Tall and slender, or generally undersized, the muscles are soft and flabby as a woman's. The hands and feet are small and gracile typically. Viewed in profile, the lines of the body are feminine. The breasts may reach almost the size of the female's and there may be a well-marked area of pigmentation around the nipple. The hair growth under the shoulders and on the lower abdomen tends to be scanty and to approximate the opposite sex in quality and distribution, as do the reproductive organs themselves.
These traits of physiognomy and physique indicate functional hermaphroditism in the underlying feminoid constitution. The feminoid constitution appears again in the supposedly masculine. The feminoid constitution should not be confused with the infantiloid constitution. The former, the gonado-centric personality, is a digression of growth, a deviated evolution of the individual because of the conflicting forces, some masculine and some feminine, in his make-up. The infantiloid constitution is one of arrested development, and may center around the arrested function in childhood or adolescence of any one or a number of endocrine glands. Yet the two may resemble one another pretty closely, at times. A cretin imitates the extreme grade of infantiloid constitution. The infantiloid is a sort of enlarged and lengthened child. The feminoid is ostensibly a man, with a good deal of woman in him. The infantiloid is a quite general type, but of course when typical is a freak, recognized and treated as such. How far the eunuchoid may deviate from the normal is suggested by the following description of one.
"Face rounded, moon-like, chubby, devoid of hair. Eyes puffed. Lips protruding and fleshy. Cheeks round and thick. Nose little developed. Skin thick and of clear color. Disproportion between the size of head and body. Hair of scalp fine. Brows and lashes scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, naïvete, timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly aroused but fugitive wrath: excessive tenderness, but unreasonable dislikes."
An almost wholly mental infantiloid state or one purely physical may occur. Certain rather large Tom Thumbs belong to the group. In everyday life we see doll creatures, overgrown children, on every hand. Mental measurements of any large group of population reveal a remarkable percentage of it as below the mental age of 12. Juvenile traits and juvenile mind, separate or combined, should always suggest the possibility of the infantiloid constitution of one type of thymocentric also.
The eunuchoid or feminoid personality is also found often among artists. One must carefully distinguish the two because the ensemble of characteristics of the one may easily stimulate the other. Yet fundamentally they are as far apart as the poles. The infantiloid type never rises above the subnormal, which is its habitat, while the feminoid type (or masculinoid, in woman) often produces an abnormal personality which rises above the normal. The infantiloids become the slaves and the weaklings of society, the Mark Tapleys, and the Tom Pinches, while the eunuchoids have created splendid literature and immortal music.
The life reactions, and especially the sex reactions of the gonado-centric, are as complex and difficult as those of the thymo-centric. Straightforward homosexuality and the eunuchoid constitution have always been intimate. The homosexuality of the thymo-centric is more subtle and disguised, often buried under the stronger masculine component of the personality.
Homosexuality as a cult has appeared correlated with the production of the functional hermaphrodite by artificially creating the eunuchoid type of constitution. Among the Aztecs, homosexuals were produced in quantity for religious purposes by a deliberate fostering of the eunuchoid constitution. They called them the Mujerados. Their method consisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic impotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in society as a man, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all intents and purposes was treated as a woman. Their large breasts were said to be capable of lactation. Their only reward was the high honor paid them as religious consecrates.
Among the Phoenicians there was a similar sect, devoted to the worship of Astarte. Known as the Galli, they were men who had transformed themselves into the closest possible resemblance to women. At all times they were prepared to engage with members of either sex in sexual relations of the most depraved kind. They lived in idleness as prostitutes, cultivating and extending their skill in sex perversions as specialists. Their initiation into their professional careers was a part of a religious ritual. During the revels of great festivals, apprentices to the trade, wrought up by certain traditional songs and music, would be hypnotised into a frenzy, run amuck, throw off every garment, and, snatching up swords, deliberately placed in convenient spots, castrate themselves at one blow. In a wilder hysteria, screaming loudly, the self-made eunuchs would then run through the streets holding the severed organs high above their heads. At last, faint through loss of blood, they brought their madness to its climax by hurling the organs in their hands into the nearest houses, so forcing the owners to take them in, and provide them with female wearing apparel, and the other feminine accoutrements of war. Henceforth, this manner of dress was not to be changed. The physical changes followed. The hair of the face was lost, the breasts enlarged, the voice became high-pitched, and the other type-characters of the eunuchoid complex appeared.
These constitutions thus may be either congenital or acquired. Individuals apparently normal during childhood and adolescence may be transformed. Injuries to the reproductive glands, sometimes the slightest bruises, may lead to atrophy, and a change of personality follows in less than six weeks. Mumps may achieve the same results because of the inflammation of the gonads that may accompany or follow it.
Whole family and races may show some of the signs of the eunuchoid constitution for generations. According to Darwin (Descent of Man) "the development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differ remarkably in the men of distinct races, and even in different tribes, and families of the same race. On the European-Asiatic continent, beards prevail, until we pass beyond India, although with the natives of Ceylon they are often absent…. Eastward of India beards disappear, as with the Siamese, Kalmuks, Malays, Chinese, and Japanese. Throughout the great American continent the men may be said to be beardless: but in almost all tribes a few short hairs are apt to appear on the face, especially in old age…." Hair being an adrenal cortex trait, it is to be inferred that hairless families and races are more eunuchoid, and possess less of the adrenal cortex secretion than the more hairy.