Ralph Werther

“ A legal marriage surely covers a multitude of sins. But I myself have such a horror of women that I could not live with one even as a sister.
I have a maiden sister, whom I could get as housekeeper, and who would take the best of care of me. But I can not receive her into my home for fear she might discover my bisexuality. I could not allow a servant to live in my flat any more than my sister. For even at the age of thirty-three, I, although half the time almost too feeble to drag myself about, do not feel like saying goodby forever to my female-impersonation sprees. They are still such fun ”

“ Nature has made it impossible for me ever to marry a woman. For I am myself really a girl whom Nature has disguised as a fellow. I only dress as a fellow because the law ignorantly requires it. Nature meant that I should go through life with a husband—not a wife, as ignorant society commands. For some years it has been my dream to take to live under the same roof, as long as God leaves me in this world, a young fellow who approaches my ideal. ”

“ Seven out of ten common soldiers appear exceedingly glad to have a prosperous young androgyne in their midst, particularly because he showers them with gifts and entertainment. Only one out of ten is such a prude as to walk away from the circle of which I have hundreds of times had the privilege of being the star. Some of these prudes would murder an androgyne but for fear of being punished.
Because of this remoteness of Fort Y, however, I had found there, during the hey-day of my career as female-impersonator, a specially hearty welcome and specially rich pickings. ”

“ Through heart-to-heart talks with hundreds of strange young bloods in New York’s Underworld I discovered that boyhood environment makes a vast difference in adult honesty and altruism. The country-bred adolescent manual-laborer is apt to be far less vile-mouthed and pugnacious, and far less likely to assault and rob one of Nature’s step-children than a young-blood product of city slums. ”

“ In order to ascertain the trustworthiness, goodheartedness, and liberalmindedness of the Hercules, I first drew him out craftily by a long series of questions. Even people in my every-day world have given me the palm for inquisitiveness. I expected to put myself in the power of Hercules and needed to find out all about him. I was always ultra-wary about falling into a trap, as I already had several times in the Underworld. Androgynes are murdered every few months in New York merely because of intense hatred of effeminacy instilled by education in the breasts of full-fledged males. ”

“ As the car carried me farther and farther from where I staged the puritan student life and nearer and nearer to where I staged the “French doll-baby” life, my overwhelming melancholia would gradually give way to a sense of gladness that in a few minutes I would find myself again on “Jennie June’s” stamping-ground. I had left at home all my masculinity (a very poor variety) . The innate feminine, strangled for a week in order that I might climb, round by round, the ladder to an honored place in the learned world, now held complete sway. ”

“ The only taint in my family is that father is somewhat womanish: falsetto voice, sissie mannerisms, and never any mind for things thoroughly masculine. He ought never to have married to perpetuate, and probably strengthen, his own mild sexual intermediacy.
As I walked the Bowery on that first spree, I was puzzling my mind as to which of the brightly lighted dance-halls or the dark and fearsome dives—through whose doors I saw pass only sailors, gutter-snipes, and slovenly gangsters—would be the best stage for my virgin effort at female-impersonation. ”

“ For they appeared demigods.
They would run a hand up my arm. “Your skin is softer than velvet. And your pencils look as if you had chewed them off with your teeth. 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. ”

“ It is August, 1895—several weeks after Buddie McDonald had left me in the lurch, as he had his legal wife, and as he probably through life went on deserting quondam soul-mates when having no more use for them. Furthermore, during this single summer that I frequented the Rialto, I found it a barren stamping-ground for myself. Nearly all my Lotharios were of the moneyed class that go out of the city for the heated term, or at least while away their evenings at a shore resort in the suburbs. For I did not drift with solid business young men, but with those who sought an easy life. ”

“ The ultra-brilliant Age of Pericles surpassed all other periods in the recognition and influence of androgynism, which promotes art and general culture. The androgyne, being a combination of man and woman in a single individual, has a wider view of life than the full-fledged man or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakespeare-Author knew both the masculine and the feminine mind better than any other writer. Such duality is the reason artistic genius crops out far more frequently among androgynes than among the sexually full-fledged. ”

“ I feel that I must give up all plans for a noble career, and that maybe I shall come to a disgraceful end!
“Oh that all instinct would die in me! It makes my life miserable. How gladly would I be free from all desire so that I could make a name for myself in the world! An extreme girl-boy can hardly become a scholar and a preacher. ”

“ Numerous wives and mothers suffer in health from the sex passion as much as I. If my having had my health wrecked by it proves it immoral for me and to be legally repressed, then the yielding to it by wedded pairs is equally immoral and to be interdicted. If it be objected that the human race is perpetuated by the latter, I answer that this consideration would only permit to married couples a sex-union when offspring was the object—that is, for a cultured couple, from one to three times throughout their married life. ”

“ 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.
Such was my chronic burden almost throughout my teens. (Subsequently, with the exception of brief spells of melancholia, I became reconciled to my fate.) ”

