Part One:
The Third Sex
I. How This Book Came to Be Written.
My motive was humanitarian. My aim was to save thousands of innocent step-children of Nature from an aggregate of tens of thousands of years in prison, and bring about a repeal of the laws under which they are incarcerated and which are still in the codes because civilized man has not yet entirely emerged from the prejudice and superstition of the Dark Ages. My second aim was to put a stop to the continuous string of murders of these step-children, the assassins laboring under the delusion that homosexuality is due to deepest moral depravity, and feeling that they are mandatories of society in ridding the world of these “monsters.” My third aim was to save hundreds of these superlatively melancholy sexual intermediates from suicide as the result of bitter persecution by those who pride themselves on the fact that in their own case, sex has been thoroughly differentiated.
[Sidenote: _The Sexual The Worst Crippling._]
The problem of the bisexual girl-boy or androgyne has been presented for the _learned professions_ in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD. But to accomplish my three aims, it is necessary that the _general reader_ have instilled into his mind that sexual intermediates are not to blame for their cross-sex idiosyncrasies. Such knowledge could not besmirch the soul of the general reader, but only benefit him morally.
In the present work I have a message for the general reader such as, in nearly every individual case, has never yet reached him. My God-given mission is to be one of the first to cry: “Child of English culture,[1] reflect a moment, and ask yourself whether you are at last, in this the most enlightened century of man’s existence, willing to grant justice and humane treatment to the androgyne and gynander? Do you still insist that these sexual cripples continue to suffer physical and mental torture for another century because your own pleasure bulks too large for you to hear and bear the truth about the despairing cross-sexed?
Why should the Christian and the Jew have always regarded as the one unpardonable sin the union in one human body of the distinctive physical and psychic earmarks of the two recognized sexes? Why should they have pitied and assisted the club-footed and the deaf-mute, but always endeavored to grind sexual cripples to powder under their heels?
There is indeed no worse crippling than the sexual. This is because sex, with all that it implies, is the principal physiological factor in life. Any abnormality of sex is truly the greatest of tragedies.
[Sidenote: _Authors’ Trilogy._]
Reader, what would have been your own attitude on this question if God had created you, or your son or daughter, a sexual intermediate, instead of some stranger about whose banishment, suicide, or murder you have read in the paper? Would you have driven the ill-starred son or daughter from home, and henceforth treated them as dead? Or would you, when their dead body was fished out of the river, be able to feel pity as did a father I read about in a New York paper, who exclaimed at sight of it: “Poor Jimmie! How you must have suffered!”[2]
* * * * *
My first three books on sexology form a trilogy. They together set forth all phases of the life experience of a bisexual university “man.” To only a trifling extent do they overlap. Thus the scientist wishing a full account of my unique life experience must read the entire trilogy. For I was predestined to an unusual role in the great drama we call “life.” I was brought into the world as one of the rare humans who possess a strong claim, on anatomic grounds as well as psychic, to membership in both the recognized sexes. I was foreordained to live part of my life as man and part as woman.
The first of the trilogy, the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, was published in January, 1919. In the following June, I began a supplement, THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS. Before September, I began to submit it to publishers. But they refused to do anything [Sidenote: _Enemies of Truth and Justice._] toward ameliorating the condition of the world’s most oppressed class. It seemed to be their opinion that the world must have its scapegoat—to punish, vicariously, for the world’s own sins. For centuries, sexual intermediates had served the world in that capacity.
After I had peddled the script around for two years to a total of ten regular book publishers, the MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL, publisher of my first book, consented to make the work available for those interested. The long delay in publication was utilized by myself in improving the form.
The third of the trilogy, THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD, has been elaborated simultaneously with THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS. Into the latter, I put the “milk for babes” (in St. Paul’s language); into the former, the “meat for strong men.” I wrote the latter in a popular style because addressed primarily to the general reader; the former more in the style suitable for scientists.
In my AUTOBIOGRAPHY, I was almost exclusively occupied with a frank exposition of what life meant to me personally. In the two supplements, I have been chiefly occupied in depicting characters with whom I associated in the Underworld. The Bible says: “Man is altogether born in sin!” But in Christendom this is really true of only the one-tenth of the race who people the Underworld. The other nine-tenths are comparatively saints. But there exists no reason for the latter’s prevalent Phariseeism. For the most part their moral superiority is hereditary and environmental.
Because of my innate appetencies and avocation of female-impersonator, I was fated to be a Nature-appointed [Sidenote: _Author Repository for Underworld’s Secrets._] amateur detective. I enjoyed entrée to the hearts of both male and female denizens of the Underworld, my stamping-ground when I surrendered my bisexual body to the feminine side of my dual psyche. They would whisper into my ears their innermost secrets. Those who happened to be Roman Catholics (because some whom I met in the Underworld were only chance and rare visitors, and ordinarily able to live up to high ideals) have doubtless revealed the mysteries of their inner life to their priest in the vaguest terms. But with me, because as a rule ignorant of the confessor’s identity and not likely to meet him in Overworld life, the confessions of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and atheist were detailed and exhaustive. Surely my having been thus favored by Providence ought to qualify me to depict little known human types for those who have missed the opportunity of meeting all kinds of people.
Of course, after the lapse of more than a score of years, I can not recall verbatim the individual confessions and conversations. I remember only their general drift. As outlined by me, they are merely representative. But Nature has endowed me with a rare memory. The earliest ascertainable date is the age of two years and three months, when I recall having seen the coffin of a great-grandmother carried out of the house. I still preserve earlier memories, such as being held on my mother’s lap and contemplating her mountainous bare breast. I remember hearing the moon whistle shrilly (the six P. M. factory whistles as I gazed at the crescent moon).
No reader should conclude from my trilogy that New York has been particularly immoral. Conditions [Sidenote: _Why an Underworld._] are about the same in all great cities, except that those of the United States are puritan towns compared with Europe. I have explored the Underworld in many cities of both continents, being temperamentally qualified. But in America’s smaller cities west of the meridian of Kansas City, the sexual Underworld is more bold and wields more political power than anywhere else in the United States or Europe.
An Underworld exists in all cities of any size because human nature is what it is, and because of the social usages decreed by the blind Overworld, which happens to include the vast majority of mankind. Man is descended from the beasts, and still retains many of their instincts—particularly true of the atypic or atavic who throng the red-light districts.
As the MEDICAL WORLD said of my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, the present work also “will be found a revelation of things undreamed of by most people. It is a contribution to the almost unexplored field of abnormal psychology.”
II. The Place of the Androgyne in the Male Sex Scale.
[Sidenote: _The Third Sex._]
Throughout the ages that mankind have trod the earth, a broad and endless stream of masculinity has coursed along until swallowed in the ocean of eternity. In all streams—whether of water, lava, or manhood—the particles at the center flow most rapidly and the speed gradually decreases toward the banks. At occasional points along the latter, the particles are stationary, or there is even an eddy.
(1) The TREMENDOUSLY VIRILE cause the surging rapids at the center of the masculine river. Their pre-eminent characteristic lies in excessive venery and excessive promiscuity. Sex holds by far the chief place in their thoughts. A large part of their waking hours is spent in the torture of unsatisfied longing. Their conversation with business intimates tends to sexual lines. They are the “black sheep” of families, never letting an opportunity go by without improving it. They are the seducers of girls under puberty. They are largely instrumental in securing a continuous flow of recruits to the rapidly decimating demimonde. Indeed the tremendously virile constitute the latter’s chief _raison d’etre_.
