Androcentrism

“ Her share of the processes which sex distinction serves is by far the greater. To be feminine—if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and dignified office than to be masculine—and nothing else.
But as a matter of humanity the male of our species is at present far ahead of the female. By this superior humanness, his knowledge, his skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and manages the world. All this is human, not male. All this is as open to the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during our androcentric culture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only bigoted pseudo-scientists have pronounced androgynes degenerates. Only mediæval medicine, not modern medicine. Androgynism is merely an instance of arrested development; or possibly of atavism—an attempt on the part of Nature to return to the original hermaphrodism of man's early antecedents. The androgyne who follows the dictates of Nature is not a whit more degenerate morally than the fullfledged man who marries. It is only the fallible mores which make the full-fledged think that a person with apparently male pudenda who impersonates a female is infinitely below themselves morally. ”

“ Why does Nature make approximately one out of every 300 physical males an androgyne or passive invert? The practice of the ancient Romans, as well as my own experience and that of other androgynes whom I have known, suggests the answer. All patrician fathers of ancient Rome provided androgyne slaves as concubines of their adolescent sons. Marriage with a woman put an absolute end to these relations. In the case of myself and my androgyne acquaintances, practically no man beyond the age of 26 ever sought or permitted relations. ”

“ All my androgyne associates whom I shall portray in this book belong to this class, because with a few exceptions they alone are Female-Impersonators. In my Riddle of the Underworld I describe some mild androgynes.
There exists vast diversity in the anatomy and psyche of androgynes—just as, from the standpoint of size and shape of the genitalia and sexual tastes, any two full-fledged males or any two full-fledged females differ more or less. In one androgyne, the only conspicuous external feminine stigma may be absence of beardal growth ”

“ It is inconceivable that a young man of that type should be intimate with an androgyne except for a rich reward—which has occurred when the individual androgyne was cut off from all access to the ultra-sexed, toward whom alone he gravitates The mildly virile young man shudders violently at the very thought and is confident—a priori, as it is only a traditional phantasy—that his vita sexualis, health, and morals would be seriously under-mined. ”

“ The chief charge against androgynes is that they are guilty of “the awful crime of race suicide.” But it is the fault of Nature alone that the ultra-androgyne is incapable of doing his part in the perpetuation of the race.
The cultured androgyne, knowing his irresistible instincts are harmless to his soul-mate, is unable to discern in them any transgression against ethics or against God.
But a very small proportion of adult androgynes have been guilty of a lamentable transgression because finding themselves in a tight place: that is, recourse to boys under puberty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 believe conditions are about the same to-day in all civilizations above the barbarous, although in Christian nations one has not been permitted to publish the facts. They are really not horrible, nor portentous of ruin for society; merely imagined to be so. They are not really conducive to the detriment of society, and have existed practically as now throughout history. It is all because Nature has created the phenomenon of androgynism, really beneficent to society, but sorely misjudged by writers grossly ignorant of the phenomenon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not necessary to crush androgynes in order to guard against the spread of effeminacy. Effeminacy, in the sense of androgynism, does not spread by example. It is entirely congenital. Only a physical male born with quasi-feminine predilections would adopt the role of a female after becoming adult. An androgyne's predilections and practices are regarded with such repugnance by all full-fledged males that none would stoop to them unless constrained by instinct. ”

“ Androgynes are clearly of two types, each of which, the author estimates, constitutes in the United States about one out of every three hundred humans possessing the male primary determinants: [7] (a) The mildly androgynous, of whom Oscar Wilde is the best known of contemporaries; and (b) the ultra-androgynous, of whom the present writer is the most widely known of his generation.
(a) The anatomy of the mildly androgynous is not conspicuously feminine. Only a few feminine traits appear in the psyche. ”

“ My own case indicates that Nature creates androgynes and gynanders as a brake on too rapid multiplication. Both paternal and maternal stock have averaged eight children to a marriage. It seems that Nature wishes to preserve to as many of her children as possible the joys of courtship. Often, instead of making cold anaphrodites or female icebergs out of the men and women not needed to perpetuate the race, she brings into the world androgynes or gynanders—as a rule, sterile. ”

“ The problem of the bisexual girl-boy or androgyne has been presented for the learned professions in my Autobiography of an Androgyne and The Riddle of the Underworld. But to accomplish my three aims, it is necessary that the general reader have instilled into his mind that sexual intermediates are not to blame for their cross-sex idiosyncrasies. Such knowledge could not besmirch the soul of the general reader, but only benefit him morally. ”

