INDEX

(and., abb. for androgyne or androgynism)

[1]. Continental European civilizations are, on this subject, a half-century ahead of Anglo-American.

[2]. See Part VI, chapter III.

[3]. A physician of wide experience who read the above before publication argued that in the United States, only five per cent are mildly virile. I stand unconvinced that my proportion is in error. The proportion surely differs with racial types and environment. The physician has always lived in New York City and practiced among liberal-minded, non-church, pleasure-loving people of Teutonic or Latin parentage. My own every-day associates, particularly in the village where I was brought up and which I still frequently visit, have been, almost entirely, ultra-puritan Anglo-Saxons. When I maintained their sexual temperance, the physician declared them hypocrites, whose secret practice is the same as “worldlings.” I have been intimately acquainted with hundreds of these male puritan church-devotees, and am convinced they are hypocrites solely in supposing their sexual moderation due to their own superior morals. Sex has naturally small place in their lives.

[4]. Do not confuse with anaphrodites the excessively rare men who are attracted by female beauty and manners, marry, but then desire merely Platonic relations. Such are rather cases of impotence. The genuine anaphrodite never even courts a woman.

[5]. The author has always preferred to read biography to fiction. If his life is spared, he will write an extensive work on the sexuality of noted men and women. An unusually large proportion of geniuses have been either anaphrodites or androgynes. For example, Sir Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant appear to have been anaphrodites.

[6]. I take no stock in the theory advanced by some medical writers that androgynism (generally termed male sexual inversion) is acquired and not congenital. The exceptional method of sexual expression can be acquired only by individuals congenitally on the very borderline between androgynes on the one hand and anaphrodites or mildly virile on the other. The latest proponent of the “acquired” theory, Dr. P. M. Lichtenstein, in the August, 1921, issue of MEDICAL REVIEW OF REVIEWS, suggests that masturbation in boyhood may produce in adulthood a fairie or ultra-androgyne. In my physical prime, I was a fairie of extreme type. I never masturbated as a child or as an adult because of acute horror. My own pudenda never had any part in my sexual ardor—any more than had my vermiform appendix.

Dr. Lichtenstein’s suggestion of the correction by parents of feminine predilections in small boys is futile. Those feminesque traits, when congenital, as I believe they always are in ultra-androgynes, can not be suppressed. Likewise his advice that the adolescent girl-boy seek the company of the gentle sex as a cure is as futile. In my teens, I forced myself to it, but it had not the least curative value.

Note Added in Galley: I just came across a scrap of a recent NEW YORK WORLD Sunday magazine, containing “Glands That Govern Our Lives”, name of author missing. I quote: “The not uncommon phenomena of the smooth-faced man with a feminine voice and a figure resembling that of a woman, and of the deep-voiced, hairy-faced masculine woman, are produced by abnormalities in the development of these glands.” Only in the third decade of the twentieth century is the comparatively new branch of medical science, endocrinology (the study of glands, particularly the ductless) coming forward to maintain the irresponsibility of “homosexualists” for their idiosyncrasy. It has also only just been brought into the limelight that the testicles are invigorating (as well as masculinizing) to the individual possessing them and the prime reason for man’s being physically stronger than woman. I myself, for several years after castration at the age of twenty-seven, observed a marked diminution in my stamina. (For details, see my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.) My own testicles were abnormal judged by the fact that I, though always having intense horror of self-manustupration, suffered from acute spermatorrhea from the incidence of puberty up to castration, while I was totally devoid of the propensity natural to full-fledged adult males for emptying the seminal vesicles.

[7]. Other authorities make them more numerous. I quote from Love’s Coming-of-Age, page 125: “Dr. Grabowsky ... quotes figures ... as high as one man in every 22, while Dr. Albert Moll (Die Contraere Sexual-Empfindung, chapter 3) gives estimates varying from one in every 50 to as low as one in every 500. These figures apply to such as are exclusively of the said nature [excluding the psychic hermaphrodites. Including the latter] the estimates must be greatly higher.... Some late statistical inquiries (See Statistische Untersuchungen, Dr. M. Hirschfeld, Leipzig, 1904) yield 1.5 to 2 per cent as a probable ratio.”

I myself have fixed upon the median of ratios I have read, as well as the frequency that has occurred to me as a result of a half-century’s unusually intimate mingling with all social types in many nations, having possessed, at the time I lived in the foreign nations, some speaking ability in seven foreign languages. But the frequency is greater than I have given in the text rather than less. But the extreme German estimates are too high for the United States. It is my conclusion from intimate intercourse with the natives in many countries that the frequency of bisexuality per thousand is proportional to the density of population. Nature puts a break on over-population by increasing the proportion of sterile bisexuals. When a population is regularly underfed, the number of bisexuals born appears to increase. But that is not the only factor. Another law is that when a consanguineous multifamily (a group of families) multiplies with exceptional rapidity, bisexuals are born in that family even though the food supply is undiminished. The author believes the latter to be the reason he himself was born bisexual. It was because the generic womb (i.e., those of my grandmothers for several generations) had been overtaxed.