Their ambition being to be “the husbands of all women,” the tremendously virile, among Christian nations, often do not marry. If they do, a separation or divorce follows within a few years.
As a rule, only these free lances—as long as under thirty—appeal to androgynes as “heroes.” To them [Sidenote: _The Tremendously Virile._] alone do these pseudo-men yearn to devote themselves as slaves.
As a rule, the tremendously virile are not _gentlemen_. For they possess not even a vestige of mild or semi-feminine traits. They are overbearing, quarrelsome, and pugnacious. They will not take a back seat for any one. They constitute the raw material for the roughest, rudest, and most death-defying occupations, as volunteer soldiers and sailors, pugilists, highwaymen, and burglars. They abhor prosaic work.
As a rule, the tremendously virile are men of only three interests in life: fighting (including the slaughter of dumb beasts, in their inability to give the same treatment to their fellow man); sport in the usual sense of that word; and the sexual instinct. But a mere handful, whom Nature endowed with unusual brain power, have been leaders in war and politics. In the United States, I dare instance only Mohammed, Henry the Eighth, Louis the Fourteenth, and Bismarck. But leaders of the American nation have belonged to this tremendously virile class. I dare not name them because cultured society, with their present mediæval ideas on sex, severely censure men of this class as “bestial.” But the latter are fundamentally irresponsible.
In absolute monarchies and aristocracies almost throughout history, the tremendously virile have been at the helm of the ship of state. Because they have been, by birth, the greatest fighters. They thus forged to the front and pre-empted for themselves and their posterity the best things of life. Their constituting themselves the ruling class has rendered history, for the most part, a record of wars. Tremendous virility, [Sidenote: _The Ultra-Virile._] combined with unusual brain power, makes the born leader of men, before whose will the masses bow unquestioningly and they blindly turn themselves into “cannon fodder” at his beck and call. Only since the dawn of the nineteenth century have the mildly virile been coming into their own, and brain and science beginning to get the upper hand over brute force. The recent World War was the final resurgence of the tremendously virile as moulders of the destinies of nations, as well as the death blow to their ambitions in this direction.
As the status of peoples descends from the enlightened to the savage, the proportion that this class forms of the entire male sex gradually increases. Among enlightened nations, I estimate it at five per cent on the basis of my intimate mingling, in the role of a soubrette, with several thousand young bachelors belonging exclusively to either the tremendously or ultra-virile class, while nearly all my every-day associates have belonged to the mildly virile.
On the basis of my reading in anthropology, I estimate the proportion among savages at seventy-five per cent. Among the adult males, I have read that women constitute almost the sole topic of conversation. Fighting and sport fill up the rest of life. When an explorer has visited a savage or barbarous tribe, the outstanding hospitality is the provision of a bed-fellow belonging to the gentle sex.
(2) The ULTRA-VIRILE, on either side of the sexually fastest flowing particles just described, take their less rapid course in the stream of masculinity. Sex occupies their thoughts to a much less extent. But, like the tremendously virile, they are naturally [Sidenote: _Natural Polygamy._] polygamous. Only these two classes of males, together with ultra-androgynes and a small proportion of the mildly androgynous, sow wild oats, beginning in their later teens and ending usually in their later twenties. Prior to settling down in marriage, the ultra-virile secretly do not care a fig for the sexual mandates of Christian society. But for the sake of appearances, they hypocritically chime in with the regnant note and openly condemn in the harshest terms the least infraction of the conventions by another than themselves. After marriage, however, their infidelities are few and far between. Perhaps a score in a life-time, as compared with a thousand upward for the tremendously virile.
The ultra-virile make excellent husbands and divorce is rare. The wife, however, while herself occupying first place in the husband’s affections, has much cause for jealousy.
While the ultra-virile do not regularly choose an occupation free from prosaic toil and ministering to love of sport and adventure, they are usually averse to intellectual pursuits, favoring the manual. If possessing unusual brain power, the ultra-virile man heads some engineering or construction enterprise. The ultra-virile build our railroads, great bridges, leviathans, and sky-scrapers. A handful are distinguished by a knack for political leadership and have contributed the vast majority of such leaders.
Both the tremendously and the ultra-virile tend to excel in physique and comeliness. Some athletes, however, are only mildly virile. “Virility” refers only to sexual power. More than the ordinary erotic ardor, however, usually goes hand in hand with [Sidenote: _The Mildly Virile._] _brawn_, just as intellectual tastes and spirituality do with _brain_. With the evolution of the race in culture, erotic ardor, together with the animal side of man’s nature in general, is declining. The goal for which the race is headed is the minimum of sexual consciousness, coitus for procreation only, just enough offspring to keep the number of the human race on earth stationary, lengthened life, and ever increasing expansion of the intellectual in man at the expense of the physical. With this evolution, the proportion of sterile bisexuals will also increase.
The fighting forces of a nation are almost entirely made up of the two more virile classes, although together constituting only about twenty-five per cent of the total manhood of civilized nations. It is dangerous for the world’s peace when these two classes get control of a great nation’s government. Of the five classes of males being described, these two alone love war and seek occasion for it.
(3) The MILDLY VIRILE constitute, among so-called “Christian” nations, about seventy-five per cent of all males.[3] Only on rare occasions do thoughts [Sidenote: _Natural Monogamy._] about sexual congress enter their minds. That is, if married, they desire it only about once a fortnight or so, and up to the date of marriage, the incentive is so weak that they never gratify it. Thus up to the bridal night, this class three have usually been as chaste as their better halves. They have usually never indulged even in masturbation, while the generality of classes one and two have indulged frequently from around the age of ten to the period in which opportunities _cum femina_ or _cum androgyna_ become plentiful. In the mildly virile man’s ignorance of the force of sex in classes one and two, however, he has been known to be obsessed with the delusion that sex in himself is strongly developed. The mildly virile always marry, although a few postpone it until much past thirty. Subsequently they have at most only negligible desires to drink water at a strange cistern. They are content to go to their graves having been absolutely faithful to the lawful wife, or several successive ones, that God gave them. Divorce is almost unknown, since its cause, in nearly every case, is _de facto_ polygamy in the husband, or his excessive demands on the frigid wife—two faults absent from the psyche of the mildly virile.
The sexual life of the latter flows on gently and smoothly. It is called humdrum by the tremendously virile, continuously wafted up and down in a dizzy fashion in the rapids at the center of the masculine river. But what the mildly virile miss of the “pep” of life is more than compensated by the blissful peace that characterizes their earthly journey.
Their abhorrence of androgynism is many times as intense as in the case of the more virile. While not a single mildly virile man would ever succumb to [Sidenote: _Anaphrodites._] androgyne allurements, I have ascertained through many years’ association with thousands of tremendously or ultra-virile that at least seventy-five per cent readily suffer capture providing their sexual needs are not already abundantly gratified. The chief reason for the bitter antagonism of the mildly virile is that they know androgynism only by hearsay. They have not, like the more virile—to whom alone androgynes gravitate—been eye-witnesses of the entirely innocent, innocuous, and even pitiable sexuality of these pseudo-men.
