What is androgyny?
- Androgyny comes from the Greek ‘andro’ meaning ‘male’ and ‘gyny’ meaning ‘female’ and describes a gender identity that is a balance between masculine and feminine characteristics
- Physical androgyny had been recognised for many years as applying to babies born with genitals of both sexes; however, the psychologist Sandra Bem (1974) was the first to introduce the idea of psychological androgyny and to propose this as a mentally healthy state
- Bem suggested that an androgynous person, who is therefore gender-neutral and expresses themselves uniquely as neither masculine nor feminine, is happier and more fulfilled because they can combine traits from both sexes to adapt to any circumstances, showing ‘sex role adaptability’ across situations (Bem, 1975)
- An androgynous person may dress in loose clothing that hides their male or female characteristics, style their hair in a gender-neutral way and identify as binary
- However, many androgynous people also identify with their sex at birth, but not with the fixed sex-role stereotypes that come with this and choose to live in a more gender-neutral way
An example of androgynous dressing - breaking the sex-role stereotypes