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The Appeal of the Androgynous Man, by Amy Gross
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Check My Assignment!James Dean was my frst androgynous man. I fgured I could talk to him. He was anguished and I was 12, so we had a lot in common. With only a Few excepTons, all the men I have liked or loved have been a certain kind oF man: a kind who doesn’t play Football or watch the games on Sunday, who doesn’t tell dirty jokes Featuring broads or chicks, who is not contemptuous oF conversaTons that are philosophically speculaTve, introspecTve, or otherwise Foolish according to the other kind oF man. He is more selF-amused, less in±ated, more quirky, vulnerable and responsive than the other sort (the other sort, I’m visualizing as the guys on ²V who adverTse deodorant in the locker room). He is more like me than the other sort. He is what social scienTsts and Feminists would call androgynous: having the characterisTcs oFboth male and Female.Now the frst thing I want you to know about the androgynous man is that he is neither e³eminate nor hermaphrodiTc. All his primary and secondary sexual characterisTcs are in order and I would say he’s all-man, but that is just what he is not. He is more than all-man. ²he merely all-man man, For one thing, never walks to the grocery store unless the li´le woman is away visiTng her mother with the kids, or is inthe hospital having a kid, or there is no li´le woman. All-men men don’t know how to shop in a grocery store unless it is to buy a 6-pack and some pretzels. ²heir ideas oF nutriTon expand beyond a 6-pack and pretzels only to take in steak, potatoes, scotch or rye whiskey, and maybe a wad oF cake or apple pie. All-men men have absolutely no taste in Food, art, books, movies, theatre, dance, how to live, what are good quesTons, what is Funny, or anything else I care about. It’s not exactly that the all-man’s man is an uncouth illiterate. He may be educated, well-mannered, and on a frst name basis with fne wines. One all-man man I knew was a handsome individual who gave the impression oF being gentle, a³ecTonate, and sensiTve. He sat and ate dinner one night while I was doing something endearingly Feminine at the sink. At one point, he mutely held up his glass to indicate in a primiTve, even ape-like, way his need For a refll. ²his was in 1967, beFore Women’s LiberaTon. Even so, I was disturbed. Not enough to break the glass over his handsome head, not even enough to mutely indicate the whereabouts oF the reFrigerator, but enough to remember that moment in all its revelatory clarity. No androgynous man would ever bruTshly expect to be waited on without even a “please.” (With a “please,” maybe.) ²he brute happened to be a doctor—not a hard hat—and, to all appearances, couth. But he had bought the whole superman package, complete with that Fragile beast, the male ego. ²he androgynous man arrives with a male ego too, but his is not as imperialisTc. It doesn’t invade every area oF his liFe and person. Most acTviTes and thoughts have nothing to do with masculinity or Femininity. ²he androgynousman knows this. ²he all-man man doesn’t. He must keep a constant guard against anything even vaguely Feminine (i.e., “sissy”) rising up in him. It must be a terrible strain.Male chauvinism is an irritaTon, but the real problem I have with the all-man man is that it’s hard For meto talk to him. He’s alien to me, and For this I’m at least halF to blame. As his interests have not carried him into the sissy, mine have never taken me very Far into the typically masculine terrains oF sports, business and fnance, poliTcs, cars, boats and machines. But blame or no blame, the reality is that it is almost as diµcult For me to connect with him as it would be to link up with an Arab shepherd or Bolivian sandal maker. ²here’s a similar culture gap.
