On the ANDROGYNOUS SELF; or TO BE A COMRADE (v3 REVISION)

INITIAL DRAFT: 11/25/2025
REVISED: 11/30/25

(v2): 1/11/2026, 1/15/26
(v3): 2/13/26, 2/18/26, 2/20/26 2/24/26

"It perhaps takes less heart to pick up the gun than to face the task of creating a new identity, a self, perhaps an androgynous self, via commitment to the struggle."

In spirit of Toni Bambara's "On the Issue of Roles", this essay expands on her concept of the "Androgynous Self" and proposes its application across race and ethnicity for both cisgender and transexual people, written in regard to gender divisions in class systems as well as radical spaces. It is possible that any Socialist looking to dismantle cisnormative Patriarchy and Misogyny, or to deepen their understanding of Decolonial theory, could benefit by adopting this Androgynous Self in service of Radicalism.

"Gender," to begin simply, is a culturally produced system that divides "roles" of societal behaviors, appearances, symbols, and labor between different "gendered" groupings, which are usually initially defined by correlation to human sexual dimorphism, and studies have shown it to also be deeply rooted as a psychological self-identity, or facet of the psyche.

Gender is, by default in many societies, ascribed to an individual at birth based on the appearance of genitalia, but it can later be determined by self-introspection or by the cultural behaviors and roles this individual performs as they develop into adulthood. This role, or social category, may change over time. The performance of this role has to be recognized by the self and the community to be properly gendered within social interactions, as a social construct generally only exists if the society agrees it exists and materializes this through communication between the subjects of socialization.

Sexual dimorphism, or "sex," refers to the taxonomical differences between an assumed sperm-carrying, androgen-dominant male with a penis, versus an assumed ovary-carrying, estrogen-dominant female with a vagina, versus a third sex that carries traits that are definably "both" male and female or "neither." The taxonomic categories of sex are, in a sense, the "gendering" of sex. Studies on sexual dimorphism in overall ecological and human populations have shown that these traits are heavily variable and overlap, dependent on a complex mixture of natal hormone exposure, puberty, and development throughout life. In other words, every human has a mix of sexed traits- meaning that, for example, cisgender men already naturally produce estrogen- and these features can transform via epigenetics or human intervention.

In-utero sex development begins as a baseline "female" state before hormones from the womb interact with instructions from the genotype and guides the development of the phenotypal appearance, which includes internal organ and hormonal makeup, brain layout, and outward genital appearance. Puberty further defines sexual trajectory, but the complex biophysiological processes of maturation do not follow a strict line. Epigenetics are increasingly shown to influence sexual development and the evolutionary path of sex chromosomes in plants and animals.

Scientific consensus understands that the inseminating sperm contributes a second X or Y chromosome at conception and that the SRY gene triggers sexual differentiation, but this process is studied most in IVF lab settings, leaving little opportunity to study the natural process inside the womb and generalize statistical findings across the population. Sometimes, the Y chromosome doesn't carry an SRY gene. Sometimes, the X chromosome has an SRY gene. Afterwards, sexual development is determined by whether hormones activate certain genes or not, such as encoding for a uterus on chromosome 7, or for a penis which is, surprisingly enough, on the X chromosome, and a lack of SOX9 on chromosome 17 results in ovaries, even in someone with a Y chromosome.

Most people do not actually know their sex chromosomes. Doctors don't automatically perform genetic tests to determine the average person's sex, so unless specifically requested, the delivering nurse or doctor observes the baby's external genitals and assigns one or the other binary sex onto the child on that basis, just as people may judge a stranger's appearance on the street in daily life. If someone indeed has a Y chromosome it is often determined during screening for other genetic abnormalities, otherwise it is assumed by phenotype. Although genetic sex testing has become more popular, it does not actually determine the phenotypal sex a child will display, and through testing we consistently find more and more people assigned a specific sex at birth who do not actually have quite all of the bits and pieces that a simplified cisnormative sex education would have assumed they must automatically have.

Therefore, sex is not black and white, either or, nor fixed. By virtue of nature's constant motion and the flexibility of biological development, as well as the social nature of scientific classification, sex is not immutable. Nature does not care if a society chooses to believe that there are only two strictly defined binary sexes that every human who has ever been born is going to follow. It has varied, it does vary, and it will continue to vary. Still, many societies choose to categorize natural variation as disordered anomalies, insisting that exceptions to the rule do not disprove the rule, despite the rule being broken enough times that it begs to question if this rule is really so black and white in the first place.

This still does not define gender, or one's social role or personal identity. Worldwide research on sexual development and gender has come to the consensus that there is an undeniable biophysiological social phenomenon of people being born with or developing genders that do not align with their sex. This is known as transexuality, transgenderism, or being gender dysphoric. The etymology of the "trans" prefix describes a crossing or change, while the opposite, "cis," means to be same, someone whose personal gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth, but being cisgender does not preclude intersex variation.

Medical innovations for trans people of the past century have allowed even more biological variation. If someone undergoes hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery, they are changing those biological features that societies use to categorize people by, much like a second puberty. These processes change sex-specific patterns in brain vesicles and grey matter, hormone production, protein markers, emotional regulation, genital appearance and functionality, egg and sperm production, fat distribution, breast growth, prostate tissue, vocal thickening, and all other primary or secondary sex traits aside from the sex chromosomes themselves.

If a transexual woman can taxonomically be described by these various biological features as, for the most part, female, then she has now become biologically female, regardless of whatever her natal sex was. By the so-called "end" of transition, a trans woman has virtually every feature of a cis woman- indistinguishable- regardless of her inability to become pregnant, because believe it or not, there are cis women who are born infertile, without wombs, or with undropped testes in place of ovum, who never develop breasts, who grow facial hair and have Y chromosomes.

