in on condescending to myself and my friends during our emo phase because apparently dressing in black was inconceivable to them.
Before it got crushed out of me in early adulthood, the innate desire that I have spent these last few months trying to recover was this: why do something the way everyone else is doing it when doing it a different way is inherently more interesting? Especially when doing it that different way can impress and prompt others to start thinking about the whole question or problem in a new light?
Pretty sure another word for that is "innovation."
Anyway, in a lifetime where everyone is analyzing, expressing, discussing, and panicking about gender, in retrospect it is little surprise I ended up diverting my gender as well. I have talked a little about how the word I use for my gender is "androgynous." To get literal about it, it's because I woke up one morning and it was there, like I had breathed it out during the tail end of a dream. It was very evidently a gift from the divine part of me who is connected to the more ethereal plane I described in my cosmology post, they having found or revealed the precise word after over a month of my wondering frantically what the hell I was.
Androgynous, as I have stated before, is commonly used to refer to a cis woman who dresses in masculine clothing. Again, I divert from this. My usage of androgynous, like the rest of me, is more esoteric. It means "combining of male and female" in Greek and applies to more than one tradition. A 2000 year old Midrash holds that Adam from the Hebrew Bible was originally androgynous before the creation of Eve. Sam Block, as well as some other hermeticist thinkers, posit that God and the essential human within hermeticist texts is also androgynous. Less complimentary to me is Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity by Luc Brisson, which records a number of ancient Hellenistic tales in which androgynes/intersex people are tortured and murdered for simply being born, sometimes after delivering prophesies.
I also identify as trans masc, by virtue of one of my two genders being male and having to navigate and express that in a world that wants to forcibly assign me to womanhood according to my body's shape. To be clear there is a difference between a "trans man" where the person is a binary trans person who was born with majority estrogen and a vagina-inclusive reproductive system and someone who is "trans masc," which is inclusive of any genderqueer people who consider themselves masculine. I present and try to behave more masculine in general since my awakening, but my gender has a certain range of fluidity so I have "he" days where I feel very male and I have "they" days where I feel more of a balance. I am still early in my gender transition so it will be curious to see how femininity will make a return for me, especially since it is common for trans masc people to medically transition partially so they can feel comfortable wearing feminine clothes again. As of now, when I attend yoga class and feel myself tumble back into my body, it is a warm, masculine presence that feels similar to how my father felt when I hugged him as a kid or how my former cis male partners felt when they comforted me.
This is all to say, my gender is not a conscious choice. It is a spiritual one.
The gymnastics coach from when I was younger chose to teach me how to do a right-handed cartwheel. I was raised as righthand dominant my entire life while having a surprisingly good backhand in tennis. The other day, I discovered that my left hand is naturally able to exercise with Chinese baoding balls while my right hand holds them at a complete loss. I was right as a kid; I am ambidexterous. I am "both."