“ If these cowboys and miners, as well as all other men, instead of having been, from boyhood, fed on the most crime-provoking of falsehoods, namely, that homosexuals (so called, though psychicly and often in part physically belonging to the opposite sex) are monsters of depravity for whom no punishment is too severe, had been taught that these sexual cripples merit only compassion, I would myself have been spared those hours of excruciating anguish in the forest, and hundreds of youthful androgynes would not have committed suicide. ”

“ But first, why have I been the victim of blackmail? Because my strongest passion is to get into feminine finery now and then and play the coquette. I also occasionally yield to instinct in the way Nature ordained for me. But in all this I transgress not in the least against God or man. Of course I have offended against laws that are a legacy from the Dark Ages.
No man should cast a stone at me who indulges in marital joys more than once a week. For since my Pug Heaven apprenticeship, I have not myself averaged once a week. True I have changed partners about thirty times. ”

“ One evening five years ago in the Rialto I ran across two youthful artillerymen from Fort Q and spent the evening with them. Regimentals have always overpowered me. Even when I was as young as ten, when an acquaintance enlisted in the national guard, his mere donning the regimentals brought about, in my eyes, a magic transformation. If already handsome, the young fellow became supremely, unearthly enchanting. If plain and unattractive in civilian dress, he grew handsome. Blue clothing and brass buttons surely bring out whatever charm was born in a young fellow. ”

“ As to the ethical question, I myself, who from the age of nineteen to thirty-one had an intensive career as fairie—female-impersonator, can truthfully state, on arrival in my late forties, that I was not once, during that career, guilty of an irreligious or unethical act—excepting alone that I seriously impaired my own health. But it is doubtful whether the impairment was permanent. In my late forties, my physical vigor is not at a lower level compared with males of my own age than it was during my childhood. My health has always been delicate. ”

“ As soon as I became financially independent of father, I chose New York as the stage for my career because only in a great city can an instinctive female-impersonator give his overwhelming yearnings free rein incognito and thus keep the respect of his every-day circle. ”

“ The Eternal foresaw that it was to the best interests both of the human race and of myself that I should leave to others the coveted work of preaching the Gospel to the heathen and spend my physical prime in New York’s Underworld as an avocational female-impersonator. That was the cross that God willed that I should bear. The role of female-impersonator is the niche in the universe that its Architect had created me to fill. ”

“ My pals did not marvel at all over my strange appetencies. They entreated me to bring around other female-impersonators. They were merely anxious for the money it would bring them. When I apologized for my queer penchant, they said: “It is nothing. It is Nature.” Ralph, those adolescent Pug Heaven sluggers knew more about the psychology of instinctive female-impersonators than all the M. D.’s in America combined! From that single hour’s conversation, I ascertained more about my own personality than in my prior fourteen years pilgrimage on this planet. ”

“ Where has androgynism been more prevalent than formerly among the American aborigines? Probably because the tribes were constantly underfed. Whenever a male arrived at puberty, the weapons of the warrior and the cooking vessels of the squaw were ceremoniously placed before him that he might choose his future social status. A not inconsiderable number of adolescents (because congenital androgynes) always chose the culinary utensils and passed the rest of their lives as squaws, the hair of the beard being plucked out as fast as it showed itself, and the costume being that of the female sex. ”

“ And how crazy I was to insinuate myself with the adolescent gunmen, whom I had only read about! The very supposition of their presence just within that latticed door attracted me as a potent magnet snatches steel filings to itself. I passed and repassed the dive, continuously imagining what would transpire if I should penetrate this unholy of unholies, and having delectable visions of every species of flirtation with the demigods who made the saloon their rendezvous. ”

“ Since ultra-androgynes are, in a sense, instances of dual personality—a male soul and a female soul inhabiting the same brain and body—it is natural for them to live a double life.
Moreover, as the “classy,” hypocritical, and bigoted Overworld considers a bisexual as monster and outcast, I was driven to a career in the democratic, frank, and liberal-minded Underworld. While my male soul was a leader in scholarship at the university uptown, my female soul, one evening a week, flaunted itself as a French doll-baby in the shadowy haunts of night life downtown. ”

“ 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. Simultaneously with my satisfying my frivolous and coquettish instincts of French doll-baby, I also met the demands of my male intellectual spirit by doing brain work of a high order. ”

“ Mildly virile writers on sex forget that there exist tens of thousands of men of far superior sexual energy. While they themselves, for example, may care for the services of their legal wife as seldom as twice a month, the tremendously virile “fellow” is not satisfied with less than an opportunity every night, and is at the same time “the husband of all women.” In my opinion, Philippics against the androgyne have their basis only in prudery and bigotry. ”

“ An Underworld exists in all cities of any size because human nature is what it is, and because of the social usages decreed by the blind Overworld, which happens to include the vast majority of mankind. Man is descended from the beasts, and still retains many of their instincts—particularly true of the atypic or atavic who throng the red-light districts.
As the Medical World said of my Autobiography of an Androgyne, the present work also “will be found a revelation of things undreamed of by most people. It is a contribution to the almost unexplored field of abnormal psychology.” ”