Thanks for inviting me to contribute to this thread, Modcleopatra.
You're welcome. I'm glad to see you've posted!
I've not read any of the other replies, as I wanted to come to your questions with a fresh head. Personally, my feeling is that there are major problems in the concept of gender as a binary.
A binary? As in two equal halves being entirely separate from one another and can be understood as entirely separate or distinct from one another? Having no relationship to one another? The binary as it functions in this way assumes there is a dialectical discussion between the two "normalized sexes," and that everything revolves around these two. This isn't always a bad thing, it has been the way art has been produced, of course, historically, and even currently, it still promotes oppression. Oppression in that it creates a world in which we consumed to adopt certain roles or methods of behaviors which may not actually feel right or limit our potential. But, instead of blaming the world, I try to turn inward. For example, in this video by Ciara, "Like a Boy" she is singing a song and dancing a dance to a tune about how Men act a certain way (like a boy)and how would a particular Man (her cheating lover) would feel if she decided to start treating him the way he treats her?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1dugl_ciara-like-a-boy_music
All is "well and good" what we'd expect: Woman hating on a Man for doing stereotypical Man things but also things a lot of Men do without realizing it, though in this case, it's hard to imagine that a Man wouldn't know this is wrong, it's more that this Man and Men like him, justify their behavior and she's turning this all around on him.
From the beginning of the video she's wearing a beater, muscles exposed, and baggy pants, surrounded by dancers who support this tough, proud image of her and follow in line in the same way. Until about 2:20 minutes in, where Ciara exposes something really cool. She dresses up as a Man on one side of the screen, and a Woman on the other side, excellent dancing on either end exposing creative expressions of self that can then come packaged as a Male or Female. Then she sings: "Dose of Your Own Medicine" meaning she also exposing Gender here as a construction, and in this case constructing it, is like a ploy, wants this Guy, who's Gender expression as a Man, is problematic, for her, and for many women, which is the purpose behind her generalization here, because many women could relate to her concerns and say men act like this and need to be shown how their behavior is problematic by simply having their behaviors mirrored, as an attempt to reneuralize his thinking about something and how thinks he can treat Women and Men based on how he sees himself to operate, and Women to operate (notice, the claim/analysis I make here is not to All Men or All Women, but Ciara turning around his specific perspective onto him.) But she stays true to herself: "which is I'm angry, why did you treat me this way and think you can get away with it, I
think it has something with how
you think your Masculinity operates!"
So if we now return to me turning inward, I'm suggesting that how we balance and harmonize ourselves with others is like the Ying Yang. The two supplement each other, there is a bit of the Yin in the Yang and bit of the Yang in the Yin and together the not only support and reify one another, the image of the Yin Yang as a whole. The binary operates a complementary system in which the two are totally divisible from the other, rather than contingent, related and ever flowing back and forth within each other and around. Moreover, you can find evidence of this in Astrology, with some planets being Yin and some planets being Yang. So for example I'm an Woman who has a majority of Yin planets, so I am very receptive to the energies around me and what I create energetically and how I self-express. In this way, a Virgo Man, Taurus, or Pisces Man could be very Yin and therefore very receptive and responsive rather than directed and already acting, which is Yang energy and considered to be Masculine energy. To me this is all conceptual, it's symbolic, it's simply creative force and energy.
How it actualizes in each person is very specific and unique, the way each of us and our energetic fields which is all Yin and Yang is (energy) is very unique, based on our bodies, our experiences, and
our charts. Therefore, a very masculine looking and behaving man, could actually be all Yin in his chart.
"Yin and Yang are opposite and yet they are the two sides of a coin. Think about the Big Bang Theory. All matter, energy, time and space came from one single point, we call it singularity. No matter how far away and how different we are, we all came from the “ONE”, there is a “oneness” inside us, that it is the true love of the universe. We all have the same type of
energy- chi flowing through us. And all of us, right from a tiny microbe to the strongest of human being have the same matter present in it. "
http://www.thespiritualfengshui.com/yin-and-yang.php
Many people try to assert therefore that balance has to happen on a macro level. That a Woman must be very Yin appearing and behaving to be balanced, and that a Man must be very Yang appearing and behaving to be balanced. It doesn't work that way and I think alot of the issues you had on the "Gay indicators chart" go back to this kind of belief system. Except that if we look at this aformentioned quote, it would appear that Yin for one person could be Yang for another. Moreover:
"There are no rigid borders between Yin and Yang and they rely on each other to be true. Imagine if there is no earth, then the word sky becomes meaningless. Like a coin cannot exist without two sides, life cannot exist without both energy and matter. As we are dependent on the universe for our existence, the universe cannot exist without us. There can be no life without death and without death life has no meaning. A human being has both positive energies and negative energies. A human being is both good and bad and so are our thoughts and emotions, resulting in some of our energies to be positive and some being negative."
http://www.thespiritualfengshui.com/yin-and-yang.php
But now let's look at this quote:
"The same goes for the sun & moon as well as man and woman. They are all Yin/Yang kismet pairs--one cannot be without the other. When talking in terms of energy and matter energy can’t exist without matter, and matter can’t exist unless it has energy to keep its structure. "
All this means that is that in order to understand things as they are, we need to see how things are related and connected to one another. Therefore, a Gay Man doesn't have to adopt any sort of Womanly qualities to have balanced relationship with another Gay Man who doesn't have to do the same either. The concern is that matter must balance itself through a flow. Negative energy would be trying to adopt "norms" of behavior, that one person must be the "woman" and the other person the "man," when in reality, relationships of all kinds, operate as a flow of energy. This assumption that one must be one way and the other the other way in order to achieve balance is actually stagnant and against the way Yin Yang Chi works.
