Hermaphroditos.

AUTOBIOGRAPHYOF ANANDROGYNE

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF AN

ANDROGYNE

Hermaphroditos.

The fusion in one human being of the distinctive physical and mental characteristics of the two sexes has from antiquity proved to be a phenomenon interesting to mankind. In some of the great museums of the world can still be seen examples of the classical statue ofHermaphroditos, with complete primary male sexual determinants and no trace of female, but with female secondary determinants. The work now in the hands of the reader portrays the inner history and the life experience of such a specimen of thegenus homo.

“Androgyne” Defined.

An “hermaphrodite,” according to the original Greek signification of this term, was not an individual—in the modern sense—having both the male and the female organs of reproduction in whole or in part, or a curious fusion of the two, but only those of the male. In other respects, however, the bodily form was that of a female. The hermaphrodite was thus, according to the Greeks,a female with male genitals. Because modern usage has diverted the term “hermaphrodite” to a different signification, the word “androgyne” has come into use to denote an individual with male genitals, but whose physical structure otherwise, whose psychical constitution, andvita sexualisapproach the female type.

Androgynes have of course existed in all ages of history and among all races. In Greek and Latin authors there are many references to them, but these references are not always understood except by the few scholars who are themselves androgynes or at least passive sexual inverts. About the middle of the 16th century, the celebrated theologian Beza more clearly wrote: “What shall I say of these vile and stinkingandrogynes, that is to say, these men-women, with their curled locks, their crisped and frizzled hair?”[1]As is evident in this passage, these men-women, because misunderstood, have been held in great abomination both in the middle ages and in modern times, but the prejudice against them was not so extreme in antiquity, and a cultured citizen having this nature did not then lose caste on this account.

1. Harmar’s translation of Beza, page 173.

But until Krafft-Ebing published his epoch-making work,Psychopathia Sexualis, in the last decade of the 19th century, European and American medical science was either practically ignorant of or else ignored the existence of androgynism. But that author treated principally of other unusual sexual phenomena. Very little of androgynism came under his observation. I quote from page 389 of the English translation of the 12th edition of his work: “There is yet wanting a sufficient record of cases belonging to this interesting group of women in masculine attire with masculine genitals.”

Ancient Greek Statue of an Androgyne, Called “Hermaphroditos,” Now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

“Fairie” Defined.

The present work discloses not only the life of an androgyneper se, but that of a “fairie” or “petit-jesus,” the life of which rare human “sport” (in the biological sense) your author was apparently also predestined to live out in a way immeasurably more varied than falls to the lot of the ordinary fairie, having had a limited experience in this vocation in Berlin and Paris and other great European cities, in addition to his extensive experience in New York.

The “fairie” is a youthful androgyne or other passive invert (for they are perhaps not all members of the extreme class of androgynes) whom natural predestination or other circumstances led to adopt the profession of the fille de joie. The term “fairie” is widely used in the United States by those who are in touch with the underworld. It probably originated on sailing vessels of olden times when voyages often lasted for months. While the crew was either actually or prospectively suffering acutely from the absence of the female of the species, one of their number would unexpectedly betray an inclination to supply her place. Looked upon as a fairy gift or godsend, such individual would be referred to as “the fairy.” As the author is one of the first users of the printed word in this derived sense, he has elected to adopt a distinctive spelling.

It is hardly necessary to explain that the sacrilegiousterm, “petit-jesus,” commonly used in France, means “a little Jesus.” This term would naturally be applied to youthful pathics by the irreverent because being psychically female, they are likely to be “saintly” or “goody-goodies,” as were both your author as a youth, and practically all the youthful pathics he has known.

Types of Hermaphrodism.

Contrary to the ordinary view, there exists, in the human race, no sharp dividing line between the sexes, just as there exists none between the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. The two sexes gradually merge into each other. Between the complete physical and psychical man and the similarly complete woman, there are innumerable stages of transitional individuals. As there are organisms which the novice would be puzzled to classify as animal or vegetable, so there are human beings who have a just claim to be classed with the sex other than that with which they are commonly classed. Some examples of these transitional individuals are the psychical hermaphrodite, the pseudo-hermaphrodite, the mujerado of the Mexican Indians, the man-woman of East India, and the virago or amazon, as well as the fairie, already mentioned.

