My daughters came home recently with the dvd Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a soulful transsexual punk rock musical, directed by and starring the brilliant John Cameron Mitchell. It started out as an off-Broadway hit, but I hadn’t heard of it. I immediately thought that Yitzhak, Hedwig’s second husband and backup singer, was so attractive: he reminded me of a few men I’ve been attracted to in one.
So when my son turned on the DVD player this morning and the movie’s special features started playing, I was glued and then had to laugh when I found out that the actor who played Yitzhak was a woman. I had been fooled (he had all sorts of rational reasons why his voice was female!).
There are a lot of terms being thrown around these days, which I see as an attempt to go beyond the strict duality and polarization of masculine and feminine. After all, we are eternal souls temporarily assigned to a body and I suspect that the many variations on a theme have always been with us, along with the ever-present strict labelling, definition and conditioning of sexual and gender roles.
Most people don’t think too much about this because things are clear and simple to them. And then for some not so much. Both gender and sexual orientation are on a continuum even if most of us fall within the average bell curve. And, one can be attracted to a certain guy but not sexually. However, as with the latest pansexual concept, romantic attraction can happen to anyone, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. The diversity of classifications is growing!
It is all very complex, and looking at the astrology of this is equally complex as obviously one must first take into account the dynamics of the entire chart. However, through the work of Jeffrey Wolf Green and others, I have seen the following concepts to be true:
Recent gender change can be indicated by Pluto or the lunar nodes on the 4th/10th house axis. This correlates with some emotional disorientation if (from a past life perspective) the change is very recent. Barbara Hand Clow also mentions the Mars/Venus conjunction.
For general gay/bisexual issues, the Scorpio/Taurus axis is always involved in some way, particularly if it involves Pluto, Mars, Venus, or Chiron. But, there is also almost always a strong Gemini, Leo, or Aquarius signature, such as Venus in Gemini in the 8th house, or Mars in Aquarius square Pluto. With the conjunction Mars/Venus, I have noticed a frequent correlation with the balsamic phase but not with the new phase.
Pisces is often a correlated signature, which could bring the ability to be quite open and limitless when faced with more unique and different orientations. I see Mars, or some other strong Pisces signature frequently when I study charts specifically of same-sex orientation.
And then there is the interesting connection of Virgo that appears with the cases of transsexuals or transgender, which would provide the ability to perfect and improve what already exists.
If I had to let myself pass the barriers of conditioning altogether, I would probably call myself pansexual, as at one time or another I have been intensely attracted to someone in just about every category there is. That doesn’t mean I have or will act on these desires, it just opens my mind to how fluid this whole area of our humanity is.
There is also a difference between a sexual attraction and falling in love. Not everyone may be attuned to it, but it’s something my Venus in Taurus (3rd house) opposite Saturn in Scorpio (retro in 9) knows all too well. One lesson for a Taurus Venus is to go beyond the physical… but from a physical point of view a certain guy drives me crazy… physical androgyny (someone who has both masculine and feminine characteristics – I put Johnny Depp or David Bowie in that category as an example) and involves a lot of ambiguity and diversity. The Gemini theme in my chart includes Venus in Taurus in the 3rd house, a Sun in Gemini, Mercury and a South Node, which in some house systems falls in the 4th, in others the 5th (Leo) which also has a my Cancer Mars trine Neptune (Pisces) in the 8th house, not forgetting Scorpio Saturn. My rising sign is Aquarius.