Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/124

98 throughout. I, however, always gave them first place in my life. But I here confine myself to what I experienced and learned while impersonating a French doll-baby because it constitutes something novel to most readers.

Indeed, , and portray the social life and diversions of the most cultured New York coterie of  during the last decade of the nineteenth century. For, while little has yet been published about instinctive female-impersonators because of the prudery of the sexually full-fledged, they form (necessarily sub rosa) quite a large class of society—about one out of every three hundred physical males. During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Fourteenth Street Rialto was their chief stamping-ground in the New York metropolitan district. I became acquainted with them because during the decade indicated, I was myself in my prime as a female-impersonator in two out of the three principal bright-light quarters of the metropolitan district.

[There exists also, the gynanders. But experience has not qualified me to describe them in detail. That task awaits some brave, high-minded, and brilliant physical female. See, however, chapter on in my .]

The Overworld has enjoined complete silence about female-impersonators because of their thoroughly false view that any adolescent adopting the role must do so from moral depravity. They argue: "If I myself adopted the role, it could only be through unspeakable depravity. Ergo, the same is true for every male." They overlook the fact that Nature did not