The mildly virile, constituting the vast majority of all males in “Christian” countries, seek to impose the dictates of their own sexual natures upon all men whatsoever. The sexual mandates of “Christian” society and of the New Testament express the sex feelings in part of the mildly virile, and in part of the anaphrodites. Whatever harmonizes with these feelings is right; whatever fails to, is “bestial.”
The mildly virile are inclined toward the less strenuous occupations, as agriculture, manufacturing, and trade. They also include ninety-five per cent of intellectuals.
(4) The cold ANAPHRODITES are the particles that cling immovably to the banks of the masculine river.[4] They neither progress nor regress. They number about one-half of one per cent of all adult males. Like the ultra-androgynes, they have a horror of women from the sex point of view. But unlike the [Sidenote: _St. Paul’s Sex Teachings._] former, their minds are devoid of hero-worship and they shudder violently at the very thought of _any kind_ of association grounded on sex differences. Their anaphroditism is either an after-effect of an illness in childhood or congenital.
For the most part, anaphrodites are intellectuals. The exquisite joys associated with courtship and marriage that they are predestined never to know are more than compensated by Providence in the way of extra allotment of intellectual enjoyment. Herbert Spencer is the shining example of anaphroditism of the nineteenth century.[5]
Since anaphrodites are not suffused with adoration for any type of human, the vast majority are the more inclined to lift their thoughts to their Creator. Some great religious leaders have been anaphrodites. St. Paul, in his epistles, shows little patience even with normal sex phenomena. He advises that every man imitate his own absolute celibacy. “But if they can not contain, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn [to lust].”
It is impossible for the tremendously or the ultra-sexed to live up to the sexual ideals of an anaphrodite. And yet St. Paul’s epistles bind them upon Christians. It is infinitely easier for an anaphrodite to be a saint than for the ultra-virile to be even decent. St. Paul’s sex teachings constitute the greatest stumbling block of the church. They have caused the human race a [Sidenote: _Androgynes._] world of woe. Belief in St. Paul’s inerrancy makes it impossible to reconcile Christian ethics with the incontrovertible teachings of Nature. While, in respect to value to the human race, I give St. Paul’s epistles first place among all published documents (the woe they have occasioned being, a thousand times over, outweighed by the light they have given man on the greatest questions that puzzle his brain) I must, particularly because of their false sex doctrines, deny their inerrancy. If inerrant, the human race ought to have ceased existence eighteen hundred years ago.
Jesus made no such blunders in his sex teaching. He was the only biblical teacher apparently to recognize the existence of androgynes without thundering against them. As “eunuchs from their mother’s womb,” he may of course have had in mind only anaphrodites. But apparently he was aware of the existence of androgynes. St. John the Divine, apparently his favorite disciple, having possessed the earmarks, particularly “softness” of disposition.
* * * * *
(5) ANDROGYNES are the eddies along the banks of the masculine river. Their movement is retrograde. They are instances of arrest of development. In the early fœtus sex is not apparent. Only later does differentiation begin. In more than ninety-nine out of a hundred humans, it is completed at puberty. But the individual androgyne or gynander remains, down to death, to a greater or less degree bisexual. Just as a mule is part horse and part donkey, so an androgyne or gynander is part man and part woman. To quote from Krafft-Ebing: “They [androgynes] are neither man nor woman: a mixture of both; with secondary [Sidenote: _Acquired or Congenital?_] psychic and physical characteristics of the one as well as the other sex.”[6]
Androgynes tend to occupations having to do with [Sidenote: _Androgynes Are Aesthetes._] art—in the widest sense of that word. They are extreme æsthetes. I quote from Edward Carpenter’s _Love’s Coming-of-Age_ (published by Boni and Liveright) page 135, where he speaks of male urnings, called by myself “androgynes”: “At the bottom lies the artist-nature, with the artist’s sensibility and perception. Such a one is often a dreamer, of brooding reserved habits, often a musician, or a man of culture, ... almost always with a peculiar inborn refinement. De Joux ... says...: ‘They are enthusiastic for poetry and music, are often eminently skilful in the fine arts, and are overcome with emotion and sympathy at the least sad occurrence.... The nerve system of many an urning is the finest and the most complicated musical instrument in the service of the interior personality that can be imagined.’” (R. W.’s comment: An androgyne is usually a bundle of nerves.)
In my university course in æsthetics, the professor lamented that art tends to make its devotees immoral. He probably had in mind the notorious frequency of homosexuality among æsthetes. But he got the cart before the horse. The æsthetes affected were born bisexual and their devotion to art was a consequence.
Androgynes are clearly of two types, each of which, the author estimates, constitutes in the United States about one out of every three hundred humans possessing the male primary determinants:[7] (a) The [Sidenote: _The Mildly Androgynous._] mildly androgynous, of whom Oscar Wilde is the best known of contemporaries; and (b) the ultra-androgynous, of whom the present writer is the most widely known of his generation.
* * * * *
(a) The anatomy of the mildly androgynous is not conspicuously feminine. Only a few feminine traits appear in the psyche. The mildly androgynous always mingle with full-fledged males and seek to pass as such themselves. As a cloak, they are prone to fabricate about excesses _cum femina_. But while secretly preferring homosexual romance, they are capable of espousing a woman and begetting children. [Sidenote: _The Ultra-Androgynous._] Sexologists have therefore called them “psychic hermaphrodites.”
(b) In ultra-androgynes alone, the physique is noticeably feminesque, and the psyche predominantly feminine. As a rule, they alone have a craze to decorate themselves in feminine finery and spread paint and powder on their faces. They tend to avoid the society of full-fledged males except to display to a tremendously virile coterie—to whom they are generally incognito—their skill in female-impersonation.
Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the terms “androgyne” and “pseudo-man” only in reference to the ultra-androgynous. All my androgyne associates whom I shall portray in this book belong to this class, because with a few exceptions they alone are FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS. In my RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD I describe some mild androgynes.
There exists vast diversity in the anatomy and psyche of androgynes—just as, from the standpoint of size and shape of the genitalia and sexual tastes, any two full-fledged males or any two full-fledged females differ more or less. In one androgyne, the only conspicuous external feminine stigma may be absence of beardal growth; in another, mammary glands; in another, the complete skeleton or the complete muscular system of the female. The one physical feminine stigma that is indispensable to the possession of a decidedly feminine psyche and the quasi-female method of sexual expression is the female variety of brain protoplasm. For there have probably lived naturally beardless men, males possessing milk glands or sissie voices, etc., who have nevertheless not been at all homosexual. But such are exceptions to the rule.
[Sidenote: _A Medical Superstition._]
While an earmark of ultra-androgynism is sexual passivity, the mildly androgynous may be active pederasts or mutual onanists. Only in the case of ultra-androgynes are the individual’s genitalia entirely divorced—as a rule—from the sexual life. For them, Nature has substituted other organs.
Ultra-androgynes are, by birth, practically identical with males castrated in early childhood, except that adult artificial eunuchs are usually overlarge. Adult ultra-androgynes tend merely to plumpness as a result of their dwarfed genitalia.
