parents think children do not learn before puberty. But down to twelve,
I considered all species of sex relations as the monopoly of naughty
children. All adults had of course outgrown such depths of nastiness.
Down to my present age of close to half-a-century, F’ank has been the
hero in half my many sexual dreams. After I reached seven, we ceased to
be confidential. I therefore never confessed to him that his influence
prior to my seventh year almost wrecked my adult life—probably
consigning me to an irresponsible, intensive fairie career—and a
thousand times made me wish, because a slave to fellatio, that I were
dead. For I firmly believe that girl-boys, if not repeatedly [Sidenote:
_Keep Tots Sexually Clean._] seduced before puberty, will, as adults,
have only weak and controllable desires for the sexual functioning
ordained by Nature for their type. While they are commonly fellators or
else pathics _congenitally_, only oft repeated seduction in early
childhood makes them, after puberty, irresponsible psychic nymphomaniacs
who recruit the ranks of fairies. But for those repeatedly seduced in
early childhood, the penchant is truly irresistible in adulthood and
would be followed regardless of all legal penalties. Just as most men
would steal a loaf of bread if their only means of salvation from death
through hunger.
Not too often repeated homosexual acts on the part of a small child,
however, are not likely to make him an adult pervert. An _innate_
tendency is practically indispensable. Early experiences along innate
lines merely strengthen a congenital bias, just as the author became an
intensive adult fairie as a result—I am inclined to believe—of my
intense fairieship from three to six.
While I believe sexual relations of children under twelve when not often
repeated will not render them particularly lustful as adults, an
_intensive_ sex life of a small child—as in my own case—is likely to
render him or her extremely intemperate sexually after puberty. Mothers
should therefore keep a watchful eye over the whereabouts and associates
of the “angel child,” and not allow it in secluded cosy nooks with older
children. A careful watch should be kept over nurse-girls. Children
under twelve, and even under six, need chaperons almost as much as those
just past puberty.
Parents should take pains that the “angel child” [Sidenote: _Criminal
Prudery._] regards them as confidants, sharers of its every secret. If
this had happened in my own case, I might have been spared a world of
woe after puberty. To preserve the frankness of the “angel child,” not
even a mild rebuke should ever be administered for its sexual lapses;
but kind persuasion alone, and care that the child does not again come
into exciting surroundings.
My own parents and teachers never vouchsafed the least sex knowledge. I
once asked where babies came from. Doctors found them in the street
gutters and brought them to people’s houses. Instinct and older boys
were my only instructors. Parents, teachers, but preferably the school
physician, should begin with children of six a clean initiation into
these mysteries—absorbing even to youngsters of that tender age—to
replace the hitherto regnant nasty one wrought by child lore handed
down, from mouth to mouth, through the centuries, and characterized by
unprintable words, in uttering, seeing, and hearing which numerous
children seem to take delight.
Or is the subject of sex irreformable and hopeless? Is it really the
crying shame of the human race?
From my third to seventh year, F’ank and I were drawn toward one
another. I yearned to recline in his arms. “F’ank,” I once said, “I’m
not af’aid on your lap. But I’m af’aid nearly always. I’m af’aid, when I
get as big as papa, hair’ll grow on my cheeks, like on his. How could I
ever use a horrible wazor, like him! I hope I’ll die before I get big!”
I was destined to be a sort of pet with others of the more stalwart
boys. It was because I retained my babyishness—like an idiot—at least
down to the age [Sidenote: _A Wee Girl-Boy’s Outlook on Life._] of
seven, and was, besides, girlish. I commonly felt myself a little girl
and told playmates to call me Jennie. They have remarked that I was
“more girl than boy.” Adults, however, were blind to my bisexuality.
They ridiculed me for carrying a doll in my arms when I took a walk;
etc. Because I was the only child of my set thus violently crossed, I
was the most unhappy. Taunts sometimes drove me to throw myself on the
floor, bang my head, and exclaim: “I wish I were dead!”
But, on the whole, my early childhood was happy. With F’ank I would play
“papa and mamma.” He would “go to business,” while I took care of the
dolls; etc. I made and laundered their wardrobes. One day a sudden
shower surprised me. Gazing at the ill-fated wash on the line, I sobbed:
“Oh it yains! It yains! And my c’ose’ll get wet!”
