Monét in Blue

@monet-in-blue ~ monet-in-blue.tumblr.com Non-binary, gender-expansive, androgyne.

[monet-in-blue]

Gender Expansive Androgyne

I identify as an androgyne, meaning I experience my gender as a mixture of feminine and masculine. But since my experience of androgyne is gender expansive, instead of being located at a single point at the middle of the gender spectrum grid, my gender occupies a large portion of the grid simultaneously:

The way I interpret it is that an expansive gender has a central focus point on the gender spectrum grid, but it also includes an expanded adjacent area. Since my gender's focus point of androgyne is in the center of the grid, a circle happens to be a convenient shape to express my experience of expansiveness. Someone who is a gender expansive demigirl might draw their expanded area as a half circle. Of course the expanded area could be any shape, (and or course regardless of how it is drawn, this is just a 2D representation of gender which is a multidimensional experience for many of us!)

Anyway, this explanation may sound a bit confusing, but I recently came across the following description of gender expansive fluidity that sums it up so much better:

From the Podcast "Let's Talk Gender S2:E6", by Meaghan / Ray (Link below):

"The third category is a gender expansive experience. People with this type of gender have one gender, but it encompasses a wide range on the gender spectrum. They may choose to present one aspect of their gender at a time, or embody a variety of components at once. They may appear to have a gender fluid identity, when in actuallity their gender is stable but expansive."

Quote from Meaghan / Ray. (Thanks for putting it so succinctly Meaghan / Ray!) Their podcast can be found here:

Let’s Talk Gender S2E6: Complexities of Nonbinary Identities

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender. This episode is about some of the more complex aspects of being nonbinary such as genderflui

[monet-in-blue]

Gender Expansive.

I love the term "gender expansive". It actually seems like my soul expands whenever I call myself that. I feel wide open and powerful, my energy thrumming like a sudden summer thunderstorm in the midwest. Non-binary feels flat by comparison to me.

Here is a wonderful quote by Pepe Santamaría, from their essay, "Cultivating the Gender Expansive Within" (Linked below) that brings me joy, and I hope does for you as well.

"As I see it, I am not genderfluid in a mercurial sense; I am not masculine or feminine at any given time. I am gender expansive in the sense that I contain and embody so many possibilities beyond those two. I can be womanly, fierce, masculine, calm, giving, receiving, motherly, fatherly, and childlike. I am the multitude of experiences, feelings, embodiments, and energies that can be found in nature—which, together, are all expressions of the same earth. My experience is less like a gradient of pink and blue and more like a painter’s palette full of colors ready to become a masterpiece."

Quoted text from Pepe Santamaria (they/elle) at:

Ofrenda Magazine - Cultivating the Gender Expansive Within • Words by Pepe Santamaría • Art by Zeferino Llamas

Taking cues from the natural world and claiming fluid ancestor-kin

[monet-in-blue]

Gender in Blue.

Blue is a magic color, more then meets the eye--a trickster. When we look at a blue sky, the ocean blue, or a blue jay's feathers, we are not seeing color in the normal chromatic sense, but instead a reflection or refraction of light that our eyes see as blueness.

Even as a pigment blue is complicated, historically one of the most difficult to find or synthesize. It requires a transmutation to achieve, as in the case of vivianite blue (a natural pigment that can develop through the breakdown of organic materials in a mineral-rich environment) or indigo blue (a color extractable from certain plants that contain an insoluble indoxyl molecule that must be chemically reconfigured to become a soluble dye).

These tricky, transmutational characteristics of blue have a lot in common with my experience of gender. What the eyes think they see as one thing is in fact a much richer and more complex other. Or the transformational breaking apart of so many tiny pieces within one's self before reassembling them into a new and more vibrant form.

Blue has inspired me in other ways as well. The blue jay in zir striking androgynous and sexually monomorphic form was what prompted me in adulthood to start consciously analyzing my feelings about gender identity and sexually dimorphic traits.

My connection with blue and blue jays felt further affirmed when I discovered the blue feather is a symbol in the SCA community to signal connection with LGBTQ+ identities.

But to go back to almost the very start, blue was a color that I as a proto-androgyne tomboy-identifying AFAB kid in the 80's could always try to insist on whenever the dreaded "pink or blue" binary presented itself.

It's been almost four decades since my young self was mortified to show up at the home economics sewing room following a sick day to discover there was only hot magenta fabric remaining for the basic string bag "Intro to Machine Sewing" project.

And those decades contained a lot of gender incongruence and rebelliousness before 6 years ago when I finally started intensive questioning and a slow (and ongoing) process of social transitioning.

Each transition is unique. Yet I, (as so many of us do) have spent countless hours searching books and blogs for evidence of gender journeys similar to my own because we gender traversers all want to know we are not alone in this.

But as more of us are able to share, even if our routes are different there are plenty of roadside stops we share in common where we can gather for comradery, to spin some yarns, or to pat each other on the back in recognition of landmarks passed or adventures had.

Tumbler seems like a good roadside stop I thought to myself, so here I am, travelogue and journal in hand, blue feather tucked in hat band, blue hatchback Honda parked outside. I'll be here with a cup of hot tea right by the window where I can see the sky. Nice to meet you. I'm Monét. Ze/zir or they/she. Monét in Blue.