Gatochy's Blog: Epicoene, or the man of beauty II

Currently featured on the Gatochy's Blog:

Hamlet
Farewell, dear mother.

King
Thy loving father, Hamlet.

Hamlet
My mother: father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother.

-William Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark, Act IV, scene III [1603]

Maybe part of the attraction in an Epicoene, or man of beauty is that by exuding both male and female sex appeal he is like mother and father rolled into one. Maybe it's a childish desire to win mom and dad's approval and possess them, combined in one human being.

I was going to call it a kind of hermophroditism, but hermaphrodite in Camille Paglia-speak stands for "severe sexual closure". She defines it as someone who is spiritually blocked and emotionally closed, and thus can not and will not mate. But what one sees in Epicoenes like Byron, Elvis Presley and Peter Murphy is the opposite of all that: a need to be seen, to make love to the world and to give of themselves completely.

I think emitting either feminine or masculine sex appeal is a deliberate pose that can be turned on and off at will. A gay man might give out a feminine vibe to signal that he is gay, in order to attract other gay men; but an Epicoene does it because he means to both attract and repel everyone, of both genders.

I see him as someone who, at some point in his life, became aware of the fascination he exerts over others, and so he decides to acknowledge it and celebrate it by sometimes turning up the feminine vibe a notch. Instead of closing up, he opens himself to it by becoming androgyne, all-inclusive in his sensuality and glamour. You saw it in Laurence Olivier, an Epicoene who was also "accused" of being gay, when he simply liked to feel his power of attraction over people.

His androgyny is also a form of insolence and defiance, to piss off the machos and the homophobes, the emotionally insecure and the simpletons. Effeminacy in a straight man is a statement that he doesn't feel he has to reject femininity to prove himself a man, that he doesn't define his masculinity as something that exists to oppose femininity, either in himself or others. It's part of the lovingness and total givingness of the Epicoene.

I love a man of exception who will not be intimidated and threatened into not realizing his full potential, the fearlessness and self-confidence that it shows. You have to be very strong not be paralyzed by the critics' put-downs; but more importantly you have to feel a lot of love for mankind to believe that it's ok to put yourself out there, that enough people will love you and relate to how you feel. It's that endless optimism and good will towards others that I find so attractive. A lesser man would just be consumed by fear and paranoia and go home and hide.......


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To read the rest, head over to the Gatochy's Blog. This is their prespective on strippers and their strip teases...:

"A strip-teaser wraps the audience in the narcissistic celebration of her sex appeal. Although, for her safety, you're not allowed to touch her, she acknowledges your presence. It is for you that she dances, it's you that she teases, and when she touches herself it's so that you can imagine your hands caressing her. The magic of the strip-tease can not exist without an audience, and the dancer is never more turned on than when she knows she's being watched, and people are responding. A feminine male performer like Peter Murphy can create a similar kind of communion with the audience, when he puts on some of those feminine characteristics of exhibitionism and narcissism, by exposing as much of his body as possible, by adorning himself as a beautiful object of desire for your pleasure, and by holding the hands of his fans for minutes at a time."