The day of thoroughgoing disillusionment came early in my seventh year.
It was the style for boys to wear skirts up to that age. How I loved
them! And I never expected to clothe myself otherwise. Even down to my
middle forties, I have always felt more at home in skirts.
Then I wasn’t to be allowed to go through life as a girl and a woman? I
was up against the choice of spending the rest of life in my bedroom, or
drawing on a pair of the utterly loathed breeches. At first it was the
same as if I had to go on the street in my underclothes. I would dodge
behind a tree when an acquaintance hove in sight. How poignantly I
missed petticoats as a screen for my shameful nether limbs! Not to
mention the deprivation of the pleasure of feeling them dangling about
my knees.
[Sidenote: _How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator._]
II. School Days.
_First year_: How terrible the aspect of the big brick academy! How
awe-inspiring the smell of the newly varnished floor on the first day of
my school life! How my heart jumped to my throat whenever I caught the
cold, stern eye of the school-marm piercing through my own little self!
How bold and bad and rough all the boys were! Why must I sit with them
and enter by their door when I so longed to be with the gentle and
soft-voiced girls?
And could I ever bring myself to see what was on the other side of the
sign: “For boys only”? What right had _I_ there? For I already
recognized I was really not a boy! At that age I gloated over being a
_girl-boy_.
There was thus provision for the comfort of the boys. There was
provision for the comfort of the girls. But architects have never
thought to make provision for the _girl-boys_!
The first week I suffered terribly rather than invade the retreat barred
to all but boys. Then an unprintable experience right at my desk
afforded the room a good laugh and sent me home for dry clothing. I now
preferred the horror of the retreat to being laughed at and sent home.
But I made a virtue of haste and watched for a moment when no other boy
was out.
_Second year_: I sat on a rear seat with a boy whom I stared at and
touched because of the softness and radiance of his hair, the rich red
of his cheeks, [Sidenote: _Sexual Precocity._] and his sturdy build. Now
and then we kissed when no one was looking. But once a loud smack
reverberated just after the near-sighted school-marm had requested such
stillness that one could hear a pin drop. As she had never been kissed
by a person of the opposite sex, she considered a smack the unpardonable
sin. My hero-boy took his whipping with a cynical smile. But I wept for
a half-hour.
_Third year_: I was caught in an immeasurably worse impropriety[16]
under a desk. The teacher thought my parents ought to know. Violently
angry, my father hammered my body with the heel of a boot. In a dozen
years, not one of my numerous brothers and sisters (although I was the
only goody-goody one) suffered such a thrashing. All the rest of my home
life, father treated me the worst of all, notwithstanding I far excelled
in school-work. What a trial to have a _girl-boy_ son? Why had I ever
been born? Subsequently there existed a lifelong coolness between father
and me.
_Fourth year_: [A typical spring afternoon.] After school, the west
playground was thronged with boys. I alone hastened directly to the
street, embarrassed as a little girl alone with two hundred boys. One
calls out: “Ralph, hurry to the girls’ yard where you belong!” Another:
“Ralph, your legs are as shapely as a girl’s. You would make a
good-looking girl!” A third throws his arms around me and exclaims:
“Kissing you is as good as kissing a girl!”
My embarrassment prevented my relishing these attentions at the moment.
But I always gloated over them after I got to bed.
[Sidenote: _Nature Indicated Rearing as a Girl._]
I had not quite reached the gate when a ball rolled to my feet and the
players shouted for it. With beet-red face on account of what I knew
would be said, I gave the ball an awkward toss. “Hah hah hah! You throw
just like a girl! Miss Nancy!”
Often I went around Robin Hood’s barn to avoid this particular
embarrassment.
Arrived in the girls’ yard, I felt as if freed from captivity and in my
proper element. Shyness and fright gave way to gleefulness. Moreover, I
cared only for the less strenuous games of the gentle sex.
Several boys mounted the high fence in order to tease me. “Ralph, I
promise you my sister’s doll carriage to push to school!”... “Heigh,
Miss Werther, have you finished the mitten I saw you knitting?”... “Say,
Ralph, give me a kiss, will you?”
