I have always found it interesting that the worldly definition of “Uranian” according to Wikipedia is

Uranian is a nineteenth century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with “a female psyche in a male body” who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types.

Delving a little deeper, I find that the origin of this association with the word Uranian with the “third sex” originated with a German scholar named Karl Heinrich Ulrich who was what we could today call transgender, meaning he identified as a woman in a man’s body.  The term Uranian was picked up by Victorian writers such as Oscar Wilde, who wrote: “”To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble – more noble than other forms.”  (Ulrich’s chart shows Venus opposite Uranus, and Uranus squares the Moon in Wilde’s chart.)

As we transition into the  Aquarian age, it’s not surprising that gender roles are blurring and homosexuality is becoming more openly accepted.  Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, the planet that inspires us to live a life that is authentically true to ourselves as possible.  Uranus governs radical behavior and rebellion against the status quo, and this includes greater acceptance of lifestyles that don’t fit into the rigid social norms that fall under Saturn’s domain.  With Pluto, lord of destruction and regeneration, traveling through Capricorn, Saturn’s sign, these rigid social structures (Capricorn) are being pummeled and demolished.

As an astrologer I use the term “Uranian” to describe any person or trait that reflects this desire to move past old ways of thinking and manifest an authenticity in one’s thoughts and behavior patterns and this goes far beyond gender issues.  But a strong Uranus in a birthchart does tend to indicate a person whose gender identification is less than rigid although this doesn’t always manifest as homosexuality.

Androgyny is nothing new in the rock world (David Bowie, Marilyn Manson), but a new singer has taken gender neutrality to a new level.  Justin Vivian Bond (Moon square Uranus) is not only trangendered, but uses the neutral pronoun of “v” to describe “vself” and says:  “I like my penis, and I am keeping it, but I am creating a transbody — a physical record on my body and a medical record that I am a transgendered person.”

Our local alternative paper reviewed a recent performance by Justin Vivian Bond, saying:

The gender-ambiguous voice is unrepentant, a queer mixture of the sexes, “monstrous.” Monster comes from the Latin monstrum, meaning an aberration within the natural order. In other words, the so-called monster defies categories. Not surprisingly, what we call monsters are often only reflections of our most profound terrors and desires. Less obviously, monsters reveal the fact that we each contain something of the other; elements of “you” lurk within “me.”

And with the hermaphroditic, we are reminded that even in our differences, we all possess male and female attributes. Writing about Michael Jackson’s violation of the rules governing racial and gender identity, James Baldwin offered that perhaps what is truly monstrous is not ambiguity but the fight against androgyny in an effort to reinforce conventional gender roles. What is terrible is a restrictive gender regime; a terrorist is someone who polices the borders of gender.

This is just the beginning, and the more radical societal changes become the stronger the backlash of conservatives who fear this kind of extreme alteration to their world view.  This is part of what we will be seeing over the next four years as Uranus squares Pluto and takes us deeper into the Aquarian Age.