# The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life/Chapter II

CHAPTER II.
Male and Female Human Nature as Theory and as Reality: The Theory of Intersexes.
The Male Sex as Consistent, or as Unsymetrical.
The Ideal "Average" Man.
Similarly, let the reader frame for himself a merely physical masculinity; virile enough, but not at all ideal. We will not busy ourselves with a male type that externally would suit the frieze of the Parthenon, or storm through the pages of Northern Sagas and Malory. Roughly made up, let us picture only a strong frame, that is to say, strong in comparison with a woman's frailer physique; with symmetry of outline, due proportion between head and body and limbs, ordinary aspects of a muscular development capable of endurance; and so on through the details of skin-texture, growth of hair and beard, quality of voice, gait, freedom of movement. All of these are traits that we take for granted as existing in a liberal preponderance among the members of a regiment, a club, or even a house-party, not to speak of the younger or older contingent at a cricket-match or in the crowd of a bank-holiday.
Reverting to the Actual Male Type.
Historic Mascul- inity Examined as to Psychology.
We begin to wonder, after we have thus reflected, exactly what is the proportion of really manly, masculine, symmetrical men in the world; if there ever has been so large a proportion of them as we have taken for ​granted. Does Nature so often stand up and say of her normal, usual male product, "This is a man!?" The achieved male, whether as to his bodily structure, or his mental and moral and temperamental equipment appears suddenly to grow vague. Yet we have not been searching for ideals, for extraordinary assemblages of distinctive male qualities. We are only trying to find a well-rounded consistency, measured by accepted tests the world over.
A Distinctively Effeminate Male Type Is Not in Question.
Of the Average Female Ideal and Divergencies from It.
Some Instances of the Type of Masculinity in Woman.
The Emotional Inconsistencies in Men.
A Principle in Nature.
Nature's Endless Unity.
The Human Spe- cies as Theoretic Extremes.
The Natural Intersexes.
Certain Consequences of Admitting this Intersexual Theory.
Sex is Never to be Determined by the Physique.
Sex Determined by Sexual Instinct.
What are the Intersexes?
These two Intersexes named here as the Uranian and the Uraniad, the one partaking most of the outwardly and inwardly masculine yet not fully a man, the other leaning toward the typic feminine yet not fully woman, are each indisputably a blend of the two extreme sexes. Each is more or less indisputably entitled to recognition as to its individual rights; each exists now as ever in a most important proportion to the rest of mankind. These ​Intersexes are constantly working-out about us, with or without social recognition and sanction, their own sexual instincts. Too often such types are not only unknown to their fellow-men for what they are, but also too often not known to—themselves. Especially do we find them the victims of sexual repression, seekers after a sexual expression that they cannot obtain without disgraces, dangers, and crimes. Not less especially are they petitioners for at least a tentative, a cautious consideration and tolerance, social and legal; fugitives from miseries and injustices which an unreasoning and ill-informed world, with its tendency to generalize, has far too little suspected. It is true that they present inevitably and often painfully, whether taken as individuals or as classes, many traits, claims, theories, impulses, practices, deviations from the more or less normally human, which cannot be tolerated in ethics and social life by even philosophic justice however dispassionate. They have sex-idioms that repel and terrify us, no matter how elastic is our human sympathy. But admitting all which will deepen around them this undeniable shadow, the fact remains that a great proportion of Intersexual lives are led and probably for a long time to come must be led, under a sexual, social and moral ban that blots our human civilization. Day by day is continued about us, no matter with what outward serenity a chronicle of underserved martyrdom that can be dramatic beyond any description in its emotional currents; demanding relief by a psychiatric enlightenment not yet more than begun.