If a transgender woman is in the process of transitioning to society's designation of what constitutes womanhood, she is therefore still a woman as a social category, because gender is overall defined more by self-identification, visual signaling, and socialization than by someone's hormonal or genital makeup.

While cisnormative culture enforces biological standards upon cisgender women, cis women still hold authority to the label, and it is generally understood not to strip a self-identifying cisgender woman of her womanhood just because she displays herself different or has a few different organs than binary expectations. If someone is born and raised and understands herself as a woman, that should not disappear if at 50 years old she learns she actually has internal testes and a Y chromosome, because she was still a woman the whole time- she walks talks and breathes as a woman, and the people around her socialize with her as a woman.

There are documented cases of cis women who discover they have a Y chromosome but can still give birth, despite the assumption that such a woman should be infertile. Baseline hormonal variations, such as the over- or under-production of testosterone, are known among cis women and transgender men who suffer from polycystic ovarian syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, while cis men and transgender women are capable of producing endometrial tissue, may have hidden ovaries, or even sealed-off uteri. A portion of the population also displays a naturally occurring hermaphroditism that is often coercively "corrected" via surgery after birth- sometimes without informing the parents. Although introductory sex science may not make it easy to understand at first glance, it is entirely possible for a body with a Y chromosome to prioritize estrogen as its primary sex hormone and to phenotypically vary from androgynous male to fully developed female.

Each contribution to sexology reinforces the truth of this flexibility, and the freedom to determine oneself and not be defined by biological sex was one of the successes of second-wave Feminism, but the current growth of transphobic sentiment in larger media has pushed the cultural trajectory back towards a reaffirmation of biological determinism in how societies overall categorize gender. Sexism, especially intertwined with racism targeted at female athletes, for example, has become rampant as a cultural talking point. One such belief that makes headlines and impacts legislation is that trans women as well as cis women determined to be intersex should be banned from competing in sports with their preferred gender.

However, a study just released in 2026 to the British Journal of Sports Medicine shows that transgender women in the process of medical transition do not actually have any substantial physical advantage over cis women in sports. Hormone replacement therapy truly does change how the human body functions, and hormonal levels are regulated to fit within the normal ranges of their cis counterparts. Contrary to transphobic rhetoric, trans women rarely headline as gold medal winners, and due to this rhetoric, are increasingly locked out of participating in even simple sports such as bowling, darts, and chess. This scrutiny has extended to cis women with androgen-based sex variations in order to debate if they're secretly just men.

The standardized institutional cultural system which assumes that someone who was born with the external bits associated with one specific sex must then also be the gender we associate with that sex, or even has the internal bits of that sex, is merely a social designation. Indeed, it represents a general grouping of biology, but the lines we draw and the boxes we check are social, and the binary manner of understanding sex is faulty, underdeveloped, and unrefined.

For European Christianity, its Abrahamic cousins, and the cultures they colonized, this existing gender binary ultimately comes from Genesis 1:27; "God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God's nature. He created them male and female."

This works in tandem with biological dimorphism, the trend towards a general collection of either "male" or "female" sex traits, but reinforces this trend as a definite either/or binary which erases the third alternative pole between the two binary sexes, as well as the ability to move between them. So, to be assigned male at birth, to be a "boy," is to be expected to grow into and fulfill Manhood. To be assigned female, or a "girl," is to be expected to fulfill Womanhood. There is no in-between.

Early in Christian Europe this was interpreted closer to an explanation of the origin of things rather than a decree of universality. Defiance of this binary was not only possible but sometimes even revered as a spiritual ascension, as leaving behind one's bodily confines and woes in prospects of reaching the heavens. Hermaphroditism was a holy mixture of Adam and Eve- arguably just another form for humanity to take in God's image, much like the mythos of the Ancient Greeks, and transgenderism of many forms has been historically recorded from Rome to Neolithic burial sites- far before religion's origin. Saint Marinos, Saint Euphrosynus, and Saint Pelagius all "cross-dressed" as men for their occupation and lived so for 40 years, and were respected as such by their communities.

However, with European Colonial expansion it was realized this social differentiation served not just a general cultural or economic purpose, but a strategy to divide and conquer, to relegate a class to domestic servitude or sexual labor, and to have visibly defined poles that represent the cultural values of a society which could be overtly pressured onto others. It was consciously decided, ideologically and economically motivated by the desire to control reproduction for survival and social reputation. As a result, European history is long filled with the Patriarchal organization of social relations- times and places where voting, ownership of property, ability to work, quality of medical care, and the consideration of personal or bodily rights were determined by sex. Women had to marry to have access to property, and were treated as property, and in many minds are still conceived of as property. This extends to the United States.

In this context, Womanhood is a performative role, ascribed on the basis of natal female sex or gendered appearance, with assumed sets of interests, symbols, and traits that under Patriarchy serve to present the woman as existing within the boundaries of societal "purity" while still alluding to reproductive fertility or domestic use, in order to attract the Manhood that interacts as its supposed "opposite". Beauty standards for women in the United States and Europe have historically centered Caucasian, Anglican, or Western European facial features, and modern standards feature a pedophilic fetishization of youth. 

This gendered division reinforces itself by means of media evoking a perfect "feminine," or social consequences for "un-womanly" behavior. Many things that are natural to human biology are associated with masculinity, such as body hair and muscle definition, so for women, this must go. Through generations of cultural reproduction and the defanging and misunderstanding of Feminism, some women have been convinced their interest in makeup is innate, an inherent urge and symbol of their biological femininity, which could not possibly be influenced by cultural market influence. Beauty companies, fashion magazines, and over-romanticized media convince even young girls that they must cover all stretch marks, pock spots, acne, crow lines, rosacea, and natural pores with makeup. Not just concealer or foundation to smooth out the skin- any "natural look" tutorial still includes lip gloss and mascara, a little bit of blush here and there, and a "sexy" subtle wing. Makeup is treated like a paintbrush to a canvass, as if a woman's bare face isn't already beautiful.