I have heard of ultra-androgynes, who, in their early twenties, on their physician’s advice, married a _woman_, when Nature intended they should marry a man. All high-minded “homosexualists,” soon after arrival at puberty, consult a medical man for a cure. From time immemorial it has been one of the profession’s superstitions that marriage would cure homosexual tendencies. Some unsophisticated adolescent androgynes put faith in their physician’s positive assurance that _marriage is a sure cure_. If, as a matter of conscience alone, the androgyne promises the physician to marry, he sometimes goes insane over the dread of it, or else commits suicide, either on the eve of marriage, or a few days afterward. But even if the marriage ceremony is performed, the consummation never takes place in the case of ultra-androgynes, and the wedded state proves very unhappy for both parties. At least in the case of the ultra-androgynes, such marriage possesses no curative value. Chronic and extreme homosexuality is congenital and incurable. It is monstrous to advise even a mild androgyne to marry, and thus contribute to propagating a line of [Sidenote: _Hermaphrodites._] unhappy and unwelcome bisexuals down through the centuries.
The two classes of androgynes do not mix well. Just as the full-fledged man is averse to attendance at a ladies’ sewing-circle. Particularly the mildly androgynous fear suspicion of their secret if they associated with ultra-androgynes. Coteries of ultra-androgynes naturally form. Knowing their own nature, they readily recognize one another, although down to 1921 at least, the sexually full-fledged have usually been blind to the androgynism of daily associates, because they were never permitted to learn of their existence.
(6) PSEUDO-HERMAPHRODITES are humans possessing in part both the male and the female genitalia, or else organs so deformed that even sexologists are unable to determine the sex until puberty. In half such cases, the physician then pronounces the individual to belong to the sex other than that with which he or she has identified him or herself. As a rule, they subsequently live and clothe themselves per prescription. But some, accustomed to the dress and usages of their first sex, choose to identify themselves with it throughout life.
Pseudo-hermaphrodites are the limit toward which the ultra-androgynous approach by slight gradations. Their frequency is not greater than one in a million to ten million humans.
(7) FULL HUMAN HERMAPHRODITES—possessing both complete male and complete female genitalia—have never been encountered. There exists in medical annals, however, a pseudo-hermaphrodite who so nearly approached full hermaphrodism that at one period he-she claimed to have lived as husband and father, [Sidenote: _The Sex Scale._] and at a later, as wife and mother. This reputed transposition is in accord with the observed phenomenon[8] of an individual’s passing over from one sex class to another at the climacteric corresponding to menopause in woman.
* * * * *
I have a theory that the sex class of an individual male depends on the size, but particularly the vigor, of his physical reproductive apparatus. I have ascertained such variety to be practically infinite, and psychicly as well as physically.
There exist no sharp dividing lines among the six classes of males. While the bulk of a particular class correspond closely to the description, there are individuals on each side of such mode who constitute slight gradations over to the next class. Thus each class gradually and almost imperceptibly shades off into the next. There exists indeed a sex scale along which all human beings can be theoretically arranged. At one pole stands the tremendously virile man—for example, the rough volunteer common soldier, as a rule intensely polygamous; at the other the petite, cry-baby species of woman. Androgynes and gynanders occupy exactly the middle section, looking toward both the male and the female side.
It is quasi-instinctive with each sex class to scorn members of another class just because they happen to be built on a different plan. It is the same phenomenon prevalent in the religious domain in past centuries, when the Roman Catholic yearned to murder the Protestant and _vice versa_. Which intolerance the [Sidenote: _Sex Animosity._] gradual conquest of human affairs by reason is pushing further and further into the background. But still in the twentieth century, reason is a nonentity in the domain of sex. There all is illogical instinct and bigotry. Each sex class still revels in calling the others bad names. The tremendously virile “fellow” bellows out at the mildly: “You milk-sop!” The latter calls back: “You rake!” The ultra-virile hisses through his teeth at the anaphrodite: “You dried tree!” The mildly virile points his finger at the androgyne: “Unclean! Unclean! Child of the devil! Monster!” And even if I do not say so here, the reader will conclude after finishing this book: The androgyne calls back at the mildly virile: “You hypocrite! You Pharisee!” For the outstanding earmark of the mildly virile is Phariseeism. They think they themselves are the only moral and God-fearing men in the world, and that all other men are sexually vile.
Is it right to chastise a horse because he prefers to munch hay out of a manger instead of walking into his owner’s dining-room; throwing himself backwards into an enormous chair; squeezing with difficulty a spoon between his two front hoofs; and with it carrying to his mouth ice-cream and French pastry? The average man (who is of the mildly virile type) says that the latter is, for every creature, the superior method of taking nourishment, and insists on all others conforming to what is right in his own eyes. If they do not, he ostracizes and even imprisons and murders those who dare to offend his æsthetic sense.
In general, man is a free agent. But his sex class is imposed by Providence. Just as he is not responsible for the face he has to carry through life.
[Sidenote: _Poultry Bisexuality_.]
Why should not every human be at liberty to live out his life in the way Nature ordains for _him_ so far as he does not thereby transgress against any one else?[9]
III. Androgynes of Mythology and History.
[Sidenote: _The Third Sex._]
APOLLO is the pre-eminent androgyne god. He was always represented with a feminine face and coiffure, and therefore worshipped as the god of beauty.
In conformity with his semi-femininity, he was the _life-giving_ and _light-giving_ deity—both physical and figurative life and light. He was the leader of the muses—the spirits presiding over all human inspiration in the fine arts.
The artistic instinct—the poetic temperament, “sentimentality” in its highest sense—goes hand in hand with a rounding-off of the sharp corners of masculinity. Artistic or poetic decades have been conspicuous because of a semi-slumbering of fundamental masculine traits, that is, the instinctive relish for wrangling and war. The sterner sex has temporarily laid aside its primal _fighting_ function ordained by Nature and become to some degree effeminate.
As a rule, abstract beauty’s devotees—“æsthetes” in the highest sense, that is: poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, and superior musicians—have been characterized by more or less effeminacy. They have been particularly prone to homosexuality. While among full-fledged males, the proportion that has achieved proficiency in one of the fine arts is something like one in a thousand, among androgynes (the two varieties combined), it has been one in about twenty. I will later point out that the pinnacle in poetry, sculpture, and painting has been achieved by androgynes.
[Sidenote: _Apollo._]
But the feminesque Apollo was the god not only of beauty, but of _adolescence_—the period of life during which human beauty is at its culmination. He possessed eternal youth. He is even referred to as “the boy god.” Adoration of him sprang out of man’s delight in the semi-womansouled and quasi-womanbodied stripling just before arrival at puberty.
And ultra-androgynes remain—to a large extent—in that pre-puberty period down to thirty-five. Their development has been arrested. Full-fledged male associates absolutely ignorant of the existence of androgynism have described—in the author’s hearing—androgynes even close to fifty years old as “still mere boys.”
But an adolescent androgyne or boy god was also worshipped by the Semite nations (other than the Jews) under the name Ablu, and by the Celts under the name Maponus.
Philologists will recognize that “Apollo,” “Ablu,” “Maponus,” and “boy” are descended from the same vocable in the language used by the Asiatic tribe from which most of the civilized nations of the ancient and modern world derive. _B_ is only a strengthened _p_; the liquid _l_ has often been transmuted into the kindred _n_; and the diphthong _oy_ indicates the elision of a liquid. We have here etymological evidence that an adolescent-androgyne deity was worshipped before the dawn of history.
To-day, among some primitive races, as the aborigines of America, androgynes are the central feature of the most sacred rites.
