The Intermediate Sex*

            Any man with a personality worth while has a touch of the woman in him.  And any woman with a personality worth while has a touch of the man in her.  It may be much or little.  But it’s there.  And when we try to think of the man still unborn we dont think of him as all man.  And when we try to think of the woman still unborn we dont think of her as all woman.  We see the invisible but assumed borderlines violated.  We know we cant draw hard and fast boundaries of sex.  We often say a man would be the biggest sort of a man if.  And we often say a woman would be the biggest sort of a woman if.  That it is vastly important.  For it points to the absence of the man in the woman and of the woman in the man.  A friend of mine picked Carpenter’s book up off my desk.  “He’s a brave man to write on that subject.”  He’s neither brave nor cowardly.  He’s just honest.  He’s not presenting an argument.  He’s presenting a situation.  He’s scientific. Then he goes beyond science.  It’s a subject about which most everybody refuses to talk decently.  It has been so confused with its vulgarest manifestations that the psychology and history back of it have been ignored and rejected.  Carpenter comes along insisting that it’s time to rescue it from the limbo of dismissed evils and to understand it for what it really signifies. Anyone who sees sex for what it means far as well as near, for what it takes from and gives to the spirit as well as the flesh, for what it bestows so lavishly sometimes upon the spirit when it gives the flesh nothing, will at once realize how necessary it is for us to face its phenomena without rant or wrath.  Carpenter dont dogmatise.  He inquires.  He calls the urning a transitional type.  He’s not sure it has come to stay.  He seems to think it perhaps only temporarily incident to a process rather than fixed as a conclusion.  There have been different kinds of men and women in the past.  One sort has given way to another. And one sort of a man and a woman gave place to us.  Who doubts but we are to give place to the next sort, whatever that may be?  And who knows but these discredited men and women are intercessional and mediatorial as well as intermediate?  Carpenter refuses to let you keep your discussion on the plane to which it is generally condemned.  He lifts it way up.  And you go up with him.  Some people suppose that sex things are always physiological.  That when emotional impulse operates in other fields it can never be sexual.  But sex is omnipresent and omnipotent.  Sex is action.  If you lay down and die, then you have ceased to have any relation to sex.  But as long as you stand up and live you are sexual and creative.  Sex is creation.  Creation dont mean babies alone.  It means trees.  It means the harvest.  It means adventure.  It means writing books. Invention.  Even what we call common labor.  Sex accounts for all.  When sex is construed in this light you begin to see how impossible it is to cut and dry it into a narrow formula.  How impossible it is to wholly dissever the masculine from the feminine order.  How normal some things are which we have so far tried to account for as disease.  Carpenter is not scared by any of the customary counternoises.  He is direct and ingratiating.  He disarms the shouters and swearers.  The man who shows he is a man by knocking somebody down.  And the woman who shows she is a woman by calling in the police.  They are scarcely pertinent to an inquiry which has to go to the sources of life and idealism for its data.  If you want to know what sex is to a man you want to know woman.  And if you want to know what sex is to a woman you want to know man.  And if you want to know what sex is to the man in the woman or the woman in the man you want to know how it manifests itself in men and women of the intermediate classification.  We see intermediacy go very low.  But we also see the ordinary man go very low.  Yes, to the bottom.  And also the ordinary woman go very low. Yes, to the bottom.  But we have no right to base our estimates of human values upon the failures.  Or upon the stumblers. Though the failures and the stumblers have to be included.  Sex will never be seen for what is until we consider it divorced from as well as dominating passional expression.  Carpenter presents the case of the class that today is of all others the most disgusting to the common intelligence. He says you have so far only listened to what can be said against it. And much may be said against it.  He says he wants you to listen to what can be said for it. And much may be said for it.  We are passing on to a new stage. You as a male. You as a female.  On this new stage men may be a bit more women than now.  And women may be a bit more men than now.  Dare we say this intervening sex which today is the puzzle of the wise and the horror of the foolish is not performing a vitally inevitable part?  If it is then you have no more excuse to call it names than you have to impute corruption to sunlight.  Carpenter don’t call you names.  But he asks you questions.  You cant get away from sex except by stepping outside the universe.  And you cant draw off sex into mathematical cubes and squares and triangles except by dogma and anathema.  And so you are compelled to acknowledge the larger implications of sex. To go with sex away from the usual into the special.  To go with sex into all human performance.  For sex accounts for all.  The impetus back of what you dream and do is sex.  It’s strong or weak as you are sexed weak or strong.  A man may not marry a woman but he may paint a picture.  A woman may not marry a man but she may sing a song. Always sex.  God dreamed and a man was born.  Man dreamed and God is born.  Always sex.  We work ourselves to death.  We struggle against odds in a great cause.  We pursue the impossible.  We cry out of our hearts for the unseen until it becomes visible.  Always sex.  Carpenter rests himself upon this big inference.  He trusts you to let this superinference play in and out and across the phenomena which he calls upon you to examine.  If you shut the door on this you dont shut the door on him but on yourself. And it’s far worse for you to shut yourself in than to shut him out.