Beyond looks, personality matters, too. Speaking too loud, eating too much, roughhousing, discussing bodily functions, standing up for oneself and telling people what to do, or being too garish is "unbecoming," selfish and unattractive to a man, so any woman who wants a potential suitor must flounder herself, dim her emotions to make room for a facade of constant consideration to her man's whims- which become generalized as "society's" whims and accepted as such, even by women. The standards of Patriarchy concocted by men become the standards of women who raise girls, creating a self-perpetuating cultural cycle.

In the modern day, with legislative and cultural shifts propagated by Suffragette, second-wave Feminist, and Gay Rights movements, women are allowed, to some limit, to participate in male-gendered activities, behaviors, or appearances. Women can wear pants, people are familiar with "tom-boys," short hairstyles have been in fashion for decades, they can participate in social and legal roles once restricted to men, but this all comes with an asterisk on a woman's performance of femininity that she's... "different," or "might be a lesbian." To be outside of the heterosexual norm implies a "queering" of the individual's gender, so to speak. So even if permitted, a woman's performance of masculinity still knocks her down the gendered social hierarchy. Even more, a woman's race may define how her femininity or lack thereof is perceived, owing to historical phrenological hierarchies- the pairing of Blackness with masculinity.

On the other hand, as cisgender men and transgender people assigned male at birth grow up under Patriarchy, they are held to higher expectations defining the line between Manhood and effeminacy. Boys with long hair, who paint their nails, wear skirts, or who are intimate with their own emotions may be confused for girls or accused of being homosexual, and face domestic, sexual, and occupational violence as a result. Trans women, who often display some disconnect to their assigned gender or natal sex before they are aware of or consciously acting on it, may get singled out by bullies who value their masculinity so much, motivated by the culture of men around them, that this bully has built up a skill of honing in on any sign of male femininity, which he "others" by means of harassment or social exclusion in order to make an example that reinforces his own Manhood.

In this sense, Manhood can be defined by negation, by "not being" something "else," by not being the "other."

By default, White Men have access to public and private life in the Western core. White Women may be subjugated by White Men yet permitted special rights over Men of Color, with some mobility to participate in masculinity. Men of Color may over-perform masculinity in order to prove they're in the same league as White Men, further "othering" Women of Color and third genders. Women of Color may be accused of being male and similarly over-perform femininity due to social pressure originating from their supposed ethnic proximity to masculinity in European hierarchy. To be homosexual or transgender only adds another layer of oppression which intersects with this social identity.

The behaviors and beliefs which cissexist, heteronormative Patriarchy propagate, end up constructing a very specific ideological framework of the world:

Women are "crazy," men are simple. Women are "too emotional," men are rational. Women are "better" at caring for children- it's not the man's fault if he doesn't know what he's doing. Men are "better" at handling money and building things. Women shouldn't show too much of their skin, they shouldn't be a "whore"- but she can't be an ugly prude, either. Men who attract sex are virtuous. Sex is power. Sex is money. Men are "meant" to be in positions of power because women are "too complicated." A wife should listen to her husband. A daughter belongs to her father. Men are instinctual "warriors," and women are "destined" to be mothers. Women don't know how to fix a car, but men don't know how to change a diaper. The husband works and participates in external life, but his wife is "better off" at home.

The interactions which manifest all these pressures are referred to as gendered "socialization," which stipulates that an individual's lived experiences and the material differences between the cultural practices of each gender influence how one views themselves and interacts with others. Cis men are usually raised to be the subject of "male socialization" who do subject other men to the same, and cis women "female socialization", but trans or queer individuals are often cast out of this frame of socialization due to being recognized by those around them as "different" in style, manner, or personality, therefore excluded from typical gendered socialization if not alternatively overtly pressured into it- which is still sometimes not even received as "successful" socialization by the trans or queer individual.

This all works in service of the dominant Manhood which constructs and confines the femininity of Womanhood, and can be found in cultures across the world, as oppression on the basis of natal female sex and fertility is not confined to Abrahamic influence, and has developed independent of it throughout human history. Religion is not the defining factor, but rather it is reproductive capability being socially and legally divided in order to hoist power over groups and individuals within an economy, which in this case was done by the dominating religious institutions of the time, and by Men.

Throughout the Germanic tribes, Roman slave-economy, Monarchal Europe, Capitalist America, in several formerly colonized and imperialized nations, and across other cultural spheres, women as a gender and class have been denied several legal and social rights in purpose of Man's control over reproduction and domestic labor. Victorian campaigns from British authorities in nations such as India proclaimed the illegalization of homosexuality and transexuality, and called for violence in order to Christianize or "modernize" their cultures- to embed a gendered power dynamic. Infant genital mutilation to "correct" one's sex to a preferred standard has been practiced in every so-called "civilized" nation of the Global North to enforce an ideal femininity and erase the existence of intersex variation.

The whole of human sex was divided into a hierarchy of classes over labor which, by its exclusionist nature, had to define itself further from what it excluded, so eventually shrunk this hierarchy into a black and white binary that erased the blurred lines between the two sexes. Variation or flexibility of these rules disprove their weight and could facilitate the overthrow of a system created by those who saw an opportunity to give themselves personal power, so the culture of gender was manipulated, and the information relayed about sexual development and identity was purposefully limited.

