A Little of My Life

by

Vivian Messetti

With the intent of furthering educational information toward oddities of human nature, Miss Vivian Messetti has graciously rendered exclusively for ONE the following article regarding her peculiar sex oddity, that of a Female Pseudo-Hermaphrodite. She informs us that the few of her kind in existence while not homosexuals themselves do feel kindly toward us, and while she herself is not one, she is near being two in one, and had nature functioned properly she would have been born twins: a boy and a girl.

Miss Messetti was born of theatrical and circus families dating back to the 1840's. Her father was a trainer and aerialist and later a sculptor, her mother an actress and opera singer who made her debut at La Scala. Miss Messetti explains that she doesn't remember ever knowing her mother's stage name in the operatic world but she recalls that she used her own married name as an actress. Her mother has appeared in America with the Boston English Opera Company and the San Carlos Opera Company. She and Vivian appeared together in films, plays on the stage including musicals, and they both appeared in Uncle Tom's Cabin. "She was Topsy and I was Little Eva." Miss Messetti has appeared in circuses, not always as a human oddity, but drum majoring the big show band in the Grand Entrance around the Hippodrome track under the Big Top. She has also worked on the flying ladders and has done chute jumps from balloons. She appeared on the stage as Charlie's Aunt, in the play of the same title, and as Isabel in the Spanish national play Isabel The Catholic.

To look like one sex when you are actually of the opposite, keeps you going around and around in circles, in a never ceasing mental unrest year in and year out, with no hope for mental or physical stability as long as life lasts.

Medical opinion concerning the classification of the hermaphrodite and pseudo-hermaphrodite is as follows:

Hermaphrodite: One possessing genital and sexual characteristics of both sexes, the two sexes being in one body, the person being fully able to bear children and beget them, thus making a perfect husband and a perfect wife. Pseudo-Hermaphrodite: A person distinctly of one sex, having superficial characteristics of both.

There are six forms of pseudo-hermaphrodites, three male and three female, placed under the following classification by Neugebauer according to the old division between masculine and feminine hermaphroditism made by Klebs:

Female

Type 'A' Internal

Type 'B' External

Type 'C' Complete (Rare)

Male Type 'A' Internal Type 'B' External

Type 'C' Complete

Type 'B' male is the most common, occuring at the rate of one per thousand births. Type 'A' female is the most rare, there being less than a hundred in the entire world. I come under this and Type 'C' classification.

The Neugerbauer-Klebs classifications have become outmoded, especially

one

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