The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and WomenCarpenter, Edward
General
The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
Carpenter, Edward
Homosexuality; Sex
Before the facts of Nature we have to preserve a certain humility and
reverence; nor rush in with our preconceived and obstinate assumptions.
Though these gradations of human type have always, and among all peoples,
been more or less known and recognised, yet their frequency to-day, or
even the concentration of attention on them, may be the indication of
some important change actually in progress. We do _not_ know, in fact,
what possible evolutions are to come, or what new forms, of permanent
place and value, are being already slowly differentiated from the
surrounding mass of humanity. It may be that, as at some past period of
evolution the worker-bee was without doubt differentiated from the two
ordinary bee-sexes, so at the present time certain new types of human
kind may be emerging, which will have an important part to play in the
societies of the future--even though for the moment their appearance is
attended by a good deal of confusion and misapprehension. It may be so;
or it may not. We do not know; and the best attitude we can adopt is one
of sincere and dispassionate observation of facts.
Of course wherever this subject touches on the domain of love we may
expect difficult queries to arise. Yet it is here probably that the
noblest work of the intermediate sex or sexes will be accomplished,
as well as the greatest errors committed. It seems almost a law of
Nature that new and important movements should be misunderstood and
vilified--even though afterwards they may be widely approved or admitted
to honour. Such movements are always envisaged first from whatever aspect
they may possibly present, of ludicrous or contemptible. The early
Christians, in the eyes of Romans, were chiefly known as the perpetrators
of obscure rites and crimes in the darkness of the catacombs. Modern
Socialism was for a long time supposed to be an affair of daggers and
dynamite; and even now there are thousands of good people ignorant enough
to believe that it simply means “divide up all round, and each take his
threepenny bit.” Vegetarians were supposed to be a feeble and brainless
set of cabbage-eaters. The Women’s movement, so vast in its scope and
importance, was nothing but an absurd attempt to make women “the apes
of men.” And so on without end; the accusation in each case being some
tag or last fag-end of fact, caught up by ignorance, and coloured by
prejudice. So commonplace is it to misunderstand, so easy to misrepresent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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