IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, Being.
The Third Sex.
Twentieth-century psychologists are coming around to the view that even the leaders of thought are governed by instinct and mores rather than reason. Even for intellectuals, truth is what is intuitive or what satisfies their prejudices and instincts. Still in the twentieth century, the leaders of thought bow down before intellectual idols, although other than those overthrown by Francis Bacon. Still to-day—as in the generation of Roger Bacon (13th century)—conservatives yearn to imprison, or even burn at the stake, those in whom a purer reason than their own operates.
My own is thus a Herculean task: To be an intellectual iconoclast. To break down the last remnant of cultured man’s savage, criminal instincts and mores. But, like Roger Bacon, I may comfort myself with the thought that my views are centuries in advance of my time; but, like him, I am therefore bitterly persecuted.[[12]]
Prudery Triumphant.
“Away with any one who attempts to bring out the truth about sex!” cry the conservatives. “Crucify him! Crucify him! Sex is a theme too disgusting for discussion!”
In the university I took an extended course of lectures on physiology. But not a word was said about sex. The professor would not have thus befouled his mouth, nor corrupted the morals of his students. Martin’s Human Body, the standard text-book of the time, had to be published in two editions: (1) That which treated of human sexuality as viewed in the Dark Ages, and (2) that which imagined the genus homo to be asexual.
One presumed male out of every three hundred belongs to the third sex, strictly speaking. That is, the ultra-androgynes—the pseudo-men who possess only undersized and non-functional male pudenda, whose body otherwise tends toward feminesqueness, and whose psyche, predilections, tastes, gestures, and postures remind one of a female.
The third sex is a commonplace topic in the Underworld, which comprises about one-tenth the population of “Christian” lands. The Underworlders, however, generally fail to understand the cause of the effeminacy. The nine-tenths of the unlearned who have never entered a more immoral place than a “movie” theatre are almost entirely ignorant of the third sex. What hazy ideas they have are criminally incorrect. And except for a handful of sexologists, |Benighted Leaders of Thought.| the learned still cling to views handed down from the Dark Ages.
In the seventeenth century, when a cyclone demolished a hamlet or an epidemic broke out, a council of physicians, lawyers, and clergymen was called to determine which semi-bearded old hag had wished the catastrophe upon the community. After prayer for divine guidance and an exhortation by a parson that the Bible taught that witches ought to be ferreted out, the high-brows would seek to determine who of the several bags of bone known to all of them presented the most loathsome appearance, and who should therefore be burned at the stake as the witch responsible for the catastrophe—as the necessary human sacrifice to appease the anger of the Unseen Powers. For even down to the twentieth century there survives in Christendom the pagan superstition of the necessity of a human sacrifice now and then.
But in the twentieth century, leaders of thought have evolved from the belief in witchcraft. They must look elsewhere than to semi-bearded hags for their sacrificial victims on whom to load the sins of mankind, and the blame for the decline and fall of nations. Since, next to hags, they consider sexual cripples as the most loathsome of humans, they make the latter the scape-goats of present-day society. While they no longer burn them at the stake or bury them alive (as provided in old European law) they are permitted by twentieth century statutes to imprison inoffensive androgynes for twenty years. And these archaic statutes are still frequently enforced. Only a few months ago I read of a Boston clergyman who was sentenced to prison on the testimony of a young ex-soldier. |Banishment of Androgynes.| But to-day these statutes serve chiefly as ground for extensive blackmail of Nature’s step-children, hardly one of whom, if belonging to the middle or upper class, but has had to pay out considerable sums, occasionally running into the thousands.
Instead of imprisonment, public opinion has generally substituted banishment of the disclosed androgyne forever from all he loves.
During the few months of composing this book, the New York papers have told of the abrupt flight to parts unknown of three intellectual leaders in their communities, two just over the city line and the third within a hundred miles. They had to flee, not because they had done the least real harm (all three were pastors of churches) but because of the mediæval ignorance and bitter hatred that their communities immediately manifested toward a “man” (reputedly) all of a sudden disclosed to be a “monster” (though in reality a harmless and pitiable sexual cripple). The populace, ignorant that he had probably practiced a thousand times more self-denial than any one of themselves, but had at last been able to withstand Nature’s demands no longer, chased him out of his community for good and all with the feeling that he was the lowest scoundrel that ever contaminated it.
