Walt Whitman stands foremost among American androgynes. But he was of the mild type. Many passages of Leaves of Grass and Drumtaps exist as proof. He never married, although closely pursued by even wealthy women desiring him as husband. In middle age he spent his hours for recreation in the society of adolescents—as I was informed by Whitman's so-called "adopted son". That is, he courted them, as a normal man courts a woman. Chance made me intimate with the "adopted son" in his seventies. All three of us happened to belong to New York City.
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Surely we androgynes, who for two thousand years have been despised, hunted down, and crushed under the heel of normal men because they have misunderstood biblical condemnations of homosexuality, have no reason to be ashamed of our heritage. America's foremost poet; the world's greatest sculptor subsequently to Athens' golden age; the two greatest ethicists and two out of the three greatest intellects of ancient Greece and Rome; two out of the three greatest conquerors of history; the greatest painter of all ages; and—to cap the climax—the greatest intellect that the English-speaking world ever produced and the greatest literary genius of all time (these two distinctions united in Francis Bacon)— ALL WERE ANDROGYNES.[1]
And to you full-fledged males I say: "What God hath cleansed [through endowment with sublime talents] call not ye 'Unclean!'"
- ↑ For twenty-five years, the author has combed the medical press for information on androgynism. This chapter is the