The ratio is probably much higher among the cultured—particularly art devotees—than among the “hoi polloi.”

[8]. See later chapter: THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE HERMAPHRODITOI IN GENERAL.

[9]. Bisexuality occurs also in animals and birds, but far less frequently than among humans. Perhaps this difference is due to the fact that the human male and female differ much less in respect to secondary sexual determinants than do most birds and animals. Several times in my life I have come across a newspaper item such as the following. I inquired of a poulterer, who informed me that he has had numerous hens that crowed and possessed secondary male determinants.

CROWS AND LAYS EGG. IS IT COCK OR HEN?

Copyright by Press Publishing Co. (NEW YORK WORLD), 1921

(Special cable despatch to the WORLD)

LONDON, Dec. 9.—A Buff Orpington cock at a poultry show in the agricultural hall at Islington has laid an egg. This bird began its career with all the attributes of a sure-enough hen. It laid eggs and cackled over them in time-honored fashion. Its head, plumage, and habits were all hen-like.

As it grew, its conformation underwent a subtle change. It began to grow a cock’s comb, sprouted a cock’s tail, developed spurs and crowed on appropriate occasions—but continued to lay eggs. When its owner exhibited it as a “cock-hen” and claimed despite its male affiliation, that it produced eggs, all the poultry fanciers derisively nicknamed it “Bluff Orpington.”

One doubter offered to pay one hundred pounds if the bird laid an egg. It was watched day and night for the coming of the marvel, and yesterday duly presented its watchers with an excellent egg.... Physiologists are dumbfounded.

[10]. “Catamite” is the Latin, as well as modern, corruption of the vocable “Ganymede.” For the relation between Jupiter and Ganymede, see Dr. Wm. Lee Howard’s Pederasty vs. Prostitution in Journal of the American Medical Association, May 15, 1897. Also Plato’s Phædo. Greek literature in general is suffused with pederasty. I read Greek six years in “prep” and university. My observation is that androgyne scholars have a penchant for that language and drift into teaching it. Prior to the twentieth century, the Greek and Latin masterpieces—in all “preps” and colleges read unexpurgated because the sexually full-fledged have not generally understood the homosexual descriptions—were the only publications affording androgynes an inkling of the secrets of their sex life.

[11]. For twenty-five years, the author has combed the medical press for information on androgynism. This chapter is the |Are Androgynes Super-men?| fruit. I made no notes, never expecting to publish the results. At the present writing, I lack the necessary month for research to the end of making a complete list of my sources. For Socrates, see Plato’s Symposium and Phædo, Xenophon’s Symposium, and Haller’s Die Rede des Sokrates in Platon’s Symposium. For Plato, see his Dialogues, particularly the Symposium; Grote’s Plato; Ellis’s Sexual Inversion, page 229; The Sexuality of Plato in Journal of Urology and Sexology, 1916, page 201. For Cæsar, see Dr. Wm. Lee Howard’s Pederasty vs. Prostitution in Journal of the American Medical Association, May 15, 1897, and Suetonius’ Lives of the Cæsars, written about A. D. 120. The latter work is a revelation of the pederasty with which the best Roman society was honeycombed. I believe conditions are about the same to-day in all civilizations above the barbarous, although in Christian nations one has not been permitted to publish the facts. They are really not horrible, nor portentous of ruin for society; merely imagined to be so. They are not really conducive to the detriment of society, and have existed practically as now throughout history. It is all because Nature has created the phenomenon of androgynism, really beneficent to society, but sorely misjudged by writers grossly ignorant of the phenomenon. Its final investigation in the twentieth century can do no hurt; only a world of good.

For Michelangelo, see his Sonnets and his biography by J. A. Symonds. For the Shakespeare-Author, see his Sonnets and Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W. H., published in Blackwood’s in 1889, as well as that same article expanded in a monograph published by Mitchell Kennerly in 1921. For Whitman, see his Leaves of Grass and Drumtaps.

Mrs. Havelock Ellis, in her New Horizons in Love and Life, says: “Inversion [sexual] and genius have a sort of affinity. They certainly both tend to belong to the neurotic group.” [R. W’s comment: As a rule both androgynes and gynanders, but particularly the former, are bundles of nerves.]

The valuable popular exposition of the philosophy of sex, Edward Carpenter’s Love’s Coming-of-Age (published by Boni and Liveright) did not come to my attention until after THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS was written. The following are excerpts from the chapter, The Intermediate Sex, the bracketed words being my own: Page 124: “Charles G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”) in his book, The Alternate Sex (1904), insists much on the frequent combination of the characteristics of both sexes in remarkable men and women, and has a chapter on “The Female Mind in Man,” and another on “The Male Intellect in Woman.” [I once read the statement in a medical journal, name not recalled: “Homosexualists are particularly common among authors.”]

