[There exists also A FOURTH SEX, the gynanders. But experience has not qualified me to describe them in detail. That task awaits some brave, high-minded, and brilliant physical female. See, however, chapter on Gynanders in my Riddle of the Underworld.]
The Overworld has enjoined complete silence about female-impersonators because of their thoroughly false view that any adolescent adopting the role must do so from moral depravity. They argue: “If I myself adopted the role, it could only be through unspeakable depravity. Ergo, the same is true for every male.” They overlook the fact that Nature did not |Female-Impersonation Instinctive.| make all anatomical males of like passions. What would be moral depravity for one is not for another.
Instinctive female-impersonators are sexual cripples from their mother’s womb. They had no choice in the matter. Thus they merit pity rather than scorn. Further, since their impersonations occasion no detriment to any one, but are a source of much entertainment to their sexually full-fledged associates, they are a positive ethical good. All beneficent talents that the Creator has distributed among mankind must have been meant for use—not for strangling.
As to the ethical question, I myself, who from the age of nineteen to thirty-one had an intensive career as fairie—female-impersonator, can truthfully state, on arrival in my late forties, that I was not once, during that career, guilty of an irreligious or unethical act—excepting alone that I seriously impaired my own health. But it is doubtful whether the impairment was permanent. In my late forties, my physical vigor is not at a lower level compared with males of my own age than it was during my childhood. My health has always been delicate.
Numerous wives and mothers suffer in health from the sex passion as much as I. If my having had my health wrecked by it proves it immoral for me and to be legally repressed, then the yielding to it by wedded pairs is equally immoral and to be interdicted. If it be objected that the human race is perpetuated by the latter, I answer that this consideration would only permit to married couples a sex-union when offspring was the object—that is, for a cultured couple, from one to three times throughout their married life.
Depilation.
In the description of my own physique and psyche, I have indicated the general characteristics of the extreme type of androgynes foreordained to become quasi-public female-impersonators. But the outstanding feminesque physical stigmata of each “fairie” (as they are commonly called in the United States) tend to be sui generis. In one it is natural beardlessness alone. In another, the possession of female breasts alone. In a third, the female skeletal shape, particularly an over-long spine, short legs, and broad pelvis. In a fourth, natural soprano voice. Etc.
Whoever has beheld an instinctive female-impersonator when keyed up, must confess that this type are born actors—or “actresses,” as they prefer to be called. Their histrionic skill is not primarily the result of practice or instruction.
Their audiences have marvelled because the impersonators’ faces are devoid of any sign of beardal hair. Usually the beard is eradicated. It is allowed to grow for a full week in seclusion. By means of a mask of depilatory wax, every hair is then pulled out by the roots, the outer portion having become embedded, like hair in wall-plaster. For three weeks, the face is as glabrous as a baby’s. Then the week’s seclusion and the final excruciatingly painful yank of the wax mask all over again. The process has no permanent effect, either good or bad.
All the impersonators adopt a fancy feminine name, as Pansy, Daisy, and Lily. Often the names of living star actresses are adopted and “dragged into the mud,” as people say. For while the career of a female-impersonator is a purely physiological and |Obedience to Nature Gave Peace.| psychological phenomenon, it is incorrectly regarded as deepdyed immorality.