Earl Lind

“ On my visits home during this first year in college, I was supersensitive to my family's criticism of me for lack of manliness. I sometimes felt like never visiting home again because of my shame at being an effeminate man. I shunned all social gatherings because I detested the idea of courting a female and putting myself forward as a man. I would nevertheless weep at seeing other young people enjoying the ordinary legitimate pleasures of love without my ever—as I then thought—being privileged to have a share in them, since love and courtship in my case must be with one of my own physical sex. ”

“ My return to college in the fall of 1892 was followed by a decline from the high spiritual level attained during the summer vacation, this decline being especially marked by periods of depression, during which I would lament to myself that I was practically, by birth, an outcast from society, with a deformed nature, and despicable in the eyes of all people. I felt that I was a soft effeminate man who was wanted nowhere. At the sight of other young men rejoicing in their manly vigor, I would exclaim, "T want to die! I want to die!" ”

“ What is the use then of laws against practices really harmless to society and to the adolescent—while perhaps harmful to the invert to the same degree that marital relations are harmful to a wife and mother—and occasioned alone by those who are driven by an innate impulse, often uncontrollable? The law does not imprison deaf-mutes for being born with abnormal inner ears, and why should it imprison members of this other congenitally defective class? The invert asks only for the same standing before the law accorded all other men. ”

“ I was just crying because some soldiers shook me, but making your acquaintance brings me happiness again, because you are wild young bloods."
"What do you see in a fellow to love any way? I don't see anything. What good do you get out of loving a fellow?"
"Well, what do you see in a girl to love? I don't see anything. Girls are not brave. They are not rough. They are not strong. You are brave, rough, and strong, and that is why I love you. I love fellows for the same reason you love girls—because they are my opposites. The weak love the strong and the strong, the weak. ”

“ I told him I had no money, except a dollar sewed in my clothes. This I secured and paid him. I told him the soldiers had taken all of my money, and how roughly they had handled me, of course confessing myself to be an invert. It was surprising to hear his words of condolence, coming as they did from an uneducated conductor, the most beautiful words of sympathy I ever heard, just like the words of the Savior to the woman taken in adultery. Among other things he said: "If only every one lived as harmless a life as you, this world would be all right." ”

“ You thus see that I may some day have to flee from the wrath of men by suicide, or by self-imposed exile in a distant land, where I doubt if I could stand the misery I would suffer, forever removed from all my dear ones, and worse than dead to them. No one would have any mercy on me, and my name would be held up as that of a consummate hypocrite and the most degraded of men. ”

“ Of course they always regarded me as a girl-boy weakling. Policy required that I always represent myself as a person of no talents except those of the fairie, and as a person occupying a humble station in life. Otherwise some of a vicious turn of mind would have followed me up with the purpose of blackmail, as was done in 1905, when the thirst for money suddenly put an end to my association with soldiers of one fort and almost occasioned my murder. ”

“ Suppose in a war between two tribes of red men, a brave is captured, consigned to adopt the dress and occupation of a squaw, and is in every way treated as a squaw. Would this unnatural life be to the brave's tastes? Would he be blamed if he sought to escape where he could live according to his masculine inclinations? No more is the passive invert to be blamed for escaping occasionally where he can live according to his quasi-feminine instincts. ”

“ These inverts are not fit to 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. ”

“ What a contrast between this life and that as Jennie June! While the phenomena of the procreative side of life bring to man the highest earthly bliss, they also occasion the intensest misery. The life as Jennie June had been a bitter life apart from all the extraneous suffering. But in a life given for others, seeking not its own, there was everything satisfying, and nothing to regret. Truly there is a glorious salvation from sin and unhappiness in announcing glad tidings to the poor, binding up the broken-hearted, and opening the eyes of the spiritually blind. ”

“ That just described was my first experience with soldiers, and I had become fascinated as never before. All my reveries were now to relinquish the career of a scholar and become a sutler near some fort in the wild west so that I could mingle daily with these demigods, whom I most abjectly worshipped. I was in misery because my lot in life separated me from these ferocious young men.
I look upon a youthful professional soldier as a most wonderful being, different from all other human beings. ”

“ Furthermore, it is not surprising that a person, deprived of even what are regarded as the necessities of a decent existence, should indulge immoderately in the single one of life's pleasures of which there was an abundant supply. In the environment in which forces outside of my control placed me, there was in me a practically irresistible impulse to adopt the manner of life I did. I would never have made the profession of the fairie the main business of life if it had not been for the peculiar concurrence of circumstances, expulsion from college, inability to find respectable employment, etc. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ To mimic the baby and the woman in his presence was a rare pleasure. Up to my early thirties, in all my conduct with him, I was more feminine than any woman and as babyish as a three-year old. Sexually I have never grown out of babyhood.
I liked to be regarded as the slave. In the " Enslaving Ceremony," I lay prostrate on the floor, my companion towered above, placed his foot on my head, and pronounced me his slave. I have always felt that a woman should adore her husband so much as to delight in being treated as a slave, and to suffer gladly any abuse by her lord. ”