While with girls, I liked nothing better than such bantering. I
out-girled them in our reaction to the boys’ teasing. We finally
succeeded in provoking the boys to chase us—my wish all along. To be
chased by boys was the highest of childhood’s pleasures.
I was always the ringleader of my girl clique, never reflecting on its
unnaturalness. They never regarded me as a normal boy—only a “girl-boy.”
We would even discuss our boy favorites.
_Fifth year_: My parents thought that if I were shut up closely with
boys and away from even the sight of girls, I would be cured of my
effeminacy. Thus my fifth to eleventh years of school life were staged
at a boys’ “prep” several miles from my home village and numbering about
a hundred students. But I was only a day-pupil except during my senior
year.
[Sidenote: _Childhood Female-Impersonation._]
The first week, it was an ordeal on a par with being forced into
breeches. I was in a state of chronic fright. When addressed, my reply
was inaudible six feet away. But after becoming well acquainted with
class-mates, I have seated myself on their laps right in the schoolroom.
For they appeared demigods.
They would run a hand up my arm. “Your skin is softer than velvet. And
your pencils look as if you had chewed them off with your teeth. And
what makes you scream when a fellow merely touches you? Ralph, you
certainly ought to have been born a girl! You will never make a man!”
On holidays I would run off to the house of a girl friend. With several
of the gentle sex, I would play hide-and-seek in remote nooks, as
hay-mows. Later I would exchange clothing with one, and we would seek
boy acquaintances that I might display my skill in female-impersonation.
Adult intimates would point the finger of scorn in vain. To pass life as
far as possible like a girl was the very essence of existence, for which
I was willing to sacrifice everything else.
The instinctive manner of coasting is a criterion of psychic sex. Every
boy of my set, excepting myself, rode bellyflops—too strenuous for the
soft-muscled and timid girls. As I possessed their physical and psychic
softness, I also coasted upright.
In ascending the hill, I kept with the girls. I enjoyed talking about
only their interests. As the boys passed, they would call out:
“Girl-boy! Mollie Coddle!”
One afternoon, two snow forts were built fifty feet apart. All the boys,
excepting myself, took their stand [Sidenote: _Outlook on Life at
Eleven._] bravely behind the breastworks and rained snowballs on the
defenders of the opposite fort. The girls were almost prostrate in the
deep snow behind—out of danger of being hit in the face—packing
snowballs for the throwers. And I, GIRL-BOYWISE, did as they, the
eternal impropriety never dawning on me.
But one of the girls cried out: “Why are you not throwing snowballs with
the boys? Afraid of getting hit, are you? Why don’t you put on
petticoats?”
After I retired that night, I had not yet recovered from my speechless
chagrin. “Why was it that I was not taking a boy’s place in life? Why
did I sit upright when coasting? Why did I feel more at home in girls’
attire? Why did the boys tease me just as they did the girls? Could it
be that I was _a girl imprisoned in the body of a boy_?
“How could I face manhood? Are men under compulsion to go and vote? But
how could I push my way into the crowd of rough men always hanging [at
that period] around the polling places?
“How terrible to be a boy! Couldn’t I take papa’s razor and in a minute
rid myself of the excrescence? A razor ought to be sharp enough to do
the job! O God, change my body this moment by a miracle! Turn me into a
girl!” I sobbed.
One day, being a goody-goody, I had felt it my duty to tell the teacher
on a mischievous boy. As I left the school for my train, I was seized
violently. “If you were a big, strong fellow like us, we would give you
a good thrashing! We’ll only see if we can lift you off the ground by
your hair. The more you cry, the better we like it. Keep your hands
down! [Sidenote: _Girl-Boys’ Reasons for Suicide._] Slap! Slap! Slap!
And stop carrying your books on your arm like a girl!”
When they let go their grip, I started off on a run, only one boy
pursuing and shouting out threats. I shall now reveal the girl-boy’s
patented secret for getting out of a predicament. I sprinted to the
porch of the first house, gave the door-bell several violent jerks, and
shrieked for help.
_Sixth year_: I was absorbed in fashioning a doll’s dress. An older
sister angrily exclaimed: “Why don’t you get out on the ball-field like
all other boys? I hate effeminate boys! Mother, I’m afraid Ralph is not
normal!”
