Androgynous (pronounced an-droj-uh-nuhs)
(1) Being both male and female;
hermaphroditic (archaic).
(2) Having both masculine and feminine
characteristics.
(3) Having an ambiguous sexual identity.
(4) Neither clearly masculine nor clearly
feminine in appearance.
(5) In botany, having staminate and
pistillate flowers in the same inflorescence.
1622: From the Latin androgynus (androgyne + ous), derived from Greek androgynos (hermaphrodite, male and
female in one, womanish man). Historically
used as an adjective (of baths) with meaning "common to men and
women," from andros, genitive of
aner (male) (see anthropo) + gyne (woman). Gyne
is ultimate root of queen. Related forms
include androgyny, androgenous, androgynous. Androgyny was first used as a noun
circa 1850, nominalizing the adjective
androgynous. Adjectival use dates from
the early seventeenth century, derived from the older French and English terms,
androgyne. The older androgyne is still in use as a noun
with overlapping meanings. Androgynous is an adjective, androgyny is a noun, androgynously is an adverb; the noun plural is androgynies.
Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) as Amy Jolly in Morocco (1930).
In an amusing political conjunction, it appears the Central
Committee of the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) ruling Communist Party (CCP)
seems now to agree with California’s most recent Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger
(b 1947; governor of California 2003-2011), that “girly men” are a bit of a
problem. The committee has been for some
time concerned with the habits of the young and in addition to cracking down on
ideologically unreliable actresses, introduced restrictions on the amount of
time the young could spend frittering away their (ie the state’s) time playing
video games instead of studying agricultural techniques, developing surveillance
systems or something useful. Around the
republic, it’s suspected parents gave thanks to the committee for at least
attempting to achieve what their years pleas and nagging failed to achieve
although, being an inventive and clever lot, no one is expecting the caffeine-fuelled
youth easily to abandon their obsession.
Work-arounds are expected soon to emerge.
The Guangzhou Circle (the doughnut).
Fashionistas and rabid gamers weren’t the committee’s only target, an actual culture
war declared on androgyny, many young men deemed too effeminate banned from the wildly popular television genre they seem to have co-invented
with the TV broadcasters impressed by the ratings. Having called in the executives to tell them
to promote "revolutionary culture" instead of Western decadence, the
crackdown on girly men is seemingly part of President Xi Jinping’s (b 1953; paramount leader
of China since 2012) campaign to tighten control over business and society so
the CCP can impose and enforce an official morality. The president’s vision is certainly all-encompassing. As well as “deviant” young men, Mr Xi
also doesn’t like the “weird architecture” he’s noticed is part of the world’s
biggest ever building boom, disapproving of intriguing structures like the
doughnut-shaped Guangzhou Circle skyscraper by Italian architect Joseph di
Pasquale (b 1968) and to demonstrate it’s not merely a criticism of foreign
influence, he’s also condemned some of the works by Chinese designers. The president expects buildings to be like
Chinese youth: cost-conscious, structurally sound, functional and environmentally
friendly. That’s it; no deviation allowed.
The new headquarters of the state media’s China Daily during construction. When finished if looked less confronting but one can see why the president was concerned.
But
the architects got off lightly compared with the androgynous, the state’s regulator
of television content ruling that broadcasters must "resolutely put an end
to sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics", telling them to ban from the
screens the niang pao (derisive slang
for girly men which translates literally as "girlie guns”). Culturally, the new interest shouldn’t be
surprising given a narrow definition of gender roles has long been a theme in
the identity and propaganda of authoritarian administrations, the imagery,
campaigns and policies of twentieth century communist & fascist regimes being
well documented, those not conforming suffering much.
Lindsay Lohan is androgynous mode.
Like the West, modern China has some history
with LGBTQQIAAOP issues and, certainly in the twentieth century, many in the LGBTQQIAAOP
communities were treated as mentally ill undesirables and sometimes prosecuted
but, reflecting changes in the West, in 1997, Beijing decriminalized
homosexuality and in 2001 removed it from the official list of mental
disorders. Before long, officially
recognized gay bars appeared in Shanghai and gay pride marches were held and it
appeared state tolerance of such things had become, if not state policy, then
certainly the practice. However, under President
Xi, things began to change, films and other material with LGBTQQIAAOP themes often
censored or actually banned, universities compiling lists of students who
identify as gay and the pride marches have been cancelled although this was
officially a COVID-19 infection-prevention measure. In a prelude to the committee’s statement on
the suppression of androgyny, in July 2021, the government ordered the
Tencent-owned messaging app WeChat to delete accounts connected to LGBTQQIAAOP
groups.
Wrong: The androgynous men on Chinese TV.
Some
medical experts have suggested the government is under no illusion about
homosexuality and understand it’s always going to exist but they just want it
to remain invisible; in the closet as it were, something done behind closed
doors between consenting adults but something which dare not speak its name,
must less be shown on television. Others
suspect the crackdown on degeneracy may reflect the regime’s fiscal and
demographic concerns, a feeling the younger generation are suffering from the “curse
of plenty”. Having grown up knowing
little but relative affluence and abundance, youth and working-age adults are
starting to rebel against the heavy workload they’ll have to bear for the rest
of their lives to maintain an aging population, a cultural movement called
"lying flat" identified which rejects the “996” (working 9am-9pm 6
days a week, ie 72 hours) culture. The
party seems to have realised 996 may not be something helpful for regime
survival and, in August 2021, arranged for the Supreme People's Court on to declare
it illegal. However, that doesn’t mean
it doesn’t endure as a cultural expectation, especially in companies employing
younger workers.
Right: The manly men of the CCP’s Central Committee.
Making connections between the strands has been a rich environment for conspiracy theorists searching for hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Blaming video games, entertainment, and androgyny for making men "too soft to work hard" is said to be just blame-shifting for the consequences of the 996 culture burning out whole generations. State-sanctioned statistics do show extraordinary gains in productivity over the last dozen years, economic output having doubled but the gains disproportionately have been accrued by a relatively few oligarchs and those well-connected to the senior echelons of the party with even many in the upper middle-class complaining the purchasing power of their incomes are consistently falling, not keeping pace with the rising cost of housing and raising children. Reaction to the party’s announcement that the one-child policy was finished and couples should now have two or three was thus muted; in the absence of anything actually to help parents afford to have another child, a baby-boom is not soon expected. Still, one of the advantages of living in a communist state running a regulated capitalism as a sort of public-private partnership, is the compulsory education in Marxist theory so at least the people will understand where the alienated surplus profits from their labour went and the party does seem aware of the problem, another of their crackdowns directed against the oligarchs. However, unlike the androgynous, they’re not expected to be banned, instead they’ll be “encouraged” to spread the wealth. Just a little.
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