Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/427



Within a few years, particularly through printed "disclosures" of similisexualism, in London New York and Paris, in club-life and other social fraternities, we have seen the word "degenerate" in frequent employ. So used, it has acquired a meaning inexact for close students of similisexual problems. The American and the English newspapers especially have aided in misusing "degenerate" as a common vocable. The work of psychiatric specialists, should teach thoughtful men and women that the similisexual instincts—Uranianism, homosexualism, even feminosexualism and Uraniadism—do not necessarily mean clear physical, intellectual or moral degeneracy.

The similisexual passion is a sex-determinant,—without the stigma of sex-decadence as its necessary consequence. It is a concurrent quality in all sorts and conditions of human beings, good and bad, moral and immoral, superior or inferior, as to physiques and minds. As we have seen, Uranians and Uraniads may be (in a great proportion are) perfectly developed and normal; they often are striking examples of "model" humanity in many traits. The intersexual instinct mixes in temperaments of the more or less perfect or imperfect, of the noble or ignoble. It can appear in types richly endowed with bodily vigour and sexual force, possessed of an aggressive mental, physical and ethical superiority. Or else it can be blended with effeminacy and a shameful un-virility. It can join to