Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/262

 her habits, and with little or no amorous bias through her career; and the really similisexual woman the Uraniad. Types of female sovereigns showing, minds and dispositions male rather than female, are presented familiarly to us in Elizabeth of England, in Catherine de' Medici, in Christina of Sweden, and so on. But many are indistinctly uraniad, if at all so. Elizabeth of England was certainly a normal woman in the unchaste private life of a nominally "Virgin Queen"—about whom there mdst be talked "no scandal". Catherine of Russia is said to have become uraniadistic as she grew old. In the royal house of Wittelsbach there has been a strain of female contra-sexualism, along with the excessive heterosexuality and uranianism of the males. Three princesses, two of them becoming sovereigns, are recent illustrations; in each case with tragic circumstances in their histories and one of them ended recently in an abominable assassination that shocked the civilized world.

Many presumptive examples of the intersexual female, the virile uraniad, occur with the veritable woman-at-arms; queen or peasant. In her mannish temperament are to be added the unfeminine traits of physical and moral courage, and her masculine muscularity. The woman-warrior has been a picturesque interloper in camp and battlefield, ever since wars were waged. The old legends of the Amazon race and of the Centaurs are deviations from realities, the woman who much preferred to wield a spear rather than bear a child, and the man who so dominated his horse that he seemed a part of it.

Classic types of amazonians are plentiful. Among early ones we have the Biblical Deborah, seeress, judge and captain over Israel—all at once. We have Bonduca, Boadicea, Tomyris, Zenobia, Jeanne Dare, Margaret of England, the terrible women-warriors of the houses of