“ The second half of my open career was possible because while having the coquetry and craze for venery of the depraved fairie, I had also the refinement, outward modesty, and general rectitude which are to be expected in an androgyne brought up as a puritan and graduated at a university. I repeat that throughout my carcer as a fairie— apart from the coquetry and venery just named—I lived up to the highest ethical standards, and never knowingly inflicted the least detriment on a single soul. ”

“ I am really a woman, and a very amorous one at that, although regarded as a man because the majority of my physical traits are those of the male sex. Did society ever compel any other woman, except those like me, to live, eat, sleep, frequent the same comfort-rooms and baths, lie sometimes in the same bed, with men, and sometimes to listen to the unclean talk of men? ”

“ It appeared as if the muscular waste was not eliminated from the blood as before castration, but remained in my system as a poison, rendering me dazed, taking the edge off my intellect, and enervating my body. I could spare my mental faculties for use in my profession only by leading a very quiet life, slow and limited in physical movement. ”

“ To those who have not arrived at a correct estimate of androgynism, I state that if he had continued to live with me as my son, his life would have been enriched along all lines, in particular morally and religiously. In practically every act of my life, I have been guided by the highest moral and religious ideals. Outside of sexual delinquencies, my life has been entirely offenceless. An androgyne, even when living out his nature, can attain the same ethical and religious heights as any other individual. ”

“ The rumor soon spreads to other squad-rooms that "Jennie June" is making a visit, and a score or more soon gather about me. I always came loaded down with cigarettes and other things that soldiers are fond of, except intoxicants. One youthful soldier after another rolls back his sleeves and displays tattooed figures for me to rave over: "That proves you are completely masculine, and I worship you for having it done." Others double back their right arms and let me feel of their biceps: "I call you 'Strength!' I call you 'Power!' I call you a man of iron! Mighty man of war! ”

“ This then is my contention, that homosexuality is either an acquired vice, that is to say a habit, or an acquired mental aberration, that is to say, insanity, or congenital; and then it is that a human being is born with a body with sexual organs all those of the male, yet most likely with a body which shows certain earmarks of the female, and with a soul nearly all female, but certainly entirely female in regard to the sex question. Such a person is a homosexualist, because he feels like a woman and to him all male persons belong to the opposite sex. ”

“ My sexual cravings began to render me sleepless after retiring, and throw me into paroxysms. Driven by my importunate craving for fellatio, I would occasionally rise from bed around midnight, and roam through the poor quarters, looking for a thoroughly intoxicated man who would not be able to recognize me, but I never found one. I now believe I was irresponsible.
The only ray of hope I had was the possibility of securing a steady mate. When in my imagination I could see the feasibility and certainty of this, I was happy and hopeful. I felt that then a successful life would be a certainty. ”

“ To me man appears to grow old and his beauty fade a decade earlier than woman, which is just the opposite of the normal man's impression. When I was a boy of twelve, all males over sixteen appeared ugly, and I had only sexual disgust for them. But in 1918, when I have arrived at my middle forties, the age of male beauty in my eyes is confined between eighteen and thirty years.
I have always preferred the brunette to the blonde type, although I myself am of the former. For years after my fairie apprenticeship I seemed to be especially drawn toward young men of Irish blood. ”

“ Throughout my life as a fairie, I always longed to have a young man live with me as my husband. If this had been practicable, monandry would possibly have been sufficient, as it proved to be in my early forties. But until long after the close of my open career, I was reluctant to reveal my identity, and was also deterred by the fear of blackmail.
At my middle forties, however, I am of the opinion that in the case of inverts, promiscuity is preferable to monandry for the welfare of the human race, the invert's associates individually, and the naturally polyandrous invert himself. ”

“ Nevertheless the fact that I was a fairie spread rapidly, and all eyes were fastened upon me wherever I moved. I learned later that my love letters had been handed around for every one to read. When my call ended, a crowd of fifty soldiers gathered on the porch to see me off. In addition every window was filled with soldiers calling out: "Hello Jennie June!" " Hello sweet-heart!" Under such an incentive, I yielded to the impulses of a coquette and gave a female-impersonation, much to the delight of my audience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is in the power of the vast majority of the human race to live what are called decent, moral lives; but it is not in the power of all. My "sin" was a disease of the mind, not wilful sin, especially at this and earlier periods of my career. I was a born "nymphomaniac," if this word may be used of one who has no nymphae. In respect to the strength of the urge after coition, I am akin to the male rather than the female sex. As few others have tried, I tried to overcome the evil inherent in my nature, but in vain. ”

“ In my more spiritual moods I shrink from the memory of the experiences through which my abnormality caused me to pass, and am overwhelmed with despair at the thought of the depths of perdition to which cultured humanity consigns the androgyne who yields to his instincts. ”