I admit that these unfortunates did show bad judgment in remaining in the ministry when they knew they were afflicted with a powerful instinct abhorred by the sexually full-fledged, and they showed the worst kind of judgment in having recourse to boys under puberty. But they were in a tight place, and besides felt that they were doing no one any harm. For the androgyne generally comes at last to the view that |Most Androgynes Ultra-Religious.| what Nature demands can be no sin and, if properly fulfilled, no transgression against any human.
The newspaper devotee runs across a similar item every once in a while, and nearly always the “monster” is a clergyman or a teacher. But the abhorred penchant (fellatio) is, of course, not peculiar to these professions. Simply their high ethical standing, and the common fancy that they should therefore be proof against what is incorrectly regarded as the worst of vices, attract greater attention, and give news value to the occasional disclosures.
But it is probable that among the occupations, those two, together with all having to do with art of any kind, have the largest proportions of androgynes. As a rule, male bisexuals are goody-goody boys who develop into ultra-religious adolescents. They are enthusiastic to better the race morally and spiritually. The robes commonly worn by clergymen are also a powerful drawing card, since androgynes yearn for apparel that conceals that they are bipeds. Thus quite a number who were born intellectual and whose sexual ardor, during adolescence, is comparatively weak, gravitate into the two professions standing highest ethically and religiously. When making his choice, the adolescent is filled with religious fervor and possessed of a strong determination to crucify his “homosexual” tendencies. The androgyne already yielding would never put on “the cloth,” although he would go into pedagogy. But the puritan-minded regards these tendencies as his “besetting sin” and fights them for years in the strenuous manner described in my own Autobiography of an Androgyne. Throughout his teens, and perhaps even his twenties, |Abstinence Induces Melancholia.| he never expects to be overmastered. But later in life many a one of these sexual cripples who have put on “the cloth” disgrace it notwithstanding his prior unparalleled mental struggles against Nature’s behests.
Or if coming out victor in the lifelong struggle, the pitiable woman-man lives down to death under the obsession (due to misinterpreted biblical texts) that the gratification of his unusual instinct is the most heinous of sins, and spends all his days, in which God meant that he should rejoice, in mourning over his sexual ardor (for which he does not realize he is irresponsible), in crucifying his body continuously, with its affections and lusts (as commanded by the anaphrodite, St. Paul), and is thereby, throughout adult life, on the borderline of insanity. I have heard sermons from such clergymen and was moved to pity as they were shedding tears in the pulpit and rendering themselves unpopular, both with their fellow preachers who are sexually full-fledged and with the laity, because their aspect was always that of tragedy. I advise that all such melancholiacs immediately ask that they be honorably deposed from the ministry. As a result, their lives would be happy and satisfying.
The vast majority of preachers are manly. I have a higher respect for that profession than for any other. If it had not been for my androgynism, I would have myself entered it. It would be well for the Church authorities to question, as to their sexuality, all candidates for beginning a theological course, and in the kindest manner advise adolescents in the least bisexual to choose some other profession because of the public’s misunderstanding of this phenomenon. |Why Androgynes Are Hated.| Sexual conduct is not primarily a voluntary matter or an ethical question, but rooted in anatomy, physiology, and psychology. The androgyne who yearns to preach the Gospel can do so through the printed word. Because of St. Paul’s sex teaching (that of an anaphrodite) the profession of “the cloth” is rightly open only to anaphrodites and the mildly virile. The more virile are likewise excluded because it is next to impossible for them to abstain from adultery.
Why are androgynes so hated? Primarily because the leaders of thought have always identified them with the men of ancient Sodom (mistakenly, because the Sodomites were full-fledged males) and historians have mistakenly (because they never met androgynes personally and were taught in their boyhood to hate them with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength) laid upon them all the blame for the decline and fall of nations, and declared that therefore effeminacy or androgynism is a type of moral depravity to be crushed mercilessly. Better that some thousands of androgynes be deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than that the general welfare of the nation be imperilled! Androgynes—they argue—are unavoidably the scape-goats of the race.
I answer: In the first place, such imperilment is only a figment of the imagination. This superstition can be disposed of by merely asking to what extent the welfare of humanity was imperiled by the sex functioning of the arch-androgynes listed in chapter III? In the second place, androgynism is not moral depravity or degeneracy. I myself—an extreme type of androgyne—spring from the most puritan stock. I was brought up to consider that on Sunday, reading |Androgynism Not Degeneracy.| anything but Christian doctrine or walking a hundred feet for mere pleasure were heinous sins. In addition to springing from the most puritan stock, both my paternal and maternal stock are of unusually strong build. A paternal and also a maternal uncle were professional athletes. A brother was the champion athlete of my native village. My stock and early environment are indeed the last that any one would pick out as likely to bring into the world a homosexual or androgyne as a result of moral degradation.[[13]] My androgynism has, however, made me myself rather lilliputian. With one exception, I grew up to be the smallest man of my paternal and maternal families.
