The female-impersonators / - Ralph Werther

[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?

(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.