ship. Men are so biassed on the subject of sex that I can not let my friends read the secrets of my life until I reach an independent old age when they can not make me suffer much on account of my androgynism.
In college, I was compelled to exercise in the "gym." I hid my form. It was a terrible ordeal to have to strip before the physical director, who remarked: "Your figure is feminine." Apparently he did not suspect the sexuality that was bound up with that figure. If military drill had been required—as in 1917—I would have quit the university.[1]
Since nineteen my yearning for skirts has been in part met by habitually wearing about my home an ornamental dressing-gown. Thus clad, I have often gazed in a mirror, imagining myself a complete female. I have taken pleasure in hearing the gown rustle, like a silk dress; in feeling it strike against my legs; and in holding up the front in ascending the stairs.
The Fairie Boy was my nickname from nineteen to thirty-one outside my every-day circle. And outside I was far more widely known. Inside I had the reputation of being an insignificant, puritan, unpractical bookworm and Mollie Coddle who knew nothing of life and human nature. Outside I achieved wide notoriety as an amateur actor—or, properly speaking, actress.
- ↑ Some androgynes of a less extreme type, however, tolerate militaries. I know of two who served in the World War—because they wanted, every day and hour, to be surrounded by adored young Mars. But if they ever got to the front, they would probably malinger. I know of another androgyne who was so afraid of being drafted that he took a hatchet and chopped off two fingers of his right hand. In the World War, I was subject to draft under the latest law. I had planned to escape by claiming that I was not a man, the law specifying that sex alone as liable.
