Medical Roundup

Why the Hostility to Sexual Mix-Ups? Understanding Is Required

By Dr. Walter C. Alvarez

Emeritus Consultant in Medicine. Mayo Clinic and Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Mayo Foundation

Of late, people have been writing asking for more information so that perhaps they can develop a kinder and more understanding attitude toward those many un fortunate people who came in to the world with

their sex interests a bit! mixed-up.

Some people have asked me why I'm coming to the de-

fense of these DR. WALTER C.

ALVAREZ

people whom so many of us have for so long misunder stood.

One answer is that as the president of the Mattachine Society-a society for the better understanding of homosexuality recently pointed out, in the fight for justice now being made by the homosexuals, help from heterosexuals is badly need-

ed if only because a homosexual who might stand up to ask for a better deal for his brethren could lose his standing in the community and his job.

This is why I, as a physician who can explain scientifically why and how a change in their mother's womb came to many of these misunderstood people, am trying to help them in their campaign.

MOST PEOPLE in the past have been somewhat hostile to male homosexuals for two reasons both of them largely wrong. One is the idea that grown men become homosexual through vile living and the other is the idea that the men corrupt and injure boys.

That this is not always the fact is shown by John Rechy, in his astounding book, "City of Night."

Toward the many people who have written me often impatiently and obviously in ignorance of the subject—I must be forgiving because

during my youth I, too, was woefully ignorant about sex variants.

i

Later, about the age of 40, I realized that I must learn about the subject so that when a patient came to me for help in understanding his problem and dealing with it I could be kindly and sympathetic. Hence it came about that I read much on the subject.

HOW I WISH that all good people now could see that in many a case a sexually mixed-up person has a purely medical problem, one not for the church and not for the law. Certainly no lay person should arrogate unto himself the right to tell the doctor what he cannot do to help his patient.

Many a mother of a homosexual son taught me much when she told me that by the time her boy was 3 she knew that in some ways he was feminine in his interests. Often my heart has gone out to a homosexual young man when he told me of his stag-

gering shock when, around the age of 18 or 19, he discovered that he probably could never have the joys of marriage and that he was likely to be punished by society for being what he was.

A very important point I must emphasize here is that many of the sexually mixedup people are not homosexu-, als and must not be confused with them.

HOMOSEXUALS are often fine, able, handsome and responsible people, whose one difficulty is in their emotional tendencies.

Many so-called homosexuals are really bi-sexual in that they can love both men and women. Many such people marry and remain married.

Of late, we have been learning that other types of sexually mixed-up men and women have been gypped because of a failure of their sex glands to develop properly in early life.

Today we physicians are recognizing more and more

sexual mix-ups because able researchers have developed for us a number of microscopic tests, such as the Barr test, that will tell us with certainty that someone who looks like a rather feminine man has a woman's body cells and what looks like a poorly sexed woman has a man's body cells.

Recently, it has been learned that an injury to a certain part of the brain can change a heterosexual youth into a homosexual.

Many mature readers will enjoy Dr. Alvarez' booklet “Psycho-Sexual Troubles of Men." To obtain your Copy send 25 cents and a stamped. self-addressed envelope with your request to Dr. Walter (. Alvarez, Dept. CPD. Box 957, Des Moines, Iowa 50304.

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