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!
[Illustration:
Alexander the Great
(Ancient Coin)
]
[Illustration:
Julius Cæsar
(Bust in Louvre)
]
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.
[Illustration:
Raphael, the Most Gifted Ultra-Androgyne the World Has Known
]
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.