MASCULINE WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 144, 20 June 1934, Page 12

MASCULINE WOMEN.

(By PERITUS.)

The influence of the mind upon the body is both immediate and remote. Among the strange results is that of girls and young women becoming masculine in form, vpice and appearance by the action of glandular secretion, and this seems to be partly controlled by the mind. A medical journal reporting upon 00 of these cases states that fifteen were treated surgically by removal of the "land secreting the sex hormone. Beards, moustaches and bodily hirsute abnormalities appeared, voices deepened, feminine characteristics faded out, even the shape of the plastic body alteied. The removal of a gland restored the femaleness in some cases, but there is evidence that what was, years ago, considered to be a most exceptional "freak, is now more often observed. The surgeon remarks: "The altered sex outlook which has been observed in these patients raises the question of an endocrine basis for certain types of mental abnormality, and this will have to _be taken into* consideration in adjudicating on medico-legal affairs. The question of heredity has been referred to, but it is to the eugenist that the problem offers a wide field of research. The presence of the syndrome is a retrograde movement, since it tends towards the intersex type. Is it stationary, receding, or increasing? If the latter, then we may be the innocent spectators of an evolutionary process drifting slowly and inevitably into the neuter state. The conditions of life arc rapidly changing. The emancipation of women has been a big change; there is over-population in many parts of the world; there are many factors in our social lives leading to race deterioration, and they must react on the individual." The normal masculine desire is that every woman, at every age, should endeavour to increase her natural feminine form and attractions, and the toleration which has been extended to masculine pirls is in no'sense responsible for what has been thought to be a transient fashion. The thing is too serious for jesting. The cases quoted are extreme, and no count is taken of the thousands stepping over masculine borders and risking a fate as real as repulsive.