“The Pandrogyne Just Feels Trapped In A Body”

by Alexandra Molotkow

This conversation between Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace (via Dangerous Minds) about gender, identity, and transition is important and riveting, as you’d expect.

P-Orridge, if you haven’t heard of them, is an artist and formerly the frontperson of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. They consider themselves at one with their wife, Lady Jaye, who died in 2007; before that, the two underwent multiple surgeries toward becoming the same being, called the Pandrogyne.

There is so much to talk about here, and so much to quote, and this is just one of many threads to pull, but: I love hearing P-Orridge talk, and what strikes me is their fusion of art, life, and spiritual practice. The Pandrogyne is both art and an act of faith, not to mention a hugely romantic gesture and the most natural thing in the world by their description. There is something to be said for building your own belief system to arrange your life around, and committing entirely to your conception of the world:

We never thought of it as transitioning as much as evolution… we wanted to demonstrate that the human body is not the person… the mind is the person. And ultimately the body’s supposed to be discarded altogether, and we become pure consciousness, that’s our belief…and so this is a step symbolizing the beignning of seeing the species differently, and looking towards an ultimate future where there is no either/or, and ultimately there is no body, there’s just divine thought, and divine consciousness.

See, we want to be together without bodies. You know, Lady Jaye’s already dropped her body, as we say. And we’ve made a pact that if it’s at all possible, we want to find each other’s consciousness and then blend into one being, the Pandrogyne, that’s neither of us, both of us combined.

…anyone who’s taken a psychedelic knows that the world can disappear. And each of us exists in our individual universe… in a way we’re like millions of universes in one place, or apparently in a sort of grouping of universes… that’s where the unity comes in, and the sharing…giving back what you know, telling stories.

…Then P-Orridge bursts out laughing. (Laura Jane, listening intently but possibly scrambling for the right response: “Yeah”). “I just suddenly thought how crazy I sound.”

After you listen — and continuing this theme of ways to be with people — you should listen to this podcast with Love + Radio and of course watch The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, a collaboration between the filmmaker Marie Losier and her subjects. Or you could read this interview with P-Orridge by Anna Soldner, or this one by Douglas Rushkoff, from just a week after Lady Jaye’s burial, because the Pandrogyne is one of the greatest love stories of our time.