MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE 147 



That is, after adolescence he would be strongly masculine, if the 

 vegetative-endocrine mechanisms created by the mother's person- 

 ality had not slipped into the inside track, so to speak. As a con- 

 sequence, continual subconscious conflict between the two sets of 

 sex reaction will, sooner or later, disturb, perhaps disrupt and 

 ruin his life. 



So an infant may start life with a fairly balanced endocrine 

 equipment, with its wake of a normal life (barring accidents 

 and infections) , and yet he may end as an inferior, insane, crim- 

 inal, or failure directly because of establishment of conflict be- 

 tween himself as one sort of sex type, and his obligatory associates 

 of another sort of mixed sex type. This applies also to the 

 mother-daughter, the father-son, and the father-daughter rela- 

 tionship. 



Male and female created He them, is a bald misstatement of 

 the facts. Male and female emerge as final by-products of 

 endocrine heredity, environmental treatment and adaptation. 

 Often the male-female, the female-male, persist anatomically, or 

 are forced to persist functionally. Society, constructed upon the 

 Biblical dogmas of man as a fallen angel, and absolute sex, is re- 

 sponsible for much misery and suffering meted out to the func- 

 tional hermaphrodite, as we shall see later in an analysis of the 

 endocrine character of Oscar Wilde. The privileges and powers of 

 sex relationship, marriage and parenthood, should be safeguarded 

 for the mixed sex type, the man or woman with the variable sex 

 index. For there are no tragedies in life more pitiful than those 

 in which an aggressive masculinely built type is forced to assume 

 a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine role and vice versa, the 

 tragedy of compelled homosexuality, because of wrong associates. 



Masochism and Sadism 



The functional hermaphrodite enables us, too, to understand 

 the phenomena of masochism and sadism, to a certain extent, 

 on the chemical side. The masculine personality, the combination 

 of masculine, e.g., adrenal cortex and gonad internal secretion 

 predominance, is built for aggression. The feminine personality, 

 the union of feminine, e.g. thyroid and ovarian superiority, is con- 

 structed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confuse them, 

 as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the attitudes be- 

 come reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in 

 woman will make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man 



