Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/75

Rh I was a born religious and philanthropic worker. On the other hand, no girl was ever more clearly cut out for the life of a fille de joie than was I.

The genitals became pubescent as early as the completion of my fifteenth year. Is this not unusually early for a male, but the proper age for a female? Whether or no as a partial effect of this beginning of pseudo-puberty, I simultaneously developed into a religious prodigy, leading the congregation in church in extempore prayer at this early age, and spending a full two hours daily in private religious exercises for the next two years. At this time I definitely chose the Christian ministry in a heathen land as my field of labor when I had finished my education. This greatly increased interest in religion fortunately put a stop to my morbid reveries. I now looked upon my yearning for fellatio as my "besetting sin," and until the age of nineteen fought against it as few others have struggled to be freed from lustful desires. A popular medical writer has described the girl-boy as "congenitally depraved," and "secretly vicious." I would refute this and other slanderers of the girl-boy, cursed by Nature and cursed by his fellow man. Lofty ethical ideals, including self-abnegation, are as common among youthful inverts as among those normally sexed.

From my fourteenth to my seventeenth year, I passed a rather sad and lonely life. I was ashamed longer to mingle with girls as one of them, and still shrunk from companionship with boys. My recreation consisted of long solitary walks through the country during which I brooded over the real and imagined ills of life. Being