Earl Lind

“ I therefore never confessed to him that his influence prior to my seventh year almost wrecked my adult life—probably consigning me to an irresponsible, intensive fairie career—and a thousand times made me wish, because a slave to fellatio, that I were dead. For I firmly believe that girl-boys, if not repeatedly seduced before puberty, will, as adults, have only weak and controllable desires for the sexual functioning ordained by Nature for their type. ”

“ Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a girl than to be doomed to pass through life incarnated in a male body? How grief -provoking for a mademoiselle to be cursed with a slight growth of hair on lip or cheeks! Only a trifling male stigma! How much more heart-rending for a mademoiselle to possess the male physique to such an extent that even all physicians (except a handful of sexologists) with their present lack of knowledge—or rather their closing their eyes to all evidence—would declare her a male, and prescribe that she should in life fill the latter role. ”

“ If society had some way by which it could bring about the satisfaction of these needs of these cultured girls, the latter could be saved from the shipwreck of life and be useful members of their community. In my own life I have proved that Christian conversion and absorption in the teachings of the Bible can not save one from innate nymphomania. I could suggest a means of salvation for these girls, but dare not. If only the leaders of thought did not prescribe an identic sex life for every daughter of Eve, although Nature has created them with such diversity along these lines! ”

“ After school, the west playground was thronged with boys. I alone hastened directly to the street, embarrassed as a little girl alone with two hundred boys. One calls out: "Ralph, hurry to the girls' yard where you belong!" Another: "Ralph, your legs are as shapely as a girl's. You would make a goodlooking girl!" A third throws his arms around me and exclaims: "Kissing you is as good as kissing a girl!" ”

“ Sticking very close to "mother" as a child, and extraordinary devotion to her when adult are common earmarks of androgynism. I have known of no other reputed male so devoted to his mother, even down to his late forties, as I. My mother is still, by a kind Providence, spared to me. I frequently weep bitterly at the thought of her dying and can not imagine living when she is in the grave. I knew an androgyne who, in his sixties, died from grief a few days after the death of his mother around ninety. ”

“ I myself am—I feel—destined to live in the memory of savants primarily because of my extensive self-restraint, and secondarily because of my excelling the other girl-boys in innate brain-power.
It was F'ank who initiated me, at two, in the mysteries which gullible parents think children do not learn before puberty. But down to twelve, I considered all species of sex relations as the monopoly of naughty children. All adults had of course outgrown such depths of nastiness. ”

“ If I live to old age, I intend to call the present trilogy to the attention of some of my associates of early years who have indicated great curiosity to know the secrets of my sex life. I have permitted only three friends (of course the closest) who know me under my legal name to read my Autobiography of an Androgyne, and one of the three dropped me from his friendship. Men are so biassed on the subject of sex that I can not let my friends read the secrets of my life until I reach an independent old age when they can not make me suffer much on account of my androgynism. ”

“ Not until the age of nineteen, when I went successively to two medical college professors and implored them to make me a complete male, did I learn that practically all the tissues of my body are of characteristically feminine texture. My muscles, judged by their weakness and my using them in general woman-fashion, are those of a female. The beardal growth is normally male except that it could never reach the length of an eighth of an inch and has no stiffness. If I had not shaved or eradicated the beard, I would have been, after seventeen, one of the dogfaced boys of the circus. ”

“ Intellectual and general cultural development; enjoyment of (but not adeptness in) all species of art; breadth and depth of life and knowledge of human nature; enjoyment of the society of my fellow humans, particularly sexual opposites; and, last but not least, fame, or, as some would prefer to have me say, notoriety. For I feel that I, as an extreme type of the bisexual, am doomed to live in the minds of savants for scores of years after every one of my hundreds of schoolmates, and my other hundreds of university associates, are eternally forgotten. ”

“ In middle life I have often thought that Providence mercifully spared me from suicide—the fate of so many youthful androgynes as a result of the world's persecution—and foreordained my career of femaleimpersonator that I might, through publishing the present trilogy, remove the veil of ignorance and prejudice as regards androgynism that now blinds the cultured, and occasions terrible persecution to Nature's inoffensive step-children, who number one out of every two hundred inmates of our state prisons, having been incarcerated merely on the ground of homosexuality. ”

“ Is it my divinely appointed task to learn the lesson of resignation in affliction? To feel myself crushed to earth by the Almighty Hand? Like Isaac, to be tried in order to see whether I am willing to be slain in my youth—in my own case morally? ”

“ IV. I Grow into The Fairie Boy.
At sixteen, I entered a college in New York City. I alone was responsible for the scene of my university training. I had frequently visited New York and wished to reside there. But I had then no intention of ever yielding to my detested instincts for female-impersonation. I had not realized that residence in a great city would make temptation far stronger than in a village. My being fated to make my home in New York almost throughout my adulthood has had a tremendous influence on my life, particularly from nineteen to thirty-one. ”

“ Being neither male nor female, with whom do androgynes associate? Up to the dawning of puberty, pronounced specimens—like myself—gravitate toward the gentle sex. As soon as the sexual life is fully developed, the vast majority (not happening to be overconscientious and ultra-puritan) give that sex the widest berth and lean on the bosoms of the ultra or tremendously virile of their acquaintance. But they never join in the sports of the sturdy sex. For in athletics, they are as awkward as girls, and besides lack the necessary physique. ”