It is not necessary to crush androgynes in order to guard against the spread of effeminacy. Effeminacy, in the sense of androgynism, does not spread by example. It is entirely congenital. Only a physical male born with quasi-feminine predilections would adopt the role of a female after becoming adult. An androgyne’s predilections and practices are regarded with such repugnance by all full-fledged males that none would stoop to them unless constrained by instinct.
Why imprison and murder the androgyne any more than the deaf-mute? The former is no more abnormal than the latter; no more degenerate; no more depraved. It is unfortunate that the human |Not Cause of Decline of Nations.| race is handicapped with either of these defective classes. But the androgyne deserves only pity, the same as the deaf-mute.
Effeminacy in an entirely different sense, and a kind that spreads rapidly through example, is the actual cause of the decline and fall of nations; in the sense of the weakening of the moral fibre of the males of the upper crust or ruling class through their having grown overfond of ease and pleasure and lost their joy in industry and justifiable fighting. A neighboring nation of superior moral fibre is quick to learn of such effemination and subjugates the decadent one. But these effeminates’ fondness for the gentle sex has in no way declined. Generally it has greatly augmented. Witness the decline and fall of the Greek, Roman, and Turkish empires.
Where has androgynism been more prevalent than formerly among the American aborigines? Probably because the tribes were constantly underfed. Whenever a male arrived at puberty, the weapons of the warrior and the cooking vessels of the squaw were ceremoniously placed before him that he might choose his future social status. A not inconsiderable number of adolescents (because congenital androgynes) always chose the culinary utensils and passed the rest of their lives as squaws, the hair of the beard being plucked out as fast as it showed itself, and the costume being that of the female sex. Surely savage tribes continuously on the war-path can not be accused of degenerative effeminacy!
About one-third the soul-mates of androgynes who have come under my observation have been voluntary common soldiers or blue-jackets. I am far |Androgynism Nationally Healthful.| from being the only androgyne who has gravitated toward the “supreme men” whose voluntary profession has as its aim the killing of their fellow man. Androgynism appears to go hand in hand with militarism rather than vice versa. Havelock Ellis says that homosexuality is particularly common among the Sikhs, the most military of the Hindustan races.
It is more likely that the emergence of androgynism is a sign of national health. The ultra-brilliant Age of Pericles surpassed all other periods in the recognition and influence of androgynism, which promotes art and general culture. The androgyne, being a combination of man and woman in a single individual, has a wider view of life than the full-fledged man or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakespeare-Author knew both the masculine and the feminine mind better than any other writer. Such duality is the reason artistic genius crops out far more frequently among androgynes than among the sexually full-fledged. The amalgamated man-woman nature gets nearest to sentiment and emotion—to the soul of art.[[14]]
Why do cultured androgynes carefully conceal their quasi-feminine sexual predilections? Why did Angelo not publish any of his homosexual sonnets? Why did Raphael not proclaim on the housetops the happenings in his house at night? Androgynes hide their sexual predilections and practices, not because of consciousness of personal degeneracy, but because |Race Suicide.| grossly misunderstood by the sexually full-fledged. By exception, Oscar Wilde was open and above board, and was therefore shut up in prison.
Only bigoted pseudo-scientists have pronounced androgynes degenerates. Only mediæval medicine, not modern medicine. Androgynism is merely an instance of arrested development; or possibly of atavism—an attempt on the part of Nature to return to the original hermaphrodism of man’s early antecedents. The androgyne who follows the dictates of Nature is not a whit more degenerate morally than the full-fledged man who marries. It is only the fallible mores which make the full-fledged think that a person with apparently male pudenda who impersonates a female is infinitely below themselves morally. Were Socrates, Plato, Angelo, Raphael, and Francis Bacon monsters of depravity? Ought the Shakespeare-Author to have been buried alive by his hare-brained fellow citizens before he had a chance to pen a line?
The chief charge against androgynes is that they are guilty of “the awful crime of race suicide.” But it is the fault of Nature alone that the ultra-androgyne is incapable of doing his part in the perpetuation of the race.
The cultured androgyne, knowing his irresistible instincts are harmless to his soul-mate, is unable to discern in them any transgression against ethics or against God.
