When most people decide to abandon traditional gender roles, they strike out on their own, off into the unknown. Societies like nice, tight little well defined boxes (but who doesn’t like a tight, well defined box, right?) and when an individual decides to identify as something other than heads or tails, that generally means they’re going to be separated out from the herd, defining themselves distinctly as “not like everyone else.”
But that’s not the Genesis P-Orridge Pandrogyny plan. Rather than strive to be unique, P-Orridge’s made achieving total sameness his life purpose.
Born Neil Andrew Megson, Genesis P-Orridge grew out of the British avante-garde, intellectual occult art scene that sprang up in the 1970s. John Cage tracked down and rereleased his first record (because the initial release had been limited to a single copy), William S. Burroughs and Byron Gisin taught him about magic, and his band, Throbbing Gristle, are considered to be the forefathers of everything from industrial to noise music. In the eighties, he toned down some of the harsher elements of Gristle and formed Psychic TV.
God, that song rules. Anyways, the chapter of P-Orridge’s life that we’re interested in began when he met his second wife, Jacqueline Breyer, also known as Lady Jaye. Genesis and Lady Jaye fell into the sort of all consuming, intellectual, emotional, artistic relationship that weird ass artsy types get into sometimes. Think John and Yoko without all the lying about in bed, breaking up the Beatles, and rambling endlessly about “love” parts. And with way more plastic surgery.
While mystics talk about being one with the universe and couples talk about being one with each other, Lady Jaye and Genesis decided to take those concepts to the next level. Through out the late nineties and early oughts, the couple underwent a series of surgeries designed to unite them as a single gender destroying hyper-sigil named Breyer P-Orridge, aiming to be as identical as was physically (and metaphysically probably) possible. Here’s Genesis talking a bit about the process.
“I guess I’m dedicated to breaking every inherited mould I can in my private life, and I am blessed to work with a partner who is prepared to be involved in that process too. We both went and got breast implants on the same day, on our 10th anniversary, and we woke up in hospital holding hands. By chance, we have the same size shoes, but now we can also share lingerie as well!”
It’s funny how often the most extreme body modification enthusiasts overlook plastic surgery. They consider sticking some metal through their cheek to be far out and over the top, but having ass skin grafted on to your face is something only some shallow L.A. sell out would do. The two bodied beast known as Breyer P-Orridge didn’t happen to share that view point however, and so over the course of almost a decade, the two of them underwent a long process aimed at unification as a single physical presence and destroying the world’s gender barriers through occult practice. Here they are explaining the concept in their own fancy, fancy words.
How cute are those matching shirts? Having a threesome with them was probably nuts! Or even better, look at this surgery chic get up.
It’s like a fucking Aphex Twin video!
Unfortunately, Breyer P-Orridge’s pandrogynous union wasn’t to last forever. On October 2007, this announcement appeared on his website:
“Lady Jaye died suddenly on Tuesday 9 October 2007 at home in Brooklyn, New York from a previously undiagnosed heart condition which is thought to have been connected with her long-term battle with stomach cancer. Lady Jaye collapsed and died in the arms of her heartbroken “other half” Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.”
Ugh, so sad. Genesis continues to perform art and music, though it seems that his plastic surgery phase is over. In an interview with Blurt Online, he explained he and Lady Jaye’s unique interpretation of relationships and reality.
“… she proposed that after death, the final result is that, post mortem, we both evolve, after death, the two merge consciousness, absorbed into a new spiritual unit; each other’s half. She always hated titles like wife, girlfriend, even partner. She preferred to call me her “other half.
She’s already gone into the next phase. We had worked it out to be able to contact in case of death, and she’s contacted me already.”
R.I.P. Jacqueline Breyer aka Lady Jaye aka Breyer P-Orridge.
Long live pandrogyny!