[Sidenote: _Hermaphroditos and Ganymede._]
HERMAPHRODITOS stands second among androgyne gods. The myth is that “he-she” was originally a full-fledged human adolescent and an entirely separate nymph in the full flower of feminine charm. The nymph, falling in love, besought Zeus that the adolescent and herself might be forever amalgamated. Excepting the pudenda, the body remained that of the nymph. The psyche became a compound of the masculine and the feminine. This myth was a poetic recognition of the existence, at the very dawn of history, of androgynes such as exist to-day.
A picture or statue of Hermaphroditos adorned nearly every Greek and Roman home of the better class. This was because the ancients held the androgyne in honor as the super-human—man and woman in one individual.
GANYMEDE ranks third.[10] Originally a human adolescent of extraordinary feminesque beauty, Zeus snatched him up into the heavenly zone and conferred immortality that the feminesque youth might be his cup-bearer. The latter’s statues represent him with a mademoiselle’s chevelure, hips, and legs, but with male breasts and pudenda. The fact that the father-god of the classic world entered into this most intimate [Sidenote: _Socrates._] union partly explains why the androgyne was held in honor by the Greeks and Romans.
SOCRATES is the earliest historic character whom sexologists have declared an androgyne. For centuries, a common designation of male homosexuality has been “Socratic love.” In Plato’s “Dialogues,” Socrates is the teacher. His remarks of extreme affection to his youthful disciples are sickening even to me, though an androgyne myself. Present-day scholars who close their eyes to the facts of androgynism, who cling to mediæval sex ideas, and hence hold homosexuality to result from deep-eyed moral depravity, have denounced Socrates as the greatest moral leper that ever lived. But from Socrates’ own generation down through the nineteenth century, he was universally recognized as the greatest saint of the classic world.
That Socrates was a married man and father and wore a beard does not disprove the sexologists’ claim. The mildly androgynous—psychic hermaphrodites, like Oscar Wilde—occasionally marry and procreate; chiefly for social reasons, not from the sexual incentive. Secondly, the razor was practically unknown in Socrates’ generation. Even to-day, some of the less extreme androgynes wear a full beard because of horror of a razor.
One of the three charges on which Socrates was condemned to death was that he was “a corruptor of youth;” the identic charge that landed Oscar Wilde in prison. But neither of these geniuses ever corrupted any youth. The prevalent idea that the association of an older androgyne with a sexually full-fledged younger man corrupts the latter is absolutely groundless. The androgyne only benefits, in several ways, the adolescent [Sidenote: _Plato._] whom he loves far more than a father loves an only son. Socrates’ two most brilliant disciples, Plato and Xenophon, wrote books, still extant, one of the purposes of which was defence of Socrates from the charge mentioned.
PLATO, the St. Paul of the pagan classic world—as was its Jesus (Socrates)—was an androgyne. His voluminous “Dialogues”—one of the world’s two score of literary masterpieces—are permeated with homosexuality. In the _Symposium_, Plato confesses himself a homosexualist. In his day, homosexuality was not regarded a disgrace any more than heterosexuality. The charge against Socrates was largely a pretext, the politicians having to give some plausible reason for ridding themselves of him.
Plato’s falsetto voice—a common characteristic of androgynes—is commented on in writings of his day still extant. He never married nor procreated.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT has been adjudged by sexologists an androgyne of the mild type. He was the first prominent Greek to dispense with hirsute decorations. The probability is that he was naturally beardless. But in imitation of the genius and leader of their generation, all the men who wished to be somebody started to shave clean. Knowledge of the razor first became common in Greece because Alexander the Great happened to be congenitally beardless!
As a monarch, Alexander was compelled to espouse a woman. But he spent nearly all his married life absent from his legal spouse, and was incapable of procreation. All the evidence is that his real soul-mate was a young warrior of his entourage. The two were inseparable. His strange affection for other [Sidenote: _Alexander the Great._] young men of his entourage is remarked by contemporaries. He bewailed the death of favorites in battle as only a wife can mourn a husband.
Androgynes, because they possess the feminine psyche in greater or less degree, are generally very much opposed to war. But it is possible for a less extreme androgyne—of the psychic hermaphrodite type—to be a great general when the leadership of armies is _thrust_ upon him. Genius occurs far oftener in connection with androgynism than with full-fledged masculinity. The rare keenness of mind of an androgyne like Alexander would enable him to plan successful campaigns. But his feminine cowardice would always keep him far from the battle-front, where there was no danger of a hair of his head ever being touched. And that is what happened with Alexander. Above all things else, he was a sybarite.
Androgynes, though never mixing in a fight themselves, are particularly attracted toward the war-loving “hero.” Much more than half of my own associates during my female-impersonation sprees belonged to a profession whose object was to kill their fellow man. For almost twenty years of my “youngmanhood,” I was an habitué of barracks, etc., and a worshipper of swords and rifles, although I would have been horrified if required to take them into my own hands. I have known other androgynes whose female-impersonation sprees were staged before professional common soldiers. A young androgyne acquaintance actually enlisted in the hospital corps in the war with Germany because he wished to be surrounded continually with warriors—the type of manhood which androgynes in general most servilely worship. Walt Whitman is [Sidenote: _Julius Cæsar._] celebrated for his work among the wounded in America’s War of the Rebellion. I read in a medical journal that during the World War, a problem with the Italian army heads was to debar androgynes, who were said to demoralize the army because of their cowardice and seductive influence on their sexually full-fledged comrades. I heard of an androgyne who received a dishonorable discharge from the American conscript army because wrongly judged to be the incarnation of deepdyed moral depravity.
Perhaps the reason why Alexander and the next mild androgyne to be described were two out of the three greatest generals and conquerors of history was their craze to pass practically all their adult lives surrounded by warriors!
JULIUS CÆSAR has been adjudged by sexologists an androgyne of the mild type. He married, as social custom demanded of aristocratic Romans, but spent nearly all his wedded life absent from his legal spouse. His offspring is _said_ to have consisted only of a single daughter. History _says_ he had a son by Cleopatra. But this is doubtful because that queen was every man’s wife. But even if Cæsar had offspring, he would merely be proved a psychic hermaphrodite.
Cæsar was always clean-shaven, if not naturally beardless. He even had his body depilated—as is customary to-day with “fairies.” Like the latter also, he was, in dress, notoriously fussy and feminine—in order to prove attractive to his lieutenants. He was an instinctive female-impersonator. His entourage were accustomed to refer to him as “the queen.” Of all historic characters, Cæsar excels in respect to the sensational stories of homosexual excesses found in contemporary authors still extant.
Cæsar was a great conqueror merely because circumstances, largely beyond his control, placed him at the head of an army. As in the case of Alexander, Cæsar’s genius enabled him to plan successful campaigns. Others, however, had to expose life and limb, while he kept himself safe in the rear passing his days and nights as an extreme voluptuary.
[Sidenote: _Michelangelo._]
MICHELANGELO, with the renaissance of civilization after the Dark Ages, heads the list of the mildly androgynous. He never married or was known to have a mistress. He left behind many hitherto unpublished homosexual sonnets of such merit that his nephew-executor gave them to the world after radical expurgation. Angelo’s statues and paintings are pre-eminent in their consummate, although sensual, outlines of the nude adult male, the principal subject of his art. His statues of the nude youthful Bacchus, Cupid, and David of his middle twenties point the direction of his sexuality. Before thirty he also produced the picture, “The Battle of Cascina,” 288 square feet crowded with [Sidenote: _Raphael._] nude male figures. His favorite Greek sculpture was a statue of Hercules.
