children. Six-foot men are common among my near relatives, especially my
brothers, but I am five feet five inches. At six years of age I was
smaller than a brother of four. In college I was noticeably small and of
slight build, weighing only 110 pounds stripped when I graduated.
My first impression of the stern realities of life came at the age of
six when my parents insisted on putting me in breeches. I wanted to wear
skirts all my life. I shrunk from going out in distinctively male garb,
and dodged behind the trees when I discovered an acquaintance
approaching. The sensation was almost as painful as if I had been
compelled to walk the streets naked. Until I reached my early thirties,
I did not cease to regret being compelled to taboo feminine apparel, and
was constantly being criticised by members of my family for choosing
bright colors and as fancy apparel as a male can possibly wear.
Androgynes have a predilection for such apparel, just as gynanders
prefer the severely plain. Dress is one of the best signs by which to
judge whether any suspected individual is or is not an invert. From the
age of seven to twelve I occasionally masqueraded in a sister’s dress,
coquetting with my boy acquaintances the same as if I were physically a
girl.
[Sidenote: _Yearning for Feminine Apparel._]
After reaching the age of seven, I abstained from fellatio on account of
shame, as well as because I now habitually played with girls.
Nevertheless, as just indicated, I was more crazy after the boys than
any of my companions, and was a great flirt. When, promenading with a
party of girls, we would encounter boys of our acquaintance, I would
incite them to chase myself and the girls. With the girls I would
discuss the merits of the various boys and name my favorites. The girls
did not look upon me as a boy. Only one ever asked me to take the normal
boy’s part in coitus, and I answered naïvely and without embarrassment
that I did not know how. My family would ridicule me for playing with
the girls, but that did not stop it.
Up to the age of twelve I continued to tell my most intimate schoolmates
to call me “Jennie,” encouraged them to hug me, and right in the
school-room reclined in their bosoms because of amorousness. Several
would hug and kiss me right in school, and in private request fellatio,
but I always turned from the latter proposition in shame. To yield would
have been my highest earthly pleasure, but I could not bear the
disgrace. Mean-spirited boys would call me a girl in derision, and twit
me about my conduct of early childhood, thus awakening a violent desire
to commit suicide.
[Sidenote: _Bent for Feminine Activities._]
I was as fond of dolls as is a little girl. Two other characteristic
pastimes were playing preacher and playing school, generally all by
myself. I spent a large part of my time in the house singing, but have
never been able to learn to whistle. Inability to whistle is a general
characteristic of passive inverts. I learned to sew and crochet, and
naturally took to most other feminine lines of activity, so that my
mother has remarked that I was “the best daughter” she had. Indeed none
of the family looked upon me as a boy, all unconsciously. Nevertheless
there is little evidence that any of them ever suspected that I was
attracted toward the male sex.
As a child and youth I was rather odd even apart from my androgynism.
For example, from my eleventh to my thirteenth year, while sitting at my
desk or walking the streets alone, I would, without raising the head,
direct my eyes upward for about two seconds at intervals of from five to
ten minutes in order to breathe a short prayer for acquaintances or for
pitiable looking individuals whom I passed. It was probably a sort of
St. Vitus dance of the muscles about the eye. Another peculiar action,
and one which I have never seen in any other person, is the life-long
craze that I have to press the flesh bordering the finger nails against
some sharp hard corner, as that of a book-cover or a pillow-case, which
repeated action renders the skin horny along the edge of the nail, so
that I have often been able to peel it off.
[Sidenote: _School Life—1883 On._]
From the age of nine to sixteen, my parents sent me to a large boys’
private school. At first the experience was painful to me. I felt out of
place, and would have preferred attending a girl’s school, or at least a
co-educational one. Through my school life up to the age of fourteen, a
sense of shame kept me from going to the lavatory except when the need
was most urgent, and until the age named, I never sat down there. I
never lingered on the play-ground, and mingled with the boys only in the
class-room. I particularly avoided them when they were tossing a ball,
being very much afraid it might roll near me, and I would have to throw
it. The few times that this did happen, the boys laughed, because, they
said, I threw just like a girl.
