Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/163

Rh of our best adolescents in beating up and torturing androgynes because the latter are outlaws. Almost exclusively, those addicted by birth to these relations—regarded by the normal males as highly unaesthetic—and largely irresponsible for their conduct, can alone occasion these so-called " crimes." What is the use then of laws against practices really harmless to society and to the adolescent—while perhaps harmful to the invert to the same degree that marital relations are harmful to a wife and mother—and occasioned alone by those who are driven by an innate impulse, often uncontrollable? The law does not imprison deaf-mutes for being born with abnormal inner ears, and why should it imprison members of this other congenitally defective class? The invert asks only for the same standing before the law accorded all other men. But as law and custom always make special exemptions for the congenitally defective, perhaps it would be right to show special mercy to the invert.

One evening at the close of about eighteen months of my avocation as a Fourteenth Street " street-walker," I was promenading up and down. Now and then some habitue of the district would recognize me, stop, and flirt for a few minutes. Finally I encountered a party of six adolescents. Four had never met me previously, yet all talked in a most free and unrestrained, as well as indecent manner. After a while, one proposed that I accompany him to his room.

"I am afraid those other fellows will follow us and hurt me."