Besides the fact of the existence of the decidedly hermaphroditic or androgynous types named, there exists a continuous scale of mental sexuality along which all human beings might be arranged, the poles of which are thorough masculinity and thorough femininity, respectively. At the masculine pole stand the warrior, the blue-jacket, the pugilist, etc., and it was only such, the tremendouslyvirile, who possess no gentle or feminine traits at all, to whom your author was ordinarily attracted. Further down the male side of the scale, after the man of adventure and sport, come, successively, the stevedore and his like, the manual laborer, and the merchant, and still lower, the scholar, which class possesses in general only a comparatively low degree of masculinity and virility. Partaking largely of the feminine type of mind are the male dress-maker and milliner, and the dilettante.

Scalæ Sexuales.

Those at the extremity of the male side of the scale, as the volunteer soldier and sailor, are the most strongly inclined to venery, as a general rule. This is your author’s conclusion after intimate experience with 800 young men, of whom at least one-half belonged to the occupations just designated. He concludes further from his experience that nearly all who associate with a fairie belong to this “tremendously virile” class. It is also probably true that congenital active pederasts belong chiefly to this class. The individuals near the lower end of the male side of the scale, as the college professor, are as a rule continent by birth, and fathers of few children, while those at the lower end, as the male milliner and the dilettante, are likely to be sexual inverts. Your author happens to be a pronounced specimen of the dilettante.

At the beginning of the feminine side of the scale, and likely also to be inverts, stand the woman soldier (surreptitious), the woman marksman, and the woman gymnast. Lower down stands the ordinarymater familias, entirely normal sexually and completely satisfied with monandry. Thefille de joiestands still lower, and is as a rule moreintensely feminine and childlike than themater familias. Many are also naturally polyandrous. At the feminine pole we find the helpless cry-baby species of woman. The author aspired to be of this type, and always, when impersonating a woman, acted out this type.

Author’s Feminine Characteristics.

As already indicated, the participation of the transitional individuals in the characters of the two sexes varies in all degrees. There may be simply a union of the perfect body of one sex with the susceptibility to such sexual charms as ordinarily attract the other sex alone, or with the mental traits of the other sex. Or the individual may possess the male genitals, but be beardless, or else possess mammary glands, broad pelvis, and sacral dimples; or possessing the female genitals, have a rudimentary moustache, or else meagrely developed breasts, narrow pelvis, etc. Instances have been known of human beings with an ovary on one side of the body and a testicle on the other, and of males who were able to suckle infants.

As to my own feminine characteristics, I have been told by intimate associates from boyhood down to my middle forties—when this book goes to press—that I markedly resemble a female physically, besides having instinctive gestures, poses, and habits that are characteristically feminine. My schoolmates said that I would make a good-looking girl and that kissing me was “as good as kissing a girl.” When I was fourteen, one of them remarked that my calves were “as shapely as those of a girl.” My associates in college have remarked how much I was like a woman in form and manners, though theynever showed evidence of a suspicion that I might be an invert. They were probably ignorant of the existence of this human sport. “He blushes like a woman,” was said of me. Later, in my fairie days, my associates would remark that my hands felt like a woman’s, and that my skin in general was as soft as a woman’s. They said that my voice, especially when singing, had a feminine timbre. The voice is one of the chief criteria by which to determine abnormal sexuality. I fancy that I can diagnose a man sexually simply by hearing him sing. For example, a male invert, as well as the closely related “eunuch by birth” or anaphrodite, is likely to sing a tenor which is hardly distinguishable from an alto.

Femininity Betrayed in Voice.

I have been told that my speaking voice is a very uncommon one, having the “fulness of a woman’s voice,” and that it often “breaks and changes, sometimes in the middle of a sentence; from being masculine, it suddenly changes timbre and becomes decidedly feminine.” I have myself observed sometimes when in conversation with a young man with whom I was in love that my voice would involuntarily change from a bass to a treble. My voice has also been described as “soothing, sentimental-sounding, gushing, bland, and caressing.” I have been told that when I talk, involuntary—and to myself unconscious—movements of the lips take place not necessary for articulation, and that the same movements take place occasionally even when I am not talking.

