Celesta Atkins:
I can sum up my reaction to James Broughton's Androgyne Journal in one simple statement: I don't get it! I chose this book expecting it to be a deconstruction of gender or at least an in-depth look into androgyny and gender nonconformity. Instead, I found myself enmeshed in a man's sexist and racist introspective retreat. Although he professes to be finding the “Androgyne” within, very little of the book actually deals with this issue, and the sections that do, do so in what I found to be a disturbing way.
Broughton begins the book by asking,
How can I accept the needs of this double-sexed being that lives in me? There is no denying its reality. I can touch it directly and feel it throb. At any moment I can put one hand on Her and one on Him. . . . Has this phenomenon always dwelt in me? The hermaphrodite as a symbol of wholeness has fascinated me since childhood.” (p. 3)
However as one moves further into the text, it becomes obvious that Broughton is obsessed with his penis and a phallocentric view of the world and the “femaleness” he is embracing is just his sensitive nipples. Broughton believes that his breasts are his womanhood and his penis defines his manhood. His definition of androgyny is demeaning to women and explicitly privileges masculinity and phallocentricism. Although he claims that his understanding of androgyny “comes as a recognition that the wedding of male and female in the body creates an androgyne in the soul” (p. 9), his next sentence reveals the sexism inherent in his philosophy. He describes androgyny as “like being unexpectedly introduced to undivided Adam” (p. 9). In Broughton's version of androgyny, woman is subsumed within man instead of the most positive aspects of masculinity and femininity blending into a true androgyne.
I found his very Eurocentric ideas about manhood and womanhood extremely disturbing. His fantasies equate persons of color with eroticized Others. In his dreams / fantasies, Native American women serve him as midwives, but true femininity is only found in the blonde Eurocentric ideal, while gay masculinity is embodied in a Polynesian man. The Polynesian man is further objectified because he is not named only called a Kahuna King, while, in contrast, the embodiment of white womanhood is named (although in keeping with his sexist ideals, she is only a princess).
I reached toward this Kahuna King and grasped his penis and held its thick throbbing heat with my right hand. At that moment on my left
Princess Annie appeared, also nude, but now with blonde hair falling to her ankles like a cloak. I reached into her warm honey-dripping vagina. Thus I grasped the sex of both these creatures to contain them and to unite them in my own body. (p. 13)
This passage brought to my mind uncomfortable visions of colonization of people of color and co-optation of white women's sexuality.
Another factor that makes me doubt his claims of androgyny is his preoccupation with male penetration, at times by force, after which the women whom he has just raped are transformed into “a delicate maiden, blushing” (p. 17). Another time, it is his own mother whom he “plunged into. . . triumphantly” (p. 24). These passages deny any fundamental respect for women, womanhood, or femininity which, I would argue, are a vital part of androgyny.
In short this book strikes me as the ravings of a middle-aged white man having a nervous breakdown and not, as the foreword promises, embarking on a “challenging adventure.” Although Edward Field in his foreword proclaims that Broughton “reappraises the wounds of his upbringing and resolves the opposing sexual forces of his nature,” I would argue that while Broughton does expose his resentment of his mother, there is no feminine sexual force in what he describes. Throughout the book very little is said about gender, about femininity and masculinity. Instead there is a man's preoccupation with his penis and his defecation. While according to Edward Field, “His exploration of the sacred function of shitting provides one of the most daring accounts in literature,” I found it to be completely self-absorbed, boring, and frankly, disgusting. I don't see the literary merit in finger-painting with fecal matter and going “smellily giggling to the shower” (p. 87). Moreover, I don't see the connection between his fecal obsession and androgyny.
The one passage that I found compelling in this work used sexist language and again privileged men and their right to self expression. “If all that a stone is expected to be is the stone that it is, why isn't a man expected to be the kind of man that he is instead of someone's idea of what kind of man he should be?” (p. 5). This passage had the potential of being a starting point of an important discussion of the social construction of gender and the costs of gender nonconformity. However, the author just lets the opportunity pass. In conclusion, although the male authors quoted on the back of the book had nothing but praise for Androgyne Journal, this woman wishes she had used her money in a more worthwhile pursuit.
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