Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/39

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Hermaphrodites.
21

unhappy and unwelcome bisexuals down through the centuries.

The two classes of androgynes do not mix well. Just as the full-fledged man is averse to attendance at a ladies' sewing-circle. Particularly the mildly androgynous fear suspicion of their secret if they associated with ultra-androgynes. Coteries of ultra-androgynes naturally form. Knowing their own nature, they readily recognize one another, although down to 1921 at least, the sexually full-fledged have usually been blind to the androgynism of daily associates, because never permitted to learn of their existence.

(6) Pseudo-Hermaphrodites are humans possessing in part both the male and the female genitalia, or else organs so deformed that even sexologists are unable to determine the sex until puberty. In half such cases, the physician then pronounces the individual to belong to the sex other than that with which he or she has identified him or herself. As a rule, they subsequently live and clothe themselves per prescription. But some, accustomed to the dress and usages of their first sex, choose to identify themselves with it throughout life.

Pseudo-hermaphrodites are the limit toward which the ultra-androgynous approach by slight gradations. Their frequency is not greater than one in a million to ten million humans.

(7) Full Human Hermaphrodites—possessing both complete male and complete female genitalia—have never been encountered. There exists in medical annals, however, a pseudo-hermaphrodite who so nearly approached full hermaphrodism that at one period he-she claimed to have lived as husband and father,