Barbers have remarked that my hair is “literally as fine as silk,” that they had “never seen it so fine in any other man.” I believe this to be a general peculiarityof androgynes, who also have a predilection for wearing the hair rather long because they think it contributes to their own good looks, while abhorring long hair in a normal male.

Femininity—Physical and Psychical.

I have the feminine slope of shoulders and the feminine angle of arm. Pelvis is broad and limbs loosely hung, as in a woman, and fingers and hands rather feminine in their general fineness of texture, comparative absence of hair, absence of prominent bones and veins, and the softness and pleasing tint of skin.

Features are small like a woman’s, but nose, lips, and ears large in proportion, indicating sensuality. I possess mammary glands and sacral dimples. While my breasts are as large as in some women, the nipples are small, even for a man. I am small-boned, of delicate build, and my muscular system is soft. An anatomist of national reputation who gave me a physical examination at the age of thirty-three, pronounced approximately one-third the exterior lines of my body those of the female, and remarked that any one viewing my naked form from the rear and not knowing my sex, would pronounce me a female.

I was said not to “reason like a man, that is, logically”; to be “fussy and inclined to peevishness”; and to have “great patience for minute details.”

I was said to throw a ball, drive a nail, etc., “just like a girl.” A lead pencil sharpened by me looks as if I had chewed it off with my teeth. I have always had the feminine instinct of screaming at slight provocation. When coasting as a child, I always sat upright after themanner of girls. In snowball fights, in which the girls packed the snowballs behind the barrier and the boys exposed themselves in throwing, I instinctively took my place with the girls, the eternal lack of fitness never dawning upon me.

General Physical Traits.

I might mention here some further characteristics which are not peculiarly feminine. I am below the average stature for a man, and unusually light for my volume, weighing only 110 pounds stripped from the age of nineteen to twenty-five, after I had attained my maximum height of five feet five inches. My back is much arched. Penis is below the average size, but entirely normal. Testicles were pronounced of normal appearance by the surgeon who castrated me at the age of twenty-eight.

I am of the brunette type. At the age of eighteen, the growth of hair on my body and limbs became more luxuriant than on the average male, but after the first shaving off of all this hair in my early fairie days, I continued to be far less hairy than the average man even after I ceased the practice of body-shaving.

My lips are a deep red, and my complexion gives the appearance of good health. My eyes are bistre-brown. I have been told that I look like a woman around the eyes, and when youthful have been complimented on their beauty, and my general appearance pronounced not unprepossessing. I have been pursued by women, and have received three proposals of marriage. In general the women who have seemed to be attracted toward me have been a few years older than myself. Havelock Ellis has said (“Sexual Inversion,” page 140) that “women seemwith special frequency to fall in love with disguised persons of their own sex.” Your author is really a woman whom Nature disguised as a man.

Childlikeness.

As late as my middle forties my “childlike face” has been commented upon, and even more my “decidedly childlike manner.” I have been told that my “face wears expressions not ordinarily seen on persons of [my] age,” that in the office my childishness is a constant source of mirth with my business associates, even those who have not had the faintest idea that I am sexually abnormal and even addicted to fellatio, and that they watch me while I am working because of my childlike way of doing things and my childlike expression. According to one of my business-associate informants, I still had in my middle thirties “the real childlike naiveté.” The term “grown-up child” has also been affectionately applied to me by my office associates down to my middle forties, and they have said that teasing me was “just like teasing a child.” All through my life, even down to my middle forties, when this book goes to press, my male school or business associates—most of whom have not even suspected my inversion—have taken delight in teasing me as older children a younger child, or as brothers tease their sisters, and I generally liked to be thus teased.

My office associates in a “provincial” city in my middle thirties were far more puritanical and unsophisticated than those in New York City of my middle forties, and never gave any evidence that they even knew of the existence of fairies. But those of the later period showed such knowledge, and several times made remarks to meindicating their suspicions about myself, but I always sought to counteract them. The knowledge of unusual sexual phenomena is apparently far more widespread in a great cosmopolitan center like New York than in a “provincial” city.

Infantilism.

