Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/248

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220

Prudery and Bigotry Now Regnant.

him the trick of Potiphar's wife on Joseph. Twice — he 'fessed up with face as red as a beet—he did not show Joseph's strength of character. And I did not think the less of him.

And you, Ralphie, of course know that I would never be guilty of anything that could bring the least harm to this adored innocent. His health of body and mind will not be damaged a particle. I shall give him the best educational and cultural advantages. As I have said, he will some day marry the girl of his choice, and I shall live with the pair as a parent. He and his children will be my heirs.

Is such an outlook for a poverty-stricken young fellow just cause for Pharisees holding up their hands in holy horror?^[1] The sexually full-fledged cannot get

↑ In the July, 1921, number of a prominent American medical journal, I saw a tirade against androgynes, whom its author declared merited no mercy, but ought to be crushed as a social menace. The invective proved merely that its physician-author clings to the sexual ethics of the Dark Ages, and at the same time belongs to the mildly virile type. That type lacks a superfluity of sexual vigor. 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. I concede, however, that such might be the case with the mildly virile because possessing only a modicum of sexual vigor (perhaps, for example, merely enough for relations with his lawful wife once a fortnight or so) and because tending to be overconscientious. I concede that the mildly virile's morals would be damaged, simply because he fancies such relations the npardonable sin. If once in his youth overcome by the offer of a "bonanza," he would ever afterwards regret the experience and feel deep guilt. As I myself in my youthful verdancy, he would cry out a thousand times: " 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!' " And because of his meagre sexual energy, he might possibly feel ill

[p220-1] In the July, 1921, number of a prominent American medical journal, I saw a tirade against androgynes, whom its author declared merited no mercy, but ought to be crushed as a social menace. The invective proved merely that its physician-author clings to the sexual ethics of the Dark Ages, and at the same time belongs to the mildly virile type. That type lacks a superfluity of sexual vigor. 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. I concede, however, that such might be the case with the mildly virile because possessing only a modicum of sexual vigor (perhaps, for example, merely enough for relations with his lawful wife once a fortnight or so) and because tending to be overconscientious. I concede that the mildly virile's morals would be damaged, simply because he fancies such relations the npardonable sin. If once in his youth overcome by the offer of a "bonanza," he would ever afterwards regret the experience and feel deep guilt. As I myself in my youthful verdancy, he would cry out a thousand times: " 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!' " And because of his meagre sexual energy, he might possibly feel ill

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