Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/62

42. But to-day these statutes serve chiefly as ground for extensive blackmail of Nature's step-children, hardly one of whom, if belonging to the middle or upper class, but has had to pay out considerable sums, occasionally running into the thousands.

Instead of imprisonment, public opinion has generally substituted banishment of the disclosed androgyne forever from all he loves.

During the few months of composing this book, the New York papers have told of the abrupt flight to parts unknown of three intellectual leaders in their communities, two just over the city line and the third within a hundred miles. They had to flee, not because they had done the least real harm (all three were pastors of churches) but because of the mediæval ignorance and bitter hatred that their communities immediately manifested toward a "man" (reputedly) all of a sudden disclosed to be a "monster" (though in reality a harmless and pitiable sexual cripple). The populace, ignorant that he had probably practiced a thousand times more self-denial than any one of themselves, but had at last been able to withstand Nature's demands no longer, chased him out of his community for good and all with the feeling that he was the lowest scoundrel that ever contaminated it.

I admit that these unfortunates did show bad judgment in remaining in the ministry when they knew they were afflicted with a powerful instinct abhorred by the sexually full-fledged, and they showed the worst kind of judgment in having recourse to boys under puberty. But they were in a tight place, and besides felt that they were doing no one any harm. For the androgyne generally comes at last to the view that