Page 139: “The instinctive artistic nature of the male of this class [urnings or androgynes], his sensitive spirit, his |Androgynes’ Angelic Disposition.| wavelike emotional temperament, combined with hardihood of intellect and body ... may be said to give them ... through their double nature, command of life in all its phases, and a certain freemasonry of the secrets of the two sexes which may well favor their function as reconcilers [of the full-fledged males with the full-fledged females] and interpreters [of human nature, particularly from the standpoint of sex]. Certainly it is remarkable that some of the world’s greatest leaders and artists have been dowered either wholly or in part with the Uranian temperament [that is, either ultra-androgynes or ultra-gynanders or else psychic hermaphrodites]—as in the cases of Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, or, among women, Christine of Sweden, Sappho the poetess, and others.”

It is noteworthy that tremendously virile males—who alone, as a rule, have been intimate with the extreme type of androgyne—have named him “fairie” in English-speaking countries and “petit-jesus” (Little Jesus) in France, largely because of his having, innate, the disposition of an angel; while the most common scientific term for androgynes in general has been “urning”, from Greek ouranos, meaning “heavenly being.” The originator of the term “urning”, however, was himself a bisexual, K. H. Ulrichs, an Austrian, the originator, about 1880, of the scientific study of sexual intermediates, and author of several published papers on the theme.

A lesser historic character than those listed in my text, Lord Cornbury, cousin of Queen Anne and colonial governor of New York, had the fad of attiring himself in feminine finery for a stroll on the capital city’s principal promenade. One of the most prominent judges (now deceased) of the Atlantic coast was declared to me, by a citizen of his own town, to be a psychic hermaphrodite. An official once high up in the government at Washington was declared to me, by a citizen of his native place, to be an androgyne. One of the greatest factors in world politics to-day is merely a grown-up infant and an androgyne, though at the same time a genius.

[12]. A confidant who read these paragraphs commented in substance: “‘Physician, heal thyself!’ Your book shows that you yourself are governed by instinct and prejudice. ‘Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.’ Therefore omit these paragraphs.”

If I am governed by instinct and prejudice, I am conscious of being ruled only by reason. Perhaps those who advocate the suppression of intermediates without investigation equally feel they are governed by pure reason. Granted that both they and myself are ruled by instinct and prejudice and that it is impossible for mankind to exercise pure reason, nevertheless intermediates should finally have their day in court. They number 700,000 in continental United States alone, including some of the brightest minds and most useful members of society.

[13]. My own case indicates that Nature creates androgynes and gynanders as a brake on too rapid multiplication. Both paternal and maternal stock have averaged eight children to a marriage. It seems that Nature wishes to preserve to as many of her children as possible the joys of courtship. Often, instead of making cold anaphrodites or female icebergs out of the men and women not needed to perpetuate the race, she brings into the world androgynes or gynanders—as a rule, sterile.

[14]. I wrote this paragraph, so much like that quoted (at close of preceding chapter) from Carpenter’s Love’s Coming of Age, before I had heard of the existence of the book named.

[15]. For me it was extreme temperance, considering my natural sexual ardor. For most people it would have been gross intemperance. Extreme temperance might be defined as the denial of six-sevenths of one’s strong fleshly desires. That is what it was with me. Professional fairies commonly indulge more than ten times as often per year as I did. But as a result, they go early to the grave.

[16]. Fellatio.

[17]. Particularly during my teens, I have worried and grieved a thousand times as much as the average individual. I say for the solace of fellow melancholiacs who retain their reason that at my present age of forty-seven, I show not the least sign of thinning or whitening hair. But this may be due to my being an ultra-androgyne, a subspecies blessed with perennial youth. Strangely also in my own case intense grief (except the agonies in my Garden of Gethsemane, for which see close of this chapter) has seemed to put physical strength into my usually weak body. I feel also that it sharpens my wits and adds to my wisdom and literary ability. “There’s not an ill wind but blows some good.”

At the age of forty-seven my conviction is that great sorrows, after the lapse of a score of years, are recognized to have been blessings in disguise. My life experience has demonstrated that “there is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.” My life experience has demonstrated that the biblical teachings about human life are in general true, and that either the Christian or Jewish religion is practically necessary to save from despair and suicide men and women foreordained to drain the cup of anguish to the dregs. My personal faith in Christian doctrine, and my habit, instilled in infancy, of “taking everything to God in prayer,” have saved me from suicide a thousand times and made the deepest of sorrows tolerable.

The upshot of my very exceptional life experience is: (1) “Praise God from whom all blessings flow;” and (2) Even pain, sorrow, and death are blessings in disguise. The heart of the universe is beneficent.

As I have had an unusual religious experience, one of the numerous books I plan to write, if my life is spared, will be entitled: MY SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I have made many discoveries in religion and ethics which I long to proclaim to the world. As already stated, I have always been ultra-religious and a deep student of the Bible. Another book I plan to write will be entitled: THE BIBLE AND THE SEXUAL INSTINCT. In the latter I will seek to demolish the Church’s chief stumbling block. As already stated, I was cut out for a preacher.