Again, these distinctions that religious and colonial law allowed Europeans to draw on others served an economic purpose- to entrench colonized workers, namely women and third genders, within hierarchies of oppression. It ensured at least a portion of the population would be legally sanctioned and denied aid by their community, and would be left with no other choice but to rely on an exploitative work dynamic, to enslave themselves to European business looking for cheap labor, or to be victims of human trafficking and sex slavery.

Beyond this era, the Enlightenment of Europe retained Christian values, even in "unbiased" scientific research. All science, as methodologies created by humans, are biased by experience and perspective, including our determination of what subjects are deemed "scientific." But practice allows the witness of science to write it down, our hypotheses and conclusions, even if through flawed lenses- and repetitive practice shows proof of these universal truths in science.

One such truth is that homosexuality, variations in natal sex, and third genders have existed for possibly all of human history across all of human culture, and that gender expression is not inherently tied to one's natal sex. Many cultures have accommodated for fluid performance of gender roles, transexuality, and intersex variation or hermaphroditism. These variations exist even in cultures where the correlating social roles may not be permissible and become a suppressed minority class.

The full range of gender expression worldwide is unknown due to the European male/Man female/Woman binary colonizing the Global South, and the resultant colonized genders being interpreted through the Western lens. While homosexuality and gender variance exist across the world, Western Christian tradition seeks to "other" these alternative concepts of self-identity and socialization to the global working class.

As such, we who are born under this gendered reproductive hierarchy, Socialist or not, may exhibit the consequences of this gendering and "othering," psychologically, socially, and in relations of production. This may be opposed through disciplined education of the working class and protection of women and sexual minorities. I assert this may also be opposed by adopting some conceptualization of Bambara's Androgynous Self, in order to shift one's perspective of self-identity and behaviors in social relations. In other words, how we perceive our own gender as we interact with other genders under Capitalism should be free and malleable, conscious, and equitable. 

Bambara writes:

"In the last few years I have frequently been asked to speak on the topic of the Black Woman's Role in the Revolution ... I'm not altogether sure we agree on the term "revolution" or I wouldn't be having so much difficulty with the phrase "woman's role."

I have always, I think, opposed the stereotypic definitions of "masculine" and "feminine," not only because I thought it was a lot of merchandising non-sense, but rather because I always found the either/or implicit in those definitions antithetical to what I was all about–and what revolution for self is all about–the whole person. And I am beginning to see, especially lately, that the usual notions of sexual differentiation in roles is an obstacle to political consciousness, that the way those terms are generally defined and acted upon in this part of the world is a hindrance to full development. And that is a shame, for a revolutionary must be capable of, above all, total self-autonomy.

...we profess to be about liberation but behave in a constricting manner; we rap about being correct but ignore the danger of having one half of our population regard the other with such condescension and perhaps fear that that half finds it necessary to "reclaim his manhood" by denying her her peoplehood. Perhaps we need to let go of all notions of manhood and femininity and concentrate on Blackhood ... It perhaps takes less heart to pick up the gun than to face the task of creating a new identity, a self, perhaps an androgynous self, via commitment to the struggle."

- On the Issue of Roles, The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970).

I try not to appropriate the analysis of Blackness inherent to Bambara's writing, but regardless, I posit that perhaps we need to let go of notions of manhood and femininity and concentrate on Socialism.

A material analysis of male chauvinism exerting centuries of control over women's lives, and a deconstruction of these values, inevitably beckons the solution of gendered oppression to be political androgyny. This does not mean that we are all to be androgynous as fully de-gendered individuals in terms of self-identity- we can retain our personal selves- but that the social value of our interactions becomes androgynous in order to propel a gender revolution, so to speak, which transcends beyond the confines of sex deterministic gender roles in social, domestic, productive, and legislative life. We are to have an androgynous trajectory in our social relations.

This material shift may still inevitably influence internal self-identity, but not in ways which are to be inherently perceived as negative or exerted without consent. Men have the chance to humanize themselves, and women and third genders may finally be humanized.

Women would benefit to not have to formulate their sense of self within a world which deems females to be eternal mothers or "breeders," to not be incessantly socialized with as sexual objects, to not be infantilized or patronized, to not have their worth be determined by their subjective appearance and to not be restricted in what they are told they are supposed to like, be, or do in life. Women would benefit if their own displays of authority, anger, and boundaries were not deemed "bossy" or "bitchy," or "due to hormones," if it weren't assumed that they are biologically set back in physical capability, if they weren't revered as weak or paradoxically capable of holding more pain by virtue of motherhood. Women would benefit if they didn't have to perceive themselves as something being interacted with, if they could instead be someone interacting with others.

Men would benefit to not isolate and overly-redefine their standards of masculinity in attempts to re-assure themselves, only creating a deeper cycle of violent competition. Men would benefit to not view themselves as incapable of complex emotion, of gentle compassion, of parental bonding, or anything else deemed biologically distant. Men would benefit to not assume their bodies are impervious, to not be defined as inherently sexually inclined, and to not render themselves incompetent by relegating half of the labor it takes to subsist oneself onto another gender. Men would benefit to be humbled.

Homosexual, intersex, and transexual people would benefit to not be seen as "broken" pieces of nature, as "freaks" defying rationality, or as existential "predators." Cisgender and heterosexual people would benefit to not have such strict confines around their sense of selves.

