Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/71

Rh woman's psyche, are goody-goodies. Indeed goody-goodiness may be regarded as their most marked characteristic. For this reason, in France, they are called "little Jesuses" (petite jesus) notwithstanding that the more extreme are public female-impersonators in resorts of ill repute. Ultra-androgynes are incapable of doing any real harm. If all the human race were as harmless, this world would be a far better place in which to live.

The cultured androgyne is a desirable citizen and a desirable member of any circle. While ultra-androgynism makes its victims physically weak—like a woman—it has no deteriorating effect morally or mentally. The usual charge of gross immorality is merely a relic of mediaeval bigotry. It matters not, however, that androgynes are absolutely innocuous practically and ethically. Do they not offend the æsthetic sense of the majority of mankind? What better cause for grinding them under one's heel?

And this bitter persecution that has been the lot of some androgynes has rendered them misanthropes. Not their androgynism per se. A mildly androgynous acquaintance—an intellectual giant of the highest moral character except for his irresponsible and innocuous passive pederasty—is, as a result of society's shutting him up in prison for the five years of his intellectual prime, a chronic and bitter reviler of the Church. Because zealous churchmen were responsible for the wrecking of his life through their misunderstanding of the biblical teaching on homosexuality.

But in general we androgynes, possessing the long-suffering feminine psyche, are resigned to being