Autobiography of an Androgyne

“I trust that the publication of my life story will contribute to a correct estimate of androgvnism on the part of scientists, the molders of public opinion, and the lawmakers, and to a more kindly treatment by society of those born with this curse. It is only expressing half the truth to say that they are more to be pitied than scorned. They are wholly to be pitied.””

— Ralph Werther

“An androgyne, even when living out his nature, can attain the same ethical and religious heights as any other individual.””

— Ralph Werther

“I am a woman entombed in the body of a man.””

— Ralph Werther

“What have I ever done that God should make me suffer so? I feel that my abnormality bars me out of the ministry, the profession of my choice, and most likely out of all other professions. I feel that this passion is going to wreck my life, and never permit me to make any return to my parents for all they have done for me. I have no hope for the future. In the convention, while I would be singing, I was in thought hacking my body to pieces with a sword, or piercing my breast with a dagger. My continuous prayer was :‘ Father, Father, hear my humble cry.While on others thou art smiling,Do not pass me by !””

— Ralph Werther

“Did society ever compel any other woman, except those like me, to live, eat, sleep, frequent the same comfort-rooms and baths, lie sometimes in the same bed, with men, and sometimes to listen to the unclean talk of men?””

— Ralph Werther

“I have been doomed to be a girl who must pass her earthly existence in a male body. How dreadful it is to a young woman to have a slight growth of hair on lip or cheeks ! Only one mark of the male ! How much more dreadful for a young woman to possess almost all the male anatomy as I do ! How I have bewailed my fate!””

— Ralph Werther

“Practically it is all right, but medico-legally it is wrong, to make the genitals the universal criterion in the determination of sex. Medico-legally, sex should be determined by the psychical constitution rather than by the physical form. There are thousands of physical females who feel themselves to be men and have the mental traits of men, and there are thousands of physical males who feel themselves to be women and have the mental traits of a woman. Should any blame be attached to such individuals when they conduct themselves according to their psychical sex?””

— Ralph Werther

“How can one explain why a six-year-old boy (the author) should class himself as a girl, give himself a girl’s name, fight against his parents’ course of bringing him up as a boy, and grieve because he could not be brought up as a girl, except on the assumption that the cells of his brain were identical with the cells of a girl’s brain and fundamentally different from those of a normal boy?””

— Ralph Werther

“Inscribed to Nature’s Step-Children”

— Ralph Werther