To create a system that justifies uplifting oneself on a biological basis has been long criticized as anti-humanist, as ideological ego and a considerable source of social ills. To create a distinction between able-bodied and disabled people led to the Eugenics movement, to the horrors of Aktion T-4, and to the systematic abuse of individuals in private and state institutions. To create a hierarchy of racial and ethnic traits led to Phrenology, to scientific racism, to Aryanism and Neo-Nazism. The solution to these ills is to abolish such social structures, so, in the case of Patriarchy, the solution is to abolish sexed and gendered structures which confine women and elevate men. The dual nature of human psychology as something experienced both internally and socially means that this must be attacked from both an internal and external angle, an idealistic and materialist manner, in our thoughts, and in our actions.

This is standard Feminism, which has proved to be a constant uphill battle, so to solve the initiating Misogynistic conflicts, the goal of Feminist anti-sexism must be taken to its most radical endpoint on a broad scale within society- to Radical transexuality, to Radical abolition. If the male gender, Man, represents a role which weaponizes control of life and labor over Women and any non-Man, and if sex or gender are used as the justification for this oppression, then all non-Men must smash the power of Man, break their chains and rid themselves of enforced gender roles. No more Womanhood as prescribed by society- just women, people, experiencing humanity among men.

This is most pertinent to the Colonized Woman under Capitalism as a form of freedom from Patriarchy, but also holds a lesson relevant to the process of deconstructing Capitalism and building a new society, relevant to those who seek to rectify any hierarchy of oppression in their environment.

The ability to be a man or woman must therefore not be defined by sex or any specific beliefs about biological traits but instead by self-identification and with open movement between these roles.

Someone designated a "girl" can grow up into a man, and he doesn't have to deny his lived experience or proximity to misogyny in order to affirm his masculinity. Ownership of a vagina should not be tied to an innate ideological motherhood of the female sex. It should be remembered that men can grow breasts, and some people have a mix of "both" parts, too. A woman can have a penis, and she doesn't have to want to remove it to be a woman. Her penis is not innately masculine, and her Womanhood is defined by her saying as much. She could be intersex or trans, but the status of her genitals is irrelevant because what defines her social gender is not her body, but how she is socialized with.

In this way, transexuality can peel open many layers of gender, of intersecting realities, such as the truth that gender is malleable and defined by our social systems, and that it is possible to move through it freely. This could be tangible for everyone, regardless of social or physical dysphoria, if we as a people would gain a consciousness about gender and take equitable action.

For some, building a sense of self-androgyny may come from understanding the contradictions between society's or one's own conceptions of gender versus their internal perception of self in this social role. It may come from the recognition that transition is proof of bio-flexibility and that one can defy social expectations and still retain their gender. It may simply come from rejecting all gendered connotation associated with one's gender identity.

When people become cognizant of how they differ from their own expectations, it becomes easier to understand how others may differ from those expectations as well, and when we question what we might have fallen in line with out of ease rather than personal interest, we may be able to see a version of ourselves beyond these boundaries. Whether a cis man violently scared of existential effeminacy, a trans woman skirting the "boymode" in fear of her own body, a queer woman insisting on biological determinacy to feel a sense of female solidarity, or a trans man struggling to define a third-sex masculinity, we must all find peace.

Swiss analytic psychologist Carl Jung, influence by Freud, Kant, and Schopenhauer, wrote of the concept of the "androgyne," furthered by June Singer in her book "Androgyny: The Opposites Within" which stipulates that synthesizing the masculine and feminine of one's psyche into an androgynous self could help achieve a well-rounded mental health. The premise follows that all human psyche is androgynous at its core, but as our lived roles and social definitions of biological sex define each person as "one" thing, the psyche forms a contradictory animus of the idealized opposite sex which their internal self is subconsciously striving for, and this animus is the key to bridging our personal consciousness with the "collective unconscious." The contradictions between lived experience and true "soul" inevitably lead to "neuroses," resembling the known psychological phenomenon of dysphoria over one's sex or gender when forced to live as something different from the "soul."

According to Singer, the androgyne contains knowledge that is secret: "because of the very nature of it is that it cannot be shared or taught or even spoken about ... it is the knowledge that comes from working with oneself towards levels of consciousness in which the opposites within one's own being become apparent. It is then that one learns to recognize the inner oscillation between Masculine and Feminine modalities of being and to hear with the inner ear the music of their interplay." This consciousness must be without social influence, as "one can only hear the music in silence, while the noise of the world is stilled for a time and the reflecting surface now faces inward."

True, I myself have been at a loss for words several times further in this piece trying to detail the process of entering the so-called gender "matrix". It is something we can really only completely learn through our own motion and experience.

Singer continues that to lack this synthesized androgyne would form "inner empty places" that the individual then seeks out another person to fill, creating victims of emotional dependence. This might explain facets of compulsory heterosexuality and hyper-romanticized marriage culture. The desertification of self represents a form of submission to this culture, a fracturing of the whole self into splices of gendered individual.

Other attempts to conceptualize the nature of the gendered psyche include Sigmund Freud's sexual dialectic, the Unconscious Conflict, and "penis envy," which certainly are not pan-applicable, are too omni-sexual and anti-historical, but may hold insight to certain manifestations of self seen under Patriarchal Capitalism- and insight to how the Psychiatric industry approaches these subjects. Judith Butler, Leslie Feinberg, and Andrea Dworkin analyzed the construction of the societal Woman in contrast to self-identity, including misogynistic pornography culture and Patriarchal socialization, and how many queer people find solace in escape from Patriarchy through gender abolition or transition.

Dworkin in particular- who should otherwise be criticized for her tepid Zionism- describes in works such as "Woman Hating", "Letters From the War Zone", and "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" how the initially external, then inevitably internalized, social nature of gender as a "sex-class" system, trains women to become submissive to men's violent and sexual desires. As such, the binary social system is a gendered "regime" meant to divide and limit the potential of humanity, and rather than reform these roles, society must abolish them entirely in order to enter a "post-gender" world.

