Ralph Werther

“ Further, all my life I have been thrown in with what is to me the opposite sex—compelled to mingle and live with them. I had nothing to do with the bringing about of this peculiar nature and environment of mine. Has it been my fault that my amorous desires have run into the channel they have, the channel opened to them when I was in the state of innocence and ignorance of a three-year-old child? 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 have always been strongly attracted by disregard for personal danger. When reading accounts of exploration and adventure, I have sometimes fallen in love with the adventurer. For example, I fell in love with a noted Arctic explorer while reading his book, as well as with the kayak-men whose courageous deeds he describes. To me tattooing has always been the mark of supreme masculinity. It was a habit with me to seek for it on my beaux, and if found, I would rave over it, osculate it, kneel before the young blood in adoration, and call him all the glorious idealizing names I could think of. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tradition was lodged there that I was well furnished with money, which reputation is fatal to the success of a penniless fairie.
Living as I was now compelled to live and necessarily mingling daily with men of loose morals, the charm of masculine beauty proved more powerful than ever before. 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. ”

“ 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 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.
Sadism. 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. ”

“ Always has it seemed to me that men gradually grow less masculine and less virile (in coitus) after passing twenty-five. They have also appeared to me to lose their good looks soon after that age. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Apparently his was the active rôle in pædicatio or inter femora. According to Frank Harris, Wilde’s confidant and the author of his best biography, Wilde thus analyzes his penchant: “What is the food of passion but beauty, beauty alone, beauty always, and in beauty of form and vigor of life there is no comparison [with the female sex] . If you loved beauty as intensely as I do, you would feel as I feel. It is beauty which gives me joy, makes me drunk as with wine, blind with insatiable desire.” ”

“ Comparing my sexual lot with that of the normal woman who bears children, I feel of course that she stands on a much higher plane. Her functioning has an exalted end, the perpetuation of the race, and is attended with infinitely more self-sacrifice than is the androgyne’s. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? I am driven wild by instinctive cravings more than any other human being ever was....
“I wish I was not of an amorous nature. It makes my life miserable. If I had my choice, it would be a life entirely free from all sexual phenomena—complete sexual indifference. ”

“ Prince A. Morrow, then the leading specialist in that line in New York City, who declared that either castration or marriage would be a sure cure for my abnormal passion! How many inverts have followed such advice of a physician, and seeking a cure in marriage, have been plunged into insanity or suicide, either on the eve of marriage, or soon after! Individuals like myself are women mentally. How is one woman to marry another, unless indeed one of the pair be a gynander, when marriage de facto often takes place. I could never think of tying myself to a wife until I felt myself to be a man. ”

“ Why am I a sexual invert? I have an explanation to offer, which is perhaps more fanciful than scientific. Is there not a difference between the “protoplasm” or cellular tissue of males and of females, which is the ground of the difference in the physical and psychical development of the sexes? Must there not be in the protoplasm of males a specific male “germ” or characteristic, and in the protoplasm of females a different germ, which are the ground of the opposite development of the sexes? ”

“ Because of society’s misunderstanding and prejudging my peculiarity, I was compelled to run the risks of the slums. Mankind would ostracize me for it, but instead they should pity me as one with whom the Almighty has dealt very bitterly.
Some Eminent Men Are Inverts. Some eminent men in all callings are numbered among the inverts. Their terrible secret is hidden from the world. If it should become known, they are irretrievably lost, and would be ostracized with the greatest possible disgust and repugnance, although these emotions have no basis in reason. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The distinction between those in whom homosexual practices are a vice and in whom they are a misfortune, is, it seems to me, generally very easily made. The vicious homosexualist acts the part of a male. The unfortunate, insane or congenital homosexualist acts the part of a female. The one is active, the other passive.
That the passive homosexualist is a victim of nature, an unfortunate who is generally despised and hounded, seems however not to be enough, for he is also considered legitimate prey of the underworld, who blackmail these ixunfortunates systematically. ”

“ Pædicatio. Only when I could not avoid it, either because of force or because of insistent entreaty on the part of a kind companion, pædicatio took place. I would sometimes be beaten into submission, and knives would be drawn on me by the most desperate ruffians of the slums. Anus evidenter attrahit a very small percentage of men, just as the pudenda does the normal individual. Tangebant atque dicebant, “Anus pulcher.” My intense moral horror of pædicatio experienced at the beginning of my fairie days gradually declined. ”

“ It is perhaps the most dangerous part of New York at night, but here we could be absolutely alone. Most of the district is covered with lumber yards, freight terminals, etc., and the very few persons who frequent those streets at night are likely to be ruffians and dockrats of the most vicious character.
Arrived within half a block of the Hudson River, we seated ourselves on the platform of a storehouse, and I began to kiss passionately my companion’s face, hair, and hands, and even covered his clothing with kisses. ”

“ Now and then through life when the memory of a particular one arises, it has been accompanied by regret at the thought of our eternal separation, and by the consciousness that I was offering him an eternal worship of which he could never know. From my late twenties on, I impressed it upon my ever changing companions that I offered them an eternal worship, and that down through life, when we must be forever separated, they should think of me as still offering them my adoration. ”