In my middle teens, my desire changed radically, due chiefly to my having just become a God-intoxicated youth, with the work of a missionary in China as my goal. I now prayed far more intensely for full-fledged manhood than I ever had for physical femininity.
Superficially and according to man-made law, ultra-androgynes are men. According to the unabridged dictionary, they are neither men nor women. That is, they are capable neither of begetting nor conceiving. But in respect to mind and feelings, in respect to their protoplasm—and thus essentially—they are women.
Being neither male nor female, with whom do androgynes associate? Up to the dawning of puberty, pronounced specimens—like myself—gravitate toward the gentle sex. As soon as the sexual life is fully developed, the vast majority (not happening to be |A Village Fairie.| overconscientious and ultra-puritan) give that sex the widest berth and lean on the bosoms of the ultra or tremendously virile of their acquaintance. But they never join in the sports of the sturdy sex. For in athletics, they are as awkward as girls, and besides lack the necessary physique.
But Nature happened to make me overconscientious, and my training was ultra-puritan. While, after I entered my teens, I was ashamed longer to make myself one with girl acquaintances, and besides was violently repelled by our both approaching the full flower of our sexuality, my now looking upon my attraction towards youths as the most heinous of sins, together with my aversion from masculine interests, forbade association with boys outside the schoolroom. Thus from the age of thirteen to eighteen, I endured an almost companionless existence outside the home, the schoolroom, and the church edifice. I did occasionally take a walk with an androgyne of my own age, goody-goodiness, education, and social standing. He, however, was not religious or of puritan parentage, and was even then extensively promiscuous with the economically better class of the village’s youthful “sports.”
I myself turned away in deep shame from the propositions of tremendously virile youths, although secretly I would rather have yielded than do anything else at all. At middle life, I have had doubts as to whether I did the right thing in resisting. I believe my health and happiness were tremendously impaired by my ultra-puritan views which made me obstinate before Nature’s behests. On the other hand, through yielding I would have lost my reputation and probably |Mine the Most Melancholy of Youthhoods.| been barred from “prep” and university. I was expelled from the latter as soon as the faculty learned that I lived according to Nature’s behests. The university training is, of course, worth erotic pleasures ten thousand times over. But during the first two years of my college course, my health and happiness (as recounted in my Autobiography of an Androgyne) were sorely wrecked by abstinence. Does the wrong not after all lie in the groundless intolerance of “prep” and university for androgynes who obey Nature’s demands, and fill, in an unobtrusive manner, the niche in the universe for which the Great Architect predestined them?
Thus being excluded from the pastimes of both the recognized sexes and from their joint social intercourse—on account of my belonging to a third and outcast sex—I found my only recreation from an ultra-studious college-preparatory life in long walks on country roads, during which I often brooded because Providence had consigned me to membership in the third sex. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, I endured the most melancholy existence I have ever heard or read of.[[17]]
Reasons for Melancholia.
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a youth than to make the startling discovery that he, though extremely conscientious and offenceless, is a type of sexual cripple that has always been regarded by the sexually full-fledged—because of their ignorance and Phariseeism—as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness, and an outcast from society?
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a girl—and a very high-strung one—than for Nature to disguise her as a boy, and foreordain that she should be brought up as a boy and be, at school, office, etc., always shut up with the sterner sex?
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a girl than to be doomed to pass through life incarnated in a male body? How grief-provoking for a mademoiselle to be cursed with a slight growth of hair on lip |Early Consciousness of Deformity.| or cheeks! Only a trifling male stigma! How much more heart-rending for a mademoiselle to possess the male physique to such an extent that even all physicians (except a handful of sexologists) with their present lack of knowledge—or rather their closing their eyes to all evidence—would declare her a male, and prescribe that she should in life fill the latter role.