Don't know if you remember me. I'm out of school at the moment (money+mental health problems were and are kicking my butt) but planning to enroll in distance learning at _____college this spring. (Still working full-time, of course.)
It occurred to me today that you might be interested in a personal development that's been going on with me, since you're rather into gender and sexuality research. I'm suspecting ( but trying to give it plenty of time to be certain) that I am not entirely female, psychologically.
That is to say, I'm androgyne. Bigendered, specifically-as opposed to neuter, I feel like I'm both, really, a little more female than male, but both. I feel like it's important that I recognize and act on this somehow.
This appears to be something that draws less animosity than transsexuality-but it's also not studied, and people aren't really aware of it. We don't have legal status... or pronouns, really, or visibility. Nobody's hurled abuse at us on Jerry Springer.
And where do I take a leak in public?
Anyway, I wasn't so much writing to you for support as writing to you because I figured you'd be interested in asking me questions about androgyny...and I might not know all the answers to them, but I think having the conversation would be a learning experience for both of us.
I posted a link to an online version of the Bem personality inventory on an androgyny talk board, and someone observed that it's biased to say a personality trait *has* a gender attached. And I remember that our textbooks said androgynous people were the most likely to succeed rather than rigidly "male" or "female" people...and I totally realized that the way that was put showed unconscious gender bias. And I did not question it.
It was a real facepalm moment for me. You put on those third-gender x-ray specs, and suddenly you see things just a bit differently.
It's not "androgyny." It's just that people with a greater range of potential responses to situations in their social toolbox do better than those with a limited range of responses.
Androgyny is a totally different critter, as I can attest.
Anyway, hope you and the family are doing well, and hope to hear back from you soon.
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