In reality if we really break it down, the Male Body is the Center, and all other bodies, Female (pre-pubscent), Female body (menstruating), Female Body (pregnant), Female Body (post pregnancy), Female body (menopausal), the Transsexual Body, the Intersexed Body, all bodies revolve around a plastic, ummoveable Male Center. I've included a picture of Atom here to express what I mean:
In actuality, if we accept this kind of model, the Female Body could be the center. Even if a fetus has an XY chromosome makeup, if the body during pregnancy fails to respond to a trigger to start producing male hormones and male sex characteristics, the body will phenotypically develop as female, suggesting that in fact, the female body comes first. If we go back even further into development in Utero, we end up in something relatively neutral. Whats interesting to note however, is that if you look at the body, just look at it, you can see how the Female Genitalia could be the template for the Male Genitalia.
Now as you say here:
Even at the purely anatomical level, people are not wholly male or wholly female; even people who are not intersex have some female and male hormones whizzing around their bodies.
See, now I see what you mean, but I think we disagree. I don't like characterizing hormones as male or female, because the hormones themselves are just chemical mechanisms which produce visible results that we then call/label male or female. It doesn't mean any of this is wrong; I'm just pointing out the power and the role we have making things mean something. Are for "wholly" male or female, it depends what you mean by that. A female who hasn't begun menstruating isn't the same as a female who has begun menstruating; a female who hasn't given birth isn't the same as a female who has. So if we go back now to hormones, as this relates to hormones, it's almost like the hormones once they impact our bodies, are indivisible from the results they produce and thus become wrapped in the labels we give them.
On a purely anatomical level, no one is purely hormonally one way or the other.
When you get beyond the anatomical and into the realm of human psychology, the picture becomes even more blurred and the idea that you are either a woman or a man seems almost laughable as it relies on stereotypical notions of what a man or a woman is.
I think it has to do with the stereotypical notions of what a man or a woman is SUPPOSED to be to reify and justify a history surrounding this kind of behavior, which people then justify has to do with the differences in body types. Some people I've heard like to say that men are stronger, more muscular than women, and that therefore justifies why it has become that Men are stronger in society. They are physically stronger so they should be the strong ones: conceptually speaking. Of course, so much of world doesn't rely on having personal physical strength so this concept sort of all makes me scratch my head!
Having said that, I think some things - such as certain cognitive abilities - do seem to be hard-wired into "male" and "female" brains; whether those brains always reside in the appropriate physical body is another matter altogether!
Like spatial intelligence? I think the issue is with seeing this as connected to ideas of male or female. For example, studies show Girls do worse at Math than Boys. I don't think this has anything to do with how the Male Brain works versus the Female Brain in terms of Mathematic ability. I think the difference might be in how Girls experience a certain kind of pressure whereas Boys experience another kind of pressure, both of which relate back to Math. Girls should be more sensitive and Boys should be more analytical. This doesn't mean the "male brain" is more analytical and Boys therefore less senstive. Male babies, right after birth, are considerably more sensitive and easily agitated than Female babies. What happens however, is that the parts of the brain which are present and used to do math problems effectively, are more encouraged in those that have Male Bodies, at least in the dominant cultures of White/American/Anglo-Saxon/English/European and many cultures across the Americas. We can witness and see substantial differences in capacities and functions of the peoples of the Indian Subcontinent, and via the various Asian Cultures. I don't think that the strength in Math here in these cultures can then be linked to the Culture itself. There isn't an "Indian Brain." There is the Indian experience which shapes how one thinks and sees the world and could therefore promote, no matter one's sex, a capacity for math.
How does this relate to astrology? Well, I personally think that astrology can offer a gender-neutral view - we are made up of all the planets and all the signs and the combinations that indicate traditionally "male" characteristics can appear in the charts of women, and vice versa, enabling us to have a sort of "extra-personal" or helicopter view unchained to notions of gender and gender roles. If that makes sense??!!
For me what you're saying is a sex-neutral view. I tend to look at the word gender as more open-ended. It is in part, your sexed body, how you relate to your sexed body, how you cloth your sexed body, but so many factors go into how these aforementioned components can operate. Gender is a composite of so many things. Therefore, astrology doesn't necessarily offer, for me, a gender-neutral view, but a way to shape, hone, and understand our specific way of being the world. Our Gender as we understand it, is refined by our self-exploration and exploration of others, into the world of Astrology.