Through all my school life, I hardly had a rival in respect to high
standing in all my studies. Near the close of my school career, I was
proclaimed before the whole school by the principal as the model
student, and the average of all my marks for the last four years of the
course was the highest ever attained by any student at that school up to
that time.
Between my eighth and my thirteenth year, I several times saw boys in
solitary onanism. It gave me a violent desire facere id iis, and also
for fellatio. But shame conquered, and I would not betray my desire to
my nearest boy friend. For years I slept with an intensely masculine
brother. Several times he requested fellatio, but even when in bed, I
turned away in shame. Because he was my brother, I had never felt drawn
until finally, about my thirteenth year, he committed solitary onanism
before my eyes. From this time on, no sleep would come to my relief
until I had followed out my instincts. After he fell asleep, I would
simply labra mea peni ejus for one second. I never disturbed him enough
to awaken him, or even to cause him to have an orgasm, except once, when
he asked me to proceed, but for shame I would not. On the other nights,
the mere contact for a second would induce a paroxysm. I immediately had
the most dreadful sensation imaginable, so that the thought held
complete possession of my being: “I’ll never do it again! I’ll never do
it again!” I closed and unclosed my hands convulsively. My memory is
that there was an emission, but not until two years later did I know the
nature of the discharge. Immediately after the paroxysm I always fell
asleep as if from exhaustion.
[Sidenote: _Renewal of Fellatio at Twelve._]
Thus my habit of early childhood was renewed after about five years
continence. Up until past the age of forty, I believed that the early
fellatio was without injurious effect on mind and body, but that that of
my thirteenth year was decidedly baneful to both. After passing the age
of forty, I am doubtful as to whether the indulgences at either period
were injurious.
But happily the period of these thefts lasted probably less than six
weeks. My parents possibly learned of it. Any way I was soon assigned a
room and a bed all to myself, which I have continued to have down to the
time when this autobiography goes to press. Subsequently, between my
thirteenth and seventeenth years, emergency destined me to sleep only
three times with a boy friend, when also instinct triumphed
surreptitiously.
[Sidenote: _Youthful Reveries._]
Beginning at the age of twelve and continuing two years, I could not
sleep for approximately two hours after retiring. My thoughts were
entirely of boys and of myself as a girl. I imagined all sorts of
flirtations and amours with every decidedly good-looking boy with whom I
went to school. I would sugere finger or plum or other similarly shaped
object, and imagine it was the membrum virile first of one acquaintance,
and then of another. I would imagine myself breaking into their houses
after they had gone to bed, and attaining my desire. I would imagine a
dozen of them standing behind a long screen, with erectis sticking
through apertures, and myself going from one to another, according to
instinct. I would imagine myself walking on a lonely road and meeting a
handsome youth, a stranger, who would force me to fellatio. I would
imagine boys keeping me a prisoner in a secluded place and compelling me
every day to fellatio. I would imagine myself a beautiful girl skating
in the rink, and having a bevy of boys frolicking with me—I falling down
and having several of them pile on top of me. In many of these reveries,
indeed, I imagined myself clad in feminine apparel. I also indulged in
this kind of revery while taking long walks alone through the country.
My present judgment on my entertaining such a current of thought is that
I was for the most part irresponsible, and that these reveries were due
to my being driven in a measure insane by the lack of any outlet for an
innate excessive amorousness.
[Sidenote: _Prayers for Feminization._]
These reveries in bed were accompanied by an orgasm, but I never had any
inclination toward solitary onanism. Though knowing the difference
between male and female pudenda, I did not until later, about my
fourteenth year as I remember, know their function, reproduction. As I
lay abed, I would wish and pray that my pudenda might be changed to
those of a girl, largely with the thought that I might be enabled to
receive boys. I knew what went on between some boys and girls, but I did
not know that anything ever resulted from the act. The fact that I was a
boy—or rather that my body was that of a boy, because in mind I was
thoroughly a girl—occasioned me an immense amount of regret and chagrin,
and continued to do so down to the age of forty, as I approached which
age, my sexual life was retreating more and more into the background, so
that I became rather indifferent as to my physical and psychical sex.