RAPHAEL was an ultra-androgyne. He was always beardless (probably natural) and boylike in appearance. Instead of choosing a Roman mademoiselle to be mistress of his mansion in the then most aristocratic residence district of the world, he took two young men to live with him as “sons”,—a common practice with well-to-do twentieth century androgynes.
The SHAKESPEARE-AUTHOR was an androgyne. The proof lies in the numerous homosexual passages of his sonnets. The authorship of the Shakespeare [Sidenote: _The Shakespeare-Author._] literature is still undetermined after close to three hundred publications on this question. If Providence grants me time, I will finally prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, by the homosexual argument original with myself, that Francis Bacon was the Shakespeare-author. I give below an outline of my proposed thesis.
The young actor, Shakespeare, was a tremendously virile male, but estranged from his wife and living apart during most of his married life. Bacon was an androgyne several years older than Shakespeare. He married only in middle life and solely for money. He was a great statesman, but sorely in need of money to meet his extravagant tastes. Apparently he was incapable of procreation. Both men lived in London, and were at least acquaintances, during the dozen years which saw the creation of the Shakespeare literature.
Bacon was the foremost scholar and one of the foremost statesmen of his generation. He and the Shakespeare-author are recognized to-day as two out of the three greatest intellects which have ever blossomed forth in England—even by those who deny the identity of the two, and hand the palm of Shakespeare-author to the obscure actor, Shakespeare.
Numerous literateurs believe that evidence exists that the incomparable Bacon’s fad was writing plays, the theatre in his day being comparatively a new craze (that is, for modern times)—as are the “movies” in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It would then have been regarded as incongruous for the dignified statesman, Bacon, to write plays as for an expresident of the United States to-day to write scenarios [Sidenote: _The Shakespeare Problem._] for the “movies.” Through covering his authorship, Bacon was spared the jests of his upper-crust entourage.
Whatever credit, too, the plays had, Bacon would wish his adored soul-mate to reap—just as the present writer has sacrificed his own interests fundamentally that his soul-mate might be benefited. But if Bacon had thought the Shakespeare literature would survive his own generation, he would doubtless, on his deathbed, have confessed himself its author. But even for many years after his death, everybody considered it would be forgotten by man as soon as the shredded leaves of the first printing were thrown into the fire place.
Another reason why Bacon would never confess his authorship is that in his age the law condemned to burial _alive_ any one guilty of such homosexual sentiments as he was constrained, by passion, to express in the “Shakespeare” sonnets.
Francis Bacon published extensively under his own name. He published extensively—as a large body of literateurs believe—under the name of “William Shakespeare.” Just as the present writer has quite a number of publications under his legal name, and a number under the name “Ralph Werther—Jennie June.” And no one suspects the identity of the two present-day authors.
The actual Shakespeare—behind whose skirts Bacon hid—was, down to his death, only an obscure actor, not known personally to any writer of his own generation except (by supposition) Bacon. The actor Shakespeare has achieved immortality through having been Bacon’s soul-mate.
[Sidenote: _Walt Whitman._]
WALT WHITMAN stands foremost among American androgynes. But he was of the mild type. Many passages of _Leaves of Grass_ and _Drumtaps_ exist as proof. He never married, although closely pursued by even wealthy women desiring him as husband. In middle age he spent his hours for recreation in the society of adolescents—as I was informed by Whitman’s so-called “adopted son”. That is, he courted them, as a normal man courts a woman. Chance made me intimate with the “adopted son” in his seventies. All three of us happened to belong to New York City.
* * * * *
Surely we androgynes, who for two thousand years have been despised, hunted down, and crushed under the heel of normal men because they have misunderstood biblical condemnations of homosexuality, have no reason to be ashamed of our heritage. America’s foremost poet; the world’s greatest sculptor subsequently to Athens’ golden age; the two greatest ethicists and two out of the three greatest intellects of ancient Greece and Rome; two out of the three greatest conquerors of history; the greatest painter of all ages; and—to cap the climax—the greatest intellect that the English-speaking world ever produced and the greatest literary genius of all time (these two distinctions united in Francis Bacon)—ALL WERE ANDROGYNES.[11]
And to you full-fledged males I say: “What God hath cleansed [through endowment with sublime talents] call not ye ‘Unclean!’”
IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, Being.
[Sidenote: _The Third Sex._]
Twentieth-century psychologists are coming around to the view that even the leaders of thought are governed by instinct and _mores_ rather than reason. Even for intellectuals, truth is what is intuitive or what satisfies their prejudices and instincts. Still in the twentieth century, the leaders of thought bow down before intellectual idols, although other than those overthrown by Francis Bacon. Still to-day—as in the generation of Roger Bacon (13th century)—conservatives yearn to imprison, or even burn at the stake, those in whom a purer reason than their own operates.
My own is thus a Herculean task: To be an intellectual iconoclast. To break down the last remnant of cultured man’s savage, criminal instincts and _mores_. But, like Roger Bacon, I may comfort myself with the thought that my views are centuries in advance of my time; but, like him, I am therefore bitterly persecuted.[12]
[Sidenote: _Prudery Triumphant._]
“Away with any one who attempts to bring out the truth about sex!” cry the conservatives. “Crucify him! Crucify him! Sex is a theme too disgusting for discussion!”
In the university I took an extended course of lectures on physiology. But not a word was said about sex. The professor would not have thus befouled his mouth, nor corrupted the morals of his students. Martin’s _Human Body_, the standard text-book of the time, had to be published in two editions: (1) That which treated of human sexuality as viewed in the Dark Ages, and (2) that which imagined the genus homo to be asexual.
* * * * *
One presumed male out of every three hundred belongs to the _third sex_, strictly speaking. That is, the ultra-androgynes—the pseudo-men who possess only undersized and non-functional male pudenda, whose body otherwise tends toward feminesqueness, and whose psyche, predilections, tastes, gestures, and postures remind one of a female.
The third sex is a commonplace topic in the Underworld, which comprises about one-tenth the population of “Christian” lands. The Underworlders, however, generally fail to understand the cause of the effeminacy. The nine-tenths of the unlearned who have never entered a more immoral place than a “movie” theatre are almost entirely ignorant of the third sex. What hazy ideas they have are criminally incorrect. And except for a handful of sexologists, [Sidenote: _Benighted Leaders of Thought._] the learned still cling to views handed down from the Dark Ages.
In the seventeenth century, when a cyclone demolished a hamlet or an epidemic broke out, a council of physicians, lawyers, and clergymen was called to determine which semi-bearded old hag had _wished_ the catastrophe upon the community. After prayer for divine guidance and an exhortation by a parson that the Bible taught that witches ought to be ferreted out, the high-brows would seek to determine who of the several bags of bone known to all of them presented the most loathsome appearance, and who should therefore be burned at the stake as the _witch_ responsible for the catastrophe—as the necessary human sacrifice to appease the anger of the Unseen Powers. For even down to the twentieth century there survives in Christendom the pagan superstition of the necessity of a human sacrifice now and then.
