Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/272

244 present because prohibited by public opinion from learning the truth—that it is a wilful bad habit. When Z had rigged himself in feminine garb (because the female side of his duality demanded it), one or more of the young men from one of the anchored yachts—according to my theory—had tied ropes around him, even around his neck, the latter merely in order to frighten him and prevent his calling for help. The newspapers stated that only a "seaman" could display such skill in tying ropes, and these yachtsmen were amateur seamen. They then, late in the afternoon, after they had had their "fun" with the pitiable androgyne, went ashore, having no thought that the rope around the throat would tighten sufficiently to strangle Z. They designed merely to punish him for his androgynism (1) through his being compelled to lie helpless on the cabin floor for several hours, with a rope tight around his neck to prevent him calling for help, and, (2) more than that, through humilating him before his family, who finally, anxious over his not returning home, would visit the yacht and discover him in his most ignominious garb and predicament.

[But Z, in his writhings to free himself from his bonds, unfortunately tightened the rope about his neck and was fatally strangled, the young men having departed and no one being at hand to succor him in his death agony. Z was only one more of the many martyrs to the public's prohibition of the showing up of the myth that bisexuals are monsters of depravity, deserving the crudest forms of torture and even murder. Those guilty of Z's death—under the theory now being propounded—were fundamentally