I have been doomed to be a girl who must pass her earthly existence in a
male body. How dreadful it is to a young woman to have a slight growth
of hair on lip or cheeks! Only one mark of the male! How much more
dreadful for a young woman to possess almost all the male anatomy as I
do! How I have bewailed my fate! During my early teens, being in a
frenzy sometimes over it, I would meditate taking my father’s razor and
castrating myself in order to bring my physical form more in accord with
that of the female sex to which I instinctively yearned to belong.
[Sidenote: _Early Opinions of Fellatio._]
Once during the wishes and prayers spoken of above, I reached my hand
down and momentarily believed I had been miraculously provided with a
cunnus. It is my present impression that my hand came in contact with
the scrotum, and that it was my first perception that I had such an
appendage. Possibly this indicates late descent of the testicles. As I
remember it, up to about my thirteenth year, I never knew there was a
scrotum on any male. All my intimates of early childhood had been fully
dressed, and thus this organ was concealed.
Up to about my fourteenth year, I regarded fellatio as a wicked shameful
habit which evil-minded children fell into, and the desire for which I
would outgrow as I became older. From my fourteenth to my seventeenth
year, I regarded it as the very worst kind of a habit, which must be
overcome by a hard struggle. I had no idea the desire was to continue
into and through my adult life.
Up to about my fourteenth year, I also thought normal coitus, which I
knew some boys and girls of my acquaintance were guilty of, was equally
heinous. When at about the age of thirteen I was told by boys that
babies thus came into being, I at first refused to believe it. When I
was finally convinced, it was with a realization that every member of
the human race was as vile as myself. Subsequently, down to my middle
twenties, I considered the subject of love between the sexes as one
which should never be mentioned in polite society, a subject which ought
to bring deep blushes to every cheek.
[Sidenote: _Fear of Pregnancy._]
After the age of twelve, I no longer masqueraded in feminine apparel or
openly flirted with boys because restrained by the sense of shame.
Because all the lexicographers wrongly insist on the _feigned_ character
of flirtations, I am moved to explain here once for all that my
flirtations, in every period of my life, were _sincere_, and prompted by
adoration for those flirted with. The same explanation applies to my use
of “coquet.”
But while no longer openly and energetically flirting with boys, I still
adored them, enjoyed their occasional petting attentions, and even
sometimes put myself in the way of receiving such consideration. For a
brief period during my fourteenth year, I used powder to make my cheeks
more rosy with a view to impressing my schoolmates, with several of whom
I was in love.
About the time of my learning the secret of reproduction, circumstances
brought me one night to sleep with a boy friend, and my instincts
prevailed while he slept. On this occasion the terrible paroxysm
accompanying fellatio two years earlier, as already described, and
putting an end to it almost before it had begun, was not experienced,
and the act continued for some minutes. I did not yet know of the
existence of semen, but believed the simple presence membrum virile in
membro femineo induced pregnancy. Even if I had had an emission myself
two years before, I knew absolutely nothing about its nature. For
several months after this night’s experience I was somewhat worried for
fear of pregnancy, thinking it might result from buccal coitus.
[Sidenote: _Early Teens._]
During my early teens also, a few schoolmates hinted at fellatio.
Because of shame I gave them no encouragement, although almost insane
for love of them. Moreover, about this time, several old and middle-aged
men would find occasion to clasp me, cum peni adversum fundamentum meum.
They evidently entertained thoughts of pædicatio, but on account of our
position in society, they did not go any farther. I abhorred their
conduct.
As a consequence of my comparatively solitary life, my association with
boys being confined to the school-room, I was very backward in acquiring
normal sexual knowledge, never used slang, and was in general a
“goody-goody.” Other boys called me an “innocent.” Adults regarded me as
exceptionally guileless and pure-minded. The reader will discover in
these pages what manner of person I was, but down to my middle thirties
my “childlike and bland smile” and my “frank and open countenance” have
been harped upon by my every-day associates. Down to the age named they
have described me as “mild-eyed,” “inoffensive,” “childlike,” and
“lamblike.”
