prevents it, as all other deterrent ideas would be overcome. Since such conditions are repugnant, as they would be to any one, I have a desire to be sexless, or to make myself sexless. If I had been single, I should long ago have taken leave of testes, scrotum, and penis.
“Of what use is female pleasure, when one does not conceive! What good comes from excitation of female love, when one has only a wife for gratification, even though copulation is felt as though it were with a man? What a terrible feeling of shame is caused by the feminine perspiration! How the feeling for dress and ornament lowers a man! Even in his changed form, even when he can no longer recall the masculine sexual feeling, he would not wish to be forced to feel like a woman. He still knows very well that, before, he did not constantly feel sexually; that he was merely a human being uninfluenced by sex. Now, suddenly, he has to regard his former individuality as a mask, and constantly feel like a woman, only having a change when, every four weeks, he has his periodical sickness, and in the intervals his insatiable female desire. If he could but awake without immediately being forced to feel like a woman! At last he longs for a moment in which he might raise his mask; but that moment does not come. He can only find amelioration of his misery when he can put on some bit of female attire or finery, an under-garment, etc.; for he dare not go about as a woman. To be compelled to fulfill all the duties of a calling with the feeling of being a woman costumed as a man, and to see no end of it, is no trifle. Religion alone saves from a great lapse; but it does not prevent the pain when temptation affects the man who feels as a woman; and so it must be felt and endured! When a respectable man who enjoys an unusual degree of public confidence, and possesses authority, must go about with his vulva—imaginary though it be; when one, leaving his arduous daily task, is compelled to examine the
toilette of the first lady he meets, and criticise her with feminine eyes, and read her thoughts in her face; when a journal of fashions possesses an interest equal to that of a scientific work (I felt this as a child); when one must conceal his condition from his wife, whose thoughts, the moment he feels like a woman, he can read in her face, while it becomes perfectly clear to her that he has changed in body and soul,—what must all this be? The misery caused by the feminine gentleness that must be overcome! Oftentimes, of course, when I am away alone, it is possible to live for a time more like a woman; for example, to wear female attire, especially at night, to keep gloves on, or to wear a veil or a mask in my room, so that thus there is rest from excessive libido. But when the feminine feeling has once gained an entrance, it imperatively demands recognition. It is often satisfied with a moderate concession, such as the wearing of a bracelet above the cuff; but it imperatively demands some concession. My only happiness is to see myself dressed as a woman without a feeling of shame; indeed, when my face is veiled or masked, I prefer it so, and thus think of myself. Like
