Note 47 — Part Five: Angelo—Phyllis

In the July, 1921, number of a prominent American medical journal, I saw a tirade against androgynes, whom its author declared merited no mercy, but ought to be crushed as a social menace. The invective proved merely that its physician-author clings to the sexual ethics of the Dark Ages, and at the same time belongs to the mildly virile type. That type lacks a superfluity of sexual vigor. It is inconceivable that a young man of that type should be intimate with an androgyne except for a rich reward—which has occurred when the individual androgyne was cut off from all access to the ultra-sexed, toward whom alone he gravitates. The mildly virile young man shudders violently at the very thought and is confident—a priori, as it is only a traditional phantasy—that his vita sexualis, health, and morals would be seriously undermined. I concede, however, that such might be the case with the mildly virile because possessing only a modicum of sexual vigor (perhaps, for example, merely enough for relations with his lawful wife once a fortnight or so) and because tending to be overconscientious. I concede that the mildly virile’s morals would be damaged, simply because he fancies such relations the unpardonable sin. If once in his youth overcome by the offer of a “bonanza,” he would ever afterwards regret the experience and feel deep guilt. As I myself in my youthful verdancy, he would cry out a thousand times: “‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!’” And because of his meagre sexual energy, he might possibly feel ill effects physically. But that by no means proves that the ultra-sexed would also feel them. And morally, the latter look upon the experience as entirely natural and sinless—the same as the eating of a piece of mince pie. Instead of ever regretting it, they look back with satisfaction that they had the experience.

Mildly virile writers on sex forget that there exist tens of thousands of men of far superior sexual energy. While they themselves, for example, may care for the services of their legal wife as seldom as twice a month, the tremendously virile “fellow” is not satisfied with less than an opportunity every night, and is at the same time “the husband of all women.” In my opinion, Philippics against the androgyne have their basis only in prudery and bigotry.