The complete or total hermaphrodite we define as the individual who possesses the reproductive organs of the male and the female, both testes and ovaries.  So rare is such a combination in man that for a long time its occurrence was doubted, descriptions of it regarded as myth.  However, undoubted cases are on record, examined by the most careful of observers, of ovo-testis or mixed reproductive organs.  Strangely enough, the history of these cases, shows that at one time the masculine set, and at another the feminine set, will hold sway over the sex traits and functions.  Blending does not happen.

Rare though the true hermaphrodite may be, the partial hermaphrodite is relatively frequent.  The mixed ensemble of the directly contrasting type, such as the concomitance of testes with feminine secondary sex traits, or of ovaries with masculine sex traits, have been described from time immemorial as freaks.  Occurring even more frequently is the mixed sex ensemble, in which the type of reproductive organs and of secondary sex traits run roughly parallel, emulsified with certain traits of the opposite sex.  Physical features of one sex, instincts and mental attitudes of the other co-exist in the same individual by reason of an excess in one direction or a deficiency in another of the internal secretions.  The degree of masculine trend in a woman is a crude measure of adrenal domination, the degree of feminine deviation in a man is roughly proportional to the amount of pituitary influences in his make-up.

Whether one or the other sex tendency will dominate depends upon the quantity of sex hormone divergence from the ideal normal.  But also determinant are the environment stimuli provoking excessive or deficient secretory reactions from the other endocrines involved, through the vegetative nervous system.  Such especially are the associates of the mixed sex individual.  Ordinarily the combative male and the submissive female are differentiated by contrasts of skin and hair, fat and bone structure.  The combative male is built as a fighting machine, the submissive female as an organism of attractive grace and beauty for impregnation and parturition.  When one sees the fragile woman aggressive, the masculinoid woman submissive, one may infer an education of experience that has brought the usually recessive glands into the foreground, and by their hyperactivity imposed a bisexuality of function upon a unisexual anatomic structure.  A man apparently as formidable as a tyrannosaurus, may be ruled by his wife for the same reason.  These combinations of a single organic sexuality with a functional bisexuality, based upon internal secretion disturbances, are frequent, and merit the name of functional hermaphrodites or mixed sex types.

MIXED SEX AND THE FAMILY