Further, all my life down to my early thirties, my decidedly virile associates in school and business have babied me. Indeed in some respects I have never ceased to be a baby mentally. I have wept and sobbed a great deal all my life. Up to my early thirties, I yearned to be called “Baby” by decidedly virile males, and to have them treat me as a baby and a weakling. All through my open career as a fairie, I conducted myself with intimates in the same way as a baby of two years towards its mother. Whenever I have seen an infant nursing, I have been seized with a desire for fellatio cum viro of about my own age, and have sometimes even experienced an attack of babyish actions, as panting or cooing in satisfaction, or swayed the head or other parts of the body, a sort of natural graceful dance of these parts. I seem to have retained many of the instincts of the babe which are normally outgrown; only these instincts—the feeling of dependence, the looking for protection, the yearning to be held in the arms and fellatio (in its etymological sense)—were, after the age of four, no longer directed to the mother, but to stalwart males around my own age.

I have aged slowly, successfully passing for twenty-four as a fairie after I had reached thirty-one, and for twenty-nine in my middle forties. When I was thirty-two,a lady of forty who did not know my age remarked of me: “Why he is only a boy!” When I was forty-two, a business associate of rather long-standing and only twenty-six years of age remarked that he had “never met any one else so abnormal as [myself] in respect to the discrepancy between apparent and actual age.” I have sometimes thought of myself as “the boy who never grew to be a man.” Before reaching my fortieth year, it was my ambition to preserve my youth indefinitely. In my middle forties business associates have asked me for the recipe for perennial youth. Before reaching my fortieth year, possibly no other male was so horrified as myself at the thought of waning youth and approaching old age. But now (1918), in my middle forties, I am reconciled to growing old.

Perennial Youth—Æstheticism.

I am rather vain, and have been guilty of contemplating my reflection in a mirror. Prior to my middle forties I was of a bashful disposition and lacked self-confidence, except when following out my fairie instincts. Down to my middle forties I have been unusually fond of small animals as pets and have covered their coats with kisses. I likewise am unusually fond of petting children.

I am devoid of practically all interest in sport. In place of this interest, I happen to be an æsthete. My home is an art gallery, with more art objects per cubic foot than I have heard to exist anywhere else outside an art gallery or shop. Few are better endowed than myself in respect to the capacity for deriving pleasure from beauty in art and nature.

Polyglottism.

Almost every department of human knowledge interests me. I like psychology, sociology, economics, and history least of all, and languages and philology most of all. Metaphysics and theology also stand high in my regard, while the natural sciences occupy a middle position.

The common union of sexual inversion and the aptitude of the linguist has been commented upon by medical writers. I turned out to be perhaps the best linguist of my college class. From childhood I have had a craze for the acquisition of foreign languages. I speak two with considerable fluency, and when having frequent occasion to use them, can carry on a conversation in two others. Besides these four, I have read quite extensively in the original the literature of about a dozen foreign tongues. For more than a decade, I devoted an average of at least ten hours a week to reading in these numerous foreign languages.

Why am I a sexual invert? I have an explanation to offer, which is perhaps more fanciful than scientific. Is there not a difference between the “protoplasm” or cellular tissue of males and of females, which is the ground of the difference in the physical and psychical development of the sexes? Must there not be in the protoplasm of males a specific male “germ” or characteristic, and in the protoplasm of females a different germ, which are the ground of the opposite development of the sexes? Just as we know by the taste that the protoplasm of the muscle of an ox is differently constituted from that of a sheep, likewise must not that of the male and female homodiffer, although in less degree? If through a surgical operation the breast from a male infant could be grafted in the proper place on a female infant, and the breast from a female infant on a male infant, the two individuals, as they became adult, would develop physically along the lines of his or her own sex except the grafted breast. That of the girl would remain flat, that of the boy would develop a mammary gland and become elevated into a mons. They each have on them a patch of the tissue of the opposite sex. In the passive invert there may exist one or more such patches from birth.

Cause of Inversion.

