lune 1977 RAIN Page 5 political liberation. Androgyny may be the mosr radical idea to come along in our time. Just as citizen activists infused the word "ecology" with extraordinary new significance, so the word "androgyny" is now being infused with momentous importance by small voluntary networks. To comprehend androgyny, it is first necessary to understand that it means neither hermaphroditism, nor homosexuality, nor bisexuality. People can bed down in whatever combinations they like so far as I am concerned, but their sexual preferences have nothing to do with androgyny simply because gender has nothing to do with androgyny. Androgyny is the expression of the ideal whole human personality; gender is a grossly inadequare expression of this wholeness. Yet we have always treated gender as if it were the essential and overriding determinant of personality. Boys were boys and girls were girls and that was that. This is like letting money serve as society's only standard of value. Who would want a world where all beauty was banished except that wirh a pricetag on it? Who wants a world where all the richness of human personality must be crammed into two little boxes, one marked "feminine" and one marked "masculine"? The idea of androgyny transcends and exists to transcend all such gender-trapped considerations. It belongs neither to men nor women; it belongs to human beings. Androgyny does not mean that women should repeat the errors of the past; the idea is not that men should now submit to the rule of women. Androgyny can get us out of the vicious cycle wherein one must either be a "winner" or a "loser." lt can help us all climb onto the common ground of true equality between the sexes. It points the way out of the bitter war which women and men have been waging for countless generations. Like all truly liberating ideas, androgyny is fundamentally simple, yet hard to define. It resurrects the ancient myth that human Leings are blessed with a dual nrt,rr.,'the all.in-one, the androgynous ideal. Psychologically, this notion derives from the contrasting qualities within us which make it possible to achieve balance and integration within the human personaliry. For reasons shrouded in the mists of time, culture has di vided these qualities into two sets and labelled rhem "mascuIine" and "feminine." Today, in a dangerously over-populated world, this division is cruel, needless and inappropriate, [ut still we cling to it. Men are forbidden access to their tender side and women are forbidden access to their aggressive side; and woe to those who dare cross over! But what, it is fair: to ask, is a communiry organizer doing in the androgyny game? What are the political and social dij mensions of a new understanding of sexuality? For years my primary interest has been facilitating social change. While I do not claim paternity of any fundamentaliy new ideas, I do claim association with the very early stages of several citizeninitiated social movements, beginning in the early sixties with the first real federal effort to combat water pollution. Among the other causes I have helped to nurture are the movement for clean air, the anti.highway movement, the public transportation movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the pro-solar energy movement and, most recently, the appropriate technology/"Smail Is Beautiful" movement. I was prese nt at the creation of the movements for public interest law, public interest economics and public interest science. In addition, I rendered loyal service as a foot-soldier in other mass social expressions of recent times, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement and the feminist movement. I daresay that I have seen a lot of social movements. These movements and the great historic movements of the nation's past-the abolitionists, the populists, the progressives, the suffragettes, the labor unions-all pursued the vision of a better society, one more just and humane. This self-same dream down through the ages has inspired people to srrive to build a better world. Great thinkers, leaders and artists have provided thrilling glimpses of what the species could be if onllour better natures were allowed to govern human affairs. But even ordinary people, if you ask them, can describe the outlines of a better society. They carry around the vision inside them; we all do. f") )k- :\, $ A funny thing happens, however, on the way to securing this vision. We fall laughably, tragically short. Again and again. We never even come close. Why? Luckily for me, I stumbled across androgyny as I was abour to publicly swear allegiance to perperual misanthropy. But contemplating androgyny allowed me to revise my perverse judgment of humanity. Irl simple terms, here is where I have emerged, Our shared vision of a better society is and must be rooted in the basic value of cooperation. But cooperation is neglected and discounted in the prevailing social system which is rooted instead in the basic value of competition. Now cooperation and competition are both necessary and desirable features of human societies as they are of ecological systems, cooperation, to provide stability; competirion, to make room for the new. There must be a balance between the two: too much cooperation, stagnation; too much competition, chaos.. The trouble with our society is that it overrewards competition (e.g. new technologies) and under-rewards cooperation (e.g. democratic collaboration). Why? The fundamental reason, it seems to me, why social alternatives rooted in cooperation are neglected is because they evolve within the side of human nature we call "feminine," a side of ourselves we have been taught to discount or even despise. Let me explain this a little further in terms of what I call a "hard" view of the world versus a "soft" view' ,,HARD" Male Measurable Reason Analysis Economics Product Competition Science Elite Specialist Certainty ,,SOFT,' Female Unmeasurable Feeling Intuition Ethics Process Cooperation Religion Participatory Generalist Uncertainry All qualities listed have their place in our lives and social relations. The poinr is that our experience should embody all these qualities, hard and soft. We should employ these qualities simultaneously and in conjunction and, through the contrasts they provide, we can achieve an internal balance. For example, if you experience an intuitive insight (soft), you must test ii rigorously through analysis (hard) to determine whether or not the insight is valid. tr
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