“ But on account of the tyranny of the full-fledged, these erring androgynes merit mercy. Their offences have probably not been at all harmful to the immature. They are merely asserted to be so by men unable to accept any scientific results except those inculcated by mediaeval savants. But this one offence of androgynes will be a thing of the past when they are permitted recourse to books which explain the riddle of their lives, and when full-fledged men read such books in order that they may do justice to Nature's step-children. ”

“ The two classes of androgynes do not mix well. Just as the full-fledged man is averse to attendance at a ladies' sewing-circle. Particularly the mildly androgynous fear suspicion of their secret if they associated with ultra-androgynes. Coteries of ultra-androgynes naturally form. Knowing their own nature, they readily recognize one another, although down to 1921 at least, the sexually full-fledged have usually been blind to the androgynism of daily associates, because never permitted to learn of their existence. ”

“ One presumed male out of every three hundred belongs to the third sex, strictly speaking. That is, the ultra-androgynes—the pseudo-men who possess only undersized and non-functional male pudenda, whose body otherwise tends toward feminesqueness, and whose psyche, predilections, tastes, gestures, and postures remind one of a female. ”

“ Of all crippling hindrances in false ideas, we have none more universally mischievous than this root error about men and women. Given the old androcentric theory, and we have an androcentric culture—the kind we so far know; this short stretch we call "history;" with its proud and pitiful record. We have done wonders of upward growth—for growth is the main law, and may not be wholly resisted. But we have hindered, perverted, temporarily checked that growth, age after age ”

“ 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. ”

“ The remedy lies in the dissemination of just and correct views of inversion, the removal of the deepseated but ill founded prejudice against individuals thus marked by Nature which is regnant in all classes of society, and the repeal of the unjustified laws against inverts, which more than anything else account for the unthinking man's persecution of these stepchildren of Nature. Then like the red-man androgyne, his cultured counterpart can, without losing his economic and social position, choose a mate from among his every-day circle. ”

“ What Mr Ward terms the androcentric theory, at least as regards man and the higher vertebrates, which is on the face of it supported by the facts of human experience and has been accepted well-nigh unanimously up to quite recent times, is, according to him, all wrong. The male element in the universe of living things is not the element of primary importance, and the female element the secondary, but the converse is the case. ”

“ Androgynes are the eddies along the banks of the masculine river. Their movement is retrograde. They are instances of arrest of development. In the early fœtus sex is not apparent. Only later does differentiation begin. In more than ninety-nine out of a hundred humans, it is completed at puberty. But the individual androgyne or gynander remains, down to death, to a greater or less degree bisexual. Just as a mule is part horse and part donkey, so an androgyne or gynander is part man and part woman. To quote from Krafft Ebing: "They [androgynes] are neither man nor woman: a mixture of both ”

“ This arrest has for its result an adult homo more or less bisexual—a sexual intermediate, whose existence the bigotry of the leaders of thought has hitherto prevented their recognizing.
At the university, the student is taught all about the anatomy of the frog, but the prevalent view among the leaders of thought that everything connected with sex is taboo has prevented even the professors of physiology from investigating androgynism, which touches the social body so intimately. They have turned their backs because "the subject leaves a bad taste in the mouth!" ”

“ The cultured androgyne is a desirable citizen and a desirable member of any circle. While ultra-androgynism makes its victims physically weak—like a woman—it has no deteriorating effect morally or mentally. The usual charge of gross immorality is merely a relic of mediaeval bigotry. It matters not, however, that androgynes are absolutely innocuous practically and ethically. ”

“ In no one particular is the androcentric character of our common thought more clearly shown than in the general deification of what are now described as "conflict stimuli." That which is true of the male creature as such is assumed to be true of life in general ”

“ As already stated, androgynism is a mere matter of arrested development, due to imperfect internal testicular secretion, in the natural sex differentiation that begins in the early fœtus and ends at puberty. ”

“ I append them here because tending to show that the sparser the population of a district, the greater the repugnance of civilized young roues to androgynism and the rarer is the latter phenomenon per thousand males. In other words: My conclusion from extensive travel and intimate mingling, as an ultra-androgyne, with native adolescent roues in every corner of the United States and Europe is that among civilized nations, the frequency of male bisexuals per thousand inhabitants and their tolerance by the full-fledged are in general in direct proportion to the density of population. ”