But in the twentieth century, leaders of thought have evolved from the belief in witchcraft. They must look elsewhere than to semi-bearded hags for their sacrificial victims on whom to load the sins of mankind, and the blame for the decline and fall of nations. Since, next to hags, they consider sexual cripples as the most loathsome of humans, they make the latter the scape-goats of present-day society. While they no longer burn them at the stake or bury them alive (as provided in old European law) they are permitted by twentieth century statutes to imprison inoffensive androgynes for twenty years. And these archaic statutes are still frequently enforced. Only a few months ago I read of a Boston clergyman who was sentenced to prison on the testimony of a young ex-soldier. [Sidenote: _Banishment of Androgynes._] But to-day these statutes serve chiefly as ground for extensive blackmail of Nature’s step-children, hardly one of whom, if belonging to the middle or upper class, but has had to pay out considerable sums, occasionally running into the thousands.
Instead of imprisonment, public opinion has generally substituted banishment of the disclosed androgyne forever from all he loves.
During the few months of composing this book, the New York papers have told of the abrupt flight to parts unknown of three intellectual leaders in their communities, two just over the city line and the third within a hundred miles. They had to flee, not because they had done the least real harm (all three were pastors of churches) but because of the mediæval ignorance and bitter hatred that their communities immediately manifested toward a “man” (reputedly) all of a sudden disclosed to be a “monster” (though in reality a harmless and pitiable sexual cripple). The populace, ignorant that he had probably practiced a thousand times more self-denial than any one of themselves, but had at last been able to withstand Nature’s demands no longer, chased him out of his community for good and all with the feeling that he was the lowest scoundrel that ever contaminated it.
I admit that these unfortunates did show bad judgment in remaining in the ministry when they knew they were afflicted with a powerful instinct abhorred by the sexually full-fledged, and they showed the worst kind of judgment in having recourse to boys under puberty. But they were in a tight place, and besides felt that they were doing no one any harm. For the androgyne generally comes at last to the view that [Sidenote: _Most Androgynes Ultra-Religious._] what Nature demands can be no sin and, if properly fulfilled, no transgression against any human.
The newspaper devotee runs across a similar item every once in a while, and nearly always the “monster” is a clergyman or a teacher. But the abhorred penchant (fellatio) is, of course, not peculiar to these professions. Simply their high ethical standing, and the common fancy that they should therefore be proof against what is incorrectly regarded as the worst of vices, attract greater attention, and give news value to the occasional disclosures.
But it is probable that among the occupations, those two, together with all having to do with art of any kind, have the largest proportions of androgynes. As a rule, male bisexuals are goody-goody boys who develop into ultra-religious adolescents. They are enthusiastic to better the race morally and spiritually. The robes commonly worn by clergymen are also a powerful drawing card, since androgynes yearn for apparel that conceals that they are bipeds. Thus quite a number who were born intellectual and whose sexual ardor, during adolescence, is comparatively weak, gravitate into the two professions standing highest ethically and religiously. When making his choice, the adolescent is filled with religious fervor and possessed of a strong determination to crucify his “homosexual” tendencies. The androgyne already yielding would never put on “the cloth,” although he would go into pedagogy. But the puritan-minded regards these tendencies as his “besetting sin” and fights them for years in the strenuous manner described in my own AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE. Throughout his teens, and perhaps even his twenties, [Sidenote: _Abstinence Induces Melancholia._] he never expects to be overmastered. But later in life many a one of these sexual cripples who have put on “the cloth” disgrace it notwithstanding his prior unparalleled mental struggles against Nature’s behests.
Or if coming out victor in the lifelong struggle, the pitiable woman-man lives down to death under the obsession (due to misinterpreted biblical texts) that the gratification of his unusual instinct is the most heinous of sins, and spends all his days, in which God meant that he should rejoice, in mourning over his sexual ardor (for which he does not realize he is irresponsible), in crucifying his body continuously, with its affections and lusts (as commanded by the anaphrodite, St. Paul), and is thereby, throughout adult life, on the borderline of insanity. I have heard sermons from such clergymen and was moved to pity as they were shedding tears in the pulpit and rendering themselves unpopular, both with their fellow preachers who are sexually full-fledged and with the laity, because their aspect was always that of tragedy. I advise that all such melancholiacs immediately ask that they be honorably deposed from the ministry. As a result, their lives would be happy and satisfying.
The vast majority of preachers are manly. I have a higher respect for that profession than for any other. If it had not been for my androgynism, I would have myself entered it. It would be well for the Church authorities to question, as to their sexuality, all candidates for beginning a theological course, and in the kindest manner advise adolescents in the least bisexual to choose some other profession because of the public’s misunderstanding of this phenomenon. [Sidenote: _Why Androgynes Are Hated._] Sexual conduct is not primarily a voluntary matter or an ethical question, but rooted in anatomy, physiology, and psychology. The androgyne who yearns to preach the Gospel can do so through the printed word. Because of St. Paul’s sex teaching (that of an anaphrodite) the profession of “the cloth” is rightly open only to anaphrodites and the mildly virile. The more virile are likewise excluded because it is next to impossible for them to abstain from adultery.
Why are androgynes so hated? Primarily because the leaders of thought have always identified them with the men of ancient Sodom (mistakenly, because the Sodomites were full-fledged males) and historians have mistakenly (because they never met androgynes personally and were taught in their boyhood to hate them with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength) laid upon them all the blame for the decline and fall of nations, and declared that therefore effeminacy or androgynism is a type of moral depravity to be crushed mercilessly. Better that some thousands of androgynes be deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than that the general welfare of the nation be imperilled! Androgynes—they argue—are unavoidably the scape-goats of the race.
I answer: In the first place, such imperilment is only a _figment of the imagination_. This superstition can be disposed of by merely asking to what extent the welfare of humanity was imperiled by the sex functioning of the arch-androgynes listed in chapter III? In the second place, androgynism is not moral depravity or degeneracy. I myself—an extreme type of androgyne—spring from the most puritan stock. I was brought up to consider that on Sunday, reading [Sidenote: _Androgynism Not Degeneracy._] anything but Christian doctrine or walking a hundred feet for mere pleasure were heinous sins. In addition to springing from the most puritan stock, both my paternal and maternal stock are of unusually strong build. A paternal and also a maternal uncle were professional athletes. A brother was the champion athlete of my native village. My stock and early environment are indeed the last that any one would pick out as likely to bring into the world a homosexual or androgyne as a result of moral degradation.[13] My androgynism has, however, made me myself rather lilliputian. With one exception, I grew up to be the smallest man of my paternal and maternal families.
It is not necessary to crush androgynes in order to guard against the spread of effeminacy. Effeminacy, in the sense of androgynism, does not spread by example. It is entirely congenital. Only a physical male born with quasi-feminine predilections would adopt the role of a female after becoming adult. An androgyne’s predilections and practices are regarded with such repugnance by all full-fledged males that none would stoop to them unless constrained by instinct.
Why imprison and murder the androgyne any more than the deaf-mute? The former is no more abnormal than the latter; no more degenerate; no more depraved. It is unfortunate that the human [Sidenote: _Not Cause of Decline of Nations._] race is handicapped with either of these defective classes. But the androgyne deserves only pity, the same as the deaf-mute.