[18]. After my conversion at fifteen, I fought against my sexual attraction toward schoolmates as few others have struggled against the ruling passion. I was no longer a coquette, although desiring as much as ever to be such. My passion for loud apparel, however, was not suppressed since I did not recognize in it any sin.

[19]. I had in mind possible predestination to be a fille de joie—the career which haunted me, off and on, every year of my life after my second, even years before I heard of the existence of such filles. I had already had an intensive five years career (third to seventh years). Another foreshadowing (that of my actual career from my twenty-sixth to fortieth years) was a common dream, from about my ninth to fourteenth years, of being chased through streets and fields by youthful soldiers, who would finally catch me, and great terror would result. The dream occurred so often that in my waking hours I resolved, the next time I had that dream, to tell the soldier boldly: “I am not afraid of you, because this is only a dream!” Repeatedly in my dreams did I tell that to the soldier who had grabbed me, but he replied (as I dreamt): “You are mistaken. This is not a dream. It is the real thing!” And then I would become as terrified as ever. My dream would always end a second or two after being grabbed, and generally I would wake up as if from a night-mare.

[20]. Anglo-Saxon leaders of thought have hitherto been of the opinion that the domain of sex is “terra interdicta,” just as those of Roger Bacon’s time (priests and monks exclusively) would have believed it sacrilege to use a telescope or microscope—“to see what God meant man should never see.” Roger, although having invented these instruments, did not dare tell his generation because the leaders of thought would have burnt him alive for invading terra interdicta.

[21]. However, as described in detail in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, the congenital extraordinarily keen edge on my intellect was progressively and permanently dulled from the age of sixteen to twenty-three by emissions during sleep twice a week. It is necessary to add that I always had acute horror of self-abuse.

[22]. An adult who never surpasses the mentality of a child of twelve.

[23]. One of my three confidants achieved the highest success in life of any student in college with me—one of the highest political offices in the United States. Down to forty, I confided my homosexual adventures, although after we graduated, our personal relations were never closer than shaking hands. Within two years of his honorable name’s appearing in absolutely every newspaper of the Union, he permitted me to receive mail addressed to one of my aliases (used only by those who knew I was an androgyne) in his care. At the time I did not realize the favor I was asking—the risk to his reputation that he unselfishly took. Ungrounded scandals sometimes arise when a full-fledged man does favors for an androgyne.

[24]. Some androgynes of a less extreme type, however, tolerate militarics. I know of two who served in the World War—because they wanted, every day and hour, to be surrounded by adored young Mars. But if they ever got to the front, they would probably malinger. I know of another androgyne who was so afraid of being drafted that he took a hatchet and chopped off two fingers of his right hand. In the World War, I was subject to draft under the latest law. I had planned to escape by claiming that I was not a man, the law specifying that sex alone as liable.

[25]. Non-mushy specimens are given in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. Its editor killed the mushy.

[26]. Substitute for the real name of the pseudo-hotel.

[27]. Decades ago I read in a newspaper this imperfectly remembered lyric. Name of poet not published.

[28]. I was dogged only three times in my many years of leading a double life: (1) Several Stuyvesant Square club-men succeeded, unbeknown to me, in boarding the same elevated train. I discovered them only after I had descended to the street. My refusal to proceed to my lodgings so incensed them that they disfigured my face with blows. (2) I was dogged again by several other Stuyvesant Square club-men. I discovered them before I boarded the train. Again my refusal to proceed angered them to giving me a beating. [They beat me because they had been taught that androgynes are monsters of depravity. All were around twenty years old.] (3) I was dogged in 1918 by a ruffian of twenty-two, with whom I had talked confidentially, but finally forsook because my usual test had shown him untrustworthy. He followed me for more than a mile, although I turned several corners suddenly and stood in a doorway and watched. But he had reckoned on my doing just that, and in some mysterious way guarded against my discovering him. He was evidently a super-crafty criminal. On straight stretches of street, I looked back half-a-dozen times, but saw nothing of him. (Because he had always taken the opposite side of the street and kept such a distance behind I could not recognize him, while his own eyesight carried further than mine.) When I arrived at my goal (fortunately this time an amusement resort and not my home), he gave me one of the surprises of my life by coming up to me. I fled from him in irrational terror.

[29]. Note.—See “Recollection” in Part VIII.

[30]. Martin and Paul are depicted in THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD.

[31]. In the summer of 1921 I twice saw moving pictures of Jack Dempsey arching his naked biceps. I was thirty feet away and his size was magnified at least twice. I carefully watched for comparison with Harvey Green. The protuberance was not equal to Harvey’s, who was far from being approached by any of the scores of sluggers whose biceps I have pinched. I can never forget Harvey’s mountains of biceps.

