Author’s Feminine Characteristics.
As already indicated, the participation of the transitional individuals in the characters of the two sexes varies in all degrees. There may be simply a union of the perfect body of one sex with the susceptibility to such sexual charms as ordinarily attract the other sex alone, or with the mental traits of the other sex. Or the individual may possess the male genitals, but be beardless, or else possess mammary glands, broad pelvis, and sacral dimples; or possessing the female genitals, have a rudimentary moustache, or else meagrely developed breasts, narrow pelvis, etc. Instances have been known of human beings with an ovary on one side of the body and a testicle on the other, and of males who were able to suckle infants.
As to my own feminine characteristics, I have been told by intimate associates from boyhood down to my middle forties—when this book goes to press—that I markedly resemble a female physically, besides having instinctive gestures, poses, and habits that are characteristically feminine. My schoolmates said that I would make a good-looking girl and that kissing me was “as good as kissing a girl.” When I was fourteen, one of them remarked that my calves were “as shapely as those of a girl.” My associates in college have remarked how much I was like a woman in form and manners, though they never showed evidence of a suspicion that I might be an invert. They were probably ignorant of the existence of this human sport. “He blushes like a woman,” was said of me. Later, in my fairie days, my associates would remark that my hands felt like a woman’s, and that my skin in general was as soft as a woman’s. They said that my voice, especially when singing, had a feminine timbre. The voice is one of the chief criteria by which to determine abnormal sexuality. I fancy that I can diagnose a man sexually simply by hearing him sing. For example, a male invert, as well as the closely related “eunuch by birth” or anaphrodite, is likely to sing a tenor which is hardly distinguishable from an alto.
Femininity Betrayed in Voice.
I have been told that my speaking voice is a very uncommon one, having the “fulness of a woman’s voice,” and that it often “breaks and changes, sometimes in the middle of a sentence; from being masculine, it suddenly changes timbre and becomes decidedly feminine.” I have myself observed sometimes when in conversation with a young man with whom I was in love that my voice would involuntarily change from a bass to a treble. My voice has also been described as “soothing, sentimental-sounding, gushing, bland, and caressing.” I have been told that when I talk, involuntary—and to myself unconscious—movements of the lips take place not necessary for articulation, and that the same movements take place occasionally even when I am not talking.
Barbers have remarked that my hair is “literally as fine as silk,” that they had “never seen it so fine in any other man.” I believe this to be a general peculiarity of androgynes, who also have a predilection for wearing the hair rather long because they think it contributes to their own good looks, while abhorring long hair in a normal male.
Femininity—Physical and Psychical.
I have the feminine slope of shoulders and the feminine angle of arm. Pelvis is broad and limbs loosely hung, as in a woman, and fingers and hands rather feminine in their general fineness of texture, comparative absence of hair, absence of prominent bones and veins, and the softness and pleasing tint of skin.
Features are small like a woman’s, but nose, lips, and ears large in proportion, indicating sensuality. I possess mammary glands and sacral dimples. While my breasts are as large as in some women, the nipples are small, even for a man. I am small-boned, of delicate build, and my muscular system is soft. An anatomist of national reputation who gave me a physical examination at the age of thirty-three, pronounced approximately one-third the exterior lines of my body those of the female, and remarked that any one viewing my naked form from the rear and not knowing my sex, would pronounce me a female.
I was said not to “reason like a man, that is, logically”; to be “fussy and inclined to peevishness”; and to have “great patience for minute details.”