The Female-impersonators
9781465678713
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
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.