[32]. I had graduated more than a year before and was earning a good salary during this summer vacation between my first and second post-graduate years.

[33]. On one spree, when I left the key in my pocket, it had been stolen out of meanness, necessitating the embarrassment, and risk of suspicion, of having to ring at midnight for admission.

[34]. In a later catastrophe, one did call. I was compelled to tell the truth, but he proved sympathetic and respected my confidences. He subsequently asked his physician about homosexuality and was informed it was deepest moral depravity and merited no sympathy. He himself happened to be one of the most broadminded of men. He remarked that physicians as a class are narrowminded since most have not taken a liberal-arts course.

[35]. In a later scrape, after being laid up for a week, I ventured to my large publishing office with practically no skin on my nose, that member having a week before been badly smashed. My physician had furnished me with the explanation that he had applied a mustard plaster for a cold and the nose resulted! But the better joke was that simultaneously another university-trained androgyne working in the same room was limping around with a crutch. He said he had been thrown off a horse, but I never doubted he had been crippled by some sexually full-fledged brute as a punishment for his androgynism.

[36]. Prudery is one of the foremost earmarks of anaphrodites and the mildly virile, to which classes nearly all the leaders of thought belong. The trait is completely absent from the more virile, as well as androgynes. Some of the more virile, as Harvey Green, are prudes only as to homosexuality because taught that fellators ought to be killed.

[37]. In the last decade of the nineteenth century also, there existed a feminine craze for skirts as narrow as a pant-leg. “Merry Widow” hats also had their day then. But in 1921 for the first time in Christendom, respectable women have been crazy to display their bare breasts, bare arms, and next-to-nude legs in the crowded streets. Respectable women have to-day adopted for street wear the garb, for exclusive brothel wear, of filles de joie of a quarter of a century ago.

[38]. See “French Doll-Baby” in Part VIII.

[39]. This anecdote deals with only one of a number of similar occurrences in New York. Gynanders, as well as androgynes, are doomed to suffer murder at the hands of hare-brained prudes because of the false teaching of the leaders of thought.

[40]. The scientific names “androgyne” and “gynander” evidence a blunder of their coiner. The order of their components is the reverse of their English colloquial equivalents.

[41]. Havelock Ellis’s works on sex—the foremost in the English language—had not yet been published in 1895.

[42]. In the year of writing (1921) sight-seeing busses feature the Bowery at night. Years ago that formerly quaintest of New York’s streets lost most of its character as red-light and amusement center for New York’s manual-laborer foreign stock. For a brief history of New York’s bright-light districts since 1800, see the author’s RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD, in its Table of Contents.

[43]. A warning to any unsophisticated androgyne who may be moved to an impersonation spree in a red-light district. It is necessary to go slow and be ultra-cautious. Numerous androgynes have been murdered by gangsters. Frank—Eunice, Angelo—Phyllis, and myself were exceptionally fortunate. Every time an androgyne puts himself in the power of a stranger gangster, it is at the risk of murder. Several times I myself have been half-murdered. A poverty-stricken aspect and concealment of one’s culture constitute the best protection. By no means show fight if assaulted.

[44]. Just the day I retyped the above (Jan. 24, 1921) I read how a girl-boy of eighteen committed suicide in New York City by jumping from a thirty-five foot bridge upon railroad tracks. Adolescent androgynes are continually putting an end to their lives because bitterly persecuted merely on account of their bisexuality and most unfeelingly told by their closest associates that they are deeply depraved, and because prohibited by the leaders of thought from acquiring scientific knowledge of their idiosyncrasy.

[45]. The reader might omit this chapter because thinking it not a propos. It is given because describing an actual episode in the life of the sexual cripple being depicted. It also paints the type of fast young bachelor after whom the cultured ultra-androgynes of New York commonly “run.” To avoid any chance of a suit for slander, I merely substitute the real name of one of my own half-dozen New York favorites—the half-dozen who will live forever in the sanctum sanctorum of my memory—that one favorite who physically much resembled Phyllis’s “adopted son,” but whose character was ideal. The real George Greenwood—of immaculate beauty and charm, and unsurpassed friendliness to a sexual cripple like myself. In the words of Phyllis, I am “continuously burning incense in my heart to his memory.” I would wish to confer on him immortality.

[46]. At the time I knew him slightly, he was very bald and possessed a rather “passe” countenance. He was nearly six feet tall, perfectly proportioned, and had a negroid complexion, charcoal eyes, and the blackest of curly hair—that is, what was left of it. He was apparently of Spanish extraction. Only when he had his hat on was he still of entrancing appearance.