At the moment I felt ashamed ever to look my disgusted sister in the
face again. So ashamed that I wanted to kill myself. (One of my girl-boy
playmates, because bitterly persecuted on account of his effeminacy,
actually committed suicide at twelve by swallowing rat poison.) “I not
normal? What did my sister mean? Could she have had in mind my queer
habit of sitting on the boys’ laps? I was the only boy that acted so
queerly. I had not realized it could be described as ‘abnormal.’”
On another occasion, I was, with two brothers, skirting a creek on the
way to the swimming-hole. We came to a row of stepping-stones. My
brothers trotted across several times. But I lacked the courage even to
set foot on the first.
We found several “shavers” in the swimming-hole. My two brothers joined
them. But I liked only to recline on the bank and feast my eyes. I would
as soon have stripped before boys as would a little girl. [Sidenote: “_I
Want to Die!_”] I only got a sight of the swimming-hole because I had
brothers.
For the first time it occurred to a “shaver” to strip and duck me. My
brothers were ashamed of my being a girl-boy and thought it would
contribute toward making a man of me.
“Stop your screeching, Ralph! You’ve got to be stripped so we can see if
you are a real boy! Stop your scratching, or we’ll give you a black
eye!... Now let’s dip him under to stop his yelling!... You can’t come
around the swimming-hole any more unless you get into the water with the
rest of us!... Cry-baby! Cry-baby! You’re a hopeless case!... Clear out
of here!”
I half-way dressed and ran off in terror. Their driving home the fact
that I was a hopeless sexual cripple brought on such melancholia as I
had never before experienced. I repeatedly blubbered out as I ran: “I
want to die! I want to die!”
[Sidenote: _How I Came to Be a Female-Impersonator._]
III. An Androgyne’s Youth.
It was not until my sixteenth year that I came to a full realization
that I am a male in name only. I had always recognized my girl-likeness
and wished Nature had created me a female. At the same time I had,
during my early teens, sometimes reflected that I would outgrow all my
feminine predilections and be a normal man. But at fifteen my bust
development made me think that perhaps God at last was answering my
fervent prayers, around the age of nine, to be changed into a physical
girl. For I was already one psychicly.
In my middle teens, my desire changed radically, due chiefly to my
having just become a God-intoxicated youth, with the work of a
missionary in China as my goal. I now prayed far more intensely for
full-fledged manhood than I ever had for physical femininity.
Superficially and according to man-made law, ultra-androgynes are men.
According to the unabridged dictionary, they are neither men nor women.
That is, they are capable neither of begetting nor conceiving. But in
respect to mind and feelings, in respect to their protoplasm—and thus
essentially—they are women.
Being neither male nor female, with whom do androgynes associate? Up to
the dawning of puberty, pronounced specimens—like myself—gravitate
toward the gentle sex. As soon as the sexual life is fully developed,
the vast majority (not happening to be [Sidenote: _A Village Fairie._]
overconscientious and ultra-puritan) give that sex the widest berth and
lean on the bosoms of the ultra or tremendously virile of their
acquaintance. But they never join in the sports of the sturdy sex. For
in athletics, they are as awkward as girls, and besides lack the
necessary physique.
But Nature happened to make _me_ overconscientious, and my training was
ultra-puritan. While, after I entered my teens, I was ashamed longer to
make myself one with girl acquaintances, and besides was violently
repelled by our both approaching the full flower of our sexuality, my
now looking upon my attraction towards youths as the most heinous of
sins, together with my aversion from masculine interests, forbade
association with boys outside the schoolroom. Thus from the age of
thirteen to eighteen, I endured an almost companionless existence
outside the home, the schoolroom, and the church edifice. I did
occasionally take a walk with an androgyne of my own age,
goody-goodiness, education, and social standing. He, however, was not
religious or of puritan parentage, and was even then extensively
promiscuous with the economically better class of the village’s youthful
“sports.”