“ While, after I entered my teens, I was ashamed longer to make myself one with girl acquaintances, and besides was violently repelled by our both approaching the full-flower of our sexuality, my now looking upon my attraction towards youths as the most heinous of sins, together with my aversion from masculine interests, forbade association with boys outside the schoolroom. ”

“ After half-a-century of rare opportunities to learn human nature, I have ascertained that I was tried worse than any one else I have heard of—that is, by torture of sexual desire that must not be gratified, and practically was not from seven to eighteen, inclusive. ”

“ My life experience has demonstrated that "there is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will." My life experience has demonstrated that the biblical teachings about human life are in general true, and that either the Christian or Jewish religion is practically necessary to save from despair and suicide men and women foreordained to drain the cup of anguish to the dregs. ”

“ And what makes you scream when a fellow merely touches you? Ralph, you certainly ought to have been born a girl! You will never make a man!"
On holidays I would run off to the house of a girl friend. With several of the gentle sex, I would play hide-and-seek in remote nooks, as hay-mows. Later I would exchange clothing with one, and we would seek boy acquaintances that I might display my skill in female-impersonation. ”

“ An innate tendency is practically indispensable. Early experiences along innate lines merely strengthen a congenital bias, just as the author became an intensive adult fairie as a result—I am inclined to believe—of my intense fairieship from three to six.
While I believe sexual relations of children under twelve when not often repeated will not render them particularly lustful as adults, an intensive sex life of a small child—as in my own case—is likely to render him or her extremely intemperate sexually after puberty. ”

“ III. An Androgyne's Youth.
It was not until my sixteenth year that I came to a full realization that I am a male in name only. I had always recognized my girllikeness and wished Nature had created me a female. At the same time I had, during my early teens, sometimes reflected that I would outgrow all my feminine predilections and be a normal man. But at fifteen my bust development made me think that perhaps God at last was answering my fervent prayers, around the age of nine, to be changed into a physical girl. ”

“ While they are commonly fellators or else pathics congenitally, only oft repeated seduction in early childhood makes them, after puberty, irresponsible psychic nymphomaniacs who recruit the ranks of fairies. But for those repeatedly seduced in early childhood, the penchant is truly irresistible in adulthood and would be followed regardless of all legal penalties. Just as most men would steal a loaf of bread if their only means of salvation from death through hunger.
Not too often repeated homosexual acts on the part of a small child, however, are not likely to make him an adult pervert. ”

“ I believe both could have been saved from shipwreck of life if, at puberty, a book, scientific, not goody-goody, could have been put into their hands, demonstrating that alcoholic and venereal excesses bring on ruin and often early death. Children inclined to dissipation on arrival at puberty are far more likely to heed the pronouncements of a physician than of a Bible school teacher. ”

“ In my middle teens, my desire changed radically, due chiefly to my having just become a God-intoxicated youth, with the work of a missionary in China as my goal. I now prayed far more intensely for full-fledged manhood than I ever had for physical femininity.
Superficially and according to man-made law, ultra-androgynes are men. According to the unabridged dictionary, they are neither men nor women. That is, they are capable neither of begetting nor conceiving. ”

“ Trying to doll yourself up as much like a girl as you can, are you?"
"I am, too, so ashamed of your bangs, Ralph!" my mother chimed in. "They make you look as if you didn't know anything!"
"Mother, make him go to C's party next Wednesday. He stays away from all gatherings of young people. He will grow up a boor."
"I would rather be thrashed than go to any party! I do not like to pay gallantries to women!"
"You will never make a man unless you do, son. I insist that you go to C's party."
Wednesday evening arrived, and with two score youngsters, I was lounging in C's parlors. ”

“ An unmarried female, as long as she has hopes of lassoing a husband, never gets beyond the lingering years of twenty-eight or twenty-nine.
Simultaneous "Male" Professional Life: In my twenties, thirties, and forties, I have worked hard in three successive learned professions. At nineteen I had already relinquished my amateur work of preacher of the Gospel on being forced by Nature into the avocation of female-impersonator. ”

“ But my extreme effeminacy and both facial and psychic infantilism have prevented employers meting out the full advancement that past work merited. Men less capable than myself have been promoted over me because my chiefs had the impression that I was merely "a grown-up child"—that is, moron-like, although as a matter of fact I possessed the intellectual qualifications. ”

“ The mother died of a broken heart in her early forties. The father, previously active in church work, became despondent on seeing both his children "go to the bad," took to drink, and died a sot.
Debauchery was born in these two children, for they had never missed Bible school up to their middle teens. They were unusually innocent prior to puberty. But religious teaching failed to convince them. They thought the "goody-goodies" were trying to rob them of the pleasures of life through false representations. ”

“ My observations are that conditions are the same among children of both types of environment. Numerous youngsters receive their sex initiation before twelve. But, unless carried to excess, it does not seem to have any bad influence, particularly after they become adults. The probability is that the same practice has ruled among small children for thousands of years. It is Nature.
And the context moves me to remark: It turned out that of my several hundred schoolmates (prior to the university) I achieved in adult life the highest success. ”

“ And such is the burden imposed by Nature on one youth out of every three hundred in every social set of every country in the world. But because of my intellectuality, high-class environment, and extreme androgynism, my grief was exceptionally intense. I do not believe the mildly androgynous are melancholy during their teens. They have not yet become conscious that they are abnormal. ”

“ Even before I began to develop adipose tissue after twenty-five, I would float on fresh water without moving a muscle, my observation being that the slim normal boy must vibrate his hands. I am a curiosity in that form of skeleton and contour of body are mostly feminine, particularly the bust. ”