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 began as an off Broadway hit but I hadn’t heard of it. I immediately thought that Yitzhak, Hedwig’s second spouse and back up singer, was so hot – he reminded me of a few men I have been attracted to rolled up into one.
So when my son turned on the dvd player this morning and the special features of the film began playing, I became glued, and then had to laugh when I found out that the actor who played Yitzhak was a woman. They had me fooled (I had all sorts or rational reasons why his voice was a woman’s!).
There are a lot of terms being thrown around these days, which I’m viewing as an attempt to get beyond the strict duality and polarization of male and female. 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 labeling, defining and conditioning of gender and sexual roles.
Most people don’t think too much about this because for them things are clear and straightforward. And then for some not so much. Both gender and sexual orientation are on a continuum even if the bulk of us fall within the average bell curve. And, one can be attracted to a certain type but not sexually. Or, as with the latest concept of pansexual, romantic attraction can happen with anyone, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. The diversity of classifications are growing!
It’s all very complex, and looking at the astrology of this is equally complex since one must obviously first take in the dynamics of the entire chart. However, through the work of Jeffrey Wolf Green and others, I have seen the following concepts hold true:
Recent gender switch may be indicated with Pluto or the lunar nodes in the 4th / 10th house axis. This correlates with some emotional disorientation if (from a past life perspective) the switch is very recent. Barbara Hand Clow also mentions the Mars / Venus conjunction.
For general themes of gay/bisexual, the Scorpio / Taurus axis is always implicated in some manner, particularly if involving Pluto, Mars, Venus or Chiron. But, there is also nearly 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 Mars / Venus conjunction, I have noticed a frequent correlation with the balsamic phase but not the new phase.
Pisces is often a correlated signature, which might lend the ability to be fairly open and boundariless when faced with the more unique and different orientations. I see Mars, or some other strong Pisces signature frequently when studying charts specifically of same sex orientation.
And then there is the interesting Virgo connection that shows up with transsexual or transgender cases, which would lend the ability to perfect and improve upon what is in place.
If I were to completely let myself go past the barriers of conditioning, I would probably call myself pansexual as I have at one time or another found myself intensely attracted to someone in almost every category there is. That doesn’t mean I have or will act upon these desires, it simply opens up 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 keyed into that, but it is something that my Venus in Taurus (third house) opposite Saturn in Scorpio (retro in 9th) knows too well. A lesson for a Taurus Venus is going beyond the physical….but from the physical point of view a certain type 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 the Venus in Taurus in the third house, a Gemini Sun, Mercury and South Node, which in some house systems falls into the 4th, others the 5th (Leo) which also has my Cancer Mars trine Neptune (Pisces) in the 8th house – not to forget the Scorpio Saturn. My rising sign is Aquarius.