According to the author’s theory,—whether any individual shall be a male or a female depends on the result of a battle in the embryo between the female corpuscles or germs of the egg and the male of the spermatozoa. From some cause, perhaps the relative state of vitality of the secretory sexual glands at the time of the formation of the particular egg and spermatozoon, either the female germs or the male germs happen to be the more vigorous, and determine the sex of the unborn. If the fœtus develops into a female, it is because the female germs have devoured the male. For some reason, in exceptional cases, the more vigorous set of cells have not succeeded in devouring the other set entirely, and both kinds coexist in different parts of the same individual throughout his existence. In a male there may be only a single patch of female tissue—that is, tissue dominated in its development by the presence of the female bacteria—about the cheeks and neck, rendering him beardless, but with masculine habits of mind and the male sexualinstinct. To constitute a passive invert, the brain, the physical basis of the psychical nature, must be composed of female tissue, must be a “female brain.”

Female Brain in Male Body.

Can it be denied that the brain of a male is fundamentally different from that of a female, although in outward appearance they are practically alike? The psychical nature of a female is radically different from that of a male, consequently the fundamental nature of certain brain cells of the female must be as different from that of corresponding cells of the male as the psychical nature of a woman is different from that of a man, and as the corpus of a woman is different from that of a man. How can one explain why a six-year-old boy (the author) should class himself as a girl, give himself a girl’s name, fight against his parents’ course of bringing him up as a boy, and grieve because he could not be brought up as a girl, except on the assumption that the cells of his brain were identical with the cells of a girl’s brain and fundamentally different from those of a normal boy?

If a surgeon could interchange the brains of a boy and of a girl, your author believes that the boy would ever afterward feel himself to be a girl, and the girl feel herself to be a boy. But it would be nearer the truth to say that with the implanting of the brain of the opposite sex, the male and female souls were also transposed. We would have an instance of a male human being with a perfect female body except the brain—an artificial amazon. Similarly, a female human being with a perfect male body except the brain—an artificial androgyne. In the natural androgyne, the female brain was formedin the male corpus before birth. There are likely, as in the case of your author, to be other patches of female tissue in other parts of the corpus.

Oscar Wilde’s Life Story.

“Active inverts,” improperly so called, have been referred to as cases of “a female mind in a male body,” as in the Introduction to Eekhoud’s “Escal Vigor.” The subject of this novel, as well as Oscar Wilde, whose case evidently forms the theme of the book, were not such instances. Theirs were cases of innate and therefore irresponsible sexual perversion rather than of inversion. They were “urnings.” “Escal Vigor” is of value as portraying the development and inner life of the urning, while this autobiography deals with the passive invert, or “the invert” properly speaking. The urning or active pederast loves an adolescent as a normal man loves a woman, and desires active pædicatio or else mutual onanism. The passive invert loves the adolescent as a woman loves a man, and desires fellatio, or occasionally the part of the pathic in pædicatio.

While reading “Escal Vigor” many years ago, your author was convinced that the book was primarily written by Oscar Wilde and based on his own life experience. This suspicion is confirmed by the name of the book, the two words having the same length as those of the name of the individual; the second and third letters of the first name being the same in both, as well as the second letter of the surname; while the initial V is the French equivalent of the English W, the novel having been first published in French. I have myself built a pseudonym on my baptismal name in similar fashion. The suspicion isfurther confirmed by the rumor of 1918 that Wilde is still alive.

Inversion Is Not Sodomy.

There occur homosexual practices which are really due to moral depravity or to the absence of the opposite sex. This is the true sodomy, an entirely different phenomenon than is present in the case of the congenital invert and urning. Knowledge of the history of the particular individual will readily determine to which of the three categories he belongs.

The author’s criticism of Havelock Ellis’s theory ‘that a condition of diffused minor abnormality in physical structure, consisting in approach to the feminine type, is the basis of congenital inversion; that inversion is bound up with a modification of the secondary sexual characters’ is that in my own case the attraction toward the male sex was powerful as early as the age of three, when there is probably no difference between the physical type of the normal and of the inverted male. This indicates that there is no cause-and-effect relation between the feminine secondary sexual characters and the love for the male sex, but that they are twin effects of a common cause, namely, the presence in the male body of the particular kind of governing corpuscles or germs ordinarily found only in the protoplasm of females.

