Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/70

50 scientific knowledge of themselves. Until thirty years ago, American and British public opinion would not tolerate the publication of the facts about androgynism even for circulation among the medical profession. Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion, the earliest published book in the English language on androgynism, was promptly suppressed by the British government thirty years ago. I myself had to bend the knee for eighteen years to medical publishers before my was fed into the printing-press in 1918.

Thus, because full-fledged men have interdicted to cultured androgynes the means of understanding themselves and knowledge of how they ought to pass their lives, some—particularly those who have achieved places of honor, because androgynes of lower rank do not need to be so crafty in hiding their terrible secret from the heartless world—have ultimately been revealed guilty of recourse to the immature (because they could not screw up their courage to disclose their abnormality to an older and wiser male). But on account of the tyranny of the full-fledged, these erring androgynes merit mercy. Their offences have probably not been at all harmful to the immature. They are merely asserted to be so by men unable to accept any scientific results except those inculcated by mediaeval savants. But this one offence of androgynes will be a thing of the past when they are permitted recourse to books which explain the riddle of their lives, and when full-fledged men read such books in order that they may do justice to Nature's step-children.

As already stated, ultra-androgynes, having a