Western liberal gender theory adopted by Capitalist culture today has decided on defining internal gender as entirely separate from the external world or one's lived experiences, placing priority on the ego and distancing gender as an ideal, rather than material, state of being. This coincidentally serves the purposes of those who wish to deny a trans person's biologically-affirmed reality. Prostitution, or sex work, is perplexingly seen as empowering, as a display of Feminism, bodily autonomy, and "girl power," which also coincidentally serves the Patriarchy in abusing sex workers. However, the material reality is undeniable. By virtue of originating within and possibly as a response to a given status quo, even identities motivated by a defiance of Patriarchy are defined in contrast to it- any attempts to analyze and heal this gendered fracturing are surrounded by its consequences, molded by it, and steeped in the perspective of this fracturing.

Such a framework can be mapped onto a Marxist dialectic- a material analysis of gender as a tangible, socially motivated, overarching mode of relation birthed from reproductive capability and labor roles, which variably shapes our perceptions of ourselves on an individual and cultural scale. The existence of a gendered self is neither independent of, nor determinate to, the larger gendered culture that exists beyond the individual. The intensification of the divide between ideal self and external reality, of cisgender ideology versus material transexuality, of the supposed "immutability" of sex despite its witnessed flexibility, creates conflict and synergy. As a result, this culture holds within it both the contradictions and the solutions to the process which the overall androgyny of humanity has been fractured through.

Russian Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky emphasized the importance of environment in child development and analyzed the relationship between culture and psyche. In his 1929 piece, "The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child", he begins by writing: "In the process of development the child not only masters the items of cultural experience but the habits and forms of cultural behaviour, the cultural methods of reasoning."

He continues:

"We have many reasons to assume that the cultural development consists in mastering methods of behaviour which are based on the use of signs as a means of accomplishing any particular psychological operation. This is not only proved by the study of the psychological development of primitive man, but also by the direct and immediate observation of children..."

Here, gender can be inserted as a sort of sign or symbol, a performance of culture, which is mastered through cultural exposure and education.

"Usually the two lines of psychological development (the natural and the cultural) merge into each other in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish them and follow the course of each of them separately. In case of sudden retardation of any one of these two lines, they become more or less obviously disconnected as, for example, in the case of different primitiveness. The same cases show that cultural development does not create anything over and above that which potentially exists in the natural development in the child’s behaviour. Culture, generally speaking, does not produce anything new apart from that which is given by nature. But it transforms nature to suit the ends of man. 

This same transformation occurs in the cultural development of behaviour. It also consists of inner changes in that which was given by nature in the course of the natural development of behaviour... The fact that the association of ideas, when we reason, becomes the object of special interest and conscious choice, does not, however, alter the laws of associations of ideas. The thought, properly speaking, can no more dispense with these laws than an artificial machine with the laws of physics. However, psychological laws as well as physical ones can be utilized in such a way as to serve our ends."

Binary gender as a mode of relation has become a cultural dogma which impregnates general psychology with ideas of "psychological" and "physical laws", or beliefs and methods of socialization about which gender does what thing supposedly backed by immutable biology, and this serves the purposes of Patriarchy. A child learns to associate specific words, sounds, parts, apparel, emotions, and so on, with specific genders, and this becomes a self-reproduced dogma.

For most cisgender people, cultural gender expectations intersect with their natural psychology near-imperceptibly, not as their inherent inclination towards specifically these gendered activities but that their breadth of potential includes partaking in these gendered activities, so there is little-to-no conflict under social pressure. However, to varying degrees, cisgender people may feel disconnected from cultural expectations of their performance of gender, as well.

With current knowledge of transexuality, the phenomenon of gender dysphoria may loosely, although critically, be applied to Vygotsky's description of so-called "retardation" of ability to learn and integrate into a cultural role, representing one's deeper disconnect from sex. Although referring primarily to mnemonic language development, the contrast against "primitiveness", when applied to a gendered context, may also be interpreted as staying true to one's internal androgyny and rejecting cultural norms. Overall, any internal gender that may be formed in line with, separate from, or in opposition to Patriarchy is still in line with that person's natural psyche and potential.

"This indicates the true relation between the cultural and primitive forms of behaviour. Every cultural method of behaviour, even the most complicated, can always be completely analysed into its component nervous and psychic processes, just as every machine, in the last resort, can be reduced to a definite system of natural forces and processes. Therefore, the first task of scientific investigation, when it deals with some cultural method of behaviour, must be the analysis of that method, i.e. its decomposition into component parts, which are natural psychological processes."

With all of this in account, the Western gender binary could be stated to be a cultural mode of relation which shapes how a child understands their own gender in relation to others. Cis men and cis women are still products of "male" and "female socialization," and understand their gender, their cis-ness, and others' genders through this cultural frame of reference. It is possible that many men insist on doing things they wouldn't necessarily do otherwise if it weren't deemed "masculine" or hadn't surrounded the child since birth, and the same for women. Transgender and intersex people are raised within this mode of socialization whether they fit it or not, and the social pressure to be something not true to oneself only deepens the stress of such a contradiction and pushes the person further away from their coercively assigned cultural role.

Historical analysis also creates a structured timeline of Patriarchal societal changes, their tangible motivations, how they were undone, and explains the alienation of self, labor, wealth, and culture that comes from these processes. The social relations of gender define why they are the way they are and what they do. With the historical development of Feudalism to Capitalism, with human laborers treated as collateral, as property, less valuable than the product they create, women's bodies were "progressively" introduced into the process of free-market commodification, their legislative rights continued to be limited for well over a century, and any change in favor of women is at risk of being overturned by the facade of Democratic Liberal democracy.