The girl-boy with diffused minor abnormality in physical structure, consisting in approach to the feminine type, is rather a female who has, along with some other male structures, developed testicles and penis in place of the usual ovaries and cunnus. Here it is not so much a case of a female brain in a male body, but of the femalebrain in afemalebody with various abnormal developments along the line of male structure. A girl-boy is sometimes even physically perhaps more a female than a male, although the primary sexual determinants and some of the secondary sexual characters are those of the male sex.

Sex Psychical Rather Than Physical.

In a manner similar to that described by Kurella, the author believes the invert is a transitional form between the complete male or the complete female and the sexually undifferentiated homo seen in the early fœtus.

Practically it is all right, but medico-legally it is wrong, to make the genitals the universal criterion in the determination of sex. Medico-legally, sex should be determined by the psychical constitution rather than by the physical form. There are thousands of physical females who feel themselves to be men and have the mental traits of men, and there are thousands of physical males who feel themselves to be women and have the mental traits of a woman. Should any blame be attached to such individuals when they conduct themselves according to their psychical sex? The writer, much against his will, was brought up as a boy, and after becoming adult continued in every-day life to identify himself with the male sex because of his beard and masculine voice, and because of the advantages of passing as a male; but in spite of himself he was occasionally compelled to go off on a female-impersonation spree.

Men call the invert’s instincts vice. The invert hasjust as much reason for calling the normal man’s instincts vice when they are not exercised solely in order to create a new human being. It is only a case of the pot calling the kettle black. In the eyes of the Supreme Being, with whom innate and unreasoning disgust is not a factor, the instincts of the normal man and of the invert are on a par morally and æsthetically. There is no ground for the charge that the passive invert’s practices are aimed at the very existence of the race. In the first place, Nature made him psychically impotent from birth. In the second place, his practices could not be spread by example. They are regarded by all normally constituted males with such disgust and aversion that practically no one would stoop to them except those born with the peculiar cravings. And why place a heavy penalty on one particular practice which might prevent a few births, and give large liberty to other practices with a hundred and a thousand fold more power to diminish the birth rate? The author was addicted to sensuality more than the vast majority of inverts. Nevertheless, if he had never yielded to instinct, there would not be today a single human being more in the world than there are. None of his intimates were given to begetting children, at least on the threshold of manhood, which was the age at which they consorted with him.

Ethics of Inversion.

The invert’s harmless instinctive sexual conduct (generally fellatio, seldom pædicatio) is today regarded as a felony almost throughout Christendom. France, Italy, and Holland are the only Christian nations which have entirely repealed the laws enacted against these unfortunatesduring the Dark Ages. Old English law provided that the guilty one be burnt alive, while other statutes of the same law condemned him to be buried alive. In the reign of Richard III, he was hanged. The death penalty was not abolished until after the reign of George IV. At the present time in England, the maximum penalty is penal servitude for life, and the minimum, ten years imprisonment. In the United States the penalty is from five to twenty years imprisonment. Is it not unjust to keep on the statute books these laws against an unfortunate and harmless class?

Legal Penalties.

I am here reminded of two conferences with Mr. Anthony Comstock, because part of his business while alive was that of hunting down inverts and haling them off to prison. By the irony of fate, I was during my college days nicknamed after this gentleman because on hearing an obscene remark by a fellow student, my features involuntarily expressed shock and disapproval, probably due to my having the mind of a woman. But in 1900, as soon as I had this autobiography ready for publication, I submitted it to Mr. Comstock in order to ascertain whether it could be circulated. He was then a Post-Office Department inspector, with power to prosecute for shipping “obscene” matter by common carrier. He read considerable of the manuscript of this book, and stated on handing it back that he would have “destroyed” it but for the fact that I impressed him “as a person not having any evil intent.”

In words which I wrote down immediately after leaving his presence, he declared: “These inverts are not fitto live with the rest of mankind. They ought to have branded in their foreheads the word ‘Unclean,’ and as the lepers of old, they ought to cry ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ as they go about, and instead of the law making twenty years imprisonment the penalty for their crime, it ought to be imprisonment for life. Are they assaulted and blackmailed? They deserve to be. Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis know nothing about them if they say they are irresponsible. They are wilfully bad, and glory and gloat in their perversion. Their habit is acquired and not inborn. Why propose to have the law against them now on the statute books repealed? If this happened, there would be no way of getting at them. It would be wrong to make life more tolerable for them. Their lives ought to be made so intolerable as to drive them to abandon their vices.”

