to be devoured by bears. But the All-Seeing overruled that they did not attack me.][1]
- ↑
I had fully described this adventure in my AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE, but the details were cut out by its editor. I append them here because tending to show that the sparser the population of a district, the greater the repugnance of civilized young roues to androgynism and the rarer is the latter phenomenon per thousand males. In other words: My conclusion from extensive travel and intimate mingling, as an ultra-androgyne, with native adolescent roues in every corner of the United States and Europe is that among civilized nations, the frequency of male bisexuals per thousand inhabitants and their tolerance by the full-fledged are in general in direct proportion to the density of population.
I, a woman-soul, but reputedly a young man, was delegated to write up an unusual affair transpiring in a Rocky Mountain wilderness. I was in a caravan with fifty men of the roughest type, cowboys, miners, etc. All were bachelors or grass-widowers. Day in and day out, they hardly talked of anything but prostitutes, some of whom enlivened every mining or lumbering camp of any permanence, although their rates were seven times city prices and they laid away fortunes. Some of the decidedly lucky prospectors, as well as occasional city-ites on hunting trips, were always accompanied by their mistresses—the cityites doubtless glad to get away from "friend wife" for a few weeks.
I found the adolescent cowboys and miners of the Rockies the most prejudiced against effeminate males of any of the hundreds of circles of adolescent roues with which I have mingled as a girlboy. The first hour, when I had not compromised myself in any way, they began to heap up insults, particularly taking pains to refer to me within my hearing by the obscene term most often used by roughs for a girl-boy. (My own age was then thirty-three, but my friends told me I looked to be only twenty-five. I still possessed the "small-boy" aspect common among ultra-androgynes.) I feared my forced sojourn with those who so despised effeminacy would be intolerable.
But my plan to win their respect succeeded. I exhibited my credentials as representative of a journal of national reputation. They never again insulted me and I even became popular. The more sensual began to resort to terms of endearment and embraces. But, while fascinated by these attentions, I distrusted them to the extent of not disclosing my secret desires. I knew that prudes occasionally murder bisexuals in cities. In the wilds of the Rockies these same prudes (only so far as concerns homosexuality) could so easily push me over a