In the collected "Lectures on Ethics", German philosopher Immanuel Kant described the issue of sexual objectification, regarding someone “as an object, something for use," specifically in the context outside of marriage, which strips individuals of their humanity in seek of banal desire rather than emotional connection. To Kant, a woman cannot partake in prostitution without being "reduced as a woman," or otherwise dehumanized by the commodification of the body. In concubinage, a woman must give her whole self to the man, her body is inextricable from her psyche, while the man does not give the same. These processes degrade social wellbeing.

As a student of idealism, Kant failed to take into account the economic and social conditions which pressure women and third genders to sell their bodies as labor, nor the way that monogamy itself perpetuates violence against women, and blamed women for this objectification. In a post-Kantian world, modern liberals, Feminists, and Marxists have since done the work to refine the scientific understanding of gender, Patriarchy, and sexual violence. The idea that a woman chooses to literally sell her body as sex to another person entirely of her own volition and thus all blame of choice is on her, with no antecedents or precursors, should be understood as an immaterial denial of the passage and consequence of actions through time, a denial of our proven Patriarchal history, and a denial of economic motive to survive.

However, the social degradation that was to come of this has indeed been fulfilled. Prostitution doesn't have to be perceived as exploitation according to the modern Capitalist status quo. Liberal Feminists claim sex work to be an expression of a woman's own sexual power, that it's a validated line of work, too. This perversion of analysis results from both the mass normalization and reproduction of rape culture, and commodity fetishism being codified into productive relations during the historical shift towards Capitalism, where the value of a product is associated with vague signifiers of what it idealistically represents rather than with its tangible social nature of production.

Sex, what a man desires, is no longer the action of externalizing emotional or cognitive connection with someone else, nor for sincere reproduction, and is instead a product which is perceived by men to exist only to appease their libido and valued more than the labor it takes from a woman to provide this sex. Sex is treated as if you can simply buy and sell it, advertised through a variety of overtly Patriarchal social performances. This method of conceptualization purposefully manufactures a mindset that justifies the most literal form of fetishism in order to trick the consumer into further buying into the objectification of themselves or others for the sake of underground, corporate, or Patriarchal profit.

The history of women is riddled with the consequences of these actions. Rape culture, apologia, and the full legalization of assault to varying degrees at various points in time have left women and sexual minorities physically vulnerable for centuries against an institution of men who are raised to prioritize sex as something they can just "take" when they "need", and despite all liberal attempts at sexual reform and rehabilitative justice, Western Americans are left with a government which refuses to prosecute an internationally scandalous pedophile sex-ring that implicates several economically and politically powerful men and the women who helped them.

Marriage being one of the only avenues to female enfranchisement until recent times has stunted the cultural perception of intimate relationships and left women reliant on men, sometimes their own rapists, for economic security, locked into domestic labor which they are rarely properly compensated for, and unable to find reasonable employment. The perception of women as "baby-makers" or "caregivers" has limited historical lines of work to nursing, midwifery, and home-good manufacturing which can be done while watching their own children. Even now, domestic and social work are seen as "a woman's job," and any man who partakes is variably suspected of being queer.

The social developments for women under American Capitalism, fought for by Suffragettes and queer Feminists, have given women the opportunity to vote, open their own bank account, own their own land, access birth control, and enter the industrial and corporate workforce, but without any actual resolve or relief for the piling contradictions and limitations of a woman's lived experience. Often during these legislative changes, women of color were excluded- white Suffragettes saw allying with Black Feminists as a detriment to their goal of securing the right to vote. In terms of labor distribution, women are still expected to handle most of the domestic work in a household, even if they are employed as much as their husbands. Access to childcare services relies on economic status, and long-term paid maternity leave is haggled. Abortion and birth control, once gained, are back in the legislative debate. And interpersonally, all the emotions of intimacy, the tenderness of a loving relationship and the care of a conscious being, are left to the woman while the man "deals with more serious things."

Capitalism has elevated and sharpened the position of women only as employees and capital investors. With less segregation, businesses have access to a larger workforce and gainfully employed consumer market- a whole new demographic to advertise to- which brings a larger profit. Convincing people that all a woman needs to do to liberate herself is become a CEO or "girl boss" has so-far been successful as a way to quell social movements which aspire to change the material conditions of women and third genders- meaning the economic baseline of Capitalism, and Patriarchy, is preserved.

The decriminalization of homosexuality and cross-dressing, along with advancements in queer science, hailing from Weimar Germany to the American Gay Pride movement of the '80s and '90s, have brought trans and queer individuals to nearly a similar position of economic equality- or rather, servitude, often pushed into homelessness and sex work. Under Capitalism, to be liberated simply means to be given a "choice" of by whom to be exploited. Unfortunately, like abortion, even access to this much life is up for debate in American legislation.

No state or era of history has ever been changed by a mere idea. The process of fixing sexism, homophobia, and transphobia is not as simple as understanding them- it requires active motion to materially deconstruct them. So clearly, for women and third genders, the path towards liberation is not more ideological reform which can be indefinitely pushed back and forth, but revolution.

Ultimately, regardless of one's journey with self-discovery, the other half of the coin- the heavier side- falls squarely on the manner in which we socialize with one another. Someone may not be able to find peace until they mend the contradictions in their behaviors with others, or until they bridge their understanding of what's inside themselves with how they understand others.

So along these lines, what Bambara describes as the Androgynous Self I would also posit is compatible with the identity of a "Comrade", which political theorist Jodi Dean conceptualizes well in her book of the same name.