Prevalent Lay Opinion on Inverts.

This attitude of mind is a proper one toward possible male filles de joie who are fundamentally normal in their sexuality, but who through cupidity, or with the purpose of blackmailing those who seek them, offer themselves to take the passive rôle in pædicatio. Your author doubts whether any such males ever lived. But the true invert belongs to a different class, and should have the same standing before the law as the normal individual. He even should be dealt with more leniently, because his passion is often abnormally intense, and his mental eccentricities sometimes lead him into unwise though little harmful, or not at all harmful, acts.

In this autobiography, I may sometimes refer to myselfas “Ralph Werther.” At the beginning of my career as “Jennie June,” when asked for my real name, I answered “Raphael Werther,” since I did not wish to bring disgrace on my family name. I adopted the name “Raphael” because of its euphony and glorious associations; the name “Werther,” because like Goethe’s hero I was doomed to great sorrow through the passion of love. During my first two years in college, when I often meditated suicide, and was by far the unhappiest person in the college community, Goethe’s “Sorrows of Werther,” the romance of suicide, had a peculiar fascination for me. Later I substituted “Ralph” for “Raphael” since I found the latter sounded too “stagey” to be believed.

Choosing Aliases.

The author may be accused of copying the pen-name of Mrs. Croly in the name that he gave himself when undertaking the role of a girl. But I was not conscious of the existence of this pen-name until after I had selected “Jennie June.” In early childhood I had called myself “Jennie,” always my favorite girl’s name. It has always seemed to me the most feminine of names. I adopted the name “June” because of the alliteration, the beauty of the word, and its agreeable associations. It was first suggested to me while reading one of Cooper’s novels, where it appears as the name of a gentle, extremely feminine squaw. It was suggested to me secondly by my seeing it appear as a surname on the sign of a business house.

At the beginning of my career as a fairie, I debated for some time whether the name of my feminine personalityshould be “Jennie June,” “Baby,” “Pussie,” or the name of a particular one of the foremost prima donnas of history. I enjoyed hugely being called “Baby” by young men. A strange young ruffian one day passed me on the street, and addressed me jocularly: “Hello Pussie!” I cannot express how much it pleased me, and I longed to be called “Pussie” always. As to my impulse to copy the name of the prima donna, I would have day dreams of being such a personage. At the opera I would imagine myself as identified with the leading soprano—that I was she. As is usual with professional fairies, I sought to cultivate a soprano singing voice, though singing a baritone when in my every-day circle.

Year 1874—Birth and Parentage.

The fourth child of my mother’s eleven children, I was born and passed my first sixteen years of life in the most refined section of a large village within fifty miles of New York City. At the time of my birth, each parent was about thirty years of age. My mother appears to have married for money rather than for love. My parents, and indeed all adults who had a molding influence over my early life, were eminently respectable religious people.

I know the history of my stock for several generations back. No member of any of the several families whose blood is mingled in my veins was ever arrested. With the exception of several black sheep, the several families have been composed of exceptionally pious people.

Both my paternal and maternal stock have been very prolific. No relative has ever distinguished himself by reason of his intellect or otherwise, the men having beenexclusively farmers or retail merchants. I am perhaps the most intellectual individual that has appeared in the several families. My father was the shrewdest man and the most successful at making money of any member of these several families.

Abnormal Relatives.

The following are the only bad strains which I have been able to find in my blood: A maternal great-great-great uncle was half-witted. A maternal great-great uncle was a worthless character, but a good singer, going around from tavern to tavern singing for his grog. Perhaps that is the development a fairie took in his environment. A maternal great uncle, though a good business man, became intoxicated occasionally. A paternal great uncle was half-witted. A maternal second cousin was mildly insane for at least several years. A paternal and also a maternal uncle, besides being extreme dipsomaniacs, lacked the energy to earn their own living, and also never married. The fact that the paternal uncle used to fondle me excessively while I was a boy ten to twelve years of age and hold me clasped in his embrace in such a way as would at the present writing suggest to me that he entertained thoughts of pædicatio, indicates that he was possibly an active pederast. The maternal uncle was known, while in his early twenties, to have indulged in solitary onanism before boys around the age of twelve, but all his adult life he appeared to be unusually attracted toward girls aged from ten to twelve, but I do not believe he ever corrupted any, as he was always popular in his community.

