One hundred years ago, queer author and activist Earl Lind (also known as Ralph Werther and Jennie June), published Autobiography of an Androgyne. This seminal work provided an exceptional, first-person account of queer self-conception in the early twentieth century.
Earl Lind/Ralph Werther/Jennie June
In his autobiography, Lind called for social and legal reforms – interchangeably using terms such as androgyne, bisexual (to refer to someone who is of two sexes, male and female), and female impersonator to describe what would now be distinctly referred to as homosexuality, transgenderism, and intersexuality. During this time, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex were often taken to be a composite experience.
Lind was suicidal from a young age – an experience that mirrors the mental health issues that queer youth suffer today. He had himself castrated in his late twenties both because he was ashamed of his desires and worried about their negative impact on his health –
"Unutterably downcast at being the victim of an obsession [to perform oral sex on men] which led me to commit what are commonly regarded as revolting crimes ... removing the exhausting effects of [seminal] emissions, gave me a new lease on life."
Up to the interwar period, queer people were likely to conceive of themselves in gendered terms. Identities such as third sex, sexual intermediary, and invert were experienced as manifestations of queer folk having the sexual psyches and drives of the "wrong sex" in tandem with their sex and gender presentations.
Nascent queer identity construction moved from the private to the public sphere as activists and intellectuals published treatises and investigations on queer experiences. With the rise of sexology (inspired by early queer protestors), written case histories gave queer people a medium through which to find both self-expression and communal solidarity. Testimony – upon the backdrop of “respectable” medical science – was a potent tool that transported queers out of an era of secrecy, silence, and suppression.
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