To be a "Comrade," or to have Comrades, is to be on the same side of some sort of uniting struggle as others, who by this virtue are your allies. This implicates, but not always necessitates, sharing the same values about the process of achieving your side of the struggle. A strong Comrade acts accordingly to their community regardless of differences in their specific values, so long as those values do not harm others or the infrastructure towards their common goals. To be a Comrade carries political expectations as much as it represents unity with community.

Being a "Comrade" is based on political relation, which means that the core of the trait is not self-imposed but instead defined by the actions and perceptions between individuals identifying in the same way- and more importantly, the material fidelity of these actions. As such, to be a Comrade, or displaying comradery, is an action in motion characterized by common understanding, equality, and solidarity. Especially in a gendered sense, to be a Comrade is to embody this relation characterized by equality and solidarity which is purposefully utopian in order to cut through the social structures of institutional religion, Patriarchy, and Capitalism that have become ingrained and deterministic to our cultures. Action must extend from the oppressed hand of the dialectic towards a Radical solution which destroys the overt, dominating hand.

The solution to any dialectic retains some elements of what it synthesizes, so just as the world post-Capital will be marked with its lasting scars, so would a "post-gender" world be marked with the colors of every gender that has ever been. Cultural gender may still persist, no matter how hard one tries to abolish all "gender" as an ideal or phenomenon, but this doesn't mean that these genders have to be divided into hierarchies or class systems which are then gatekept or commit acts of oppression against each other, nor do these have to be deterministic to biology. The people will still be who they are with freedom to create culture as humans, so the goal of a Comrade should be to always meet these differences in gender with equality, freedom of movement, and dignity.

This means that women and third genders, trans people, and sexual minorities must insist upon their sameness to society and their right to participate in what has been cordoned off, to their right to life as a whole, without being stereotypically defined by their sex or gender- while simultaneously insisting upon the existence of their gender- and should be protected by their community while doing so.

Men who are conscious or "woke" to gender in this way may partake in a gendered form of class treason by expressing solidarity and uniting with the oppressed demographics of their own society's hierarchies. It is a man's responsibility to utilize his position of privilege to uplift the voices of women and others, most pertinently trans women of color who suffer most often in the depths of the prostituted lumpenproletariat.

This means that women must not be defined by their fulfilment of aesthetic femininity or reproductive capability, and men must no longer dominate spheres of social, productive, and legislative life. Women must be given throughways out of sex work with material opposition to human trafficking and the uplifting of victims, as well as stable ground without reliance on marriage or other heteronormative structures and economic relations.

Transexual people must be allowed freedom to transition socially, administratively, and medically, and even further- cisgender people must not feel a dividing wall between their freedom of movement within gender and trans people's movement between gender. Recognition of the social mobility of gender as a taxonomical category can bring freedom from the confines of gender entirely.

Medical institutions must no longer perform genital mutilation or sex reassignment on intersex children, and the existence of intersex individuals and third genders must be widely acknowledged and accepted. The fetishization of which gender one's child might be born as must be disincentivized and explained with alternatives- don't say "it's a girl," say "it's alive!" and give the little human a name. The appearance of a child's genitals is only relevant to their doctor for basic functionality.

We must allow our children to freely participate in all gendered activities and to determine their own gender, and we must define our expectations without special regard to sex or gender. We must recognize that we all harbor traits of both sexes with unlimited potential of how we choose to express them, and that how we understand ourselves now is molded by what we grew up around, so to raise a child to their best potential would be to allow them this freedom of self.

We must neuter the gendered connotations of our social interactions and refuse to assume or prescribe behaviors or traits to ourselves or others merely on the basis of sex or gender. We must question why we say certain things in certain ways to certain people, or how we perceive certain boundaries with others, and determine which behaviors are motivated by sexual stereotypes or the objectification of women.

We must distribute labor in the workplace, domestically and in Radical spaces, in an equitable manner without special regard to sex or gender other than to compensate for overwhelming the labor of another gender, especially in regard to the domestic labor cast onto women. The domestic tasks of life must no longer be cordoned off to specific types of people, when it in fact creates a more holistic human to learn all spheres of labor. Women, children, and third genders must have access to economic dignity and security, without the assumption that they may struggle because they lack a man as a "breadwinner."

We must refuse to fetishize or demonize on the basis of sex or gender and instead judge on the basis of how someone behaves or relates to others within their community, considering the social environment and expectations they were raised with, while still understanding that they fundamentally retain free will- and we should conceptualize of all humans in this manner.

In a broader sense, this also means we must have internationalist support for the women, sexual minorities, and third genders of the world. We must understand the manner in which women, sexual minorities, and third genders are reproductively and socially oppressed, and how layers of racialization embolden this oppression. We must decry and correct Sexism, Homophobia, Racism, and other reactionary or chauvinistic tendencies, and should consider the threshold which all other means might exhaust towards the need for physical defense. We must not be willing to let vulnerable demographics face violence for the sake of "civility."

One does not have to feel an incongruence with their gender to deconstruct these hierarchies in their beliefs, cultural systems, or relations of production, and in fact, all those who aim to be a thorough Socialist must do so. This might mean that some find they feel neutral in their personal practice of gender, while others have to contend with what it means to behave equitably in their gendered relations while retaining their gender. This introspection is important, no doubt, but comradery is on the outside, built in motion by the hands we outstretch to women and sexual minorities. It is more important to act on our knowledge than to simply quell our own discomforts, inside our minds.

Anyone who seeks to understand humanity beyond the deterministic binary we have today could hugely benefit from adopting a sense of this Androgynous Self, as a Comrade, and as a fellow human.

Citations:

Bambara, Toni. (1970). "On the Issue of Roles" The Black Woman: An Anthology.

Dean, Jodi. (2019). "Comrade" An Essay on Political Belonging.

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