[Illustration:
The Author—a Modern Living Replica of the Ancient Greek Statue,
“Hermaphroditos”
(Photo by Dr. A. W. Herzog)
]
The
Female-Impersonators
A sequel to the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and an account of some of
the author’s experiences during his six years’ career as instinctive
female-impersonator in New York’s Underworld; together with the life
stories of androgyne associates and an outline of his subsequently
acquired knowledge of kindred phenomena of human character and
psychology.
BY
RALPH WERTHER—JENNIE JUNE
(“EARL LIND”)
Author also of
THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION
BY
ALFRED W. HERZOG, Ph.B., A.M., M.D.
Member of the New York and the New Jersey Bar
Editor of the _Medico-Legal Journal_
NEW YORK
THE MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL
1922
Copyright, 1922
By ALFRED W. HERZOG
First edition, 1,000 copies. Sold only to physicians, lawyers,
clergymen, teachers, writers, psychologists, sociologists, and
legislators; by Medico-Legal Journal, 123 West 83d Street, New York
City.
This is copy Number ................. and is sold
to ..............................................
Inscribed to NATURE’S STEP-CHILDREN—the sexually abnormal by birth—in
the hope that their lives may be rendered more tolerable through the
author’s efforts to enlighten thinking men on these step-children’s
psychology and life experience.
“But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in
holes, and they are hid in prison houses; they are for a prey, and none
delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.
“Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the
time to come?”—Isaiah XLII, v. 22, 23.
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION, by Dr. Alfred W. Herzog vii
PART ONE: THE THIRD SEX
I. How This Book Came to Be Written 1
II. The Place of the Androgyne in the Male Sex Scale 7
III. Androgynes of Mythology and History 25
IV. Man Is a Passional, Rather Than a Rational, Being 39
PART TWO: HOW THE AUTHOR CAME TO BE A FEMALE-IMPERSONATOR
I. Reveries Suggested by My Infancy 53
II. School Days 63
III. An Androgyne’s Youth 70
IV. I Grow into THE FAIRIE BOY 82
V. The Boy Who Never Grew to Be a Man 89
PART THREE: THE FAIRIE BOY
I. Female-Impersonation 97
II. A Typical Female-Impersonation Spree 103
III. The Gambler 114
IV. A Stuyvesant Square Pick-up 130
V. Evenings at Paresis Hall 146
VI. Thoughts Suggested by the “Hermaphroditoi” in General 164
PART FOUR: FRANK—EUNICE
I. Debut as Adult Female-Impersonator 170
II. The Pug Heaven 175
III. A University Friendship 178
IV. The Masked Ball 182
V. Frank—Eunice’s Indiscretion 191
PART FIVE: ANGELO—PHYLLIS
I. Angelo Angevine’s Debut as Public Female-Impersonator 198
II. Jailed for Wearing Petticoats 209
III. George Greenwood 214
PART SIX: NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS OF MURDERS OF ANDROGYNES
I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in Many Ways,
Baffled All Efforts to Solve 223
II. Z Mystery Baffles Inquiry at Every Angle 237
III. College Student’s Death Is Unexplained 259
PART SEVEN: MEDICAL WRITERS ON ANDROGYNISM
I. What a New York Official Physician Has to Say about Fairies 262
II. What One of America’s Foremost Medical Writers Has to Say
about Fairies 266
PART EIGHT: ANDROGYNE VERSE
I. Emotion 271
II. Recollection 275
III. Memories 278
IV. French Doll-Baby 280
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Announcement of THE RIDDLE OF THE UNDERWORLD 283
Index 286
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
I. The Author—A Modern Living Replica of the Ancient
Greek Statue, “Hermaphroditos” (Photo by Dr. A. W.
Herzog) Frontispiece
II. Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called
“Hermaphroditos,” Now in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence, Italy 25
III. Alexander the Great—An Androgyne of the Mild Type 31
IV. Julius Cæsar—An Androgyne of the Mild Type 31
V. Raphael—the Most Gifted Ultra-Androgyne the World
Has Known 33
VI. The “Fairie Boy” Ready to Set Out on Life’s Journey 53
VII. My Garden of Gethsemane 78
VIII. Front View of Author at Thirty-three (Photo by Dr.
R. W. Shufeldt) 82
IX. Rear view of Author at Thirty-three (Photo by Dr. R.
W. Shufeldt) 89
X. Fourteenth Street Rialto, Stamping-Ground of the
Hermaphroditoi 105
XI. Stuyvesant Square, One of Jennie June’s Stamping
Grounds 105
XII. Neighborhood Where Harvey Green Thought He
“Finished” Jennie June 140
XIII. The Author at Thirty-four (Amateur photo) 164
XIV. Bowery, in the Nineteenth Century America’s Main
Red-Light Street, and Stamping-Ground of
Frank—Eunice, Angelo—Phyllis and Ralph
Werther—Jennie June 169
XV. Michelangelo’s Adam 216
XVI. Whitestone Railroad Station (“Holy Ground”) 271, 272,
273
XVII. “The Boy of the Piave” (America’s gift to Italy in
1921) 277
Introduction
When, in 1918, I agreed to publish the author’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
ANDROGYNE, I did so because persuaded that androgynism was not
sufficiently understood and that therefore androgynes were unjustly made
to suffer.
Owing to the subject matter, or rather on account of the way in which it
was presented by the author, I was obliged to restrict the sale of the
book to physicians, lawyers, legislators, psychologists, and
sociologists.