I was probably more a prey to sensual imaginations than any other boy of
the community, and yet, without any attempt to deceive on my part, I was
judged to be the most pure-minded! Nevertheless, though naturally one of
the most sensual, I probably practiced the most self-denial. Later,
college associates remarked that they never met any one else with so
little of the animal in him, when actually I was then perhaps the most
given to venery of them all. I had in myself the germs of two as widely
opposed careers as it would be possible to name. I was a born religious
and philanthropic worker. On the other hand, no girl was ever more
clearly cut out for the life of a fille de joie than was I.
[Sidenote: 1889_—I Become a Religious Prodigy._]
The genitals became pubescent as early as the completion of my fifteenth
year. Is this not unusually early for a male, but the proper age for a
female? Whether or no as a partial effect of this beginning of
pseudo-puberty, I simultaneously developed into a religious prodigy,
leading the congregation in church in extempore prayer at this early
age, and spending a full two hours daily in private religious exercises
for the next two years. At this time I definitely chose the Christian
ministry in a heathen land as my field of labor when I had finished my
education. This greatly increased interest in religion fortunately put a
stop to my morbid reveries. I now looked upon my yearning for fellatio
as my “besetting sin,” and until the age of nineteen fought against it
as few others have struggled to be freed from lustful desires. A popular
medical writer has described the girl-boy as “congenitally depraved,”
and “secretly vicious.” I would refute this and other slanderers of the
girl-boy, cursed by Nature and cursed by his fellow man. Lofty ethical
ideals, including self-abnegation, are as common among youthful inverts
as among those normally sexed.
From my fourteenth to my seventeenth year, I passed a rather sad and
lonely life. I was ashamed longer to mingle with girls as one of them,
and still shrunk from companionship with boys. My recreation consisted
of long solitary walks through the country during which I brooded over
the real and imagined ills of life. Being delicate, I hardly expected to
live to reach manhood.
[Sidenote: _My Gethsemane._]
Erotic dreams, with emissions, began at the age of fifteen, and in a few
months reached a frequency of twice a week. The fraudulent
advertisements in the newspapers held out to me the strong probability
of my soon becoming an idiot as a result of these losses, and occasioned
me much despondency. Only males have figured in these dreams. They
related only to fellatio, never to pædicatio.
It was during my seventeenth year that I first became fully conscious
that my unwilling craving for fellatio was deeply rooted, and not to be
outgrown; that my feeling for my schoolmates was the procreative
instinct, in me misdirected. The realization that I was differently
constituted from nearly all other males, and such an individual as
during the whole history of the human race—so far as I was then
acquainted with the history of the phenomenon—has been abhorred,
reviled, and regarded as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness,
and an outcast, was accompanied by the bitterest sorrow, causing me
about once a week to go forth at night to a lonely quasi-abandoned
graveyard, throw myself on the grass-covered graves, writhe in an agony
of tears and moans, and beseech my Creator by a miracle then and there
to take away my perverted instinct and make a virile man of me. These
seasons of anguish would exhaust me mentally and physically for
twenty-four hours afterward. This was the beginning of three such
melancholy years as few are called to pass through, and I meditated
suicide repeatedly.
[Sidenote: _Family Physician Prescribes._]
For several months I bore my sorrow alone, shame preventing my making my
spiritual adviser my confidant. I was at last driven to him for
consolation, and on his advice, with the greatest shame and in broken
language, made my secret known to my family physician. The latter
advised me to enter into courtship with some girl acquaintance, and said
that this would render me normal. Like most physicians in 1890, he did
not understand the deepseated character of my perversion. Although it
was counter to my inclinations, I cultivated the society of a girl
friend. But after months of effort, feminine beauty proved powerless to
attract me in the least, while male beauty was constantly increasing its
sway over me.
