Androgyny

Androgyny is the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics into an ambiguous form. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual identity.

Quotes

Androgyny comes from two Greek words meaning male and female. In a wider sense, this particular dichotomy is one of many possible expressions of all dichotomies, as the Greek philosophers have taught us - thesis and antitheses. To resolve a problem, an issue, or a war, it is necessary to bring together the opposites into a harmonious relationship, synthesis. It does not mean that the issues no longer exist, but that they exist as clearly defined and workable entities within a working system. Likewise, masculinity and femininity enter into a cooperative system under the rubric of androgyny. The idea, clearly is as old as philosophy and myth - and… It is an idea that is also so new, that it is only now being rediscovered.
- June Singer, Androgyny: The Opposites Within, (February 2000), Nicolas-Hays Press

As at the close of the eighteenth century, with its emphasis on dualistic structures, androgyny - expressed as the desire for the expanded middle, where life is at its fullest and most beautiful - has seemed, in the eyes of certain gender theorists, to contain the potential to transcend or to subvert the reign of binaristic thought.
- Catriona MacLeod, Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller, (1998), Wayne State University Press, p. 13

Androgyny, an ancient concept, is deeply rooted in both Western and Chinese philosophies. In the Symposium, Plato, through Aristophanes, mentions the existence of three primordial races, one of which is made of the union between men and women. Although the united body is later split by God into halves of different sexes, each seeks the other, yearning for the original whole.
- Zuyan Zhou, Androgyny in Late Ming and Early Qing Literature, (2003), University of Hawai'i Press

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