[47]. In the July, 1921, number of a prominent American medical journal, I saw a tirade against androgynes, whom its author declared merited no mercy, but ought to be crushed as a social menace. The invective proved merely that its physician-author clings to the sexual ethics of the Dark Ages, and at the same time belongs to the mildly virile type. That type lacks a superfluity of sexual vigor. It is inconceivable that a young man of that type should be intimate with an androgyne except for a rich reward—which has occurred when the individual androgyne was cut off from all access to the ultra-sexed, toward whom alone he gravitates. The mildly virile young man shudders violently at the very thought and is confident—a priori, as it is only a traditional phantasy—that his vita sexualis, health, and morals would be seriously undermined. I concede, however, that such might be the case with the mildly virile because possessing only a modicum of sexual vigor (perhaps, for example, merely enough for relations with his lawful wife once a fortnight or so) and because tending to be overconscientious. I concede that the mildly virile’s morals would be damaged, simply because he fancies such relations the unpardonable sin. If once in his youth overcome by the offer of a “bonanza,” he would ever afterwards regret the experience and feel deep guilt. As I myself in my youthful verdancy, he would cry out a thousand times: “‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!’” And because of his meagre sexual energy, he might possibly feel ill effects physically. But that by no means proves that the ultra-sexed would also feel them. And morally, the latter look upon the experience as entirely natural and sinless—the same as the eating of a piece of mince pie. Instead of ever regretting it, they look back with satisfaction that they had the experience.

Mildly virile writers on sex forget that there exist tens of thousands of men of far superior sexual energy. While they themselves, for example, may care for the services of their legal wife as seldom as twice a month, the tremendously virile “fellow” is not satisfied with less than an opportunity every night, and is at the same time “the husband of all women.” In my opinion, Philippics against the androgyne have their basis only in prudery and bigotry.

[48]. See note beginning bottom page [254].

[49]. I had fully described this adventure in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, but the details were cut out by its editor. I append them here because tending to show that the sparser the population of a district, the greater the repugnance of civilized young roues to androgynism and the rarer is the latter phenomenon per thousand males. In other words: My conclusion from extensive travel and intimate mingling, as an ultra-androgyne, with native adolescent roues in every corner of the United States and Europe is that among civilized nations, the frequency of male bisexuals per thousand inhabitants and their tolerance by the full-fledged are in general in direct proportion to the density of population.

I, a woman-soul, but reputedly a young man, was delegated to write up an unusual affair transpiring in a Rocky Mountain wilderness. I was in a caravan with fifty men of the roughest type, cowboys, miners, etc. All were bachelors or grass-widowers. Day in and day out, they hardly talked of anything but prostitutes, some of whom enlivened every mining or lumbering camp of any permanence, although their rates were seven times city prices and they laid away fortunes. Some of the decidedly lucky prospectors, as well as occasional city-ites on hunting trips, were always accompanied by their mistresses—the city-ites doubtless glad to get away from “friend wife” for a few weeks.

I found the adolescent cowboys and miners of the Rockies the most prejudiced against effeminate males of any of the hundreds of circles of adolescent roues with which I have mingled as a girl-boy. The first hour, when I had not compromised myself in any way, they began to heap up insults, particularly taking pains to refer to me within my hearing by the obscene term most often used by roughs for a girl-boy. (My own age was then thirty-three, but my friends told me I looked to be only twenty-five. I still possessed the “small-boy” aspect common among ultra-androgynes.) I feared my forced sojourn with those who so despised effeminacy would be intolerable.

But my plan to win their respect succeeded. I exhibited my credentials as representative of a journal of national reputation. They never again insulted me and I even became popular. The more sensual began to resort to terms of endearment and embraces. But, while fascinated by these attentions, I distrusted them to the extent of not disclosing my secret desires. I knew that prudes occasionally murder bisexuals in cities. In the wilds of the Rockies these same prudes (only so far as concerns homosexuality) could so easily push me over a |Murdering Androgynes Not Now Necessary.| precipice after tempting me to a stroll, and no one ever learn my fate. The tradition is wide spread that bisexuals must be murdered. Perhaps the practice of murdering is akin to that prevalent among some savage tribes of children killing their parents as soon as the latter become too feeble to hunt and work. It was racial economy to put out of the way those who could not contribute their share to the food supply, as well as those impotent to procreate children. But as civilized man no longer finds it necessary to the continued life of the nation to knock in the head all citizens as they reach the age of sixty, equally there is now no call for murdering (or even chastising) individuals incapable of generation.

But sleeping in the same tent and continuously having to listen to confessions of their amorous adventures, I became wrought up as rarely in my life. Therefore after a week of continuous Platonic association with the cowboy who seemed naturally the most high-minded and trustworthy, I invited him for an evening’s stroll in the forest primæval. He had been brought up on a Wyoming ranch, never been inside of a church, never heard a word read out of the Bible, and could not read nor write. He asserted he had once been a rough rider in Buffalo Bill’s show, and my test of his descriptions of the surroundings of Madison Square Garden in New York evidenced his truthfulness. I worshipped the very soil on which this “Nature’s nobleman” trod. For he was, in addition, the handsomest adolescent in the caravan. On our stroll I confessed myself an “hermaphrodite,” using that inaccurate term because it is known to every rough (though by them always pronounced incorrectly). He would not have understood “androgyne.” Since he was only a servant in the caravan, I offered a large bill. But much to my surprise and almost to my death, he abruptly jilted me with an unparalleled display of horror. But he promised to keep the incident locked in a chamber of his brain, and events proved him true blue. My desolate stroll in the bear-infested wilderness followed immediately.

