Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/103

 to put before the average reader in a clarity positive enough, if he be hostile to any such topic. Perhaps the clearest descriptions come when we tell the reader to take any and every phase of admiration, of attraction and sexual love, which a normal, amorous man feels for a woman, and to translate that into the uranistic passion; into sexual love for a man or youth, on the part of a man. There is the same impressionability to the outward beauty. There is the same sense of swimming in a sea of it daily, of letting it play on the eyes, the ideals, the sexual nerves. There is the same falling in love "at sight", vehemently or lightly, worthily or unworthily; the same loving in constancy or in inconstancy. There are the same ripenings of calm interest and vague friendship into vivid passion and physical desire. There are the same struggles, hopes, fears, self-sacrifices, workings for good or ill on the nature of the lover; the same joys, jealousies, despairs; and too often (as we shall see) the same tragedies of slow or of fiercely swift culmination. All, all, are to be "translated" from their normal relations in distinctly masculine natures, into the sexually feminine instincts and experiences of the male-loving Uranian heart.

But, alas! between conditions kindly or adverse that meet the normal man in love, and which the Uranian encounters, exists one terribly significant difference; tyrannic during modern eras of faiths, morals and laws. It may be called the curse upon the Uranian. For, the 'normal' man can speak without shame of his passion to the woman who inspires it. Even if she reject it, she is not insulted by it, if it be worthy; spiritual enough and sincere in her eyes. The woman-lover can demand the sympathy of his confidential friend, he can receive such sympathy if he will. He can be the object of sympathy to even the outside world; for his secret can be guessed by it without disgrace on any ground of