It’s no secret that sex is a topic of sensation in our culture. It’s often deemed a “necessary evil”- sometimes a nasty secret to be kept behind closed doors while other times a profitable commodity to be exploited by media for capital gain. So where does androgyny fit into all this?

Sexuality is traditionally glorified in the context of hetero-normativity: girl meets boy, they marry, contribute to the over population of the planet, blah blah and blah. We all know this is a short sided and antiquated formula, but it still persists as a societal default. Over sexualized archetypes of men and women flood our television sets: men who are all torso with stuffed underwear and large breasted women are revered as the epitome of fertile sexual beings. While these caricatures exemplify the best of the species, those of us that do not fit into this picture perfect hetero fantasy are often categorized as inherently nonsexual or undesirable. I cannot speak for all androgynes/gender queers but my peeps are neither nonsexual nor undesirable.

In any case, it’s not too difficult to see how androgyny could be associated with a lack of sexuality. There is some degree of androgyny associated with many religious figures: deities who are venerated as chaste, abstinent, or virgin. Religious figures in many western traditions possess a certain fusion of gender traits, which takes them outside the realm of the carnal and human. Between you and me, I’m no saint.

Beneath the sheets there is yet another dimension to the role that we gender non-conformists seem to fall into, fetishization. There’s no lack of exploitation of gender ambiguous individuals in the sex industry. Too often being androgynous, genderqueer, trans, etc. earns us a spot in the dark corner of some porn shop in rural USA. God forbid that it ever be considered normal or socially acceptable to fall for the androgyne next door!

In Bob’s words, “the times, they are a –changin,” and we are at the forefront of that change. It is our obligation to our community to represent ourselves as we want to be seen against the current of stereotypes that haunt our name. It is unlikely that any of this comes as a revelation to any of our readers but one’s gender identity does not denote any particular sexual identity. Some androgynes/ gender queers as well as some cis-gendered or transgendered beings may be naturally asexual. Many of us however, whether pansexual, gynosexual, androsexual, homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual or anything in between lead perfectly “sexual” lives as we so choose. I for one would like to see that on TV.