If these cowboys and miners, as well as all other men, instead of having been, from boyhood, fed on the most crime-provoking of falsehoods, namely, that homosexuals (so called, though psychicly and often in part physically belonging to the opposite sex) are monsters of depravity for whom no punishment is too severe, had been taught that these sexual cripples merit only compassion, I would myself have been spared those hours of excruciating anguish in the forest, and hundreds of youthful androgynes would not have committed suicide.

Note to page [240].—This comment so developed that I was compelled to make it a footnote. The assignment to shore duty might indicate that Z’s immediate superiors might have noticed that he was of soft disposition, an earmark of |Visit to Fort “Y” in 1921.| androgynism. An androgyne acquaintance, though perfectly sound physically, was rejected in the World War draft merely on account of his softspokenness and generally “soft” mannerisms. Another young androgyne acquaintance enlisted in the Hospital Corps during the war so as to be able to pass all his time among idols. Moreover, androgynes long to serve as nurses to wounded virile young men, as did Walt Whitman during the American War of the Rebellion. Androgynes make the best nurses of youthful warriors because they slavishly adore them. From an eyewitness I heard of a third androgyne who was drafted in the World War and “bobtailed” out of the army because discovered to be addicted to fellatio. From another eyewitness I heard of a fourth androgyne who was similarly “bobtailed”, and as a result of the indignities heaped upon him at the time, immediately committed suicide. Of course those who heaped up the indignities thought the sexual cripple wilfully depraved. From still another eyewitness I heard of another drafted androgyne who, on the eve of his first battle in France, ate the heads off matches so as to assure getting back into the hospital while his virile “buddies” were valiantly “going over the top.” Virility confers bravery.

At the date of writing, I still “pal” only with regular soldiers, but am instinctively such an industrious worker that I go into any kind of fellowship only about once a fortnight. I still look upon youthful regular soldiers as magic demigods to whom I wish to enslave myself. Two days before the present writing, I happened to take a walk to Fort Y, which played a large part in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, and which, from 1902 to 1905, I visited, in the role of female-impersonator, one evening out of fourteen, and where I was acquainted with practically every one of the four hundred men not above the grade of sergeant. That of two days ago was only my second trip there in the past sixteen years. Because it is inconveniently located for a visit. After sixteen years, I happened to be recognized by one soldier who had stuck to that post and risen to the rank of sergeant. He told me there were still only about four at the fort who served there when I had the honor to be “the daughter of the regiment.” He expressed his amazement at my being so well preserved, saying I look twenty years younger than I am. He told me that only four or five fairies had run after the men of that fort in the past sixteen years. That small number is due to the remoteness of Fort Y from the city. At two other forts formerly frequented by me as a female-impersonator which are right in the city, androgyne cultivators of the common soldiers are numerous. A man serving at one of these forts told me that common soldiers often speak with one another about their “fairies.” Whenever any one of the former appears with a new watch, ring, etc., a common query of his “buddies” is: “Did your fairie give it to |Author’s Conversations with Opposites.| you?” Seven out of ten common soldiers appear exceedingly glad to have a prosperous young androgyne in their midst, particularly because he showers them with gifts and entertainment. Only one out of ten is such a prude as to walk away from the circle of which I have hundreds of times had the privilege of being the star. Some of these prudes would murder an androgyne but for fear of being punished.

Because of this remoteness of Fort Y, however, I had found there, during the hey-day of my career as female-impersonator, a specially hearty welcome and specially rich pickings.

(See “Emotion” in Part VIII.)

The sergeant I met two days ago—as common soldiers in general—was very much interested to hear the experiences of an androgyne as I narrated my life-story for the sixteen years since I talked with him. I habitually tell soldier associates the complete story of my life, and all who stay in the circle to listen appear very glad for the chat. Of course I never use any indecent language, although dealing frankly with sex questions. I am a lecturer on sexology to them. Moreover, within three minutes after becoming acquainted with a common soldier, I sometimes ask him, if he is beyond twenty-five, if he is married. For I do not care to chat with married men. I also commonly ask why he never married. I ask him to enlighten me as to his feelings toward the gentle sex, and as to what transpires when he and a girl are out for an evening’s stroll on a rural road. They are very frank in telling me their outlook on life. If there is no opportunity for assault and robbery (A large proportion of the uncultured thinking the first thing of robbing a stranger androgyne, if not of “beating him up”) I have, to strange young soldiers, confessed myself an androgyne within three minutes after we exchanged our first words, because their learning that fact proves, in general, the strongest kind of a drawing card.

