Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 1985)
Ginger Hudson and Chris Dominy Androgyny: Freedo II sex roles By PATTI FLINT StaffWriter You’d probably never know it by looking at me — fair hair, blue eyes, freckles — and I’m not sure that this is something I should tell my mother, but move over Grace Jones because androgyny is more than cos metic and I’m out to demon strate that. Fear not, Grace; you still sing better than I do. “A person having character istics of the opposite sex” seems to be the general defi nition of androgyny, at least around The Battalion. “Androygny is really a fusing of the two,” says Dr. Barbara Finlay, associate professor of sociology, giving the psycholog ical definition. “It’s a mixture without emphasizing either one or the other. “The way androgyny is used in the media refers more to fashions and styles. In psychol ogy it’s usually defined as somebody who’s not either strongly masculine or femine.” Like “biodegradable,” “an drogyny” is one of those scien tific words that has always been around, but is only re cently falling off of eveiybody’s lips. Many people think that androgyny began with Boy George. Wrong. There has al ways been androgynous peo ple, but androgyny has only re cently become hip. Dr. Larry Hickman, asso ciate professor of philosophy, believes that androgyny is a natural result of our society. “I believe that technology, and more specificallv the infor mation explosion, has made available to us all, many differ ent lifestyle possibilities that we didn’t have before this new technology,” he says. “If (Carl] Jung told us any thing, he told us that males in western society are capable of responses denied them by their culture,” Hickman says, and this also applies to females. Jung said that there are, in all of us, elements that have been traditionally identified as male and female, and a lot of what passes as male and fe male differences are culturally bound. Hickman believes the emer gence of androgyny was inevi table because of modern tech nology. “The more we know about- one another, the more we’re going to be accepting of one another. Not only is the new acceptance of androgyny, as far as it’s been accepted, not onlv is it inevitable, but also desirable.” “We see more possibilities because we know more about the world,” he says. “We see objects as more clear cut and obtainable.” Androgvny is often (erro neously) associated just with fashion. Finlay says that Grace Jones is a good example of physical and behavioral andro gyny because she is in the mid dle of the sexes, not expressing strong characteristics of either. But, she says that Jones also emphasizes her ability to be unisex in order to be unique because in pop music one has to be unique to be noticed. In other words, androgyny is not what /you look like; it’s what you are. “In the physical forms, it is a form of rebellion,” Finlay says. ‘“I don’t believe in the tradi tion. I can flaunt it and still be me.’ But it is becoming a fash ion — conformity. In and of it self, it is not rebellion.” Androgyny is personality tra its, it’s an approach to life that says “I’ll be whoever I want to be, not who society dictates.” “It’s something you learn through experience, something you decide,” Finlay says. “No body is born androgynous or not androgynous. Often people decide that they can work to being more human. That often means that you don’t just fol low already defined sex roles. All of those things are a combi nation of experience, thinking, deciding what vou want to do in life.” 1 Men are now allowed to be sensitive and have weaknesses and women may be self-as sured and have their own goals, she says. Hickman says, “The core of what androgyny means is that there are a whole range of ex periences that we are capable of, that you can only do part of, because society has reserved some of those experiences for the opposite sex.” Finlay says it is better not to be “either/or,” but to have characteristics of both sexes. Research has shown that an drogynous people are usually more stable, more adaptable, more satisfied with who they are. Why? “I suppose they’re not as de termined by others and role ex pectations.” She says, for example, that super-macho men are often hiding their insecurities and super-feminine women are of ten afraid of their own emo tions. “But most people don’t ac cept these extremes any more,” she says. Many of America’s heros are androgynous, such as Alan Alda and the character Mary Tyler Moore played on her show. Everybody knows that Alda supports women’s right and seems to be deeply sensitive, but Maiy Tyler Moore? Finlay says that the character Maiy Richards is androgynous be cause she was a career women who expected to be treated as a person, not as a sex role. In brief, Hickman says, “There is a continuum which has been culturally defined male and female, and there are some people who are caught in the middle.” /y