The sale of the book, while not as large as it ought to have been,
showed however that the interest of the professional man could be
awakened, and he be made to realize that the androgyne is no more to be
punished for his harmless sexual transgressions than a congenital
physical cripple for the latter’s unæsthetic physique.
Hardly had the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE been published, when the
author (who, it must be understood, belongs to that despised class of
sexual cripples) started, to use his own words, “to peddle the script”
of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS around to general book publishers, and
continued to do so for two years, until ten publishers had returned it
to him as unsuited for general circulation.
It must be understood that the author wrote THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS for
the general reader as he felt that, although propaganda among scientists
was necessary, and would undoubtedly do some good, really to help the
suffering androgyne quickly, it was necessary to reach the general
public.
In this idea the author was not wrong. During the last few years several
suicides and murders of androgynes have come to my personal notice, and
although a change of laws, which would do away with the punishment of
androgynes for their harmless sexual lapses, would do a great deal to
ameliorate the conditions surrounding their lives (particularly prevent
much blackmail, from which they continually suffer) yet the suicides of
androgynes are almost always due, not to fear of punishment by the law,
but to fear of exposure, which would cause the loss of their positions
and insure their being shunned by “decent” society.
As to the frequent murders of androgynes, these surely have not been
committed by members of the medical, legal or other learned professions,
but by men belonging to “the general public”—men more or less
“civilized,” but altogether brutal.
It can not be doubted that a repeal of those laws which prescribe
punishment for sexual lapses of these “pseudo-men” would do good, as it
would not only save them from prison terms, but also enable the braver
of them to prosecute and stop blackmailers, who make a regular business
of draining the resources of androgynes.
It is however impossible to achieve all that is desirable until the
general public has been thoroughly impregnated with the fact that
androgynism (as well as its correlative, gynandrism) is a _psychopathia
sexualis_, a mental twist, as harmless to society as anything can be,
because it is neither infectious nor contagious, and can not be induced
in anybody through either association with androgynes or through
quasi-philosophical (that is, sophistical) teachings or cults.
It must be understood that a normal man can not develop sexual feelings
or desires for another man, although it must be admitted that
homosexuality is occasionally practiced under conditions where access to
the opposite sex is impossible (or next to impossible), as, for example,
among soldiers on campaigns, among sailors during long voyages on
sailing vessels, in boarding-schools for adolescents, etc. This species
of homosexuality is indulged in only from “necessity”—so to say—and is
not considered by those indulging as much different from
self-manustupration. It is gladly abandoned as soon as access to the
opposite sex has become possible.
An ultra-androgyne however, although he has the male primary physical
attributes, never feels himself to be a real male, but a female
incarnated in a male body (often with feminine earmarks), and would no
more be able to develop sexual feelings for a female than a normal man
for another male.
It is therefore a consummation devoutly to be wished that a book setting
forth the facts of androgynism could be distributed among the general
public. The author tried to write a compendium for such readers, and THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS is the result.
That he has failed in his attempt is to me not only very apparent, but
also quite natural.
To the author nothing that he has written about the practices of
androgynes seems what we call immoral or revolting. Because their own
congenital sexual tendencies appear to androgynes as the full-fledged
man’s appear to the latter.
To the author of THE FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS it is as natural to fall in
love with another male (bearing in mind however that the androgyne is
only a “pseudo-male”) and write, what he calls poems, dedicated to his
“hero-boys” (who to me appear nothing but low ruffians, blackmailers,
and grafters) as it would be for a normal man to fall in love with some
good-looking female, and write “poetry” about her, perhaps in some of
his later “poems” to bewail the fact that she has proven herself
“faithless, truthless, and makes a sale of that which men call love, to
him who bids the highest.”
It is therefore but natural that, since the author sees human beings, as
it were, distorted through his own mental astigmatism, namely females as
belonging to his own sex and males to the opposite, his second book, THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS, contains a great deal which to the average reader
would be “shocking”, and thus, instead of accomplishing the result which
he intended, would cause disgust, and make the treatment of the
androgyne even worse than at present.
After the author had submitted the manuscript of his book to numerous
publishers, trying in vain (as I had predicted to him) to induce one of
them to bring out the book for general circulation, I agreed to publish
it for restricted sale.
Not because I really felt that the book presents a great deal of new
material of scientific interest, but because, by describing the life
experience of various other androgynes, their viewpoints, their
sufferings, it continues the missionary work begun by the author in his
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE and thus helps in keeping up the good
work. For, to achieve results, it is not only necessary to awaken
interest in a subject, but also to keep that interest alive.
_Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo._ “A drop of water wears
a hole in a stone, not by force, but by frequently falling.”
That the author is really doing missionary work can not be doubted by
me, for I know that he does not derive any financial benefit from the
publication of his AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, nor do I expect he
will from the publication of the present sequel.
Every cent which I have turned over to him as royalties from the sale of
his AUTOBIOGRAPHY he has returned to me to be expended for
advertisements in various medical journals and, owing to the slight
interest in the subject which exists among physicians, I am sorry to say
that those advertisements have not been financially remunerative.
As the author however feels that he has a mission to fulfill; that he
has been created by Providence one of the despised androgynes for the
purpose of taking up their cause and ameliorating their state of almost
unparalleled sufferings, the missionary work will go on, as it has
begun.
As in the case of the first of the present trilogy, THE
FEMALE-IMPERSONATORS is published practically as its author wrote it.
For my impressions of the author’s personality, I refer to my
_Introduction_ in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.
ALFRED W. HERZOG.
March, 1922
The Female-Impersonators
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]
[Illustration:
Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called “Hermaphroditos,” Now in
the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
]
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.