TRANSVESTIA

Androgyne," that super type human who embodied all qualities in one person. According to her, something brought about the separation of the yang and the yin or the masculine and the feminine (or several other terms in the various philosophies or religions), and the problem is how to get them together again.

She completely overlooks the long evolutionary history of the human species in which the development of masculine and feminine aspects of the human condition were the natural outgrowths of the division of labor based on the two different areas of responsibility in reproduction. Androgeny never existed as a condition in the past except for some special individuals. Its possibility today is solely because the human condition has developed to such a point and in such a way that we can begin to see that those qualities generally represented in both men and woman as not being quite appropriate, can, as a matter of fact, both be present and consciously used by each sex. It is intereting that almost all the books and research being done in this area have been written by women or undertaken by women. It is the freeing of women through the women's movement that is making Androgeny or Gynandry (same word, reversed order) possible.

In short, I'd have to say that although the name on the book ANDROGENY would seem to make it a very readable and instructive book it is neither and I wouldn't recommend your spending money on it. She does say some good things here and there such as: "Androgeny does not depend on what you do, but on what you are," or "One may ask, how do we become androgenous? The answer to this question is that we do not become androgenous, we already are. It is necessary only to let ourselves be ourselves. It is not necessary to learn how." "But nothing works without the dynamics of the interaction of opposites, and this is what androgeny is: the rhythmic interplay of Masculine and Feminine within the psyche of one individual." These little gems are, however, hard to find, sandwiched as they are between pages and pages of philosophical-religious-mythological filler. It's really too bad, I was hoping that someone had written a really definitive book on the subject, it is badly needed. But nobody has. Maybe I ought to do it myself, but I find that while getting books written is difficult enough, getting them sold is much worse.

Virginia