Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/43

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
General Physical Traits.
13

manner of girls. In snowball fights, in which the girls packed the snowballs behind the barrier and the boys exposed themselves in throwing, I instinctively took my place with the girls, the eternal lack of fitness never dawning upon me.

I might mention here some further characteristics which are not peculiarly feminine. I am below the average stature for a man, and unusually light for my volume, weighing only 110 pounds stripped from the age of nineteen to twenty-five, after I had attained my maximum height of five feet five inches. My back is much arched. Penis is below the average size, but entirely normal. Testicles were pronounced of normal appearance by the surgeon who castrated me at the age of twenty-eight.

I am of the brunette type. At the age of eighteen, the growth of hair on my body and limbs became more luxuriant than on the average male, but after the first shaving off of all this hair in my early fairie-days, I continued to be far less hairy than the average man even after I ceased the practice of body-shaving.

My lips are a deep red, and my complexion gives the appearance of good health. My eyes are bistre-brown. I have been told that I look like a woman around the eyes, and when youthful have been complimented on their beauty, and my general appearance pronounced not unprepossessing. I have been pursued by women, and have received three proposals of marriage. In general the women who have seemed to be attracted toward me have been a few years older than myself. Havelock Ellis has said ("Sexual Inversion," page 140) that "women seem