The Female-Impersonators/Introduction
Introduction
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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 unaesthetic physique.
Hardly had the Autobiography of an Androgyne been published, when the author (who, it must be understood, belongs to that despised class of sexual cripples) started, to use his own words, "to peddle the script" of The Female-Impersonators around to general book publishers, and continued to do so for two years, until ten publishers had returned it to him as unsuited for general circulation. It must be understood that the author wrote The Female-Impersonators for the general reader as he felt that, although propaganda among scientists was necessary, and would undoubtedly do some good, really to help the suffering androgyne quickly, it was necessary to reach the general public.
In this idea the author was not wrong. During the last few years several suicides and murders of androgynes have come to my personal notice, and although a change of laws, which would do away with the punishment of androgynes for their harmless sexual lapses, would do a great deal to ameliorate the conditions surrounding their lives (particularly prevent much blackmail, from which they continually suffer) yet the suicides of androgynes are almost always due, not to fear of punishment by the law, but to fear of exposure, which would cause the loss of their positions and insure their being shunned by "decent" society.
As to the frequent murders of androgynes, these surely have not been committed by members of the medical, legal or other learned professions, but by men belonging to "the general public"—men more or less "civilized," but altogether brutal.
It can not be doubted that a repeal of those laws which prescribe punishment for sexual lapses of these "pseudo-men" would do good, as it would not only save them from prison terms, but also enable the braver of them to prosecute and stop blackmailers, who make a regular business of draining the resources of androgynes.
It is however impossible to achieve all that is desirable until the general public has been thoroughly impregnated with the fact that androgynism (as well as its correlative, gynandrism) is a psychopathia sexualis, a mental twist, as harmless to society as anything can be, because it is neither infectious nor contagious, and can not be induced in anybody through either association with androgynes or through quasi-philosophical (that is, sophistical) teachings or cults.
It must be understood that a normal man can not develop sexual feelings or desires for another man, although it must be admitted that homosexuality is occasionally practiced under conditions where access to the opposite sex is impossible (or next to impossible), as, for example, among soldiers on campaigns, among sailors during long voyages on sailing vessels, in boarding-schools for adolescents, etc. This species of homosexuality is indulged in only from "necessity"—so to say—and is not considered by those indulging as much different from self-manustupration. It is gladly abandoned as soon as access to the opposite sex has become possible.
An ultra-androgyne however, although he has the male primary physical attributes, never feels himself to be a real male, but a female incarnated in a male body (often with feminine earmarks), and would no more be able to develop sexual feelings for a female than a normal man for another male.
It is therefore a consummation devoutly to be wished that a book setting forth the facts of androgynism could be distributed among the general public. The author tried to write a compendium for such readers, and The Female-Impersonators is the result.
That he has failed in his attempt is to me not only very apparent, but also quite natural.
To the author nothing that he has written about the practices of androgynes seems what we call immoral or revolting. Because their own congenital sexual tendencies appear to androgynes as the full-fledged man's appear to the latter.
To the author of The Female-Impersonators it is as natural to fall in love with another male (bearing in mind however that the androgyne is only a "pseudo-male") and write, what he calls poems, dedicated to his "hero-boys" (who to me appear nothing but low ruffians, blackmailers, and grafters) as it would be for a normal man to fall in love with some good-looking female, and write "poetry" about her, perhaps in some of his later "poems" to bewail the fact that she has proven herself "faithless, truthless, and makes a sale of that which men call love, to him who bids the highest."
It is therefore but natural that, since the author sees human beings, as it were, distorted through his own mental astigmatism, namely females as belonging to his own sex and males to the opposite, his second book, The Female-Impersonators, contains a great deal which to the average reader would be "shocking", and thus, instead of accomplishing the result which he intended, would cause disgust, and make the treatment of the androgyne even worse than at present.
After the author had submitted the manuscript of his book to numerous publishers, trying in vain (as I had predicted to him) to induce one of them to bring out the book for general circulation, I agreed to publish it for restricted sale.
Not because I really felt that the book presents a great deal of new material of scientific interest, but because, by describing the life experience of various other androgynes, their viewpoints, their sufferings, it continues the missionary work begun by the author in his Autobiography of an Androgyne and thus helps in keeping up the good work. For, to achieve results, it is not only necessary to awaken interest in a subject, but also to keep that interest alive.
Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo. "A drop of water wears a hole in a stone, not by force, but by frequently falling."
That the author is really doing missionary work can not be doubted by me, for I know that he does not derive any financial benefit from the publication of his Autobiography of an Androgyne, nor do I expect he will from the publication of the present sequel.
Every cent which I have turned over to him as royalties from the sale of his Autobiography he has returned to me to be expended for advertisements in various medical journals and, owing to the slight interest in the subject which exists among physicians, I am sorry to say that those advertisements have not been financially remunerative.
As the author however feels that he has a mission to fulfill; that he has been created by Providence one of the despised androgynes for the purpose of taking up their cause and ameliorating their state of almost unparalleled sufferings, the missionary work will go on, as it has begun.
As in the case of the first of the present trilogy, The Female-Impersonators is published practically as its author wrote it.
For my impressions of the author's personality, I refer to my Introduction in his Autobiography of an Androgyne.
March, 1922