The sergeant of two days ago wanted to make a date with me. I absolutely turned my back on such a proposition, chiefly on account of the dread of the physical and mental debility always supervening the following day. He urged me to resume my visits to Fort Y, to flaunt myself before all the soldiers as female-impersonator, as sixteen years before. I replied that I was now too old and too feeble. While sixteen years before I never left the vicinity of the post without dalliance with intimates, two days ago I did not entertain the least idea of, and hardly any wish for, such relations. Age has sobered me. “Intimates” I just wrote—some of whom, however, I had never laid eyes on until three minutes before. Providence gave me this wealth of one kind to counterbalance the almost unparalleled anguish I have been called upon to suffer because of my fate of being a sorely persecuted androgyne.

Author’s Third “Adopted Son.”

Lest I should be misjudged (the reader will any way judge me the warmest body that ever breathed, as intimates have told me) I further confess that during the year ending March, 1921, I visited at another fort about once a fortnight a 20-year-old private whom I planned to adopt (not legally) as son to live with me the rest of my life. I previously looked over, at ball games at the post, the entire common-soldier personnel of several hundred in order to pick out one of the three or four handsomest. Even at my first visit, one or two of the privates with whom I exchanged words evidently took me for an androgyne looking for a sweetheart, and did their best to be “the lucky dog.” But I passed the poor fellows by until I could get intimately acquainted with one of the three or four pre-eminent Adonises. I later ascertained that the one selected—greatly to his joy and to the envy of numerous “buddies”—excelled in disposition and character as much as in good looks. I also learned he had been brought up in the back woods and had never attended school a single day, although he had learned to read and write a little after entering the army. After I had known him intimately for nine months, his enlistment expired. Only now I disclosed my true name and station and took him to live in my own home, where I had been all by myself, doing my own housework like a woman. Although I had loaded him with gifts, this my “third adopted son” took French leave after only three days’ residence with me. His “buddies” told me he had gone away to marry the girl with whom I had known he had been corresponding.

Having lost him, I immediately started in to cultivate at the same barracks its pre-eminent Adonis, and almost its pre-eminent Hercules, with a view to his non-legal adoption to live with me as son the rest of my life after a nine-months apprenticeship during which he would not know my real name, station in life, or place of residence. It is easy to conceal these things from common soldiers. They are not inquisitive. They believe my misrepresentations of myself—necessary because androgynes are the favorite victims of blackmailers. But after a month, this latest favorite committed theft and I never saw him again. His “buddies” told me that he had stolen two blankets, “government property,” and was therefore sentenced to two years in military prison. If I am correctly informed, court martials often impose on an enlisted man caught in a misdemeanor a prison sentence several times as lengthy as would a civil court. I take this opportunity to enter a plea for better treatment of common soldiers, who have been my “pals” for a quarter of a century—particularly for punishments by court martial no more severe than by civil courts. Sometimes I have thought that when an uneducated young man enlists to defend his country as a common soldier, he thereby forfeits all rights of citizenship and all privileges guaranteed by the |An Adonis or a Hercules?| American constitution. The cowboys of the Rockies have mingled with common soldiers because of the numerous forts scattered throughout the “Indian country.” I asked one with whom I was well acquainted why he did not serve a few years in the army. His words were: “Do you think I want to be a slave?” But the lot of the common soldier has steadily improved during my association with him, excepting during our war with Germany. In 1921, he is better treated by his officers than ever before.

The context of this footnote moves me to reflect: Do I prefer an Adonis or a Hercules? I incline to the latter slightly. My first “adopted son” (for nine years, as described in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE) was an almost unmatched Hercules and at the same time an almost unmatched Adonis. He was one young man out of ten thousand. My second “adopted son” (for only a half-year, as described in same work) was neither a Hercules nor an Adonis. Not more than one out of twenty adolescents can qualify under either of these physically superior types, and I must confess that these types are very much lacking in mental acumen. Bright intellects nearly always go hand in hand with poor physical development. My second “adopted son” (while only tolerably good-looking) commanded my adoration because of his beautiful disposition and extreme passion for myself. My third prospective “adopted son” was a pre-eminent Adonis, and a fair Hercules.

There exist other attractive qualities in males that knit females to them. The chief is intellectual brilliance. That to me has always been, sexually considered, decidedly detractive—because I am myself of the intellectual type. As a rule, only opposites attract.

[50]. Attempt at poetical expression of experiences described in prose on page [255] following.

[51]. For prose description of the personality that I have here attempted to depict poetically, see page [114] following.

[52]. See page [103] following.

[53]. See THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, page [153]. Second stanza is a free translation from Beranger. For original, see AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, page viii.

[54]. Seemingly natural language of “pup love”, the girl repeating the former a hundred times in five minutes, and the adolescent the latter. Both also cry these words simultaneously while gazing into each other’s eyes.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. P. [21], changed “because never permitted to learn of their existence” to “because they were never permitted to learn of their existence”.
  2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.