All inverts do not give way to their instincts, since the strength of these instincts varies in different individuals, as does the degree of effeminacy, just as there are corresponding differences in normal individuals. Your author’s is an extreme case of passive inversion. His case is also unusual because of the strange combination of appetencies in one individual: the instincts of the fairie, the thirst for knowledge of the savant, the yearning after God and holiness of life of the zealot, and the impulse toward altruism of the missionary. My intention from the age of fifteen to nineteen to pass my life as a foreign missionary and preacher of the Gospel was relinquished because inconsistent with the much stronger appetency of the fairie, which finally carried all good resolutions before it.
I grew up slowly, and when adult was the shortest of my parents’ eight children. Six-foot men are common among my near relatives, especially my brothers, but I am five feet five inches. At six years of age I was smaller than a brother of four. In college I was noticeably small and of slight build, weighing only 110 pounds stripped when I graduated.
My first impression of the stern realities of life came at the age of six when my parents insisted on putting me in breeches. I wanted to wear skirts all my life. I shrunk from going out in distinctively male garb, and dodged behind the trees when I discovered an acquaintance approaching. The sensation was almost as painful as if I had been compelled to walk the streets naked. Until I reached my early thirties, I did not cease to regret being compelled to taboo feminine apparel, and was constantly being criticised by members of my family for choosing bright colors and as fancy apparel as a male can possibly wear. Androgynes have a predilection for such apparel, just as gynanders prefer the severely plain. Dress is one of the best signs by which to judge whether any suspected individual is or is not an invert. From the age of seven to twelve I occasionally masqueraded in a sister’s dress, coquetting with my boy acquaintances the same as if I were physically a girl.
Yearning for Feminine Apparel.
After reaching the age of seven, I abstained from fellatio on account of shame, as well as because I now habitually played with girls. Nevertheless, as just indicated, I was more crazy after the boys than any of my companions, and was a great flirt. When, promenading with a party of girls, we would encounter boys of our acquaintance, I would incite them to chase myself and the girls. With the girls I would discuss the merits of the various boys and name my favorites. The girls did not look upon me as a boy. Only one ever asked me to take the normal boy’s part in coitus, and I answered naïvely and without embarrassment that I did not know how. My family would ridicule me for playing with the girls, but that did not stop it.
Up to the age of twelve I continued to tell my most intimate schoolmates to call me “Jennie,” encouraged them to hug me, and right in the school-room reclined in their bosoms because of amorousness. Several would hug and kiss me right in school, and in private request fellatio, but I always turned from the latter proposition in shame. To yield would have been my highest earthly pleasure, but I could not bear the disgrace. Mean-spirited boys would call me a girl in derision, and twit me about my conduct of early childhood, thus awakening a violent desire to commit suicide.
Bent for Feminine Activities.
I was as fond of dolls as is a little girl. Two other characteristic pastimes were playing preacher and playing school, generally all by myself. I spent a large part of my time in the house singing, but have never been able to learn to whistle. Inability to whistle is a general characteristic of passive inverts. I learned to sew and crochet, and naturally took to most other feminine lines of activity, so that my mother has remarked that I was “the best daughter” she had. Indeed none of the family looked upon me as a boy, all unconsciously. Nevertheless there is little evidence that any of them ever suspected that I was attracted toward the male sex.
As a child and youth I was rather odd even apart from my androgynism. For example, from my eleventh to my thirteenth year, while sitting at my desk or walking the streets alone, I would, without raising the head, direct my eyes upward for about two seconds at intervals of from five to ten minutes in order to breathe a short prayer for acquaintances or for pitiable looking individuals whom I passed. It was probably a sort of St. Vitus dance of the muscles about the eye. Another peculiar action, and one which I have never seen in any other person, is the life-long craze that I have to press the flesh bordering the finger nails against some sharp hard corner, as that of a book-cover or a pillow-case, which repeated action renders the skin horny along the edge of the nail, so that I have often been able to peel it off.