A female first cousin is a psychical hermaphrodite, andwhile married to a man, has always retained a woman sweetheart, who has evidently occupied a place in my cousin’s affections much above the husband. From my close observation of this case for over thirty years, I am convinced that normal women succumb more readily to the advances of a gynander than do normal men to those of an androgyne. The cousin is decidedly masculine both physically and psychically. No offspring resulted from her marriage.

Fellatio ex Instinctu Infantili.

The question has been much discussed as to whether sexual inversion is congenital or acquired. In my own case—as well as in that of my female cousin—it is indubitably congenital. The full evidence, in addition to my decidedly feminine anatomy and her decidedly masculine, may not be presented here out of regard for others.

My very earliest memories are those of following out my strong baby’s instinct for the nipple—immediately after I was weaned—by making use of the best substitute that came in my way. Pueri, atque puellae, several years older than myself, with whom I was intimately thrown every day, furnished me with what nature craved. The infant’s nursing instinct unfortunately did not die out in me as in the normal individual, but has continued powerful all my life, though with transferred object. Once after I had grown up—much to my shame—my mother remarked before a small family gathering that until I was quite a large boy (perhaps nine years of age) I would in my sleep go through imbibing motions, like an infant at the nipple.

Infantile Sexual Precocity.

My earliest memory of all of this perversion of the nursing instinct and its transformation into a perverted sexual instinct is the following: A large carpet hung over a line. Several girls around eleven years of age sat down inside and exposuerunt pudenda. The conversation was about the boys, who they wished might come in. I was hardly more than a baby and was undoubtedly thought too young to understand or disclose their conduct. I crept from one to another, os cunnis earum. I was too young to know that it was the organ of micturition, or to distinguish between it and the breast. My instinct was sugere when the latter was presented to me, and I did the same to it. Possibly the girls told me to.

Only on one other occasion, at the age of six, did I have such relations with a female. The girl, of my own age, begged it of me, much to my disgust. But I had innumerable relations cum pueris. The earliest remembered occurred when I was three-and-a-half years old. A boy of nine had myself, a brother of five, and another of fifteen months sugere penem erectum. For several years he sought me occasionally for the same purpose. My two brothers complied only a few times, while I eagerly grasped every opportunity. They developed into strong, virile, six-foot men, husbands and fathers.

One other boy, a year older than myself, became an even greater favorite. From my fifth to seventh year, our relations were almost as intimate as those of a husband and wife. We used to play “husband and wife,” although the fact of conjugal relations was the farthest from our thoughts. When I reached the age of seven,our relations ceased, since we were sent to different schools and he began to play with normal boys, while I henceforth shared the pastimes of the little girls and had them almost exclusively for my companions. In subsequent years of our boyhood, he asked for fellatio several times, but I refused through shame.

Age Four to Seven.

My addiction was common knowledge among the boys, and others sought it. While engaged in games with boys, sometimes fellatio would occur every few minutes. Before reaching the age of seven, I had doubtless had more than one thousand such experiences. I of course always took the more humiliating part. Only once in my life, at the age of thirty-six, has another taken that part with me, much to my disgust. Out of nearly 800 intimates during my life-time, only one ever sought to take that part.

I told these boy playmates to call me “Jennie,” and encouraged them to use sexual argot to me. I instinctively hid all my sexual experiences from everybody except my boy intimates, though some of them proclaimed my addiction abroad in my hearing and much to my shame. Only once my mother questioned me suspiciously as to why I entered an outhouse every little while with my boy friend, but I counteracted her suspicion.

I was decidedly the greatest cry-baby of my mother’s eight children who survived infancy, as well as the most weakly. I was the only child of the neighborhood subject to convulsions, but these were not more than half a dozen in number and occurred before the age of six. As early as the age of three I suffered from occasionalmelancholia, and would bang my head on the floor and express the wish that “I was dead.” A girl-boy acquaintance committed suicide at the age of twelve by swallowing rat poison.

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