An androgynous person is classified as someone who has features that do not coincide with the usual characteristics of their biological sex.
The etymology of androgynous takes us first to the Latin language and then to the Greek language, where it comes from a compound word that combines the notions of "male" and "woman." The first meaning of the term mentioned by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) in its dictionary, in this framework, refers to the adjective hermaphrodite : having both sexes .
The androgynous condition is called androgyny . This quality, in human beings , is related to showing external features that do not coincide with the characteristics of one's sex . A man who has long hair, plucks his eyebrows and paints his lips can be classified as androgynous, since his physical appearance is associated with a woman and not with masculine aesthetics.
From Plato to the present
Plato was the one who used this idea for the first time in "The Symposium" , mentioning beings that had two sexes in their bodies. Using lightning, Zeus split these sexes and, in this way, the androgynes "lost" their other half. From this concept, the position was developed that maintains that people are in search of that other half when trying to form a couple.
In recent years, several androgynous models have achieved fame because of how striking it is that a person can wear clothes intended for both sexes. These are individuals who, at first glance, it is difficult to determine if they are men or women. Its popularity in the fashion industry lies in this duality. It must be taken into account, however, that androgynous subjects are usually discriminated against because they do not comply with the stereotypes of men and women.
The musician David Bowie was often referred to as androgynous.
Stav Strashko, an androgynous model
Despite this discrimination, which in the worst cases can reach the limits of extreme violence, not everything is negative for androgynous people: the luckiest earn fortunes for their work on the catwalks and dazzle the readers of fashion magazines with their aspects of indecipherable sex.
One of the most recognized cases is that of the famous Strav Strashko , a model who has posed for the most important brands, always as a woman, despite not having undergone any surgery. He was discovered at the age of sixteen and since then he has used his particular beauty to demonstrate that the walls that divide men from women are nothing more than one of the many social impositions .
Social changes
Machismo leads us to think about that fictional world composed exclusively of heterosexual beings, who necessarily group together in couples and dedicate their lives to procreation: the man is rude and goes out to look for money to buy food; The woman is fragile, and for that reason she waits for her knight in the house, while she cleans and cooks for him and his offspring.
Being born with an indefinite appearance is not exactly a blessing for those who carry those archaic ideas , but apparently there is a light of hope that can place them beyond the reach of the clubs.
Differences between androgynous and androgen
It is important to note that we should not confuse the terms androgynous and androgen : the latter serves to refer to the hormone that promotes the emergence of secondary sexual characteristics in men. As often happens in these cases, there are many texts in the media in which they are used incorrectly, as if both meant "external traits that do not clearly respond to the sex of the person."
If we refer to the etymology of both words, we see that androgyne is formed by the Greek words corresponding to " male " and "woman" ( andrós and giné , respectively), while androgen combines "male" with the suffix -geno , which indicates "that produces or generates."