desire to do kindnesses, to
give presents, to be liked and respected and all such natural
small matters, referred to women, not to men, and at this time,
both openly and to myself, I said unhesitatingly that I liked
women best. It must be remembered that at this time a dislike for
men was being fostered in me by those who wanted me to marry, and
this must have counted for more than I now remember.

"As regards my physical sexual feelings, which were well
established during these few years, I don't think I often
indulged in any erotic imaginations worth estimating, but so far
as I did at all, I always imagined myself as a man loving a
woman. I cannot recall ever imagining the opposite, but I seldom
imagined anything at all, and I suppose ultimate sex sensations
know no sex.

"But as time went on and my physical and psychical feelings met,
at any rate in my own mind, I became fully aware of the meaning
of love and even, of homosexual possibilities.

"I should probably have thought more of this side of things
except that during this time I was so worried by the difficulty
of living in my home under the perpetual friction of comparison
with other people. My life was a sham; I was an actor never off
the boards. I had to play at being a something I was not front
morning till night, and I had no cessation of the long fatigue I
had had at school; in addition I had sex to deal with actively
and consciously.

"Looking back on these twenty-four years of my life I only look
back on a round of misery. The nervous strain was enormous and so
was the moral strain. Instead of a child I felt myself, whenever
I desired to please anyone else, a performing monkey. My
pleasures were stolen or I was snubbed for taking them. I was not
taught and was called a fool. My hand was against everybody's.
How it was that with my high spirits and vivid imagination I did
not grow up a moral imbecile full of perverted instincts I do not
know. I describe myself as a docile child, but I was full of
temptations to be otherwise. There were times when I was silent
before people, but if I had had a knife in my hand I could have
stuck it into them. If it had been desired to make me a
thoroughly perverted being I can imagine no better way than the
attempt to mould me by force into a particular pattern of girl