I myself turned away in deep shame from the propositions of tremendously
virile youths, although secretly I would rather have yielded than do
anything else at all. At middle life, I have had doubts as to whether I
did the right thing in resisting. I believe my health and happiness were
tremendously impaired by my ultra-puritan views which made me obstinate
before Nature’s behests. On the other hand, through yielding I would
have lost my reputation and probably [Sidenote: _Mine the Most
Melancholy of Youthhoods._] been barred from “prep” and university. I
was expelled from the latter as soon as the faculty learned that I lived
according to Nature’s behests. The university training is, of course,
worth erotic pleasures ten thousand times over. But during the first two
years of my college course, my health and happiness (as recounted in my
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE) were sorely wrecked by abstinence. Does
the wrong not after all lie in the groundless intolerance of “prep” and
university for androgynes who obey Nature’s demands, and fill, in an
unobtrusive manner, the niche in the universe for which the Great
Architect predestined them?
Thus being excluded from the pastimes of both the recognized sexes and
from their joint social intercourse—on account of my belonging to a
third and outcast sex—I found my only recreation from an ultra-studious
college-preparatory life in long walks on country roads, during which I
often brooded because Providence had consigned me to membership in the
third sex. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, I endured the most
melancholy existence I have ever heard or read of.[17]
[Sidenote: _Reasons for Melancholia._]
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a _youth_ than to make the
startling discovery that he, though extremely conscientious and
offenceless, is a type of sexual cripple that has always been regarded
by the sexually full-fledged—because of their ignorance and
Phariseeism—as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness, and an
outcast from society?
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a _girl_—and a very
high-strung one—than for Nature to disguise her as a boy, and foreordain
that _she_ should be brought up as a boy and be, at school, office,
etc., always shut up with the sterner sex?
Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a _girl_ than to be doomed
to pass through life incarnated in a male body? How grief-provoking for
a mademoiselle to be cursed with a slight growth of hair on lip
[Sidenote: _Early Consciousness of Deformity._] or cheeks! Only a
trifling male stigma! How much more heart-rending for a mademoiselle to
possess the male physique to such an extent that even all physicians
(except a handful of sexologists) with their present lack of
knowledge—or rather their closing their eyes to all evidence—would
declare her a male, and prescribe that _she_ should in life fill the
latter role.
Such was my chronic burden almost throughout my teens. (Subsequently,
with the exception of brief spells of melancholia, I became reconciled
to my fate.) And such is the burden imposed by Nature on one youth out
of every three hundred in every social set of every country in the
world. But because of my intellectuality, high-class environment, and
extreme androgynism, my grief was exceptionally intense. I do not
believe the mildly androgynous are melancholy during their teens. They
have not yet become conscious that they are abnormal.
My chronic lamentation during my seventeenth to nineteenth years was:
“Miserable wretch! Miserable wretch! Miserable wretch! That’s all I am!
I was born with a deformed nature, despicable in the eyes of all people!
I am a soft effeminate youth who is wanted nowhere! I am ashamed to look
any one in the face! I feel like putting an end to my life, or else
losing myself, to all who know who I am, in a distant city where I could
live according to my queer nature. I have nothing to live for! I may be
disgraced, disgrace my family, be compelled to flee, be disowned by my
parents, be cursed and be despised throughout the land!”
An older sister frequently vented her spite on me because of her disgust
at my effeminacy. The Sunday [Sidenote: _Horror of Fire-arms._] school
picnic in my seventeenth year led up to one of the greatest sorrows of
my youth. “You little coward!” my sister the next day began. “Even
eight-year-old George has more pluck! I was so mortified to see you the
only boy to refuse to pick up the rifle in the shooting contest! The
others could hardly wait their turn. And to-day you do look like a freak
in that pink ruffled shirt! And with your hair banged! Trying to doll
yourself up as much like a girl as you can, are you?”
“I am, too, so ashamed of your bangs, Ralph!” my mother chimed in. “They
make you look as if you didn’t know anything!”
“Mother, make him go to C’s party next Wednesday. He stays away from all
gatherings of young people. He will grow up a boor.”
“I would rather be thrashed than go to any party! I do not like to pay
gallantries to women!”
“You will never make a man unless you do, son. I insist that you go to
C’s party.”
Wednesday evening arrived, and with two score youngsters, I was lounging
in C’s parlors. My older sister had managed to have me escort a girl.
Unfortunate female, to be attended by one of her own sex whom Nature had
disguised as a man!
It was extreme torture to have to go into society and put myself forward
as a gallant. Accordingly I grasped the first opportunity to escape to
the garden. I could look into the brilliantly lighted drawing-rooms
filled with the youthful merry-makers. The spectacle moved me to tears.