_Effeminacy in an entirely different sense, and a kind that spreads rapidly through example, is the actual cause of the decline and fall of nations_; in the sense of the weakening of the moral fibre of the males of the upper crust or ruling class through their having grown overfond of ease and pleasure and lost their joy in industry and justifiable fighting. A neighboring nation of superior moral fibre is quick to learn of such effemination and subjugates the decadent one. But these _effeminates’_ fondness for the gentle sex has in no way declined. Generally it has greatly augmented. Witness the decline and fall of the Greek, Roman, and Turkish empires.
Where has androgynism been more prevalent than formerly among the American aborigines? Probably because the tribes were constantly underfed. Whenever a male arrived at puberty, the weapons of the warrior and the cooking vessels of the squaw were ceremoniously placed before him that he might choose his future social status. A not inconsiderable number of adolescents (because congenital androgynes) always chose the culinary utensils and passed the rest of their lives as squaws, the hair of the beard being plucked out as fast as it showed itself, and the costume being that of the female sex. Surely savage tribes continuously on the war-path can not be accused of degenerative effeminacy!
About one-third the soul-mates of androgynes who have come under my observation have been voluntary common soldiers or blue-jackets. I am far [Sidenote: _Androgynism Nationally Healthful._] from being the only androgyne who has gravitated toward the “supreme men” whose voluntary profession has as its aim the killing of their fellow man. Androgynism appears to go hand in hand with militarism rather than _vice versa_. Havelock Ellis says that homosexuality is particularly common among the Sikhs, the most military of the Hindustan races.
It is more likely that the emergence of androgynism is a sign of national health. The ultra-brilliant Age of Pericles surpassed all other periods in the recognition and influence of androgynism, which promotes art and general culture. The androgyne, being a combination of man and woman in a single individual, has a wider view of life than the full-fledged man or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakespeare-Author knew both the masculine and the feminine mind better than any other writer. Such duality is the reason artistic genius crops out far more frequently among androgynes than among the sexually full-fledged. The amalgamated man-woman nature gets nearest to sentiment and emotion—to the soul of art.[14]
Why do cultured androgynes carefully conceal their quasi-feminine sexual predilections? Why did Angelo not publish any of his homosexual sonnets? Why did Raphael not proclaim on the housetops the happenings in his house at night? Androgynes hide their sexual predilections and practices, not because of consciousness of personal degeneracy, but because [Sidenote: _Race Suicide._] grossly misunderstood by the sexually full-fledged. By exception, Oscar Wilde was open and above board, and was therefore shut up in prison.
Only bigoted pseudo-scientists have pronounced androgynes degenerates. Only mediæval medicine, not modern medicine. Androgynism is merely an instance of arrested development; or possibly of atavism—an attempt on the part of Nature to return to the original hermaphrodism of man’s early antecedents. The androgyne who follows the dictates of Nature is not a whit more degenerate morally than the full-fledged man who marries. It is only the fallible _mores_ which make the full-fledged think that a person with apparently male pudenda who impersonates a female is infinitely below themselves morally. Were Socrates, Plato, Angelo, Raphael, and Francis Bacon monsters of depravity? Ought the Shakespeare-Author to have been buried alive by his hare-brained fellow citizens before he had a chance to pen a line?
The chief charge against androgynes is that they are guilty of “the awful crime of race suicide.” But it is the fault of Nature alone that the ultra-androgyne is incapable of doing his part in the perpetuation of the race.
The cultured androgyne, knowing his irresistible instincts are harmless to his soul-mate, is unable to discern in them any transgression against ethics or against God.
But a very small proportion of adult androgynes have been guilty of a lamentable transgression because finding themselves in a tight place: that is, recourse to boys under puberty. The prudery of full-fledged men has hitherto prohibited androgynes from [Sidenote: _Androgynes’ One Offence._] scientific knowledge of themselves. Until thirty years ago, American and British public opinion would not tolerate the publication of the facts about androgynism even for circulation among the medical profession. Havelock Ellis’s _Sexual Inversion_, the earliest published book in the English language on androgynism, was promptly suppressed by the British government thirty years ago. I myself had to bend the knee for eighteen years to medical publishers before my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE was fed into the printing-press in 1918.
Thus, because full-fledged men have interdicted to cultured androgynes the means of understanding themselves and knowledge of how they ought to pass their lives, some—particularly those who have achieved places of honor, because androgynes of lower rank do not need to be so crafty in hiding their terrible secret from the heartless world—have ultimately been revealed guilty of recourse to the immature (because they could not screw up their courage to disclose their abnormality to an older and wiser male). But on account of the tyranny of the full-fledged, these erring androgynes merit mercy. Their offences have probably not been at all harmful to the immature. They are merely asserted to be so by men unable to accept any scientific results except those inculcated by mediæval savants. But this one offence of androgynes will be a thing of the past when they are permitted recourse to books which explain the riddle of their lives, and when full-fledged men read such books in order that they may do justice to Nature’s step-children.
As already stated, ultra-androgynes, having a [Sidenote: _Androgynes Are Goody-Goodies._] woman’s psyche, are goody-goodies. Indeed goody-goodiness may be regarded as their most marked characteristic. For this reason, in France, they are called “little Jesuses” (_petits jesus_) notwithstanding that the more extreme are public female-impersonators in resorts of ill repute. Ultra-androgynes are incapable of doing any real harm. If all the human race were as harmless, this world would be a far better place in which to live.
The cultured androgyne is a desirable citizen and a desirable member of any circle. While ultra-androgynism makes its victims physically weak—like a woman—it has no deteriorating effect morally or mentally. The usual charge of gross immorality is merely a relic of mediæval bigotry.
It matters not, however, that androgynes are absolutely innocuous practically and ethically. Do they not offend the _æsthetic_ sense of the majority of mankind? What better cause for grinding them under one’s heel?
And this bitter persecution that has been the lot of some androgynes has rendered them misanthropes. Not their androgynism _per se_. A mildly androgynous acquaintance—an intellectual giant of the highest moral character except for his irresponsible and innocuous passive pederasty—is, as a result of society’s shutting him up in prison for the five years of his intellectual prime, a chronic and bitter reviler of the Church. Because zealous churchmen were responsible for the wrecking of his life through their misunderstanding of the biblical teaching on homosexuality.
But in general we androgynes, possessing the long-suffering feminine psyche, are resigned to being [Sidenote: _God Will Avenge Androgynes._] ground to powder by the hypocritical world. It is better to suffer than to inflict suffering. Though the world despise and ostracise us, the All-Knowing is still our refuge, and another life awaits us where conditions will be more just. The bigoted and pharisaical judges and juries who have haled hundreds of innocent androgynes off to prison should remember the Old Testament doctrine: “‘Vengeance is mine!’ saith Jehovah.” Those who incarcerate the innocent in this world will in the next have to serve time in the darkest dungeons of a just God.
* * * * *
Note to Illustration Facing Page 53.
My father was a reversionary pure Alpine, but his brothers were decidedly Nordic. My mother is a reversionary pure Nordic, while most of her brothers and sisters were predominantly Alpine. Evidences of Mediterranean blood in my paternal or maternal stock are doubtful. I myself am predominantly Alpine, particularly evident in my short stature and generally brunette features. But the Nordic cross has given me a rather ruddy complexion and “browned” my chevelure. My beard hair is jet black, but always clean-shaven, if not eradicated. I am of English, Scotch, Dutch, German, and French descent. During adulthood, I have always considered the highest human beauty to reside in adolescent Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans of approximately pure Mediterranean stock.