Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/193

Rh of the influences toward sexual expression during childhood. My own adult career had its prototype in my intense fairie-ism from two until seven. Sexual impressions of early childhood have often a powerful influence down through middle life. In large measure they determine the course to be taken by the adult sexual life. .

Androgynes, during childhood, are particularly prone to fall into bad habits (fellatio; or pathicism in prædicatio) because always confined with their sexual opposites. What would one expect of the chastity of a high-strung girl of twelve marooned for a summer on an island with merely a dozen ultra-virile youths? That is the identical situation of youthful androgynes.

As a rule, when an androgyne reaches the middle thirties, the instinct to dress and pose as a mademoiselle gradually becomes feeble. Age sobers many and they become practically asexual. I have observed the same thing in ultra-virile men during my twelve years career as their mignon. Their craze for the opposite sex is strongest from twenty to twenty-five (just at the time when Christian custom interdicts the propensity) after which it gradually declines. It is the same with animals. Poulterers cut off the heads of all but "adolescent" roosters. I have myself been a Guinea pig fancier. I discovered that the males gradually lose their virility at middle age.

Indeed I have observed that as androgynes approach fifty, they sometimes become more masculine than they ever were, and will even marry. It seems that in rare cases mild virility supplants sexual