But a very small proportion of adult androgynes have been guilty of a lamentable transgression because finding themselves in a tight place: that is, recourse to boys under puberty. The prudery of full-fledged men has hitherto prohibited androgynes from |Androgynes’ One Offence.| scientific knowledge of themselves. Until thirty years ago, American and British public opinion would not tolerate the publication of the facts about androgynism even for circulation among the medical profession. Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion, the earliest published book in the English language on androgynism, was promptly suppressed by the British government thirty years ago. I myself had to bend the knee for eighteen years to medical publishers before my Autobiography of an Androgyne was fed into the printing-press in 1918.
Thus, because full-fledged men have interdicted to cultured androgynes the means of understanding themselves and knowledge of how they ought to pass their lives, some—particularly those who have achieved places of honor, because androgynes of lower rank do not need to be so crafty in hiding their terrible secret from the heartless world—have ultimately been revealed guilty of recourse to the immature (because they could not screw up their courage to disclose their abnormality to an older and wiser male). But on account of the tyranny of the full-fledged, these erring androgynes merit mercy. Their offences have probably not been at all harmful to the immature. They are merely asserted to be so by men unable to accept any scientific results except those inculcated by mediæval savants. But this one offence of androgynes will be a thing of the past when they are permitted recourse to books which explain the riddle of their lives, and when full-fledged men read such books in order that they may do justice to Nature’s step-children.
As already stated, ultra-androgynes, having a |Androgynes Are Goody-Goodies.| woman’s psyche, are goody-goodies. Indeed goody-goodiness may be regarded as their most marked characteristic. For this reason, in France, they are called “little Jesuses” (petits jesus) notwithstanding that the more extreme are public female-impersonators in resorts of ill repute. Ultra-androgynes are incapable of doing any real harm. If all the human race were as harmless, this world would be a far better place in which to live.
The cultured androgyne is a desirable citizen and a desirable member of any circle. While ultra-androgynism makes its victims physically weak—like a woman—it has no deteriorating effect morally or mentally. The usual charge of gross immorality is merely a relic of mediæval bigotry.
It matters not, however, that androgynes are absolutely innocuous practically and ethically. Do they not offend the æsthetic sense of the majority of mankind? What better cause for grinding them under one’s heel?
And this bitter persecution that has been the lot of some androgynes has rendered them misanthropes. Not their androgynism per se. A mildly androgynous acquaintance—an intellectual giant of the highest moral character except for his irresponsible and innocuous passive pederasty—is, as a result of society’s shutting him up in prison for the five years of his intellectual prime, a chronic and bitter reviler of the Church. Because zealous churchmen were responsible for the wrecking of his life through their misunderstanding of the biblical teaching on homosexuality.
But in general we androgynes, possessing the long-suffering feminine psyche, are resigned to being |God Will Avenge Androgynes.| ground to powder by the hypocritical world. It is better to suffer than to inflict suffering. Though the world despise and ostracise us, the All-Knowing is still our refuge, and another life awaits us where conditions will be more just. The bigoted and pharisaical judges and juries who have haled hundreds of innocent androgynes off to prison should remember the Old Testament doctrine: “‘Vengeance is mine!’ saith Jehovah.” Those who incarcerate the innocent in this world will in the next have to serve time in the darkest dungeons of a just God.
Note to Illustration Facing Page [53].
My father was a reversionary pure Alpine, but his brothers were decidedly Nordic. My mother is a reversionary pure Nordic, while most of her brothers and sisters were predominantly Alpine. Evidences of Mediterranean blood in my paternal or maternal stock are doubtful. I myself am predominantly Alpine, particularly evident in my short stature and generally brunette features. But the Nordic cross has given me a rather ruddy complexion and “browned” my chevelure. My beard hair is jet black, but always clean-shaven, if not eradicated. I am of English, Scotch, Dutch, German, and French descent. During adulthood, I have always considered the highest human beauty to reside in adolescent Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans of approximately pure Mediterranean stock.
The “Fairie Boy” Ready to Set Out on Life’s Journey
(See note on page [52].)
Part Two:
How the Author Came to Be a Female-Impersonator
(Part Two summarizes my pre-nineteen life and my physical and mental traits for those not reading my Autobiography of an Androgyne. Particularly for details of purely medical interest, the scientist is referred to that work, since the present volume is designed primarily for the general reader. Part Two, however, presents many facts not in mind when I wrote the earlier work over twenty years ago.)