* * * * *
In September of 1891 I entered a university in the City of New York,
which was only an hour by train from my home. During the first two years
I was regularly engaged in mission work in the slums as an avocation. I
preached about twelve times from the pulpit, besides being the leader of
about a hundred secondary church services.
Life in a great city soon made its impress on my constitutional
femininity, which, for several years practically suppressed as a matter
of conscience, was now calling louder and louder for expression.
Moreover, in a great city, the temptation to a double life is
exceptional. One can so easily hide a disgraceful act. It was especially
unfortunate that I saw so much of the loose morals of the slums. The
adolescents there attracted me powerfully, and suggestions came into my
mind repeatedly to accost them with an indecent purpose.
[Sidenote: _Year 1891—Freshman in University._]
I was also constantly in love with athletic classmates. In the lecture
rooms I found it advisable to take a front seat since the sight of an
athlete would hypnotize me, making me stare at his form and disregard
the lecturer. If one seated himself beside me, shameful thoughts would
come into my mind at once. While seated in the lecture room, some of
them have put their arms around me and said “Child.” They have taken my
hand in theirs and said it was just like a girl’s hand. When my sleeves
were rolled up they have said that my arms were just like a girl’s arms.
Their laying their hands on me was ineffably sweet, and always
occasioned an orgasm, but modesty forbade betraying my feminine
feelings. None ever even hinted at anything further than what I have
just narrated.
On my visits home during this first year in college, I was
supersensitive to my family’s criticism of me for lack of manliness. I
sometimes felt like never visiting home again because of my shame at
being an effeminate man. I shunned all social gatherings because I
detested the idea of courting a female and putting myself forward as a
man. I would nevertheless weep at seeing other young people enjoying the
ordinary legitimate pleasures of love without my ever—as I then
thought—being privileged to have a share in them, since love and
courtship in my case must be with one of my own physical sex. I often
wished I might get away from the world and live as a monk or, better in
my own case, a hermit. Then I would be in a way unsexed, and would be so
regarded by the world. As to be a monk one must be a Roman Catholic, I
contemplated going over to that religious body.
[Sidenote: _Religion Unavailing._]
One day I happened to be left alone in the room of an athletic
classmate. I spent the whole time in passionately kissing his pillow and
articles of clothing. Especially did corduroy braccas feel most
exquisite labris as I osculated partem prope locum membri virilis. If he
had not been fair to look upon and decidedly virile, it would have been
nauseating even to _think_ of doing what I did.
Afterward, repentant, I wrote in my journal: “Religion, reputation, life
itself, ready to put all at stake for a few moments enjoyment! I never
felt so much like a wretch as I do now! If only I had thought more of
the love of Christ to me, I might not have so far yielded! For a month
nearly all my reading has been of a religious character; I have for a
month been in close communion with God; yet in a moment I can so fall
away! O to understand more fully salvation from sin through Christ, and
to experience more of it in my own life!... I feel this morning that I
can never enter the ministry. I feel that I must give up all my plans,
and that maybe I shall come to a miserable end.”
All my life corduroy trousers and rubber boots have attracted me
sexually more than any other articles of civilian dress. I have always
considered both articles too masculine for me to wear. It would have
filled me with shame to be seen wearing boots. At the age of ten I would
go secretly to the closet where a brother’s corduroy braccas hung and do
as described above. On other occasions prior to my fifteenth year I have
arisen at night and similarly osculated braccas puerorum who were our
guests, creeping stealthily into their rooms in a highly excited state
and trembling violently. On only two occasions I approached their bed
and touched them, but did not dare go further for fear they would awake.
I have no doubt now that I was irresponsible, and any girl-boys ever
found guilty of similar conduct should be dealt with compassionately.
[Sidenote: _Fetishes._]
Speaking of fetishes,—from boyhood the military uniform has been a
magnet. During my twenties the sight of it would bring on a sort of
babyish and effeminate dance of various members of the body and a sort
of pouting. It would rivet my gaze, I would halt and turn around as the
soldier passed, and mark his every movement until he disappeared. I
would consider his gait and his every sway and swagger as marvellously
manly and in every way wonderful.