Parents should take pains that the “angel child” |Criminal Prudery.| regards them as confidants, sharers of its every secret. If this had happened in my own case, I might have been spared a world of woe after puberty. To preserve the frankness of the “angel child,” not even a mild rebuke should ever be administered for its sexual lapses; but kind persuasion alone, and care that the child does not again come into exciting surroundings.
My own parents and teachers never vouchsafed the least sex knowledge. I once asked where babies came from. Doctors found them in the street gutters and brought them to people’s houses. Instinct and older boys were my only instructors. Parents, teachers, but preferably the school physician, should begin with children of six a clean initiation into these mysteries—absorbing even to youngsters of that tender age—to replace the hitherto regnant nasty one wrought by child lore handed down, from mouth to mouth, through the centuries, and characterized by unprintable words, in uttering, seeing, and hearing which numerous children seem to take delight.
Or is the subject of sex irreformable and hopeless? Is it really the crying shame of the human race?
From my third to seventh year, F’ank and I were drawn toward one another. I yearned to recline in his arms. “F’ank,” I once said, “I’m not af’aid on your lap. But I’m af’aid nearly always. I’m af’aid, when I get as big as papa, hair’ll grow on my cheeks, like on his. How could I ever use a horrible wazor, like him! I hope I’ll die before I get big!”
I was destined to be a sort of pet with others of the more stalwart boys. It was because I retained my babyishness—like an idiot—at least down to the age |A Wee Girl-Boy’s Outlook on Life.| of seven, and was, besides, girlish. I commonly felt myself a little girl and told playmates to call me Jennie. They have remarked that I was “more girl than boy.” Adults, however, were blind to my bisexuality. They ridiculed me for carrying a doll in my arms when I took a walk; etc. Because I was the only child of my set thus violently crossed, I was the most unhappy. Taunts sometimes drove me to throw myself on the floor, bang my head, and exclaim: “I wish I were dead!”
But, on the whole, my early childhood was happy. With F’ank I would play “papa and mamma.” He would “go to business,” while I took care of the dolls; etc. I made and laundered their wardrobes. One day a sudden shower surprised me. Gazing at the ill-fated wash on the line, I sobbed: “Oh it yains! It yains! And my c’ose’ll get wet!”
The day of thoroughgoing disillusionment came early in my seventh year. It was the style for boys to wear skirts up to that age. How I loved them! And I never expected to clothe myself otherwise. Even down to my middle forties, I have always felt more at home in skirts.
Then I wasn’t to be allowed to go through life as a girl and a woman? I was up against the choice of spending the rest of life in my bedroom, or drawing on a pair of the utterly loathed breeches. At first it was the same as if I had to go on the street in my underclothes. I would dodge behind a tree when an acquaintance hove in sight. How poignantly I missed petticoats as a screen for my shameful nether limbs! Not to mention the deprivation of the pleasure of feeling them dangling about my knees.
How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator.