Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
Volume 2
Havelock Ellis
First published in 1900. This third edition was first published in 1927.
This online edition was created and published by Global Grey on the 18th December 2023.
Table of Contents
2. The Study Of Sexual Inversion
5. The Nature Of Sexual Inversion
6. The Theory Of Sexual Inversion
Appendix A. Homosexuality Among Tramps
Appendix B. The School-Friendships Of Girls
Preface To The Third Edition
It has been remarked by Professor Wilhelm Ostwald that the problem of homosexuality is a problem left over to us by the Middle Ages, which for five hundred years dealt with inverts as it dealt with heretics and witches. To regard the matter thus is to emphasize its social and humanitarian interest rather than its biological and psychological significance. It is no doubt this human interest of the question of inversion, rather than its scientific importance, great as the latter is, which is mainly responsible for the remarkable activity with which the study of homosexuality has been carried on during recent years.
The result has been that, during the fourteen years that have passed since the last edition of this Study was issued, so vast an amount of work has been carried on in this field that the preparation of a new edition of the book has been a long and serious task. Nearly every page has been rewritten or enlarged and the Index of Authors consulted has more than doubled in length. The original portions of the book have been still more changed; sixteen new Histories have been added, selected from others in my possession as being varied, typical, and full.
These extensive additions to the volume have rendered necessary various omissions. Many of the shorter and less instructive Histories contained in earlier editions have been omitted, as well as three Appendices which no longer seem of sufficient interest to retain. In order to avoid undue increase in the size of this volume, already much larger than in the previous editions, a new Study of Eonism, or sexo-esthetic inversion, will be inserted in vol. v, where it will perhaps be at least as much in place as here.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
Preface To First Edition
It was not my intention to publish a study of an abnormal manifestation of the sexual instinct before discussing its normal manifestations. It has happened, however, that this part of my work is ready first, and, since I thus gain a longer period to develop the central part of my subject, I do not regret the change of plan.
I had not at first proposed to devote a whole volume to sexual inversion. It may even be that I was inclined to slur it over as an unpleasant subject, and one that it was not wise to enlarge on. But I found in time that several persons for whom I felt respect and admiration were the congenital subjects of this abnormality. At the same time I realized that in England, more than in any other country, the law and public opinion combine to place a heavy penal burden and a severe social stigma on the manifestations of an instinct which to those persons who possess it frequently appears natural and normal. It was clear, therefore, that the matter was in special need of elucidation and discussion.
There can be no doubt that a peculiar amount of ignorance exists regarding the subject of sexual inversion. I know medical men of many years’ general experience who have never, to their knowledge, come across a single case. We may remember, indeed, that some fifteen years ago the total number of cases recorded in scientific literature scarcely equaled those of British race which I have obtained, and that before my first cases were published not a single British case, unconnected with the asylum or the prison, had ever been recorded. Probably not a very large number of people are even aware that the turning in of the sexual instinct toward persons of the same sex can ever be regarded as inborn, so far as any sexual instinct is inborn. And very few, indeed, would not be surprised if it were possible to publish a list of the names of sexually inverted men and women who at the present time are honorably known in church, state, society, art, or letters. It could not be positively affirmed of all such persons that they were born inverted, but in most the inverted tendency seems to be instinctive, and appears at a somewhat early age. In any case, however, it must be realized that in this volume we are not dealing with subjects belonging to the lunatic asylum, or the prison. We are concerned with individuals who live in freedom, some of them suffering intensely from their abnormal organization, but otherwise ordinary members of society. In a few cases we are concerned with individuals whose moral or artistic ideals have widely influenced their fellows, who know nothing of the peculiar organization which has largely molded those ideals.
I am indebted to several friends for notes, observations, and correspondence on this subject, more especially to one, referred to as “Z.,” and to another as “Q.,” who have obtained a considerable number of reliable histories for me, and have also supplied many valuable notes; to “Josiah Flynt” (whose articles on tramps in Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine have attracted wide attention) for an appendix on homosexuality among tramps; to Drs. Kiernan, Lydston, and Talbot for assistance at various points noted in the text; and to Dr. K., an American woman physician, who kindly assisted me in obtaining cases, and has also supplied an appendix. Other obligations are mentioned in the text.
All those portions of the book which are of medical or medico-legal interest, including most of the cases, have appeared during the last three years in the Alienist and Neurologist, the Journal of Mental Science, the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, the Medico-legal Journal, and the Archivo delle Psicopatie Sessuale. The cases, as they appear in the present volume, have been slightly condensed, but nothing of genuine psychological interest has been omitted. Owing to some delay in the publication of the English edition of the work, a German translation by my friend, Dr. Hans Kurella, editor of the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, has already appeared (1896) in the Bibliothek für Sozialwissenschaft. The German edition contains some matter which has finally been rejected from the English edition as of minor importance; on the other hand, much has been added to the English edition, and the whole carefully revised.
I have only to add that if it may seem that I have unduly ignored the cases and arguments brought forward by other writers, it is by no means because I wish to depreciate the valuable work done by my predecessors in this field. It is solely because I have not desired to popularize the results previously reached, but simply to bring forward my own results. If I had not been able to present new facts in what is perhaps a new light, I should not feel justified in approaching the subject of sexual inversion at all.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
1. Introduction
Homosexuality Among Animals—Among the Lower Human Races—The Albanians—The Greeks—The Eskimos—The Tribes of the Northwest United States—Homosexuality Among Soldiers in Europe—Indifference Frequently Manifested by European Lower Classes—Sexual Inversion at Rome—Homosexuality in Prisons—Among Men of Exceptional Intellect and Moral Leaders—Muret—Michelangelo—Winkelmann—Homosexuality in English History—Walt Whitman—Verlaine—Burton’s Climatic Theory of Homosexuality—The Racial Factor—The Prevalence of Homosexuality Today.
Sexual inversion, as here understood, means sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex. It is thus a narrower term than homosexuality, which includes all sexual attractions between persons of the same sex, even when seemingly due to the accidental absence of the natural objects of sexual attraction, a phenomenon of wide occurrence among all human races and among most of the higher animals. It is only during recent years that sexual inversion has been recognized; previously it was not distinguished from homosexuality in general, and homosexuality was regarded as a national custom, as an individual vice, or as an unimportant episode in grave forms of insanity.[1] We have further to distinguish sexual inversion and all other forms of homosexuality from another kind of inversion which usually remains, so far as the sexual impulse itself is concerned, heterosexual, that is to say, normal. Inversion of this kind leads a person to feel like a person of the opposite sex, and to adopt, so far as possible, the tastes, habits, and dress of the opposite sex, while the direction of the sexual impulse remains normal. This condition I term sexo-esthetic inversion, or Eonism.
The nomenclature of the highly important form of sexual perversion with which we are here concerned is extremely varied, and most investigators have been much puzzled in coming to a conclusion as to the best, most exact, and at the same time most colorless names to apply to it.
The first in the field in modern times was Ulrichs who, as early as 1862, used the appellation “Uranian” (Uranier), based on the well-known myth in Plato’s Banquet. Later he Germanized this term into “Urning” for the male, and “Urningin” for the female, and referred to the condition itself as “Urningtum.” He also invented a number of other related terms on the same basis; some of these terms have had a considerable vogue, but they are too fanciful and high-strung to secure general acceptance. If used in other languages than German they certainly should not be used in their Germanized shape, and it is scarcely legitimate to use the term “Urning” in English. “Uranian” is more correct.
In Germany the first term accepted by recognized scientific authorities was “contrary sexual feeling” (Konträre Sexualempfindung). It was devised by Westphal in 1869, and used by Krafft-Ebing and Moll. Though thus accepted by the earliest authorities in this field, and to be regarded as a fairly harmless and vaguely descriptive term, it is somewhat awkward, and is now little used in Germany; it was never currently used outside Germany. It has been largely superseded by the term “homosexuality.” This also was devised (by a little-known Hungarian doctor, Benkert, who used the pseudonym Kertbeny) in the same year (1869), but at first attracted no attention. It has, philologically, the awkward disadvantage of being a bastard term compounded of Greek and Latin elements, but its significance—sexual attraction to the same sex—is fairly clear and definite, while it is free from any question-begging association of either favorable or unfavorable character. (Edward Carpenter has proposed to remedy its bastardly linguistic character by transforming it into “homogenic;” this, however, might mean not only “toward the same sex,” but “of the same kind,” and in German already possesses actually that meaning.) The term “homosexual” has the further advantage that on account of its classical origin it is easily translatable into many languages. It is now the most widespread general term for the phenomena we are dealing with, and it has been used by Hirschfeld, now the chief authority in this field, as the title of his encyclopedic work, Die Homosexualität.
“Sexual Inversion” (in French “inversion sexuelle,” and in Italian “inversione sessuale”) is the term which has from the first been chiefly used in France and Italy, ever since Charcot and Magnan, in 1882, published their cases of this anomaly in the Archives de Neurologie. It had already been employed in Italy by Tamassia in the Revista Sperimentale di Freniatria, in 1878. I have not discovered when and where the term “sexual inversion” was first used. Possibly it first appeared in English, for long before the paper of Charcot and Magnan I have noticed, in an anonymous review of Westphal’s first paper in the Journal of Mental Science (then edited by Dr. Maudsley) for October, 1871, that “Conträre Sexualempfindung” is translated as “inverted sexual proclivity.” So far as I am aware, “sexual inversion” was first used in English, as the best term, by J. A. Symonds in 1883, in his privately printed essay, A Problem in Greek Ethics. Later, in 1897, the same term was adopted, I believe for the first time publicly in English, in the present work.
It is unnecessary to refer to the numerous other names which have been proposed. (A discussion of the nomenclature will be found in the first chapter of Hirschfeld’s work, Die Homosexualität, and of some special terms in an article by Schouten, Sexual-Probleme, December, 1912.) It may suffice to mention the ancient theological and legal term “sodomy” (sodomia) because it is still the most popular term for this perversion, though, it must be remembered, it has become attached to the physical act of intercourse per anum, even when carried out heterosexually, and has little reference to psychic sexual proclivity. This term has its origin in the story (narrated in Genesis, ch. xix) of Lot’s visitors whom the men of Sodom desired to have intercourse with, and of the subsequent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This story furnishes a sufficiently good ground for the use of the term, though the Jews do not regard sodomy as the sin of Sodom, but rather inhospitality and hardness of heart to the poor (J. Preuss, Biblisch-Talmudische Medizin, pp. 579-81), and Christian theologians also, both Catholic and Protestant (see, e.g., Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iv, p. 199, and Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, p. 742), have argued that it was not homosexuality, but their other offenses, which provoked the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. In Germany “sodomy” has long been used to denote bestiality, or sexual intercourse with animals, but this use of the term is quite unjustified. In English there is another term, “buggery,” identical in meaning with sodomy, and equally familiar. “Bugger” (in French, bougre) is a corruption of “Bulgar,” the ancient Bulgarian heretics having been popularly supposed to practise this perversion. The people of every country have always been eager to associate sexual perversions with some other country than their own.
The terms usually adopted in the present volume are “sexual inversion” and “homosexuality.” The first is used more especially to indicate that the sexual impulse is organically and innately turned toward individuals of the same sex. The second is used more comprehensively of the general phenomena of sexual attraction between persons of the same sex, even if only of a slight and temporary character. It may be admitted that there is no precise warrant for any distinction of this kind between the two terms. The distinction in the phenomena is, however, still generally recognized; thus Iwan Bloch applies the term “homosexuality” to the congenital form, and “pseudo-homosexuality” to its spurious or simulated forms. Those persons who are attracted to both sexes are now usually termed “bisexual,” a more convenient term than “psycho-sexual hermaphrodite,” which was formerly used. There remains the normal person, who is “heterosexual.”
Before approaching the study of sexual inversion in cases which we may investigate with some degree of scientific accuracy, there is interest in glancing briefly at the phenomena as they appear before us, as yet scarcely or at all differentiated, among animals, among various human races, and at various periods.
Among animals in a domesticated or confined state it is easy to find evidence of homosexual attraction, due merely to the absence of the other sex.[2] This was known to the ancients; the Egyptians regarded two male partridges as the symbol of homosexuality, and Aristotle noted that two female pigeons would cover each other if no male was at hand. Buffon observed many examples, especially among birds. He found that, if male or female birds of various species—such as partridges, fowls, and doves—were shut up together, they would soon begin to have sexual relations among themselves, the males sooner and more frequently than the females. More recently Sainte-Claire Deville observed that dogs, rams, and bulls, when isolated, first became restless and dangerous, and then acquired a permanent state of sexual excitement, not obeying the laws of heat, and leading them to attempts to couple together; the presence of the opposite sex at once restored them to normal conditions. Bombarda of Lisbon states that in Portugal it is well known that in every herd of bulls there is nearly always one bull who is ready to lend himself to the perverted whims of his companions. It may easily be observed how a cow in heat exerts an exciting influence on other cows, impelling them to attempt to play the bull’s part. Lacassagne has also noted among young fowls and puppies, etc., that, before ever having had relations with the opposite sex, and while in complete liberty, they make hesitating attempts at intercourse with their own sex. This, indeed, together with similar perversions, may often be observed, especially in puppies, who afterward become perfectly normal. Among white rats, which are very sexual animals, Steinach found that, when deprived of females, the males practise homosexuality, though only with males with whom they have long associated; the weaker rats play the passive part. But when a female is introduced they immediately turn to her; although they are occasionally altogether indifferent to sex, they never actually prefer their own sex.
With regard to the playing of the female part by the weaker rats it is interesting to observe that Féré found among insects that the passive part in homosexual relations is favored by fatigue; among cockchafers it was the male just separated from the female who would take the passive part (on the rare occasions when homosexual relations occurred) with a fresh male.[3]
Homosexuality appears to be specially common among birds. It was among birds that it attracted the attention of the ancients, and numerous interesting observations have been made in more recent times. Thus Selous, a careful bird-watcher, finds that the ruff, the male of the Machetes pugnax, suffers from sexual repression owing to the coyness of the female (the reeve), and consequently the males often resort to homosexual intercourse. It is still more remarkable that the reeves also, even in the presence of the males, will court each other and have intercourse. We may associate this with the high erotic development of birds, the difficulty with which tumescence seems to occur in them, and their long courtships.
Among the higher animals, again, female monkeys, even when grown up (as Moll was informed), behave in a sexual way to each other, though it is difficult to say how far this is merely in play. Dr. Seitz, Director of the Frankfurt Zoölogical Garden, gave Moll a record of his own careful observations of homosexual phenomena among the males and females of various animals confined in the Garden (Antelope cervicapra, Bos Indicus, Capra hircus, Ovis steatopyga). In all such cases we are not concerned with sexual inversion, but merely with the accidental turning of the sexual instinct into an abnormal channel, the instinct being called out by an approximate substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in the absence of the normal object.
It is probable, however, that cases of true sexual inversion—in which gratification is preferably sought in the same sex—may be found among animals, although observations have rarely been made or recorded. It has been found by Muccioli, an Italian authority on pigeons, that among Belgian carrier-pigeons inverted practices may occur, even in the presence of many of the other sex. This seems to be true inversion, though we are not told whether these birds were also attracted toward the opposite sex. The birds of this family appear to be specially liable to sexual perversion. Thus M. J. Bailly-Maitre, a breeder of great knowledge and a keen observer, wrote to Girard that “they are strange creatures in their manners and customs and are apt to elude the most persistent observer. No animal is more depraved. Mating between males, and still more frequently between females, often occurs at an early age: up to the second year. I have had several pairs of pigeons formed by subjects of the same sex who for many months behaved as if the mating were natural. In some cases this had taken place among young birds of the same nest, who acted like real mates, though both subjects were males. In order to mate them productively we have had to separate them and shut each of them up for some days with a female.” In the Berlin Zoölogical Gardens also, it has been noticed that two birds of the same sex will occasionally become attached to each other and remain so in spite of repeated advances from individuals of opposite sex. This occurred, for instance, in the case of two males of the Egyptian goose who were thus to all appearance paired, and always kept together, vigorously driving away any female that approached. Similarly a male Australian sheldrake was paired to a male of another species.
Among birds generally, inverted sexuality seems to accompany the development of the secondary sexual characters of the opposite sex which is sometimes found. Thus, a poultry-breeder describes a hen (colored Dorking) crowing like a cock, only somewhat more harshly, as a cockerel crows, and with an enormous comb, larger than is ever seen in the male. This bird used to try to tread her fellow-hens. At the same time she laid early and regularly, and produced “grand chickens.” Among ducks, also, it has occasionally been observed that the female assumes at the same time both male livery and male sexual tendencies. It is probable that such observations will be multiplied in the future, and that sexual inversion in the true sense will be found commoner among animals than at present it appears to be.
Traces of homosexual practices, sometimes on a large scale, have been found among all the great divisions of the human race. It would be possible to collect a considerable body of evidence under this head. Unfortunately, however, the travellers and others on whose records we are dependent have been so shy of touching these subjects, and so ignorant of the main points for investigation, that it is very difficult to discover sexual inversion in the proper sense in any lower race. Travellers have spoken vaguely of crimes against nature without defining the precise relationship involved nor inquiring how far any congenital impulse could be distinguished.
Looking at the phenomena generally, so far as they have been recorded among various lower races, we seem bound to recognize that there is a widespread natural instinct impelling men toward homosexual relationships, and that this has been sometimes, though very exceptionally, seized upon and developed for advantageous social purposes. On the whole, however, unnatural intercourse (sodomy) has been regarded as an antisocial offense, and punishable sometimes by the most serious penalties that could be invented. This was, for instance, the case in ancient Mexico, in Peru, among the Persians, in China, and among the Hebrews and Mohammedans.
Even in very early history it is possible to find traces of homosexuality, with or without an implied disapproval. Its existence in Assyria and Babylonia is indicated by the Codex Hamurabi and by inscriptions which do not on the whole refer to it favorably. As regards Egypt we learn from a Fayum papyrus, found by Flinders Petrie, translated by Griffiths, and discussed by Oefele, that more than four thousand years ago homosexual practices were so ancient that they were attributed to the gods Horus and Set. The Egyptians showed great admiration of masculine beauty, and it would seem that they never regarded homosexuality as punishable or even reprehensible. It is notable, also, that Egyptian women were sometimes of very virile type, and Hirschfeld considers that intermediate sexual types were specially widespread among the Egyptians.
One might be tempted to expect that homosexual practices would be encouraged whenever it was necessary to keep down the population. Aristotle says that it was allowed by law in Crete for this end. And Professor Haddon tells me that at Torres Straits a native advocated sodomy on this ground.[4] There seems, however, on the whole, to be little evidence pointing to this utilization of the practice. The homosexual tendency appears to have flourished chiefly among warriors and warlike peoples. During war and the separation from women that war involves, the homosexual instinct tends to develop; it flourished, for instance, among the Carthaginians and among the Normans, as well as among the warlike Dorians, Scythians, Tartars, and Celts,[5] and, when there has been an absence of any strong moral feeling against it, the instinct has been cultivated and, idealized as a military virtue, partly because it counteracts the longing for the softening feminine influences of the home and partly because it seems to have an inspiring influence in promoting heroism and heightening esprit de corps. In the lament of David over Jonathan we have a picture of intimate friendship—”passing the love of women”—between comrades in arms among a barbarous, warlike race. There is nothing to show that such a relationship was sexual, but among warriors in New Caledonia friendships that were undoubtedly homosexual were recognized and regulated; the fraternity of arms, according to Foley, complicated with pederasty, was more sacred than uterine fraternity. We have, moreover, a recent example of the same relationships recognized in a modern European race—the Albanians.
Hahn, in the course of his Albanische Studien (1854, p. 166), says that the young men between 16 and 24 lore boys from about 12 to 17. A Gege marries at the age of 24 or 25, and then he usually, but not always, gives up boy-love. The following passage is reported by Hahn as the actual language used to him by an Albanian Gege: “The lover’s feeling for the boy is pure as sunshine. It places the beloved on the same pedestal as a saint. It is the highest and most exalted passion of which the human breast is capable. The sight of a beautiful youth awakens astonishment in the lover, and opens the door of his heart to the delight which the contemplation of this loveliness affords. Love takes possession of him so completely that all his thought and feeling goes out in it. If he finds himself in the presence of the beloved, he rests absorbed in gazing on him. Absent, he thinks of nought but him. If the beloved unexpectedly appears, he falls into confusion, changes color, turns alternately pale and red. His heart beats faster and impedes his breathing. He has ears and eyes only for the beloved. He shuns touching him with the hand, kisses him only on the forehead, sings his praise in verse, a woman’s never.” One of these love-poems of an Albanian Gege runs as follows: “The sun, when it rises in the morning, is like you, boy, when you are near me. When your dark eye turns upon me, it drives my reason from my head.”
It should be added that Prof. Weigand, who knew the Albanians well, assured Bethe (Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1907, p. 475) that the relations described by Hahn are really sexual, although tempered by idealism. A German scholar who travelled in Albania some years ago, also, assured Näcke (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908, p. 327) that he could fully confirm Hahn’s statements, and that, though it was difficult to speak positively, he doubted whether these relationships were purely ideal. While most prevalent among the Moslems, they are also found among the Christians, and receive the blessing of the priest in church. Jealousy is frequently aroused, the same writer remarks, and even murder may be committed on account of a boy.
It may be mentioned here that among the Tschuktsches, Kamschatdals, and allied peoples (according to a Russian anthropological journal quoted in Sexual-Probleme, January, 1913, p. 41) there are homosexual marriages among the men, and occasionally among the women, ritually consecrated and openly recognized.
The Albanians, it is possible, belonged to the same stock which produced the Dorian Greeks, and the most important and the most thoroughly known case of socially recognized homosexuality is that of Greece during its period of highest military as well as ethical and intellectual vigor. In this case, as in those already mentioned, the homosexual tendency was frequently regarded as having beneficial results, which caused it to be condoned, if not, indeed, fostered as a virtue. Plutarch repeated the old Greek statement that the Beotians, the Lacedemonians, and the Cretans were the most warlike stocks because they were the strongest in love; an army composed of loving homosexual couples, it was held, would be invincible. It appears that the Dorians introduced paiderastia, as the Greek form of homosexuality is termed, into Greece; they were the latest invaders, a vigorous mountain race from the northwest (the region including what is now Albania) who spread over the whole land, the islands, and Asia Minor, becoming the ruling race. Homosexuality was, of course, known before they came, but they made it honorable. Homer never mentions it, and it was not known as legitimate to the Æolians or the Ionians. Bethe, who has written a valuable study of Dorian paiderastia, states that the Dorians admitted a kind of homosexual marriage, and even had a kind of boy-marriage by capture, the scattered vestiges of this practice indicating, Bethe believes, that it was a general custom among the Dorians before the invasion of Greece. Such unions even received a kind of religions consecration. It was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in Crete to have no lover; it spoke ill for his character. By paiderastia a man propagated his virtues, as it were, in the youth he loved, implanting them by the act of intercourse.
In its later Greek phases paiderastia was associated less with war than with athletics; it was refined and intellectualized by poetry and philosophy. It cannot be doubted that both Æschylus and Sophocles cultivated boy-love, while its idealized presentation in the dialogues of Plato has caused it to be almost identified with his name; thus in the early Charmides we have an attractive account of the youth who gives his name to the dialogue and the emotions he excites are described. But even in the early dialogues Plato only conditionally approved of the sexual side of paiderastia and he condemned it altogether in the final Laws.
The early stages of Greek paiderastia are very interestingly studied by Bethe, “Die Dorische Knabenliebe,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1907. J. A. Symonds’s essay on the later aspects of paiderastia, especially as reflected in Greek literature, A Problem in Greek Ethics, is contained in the early German edition of the present study, but (though privately printed in 1883 by the author in an edition of twelve copies and since pirated in another private edition) it has not yet been published in English. Paiderastia in Greek poetry has also been studied by Paul Brandt, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vols. viii and ix (1906 and 1907), and by Otto Knapp (Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, pp. 254-260) who seeks to demonstrate the sensual side of paiderastia. On the other hand, Licht, working on somewhat the same lines as Bethe (Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, August, 1908), deals with the ethical element in paiderastia, points out its beneficial moral influence, and argues that it was largely on this ground that it was counted sacred. Licht has also published a learned study of paiderastia in Attic comedy (Anthropophyteia, vol. vii, 1910), and remarks that “without paiderastia Greek comedy is unthinkable.” Paiderastia in the Greek anthology has been fully explored by P. Stephanus (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908, p. 213). Kiefer, who has studied Socrates in relation to homosexuality (O. Kiefer, “Socrates und die Homosexualität,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908), concludes that he was bisexual but that his sexual impulses had been sublimated. It may be added that many results of recent investigation concerning paiderastia are summarized by Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, pp. 747-788, and by Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk, 1914, part ii; see also Bloch, Die Prostitution, vol. i, p. 232 et seq., and Der Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, p. 564.
It would appear that almost the only indications outside Greece of paiderastic homosexuality showing a high degree of tenderness and esthetic feeling are to be found in Persian and Arabian literature, after the time of the Abbasids, although this practice was forbidden by the Koran.[6]
In Constantinople, as Näcke was informed by German inverts living in that city, homosexuality is widespread, most cultivated Turks being capable of relations with boys as well as with women, though very few are exclusively homosexual, so that their attitude would seem to be largely due to custom and tradition. Adult males rarely have homosexual relations together; one of the couple is usually a boy of 12 to 18 years, and this condition of things among the refined classes is said to resemble ancient Greek paiderastia. But ordinary homosexual prostitution is prevalent; it is especially recognized in the baths which abound in Constantinople and are often open all night. The attendants at these baths are youths who scarcely need an invitation to induce them to gratify the client in this respect, the gratification usually consisting in masturbation, mutual or one-sided, as desired. The practice, though little spoken of, is carried on almost openly, and blackmailing is said to be unknown. In the New Turkey, however, it is stated by Adler Bey that homosexual prostitution has almost disappeared.
There is abundant evidence to show that homosexual practices exist and have long existed in most parts of the world outside Europe, when subserving no obvious social or moral end. How far they are associated with congenital inversion is usually very doubtful. In China, for instance, it seems that there are special houses devoted to male prostitution, though less numerous than the houses devoted to females, for homosexuality cannot be considered common in China (its prevalence among Chinese abroad being due to the absence of women) and it is chiefly found in the north.[7] When a rich man gives a feast he sends for women to cheer the repast by music and song, and for boys to serve at table and to entertain the guests by their lively conversation. The boys have been carefully brought up for this occupation, receiving an excellent education, and their mental qualities are even more highly valued than their physical attractiveness. The women are less carefully brought up and less esteemed. After the meal the lads usually return home with a considerable fee. What further occurs the Chinese say little about. It seems that real and deep affection is often born of these relations, at first platonic, but in the end becoming physical, not a matter for great concern in the eyes of the Chinese. In the Chinese novels, often of a very literary character, devoted to masculine love, it seems that all the preliminaries and transports of normal love are to be found, while physical union may terminate the scene. In China, however, the law may be brought into action for attempts against nature even with mutual consent; the penalty is one hundred strokes with the bamboo and a month’s imprisonment; if there is violence, the penalty is decapitation; I am not able to say how far the law is a dead letter. According to Matignon, so far as homosexuality exists in China, it is carried on with much more decorum and restraint than it is in Europe, and he thinks it may be put down to the credit of the Chinese that, unlike Europeans, they never practice unnatural connection with women. His account of the customs of the Chinese confirms Morache’s earlier account, and he remarks that, though not much spoken of, homosexuality is not looked down upon. He gives some interesting details concerning the boy prostitutes. These are sold by their parents (sometimes stolen from them), about the age of 4, and educated, while they are also subjected to a special physical training, which includes massage of the gluteal regions to favor development, dilatation of the anus, and epilation (which is not, however, practised by Chinese women). At the same time, they are taught music, singing, drawing, and the art of poetry. The waiters at the restaurants always know where these young gentlemen are to be found when they are required to grace a rich man’s feast. They are generally accompanied by a guardian, and usually nothing very serious takes place, for they know their value, and money will not always buy their expensive favors. They are very effeminate, luxuriously dressed and perfumed, and they seldom go on foot. There are, however, lower orders of such prostitutes.
Homosexuality is easily traceable in India. Dubois referred to houses devoted to male prostitution, with men dressed as women, and imitating the ways of women. Burton in the “Terminal Essay” to his translation of the Arabian Nights, states that when in 1845 Sir Charles Napier conquered and annexed Sind three brothels of eunuchs and boys were found in the small town of Karachi, and Burton was instructed to visit and report on them. Hindus, in general, however, it appears, hold homosexuality in abhorrence. In Afghanistan homosexuality is more generally accepted, and Burton stated that “each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman’s attire, with kohled eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and hennaed fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in camel paniers.”
If we turn to the New World, we find that among the American Indians, from the Eskimo of Alaska downward to Brazil and still farther south, homosexual customs have been very frequently observed. Sometimes they are regarded by the tribe with honor, sometimes with indifference, sometimes with contempt; but they appear to be always tolerated. Although there are local differences, these customs, on the whole, seem to have much in common. The best early description which I have been able to find is by Langsdorff and concerns the Aleuts of Oonalashka in Alaska: “Boys, if they happen to be very handsome,” he says, “are often brought up entirely in the manner of girls, and instructed in the arts women use to please men; their beards are carefully plucked out as soon as they begin to appear, and their chins tattooed like those of women; they wear ornaments of glass beads upon their legs and arms, bind and cut their hair in the same manner as the women, and supply their place with the men as concubines. This shocking, unnatural, and immoral practice has obtained here even from the remotest times; nor have any measures hitherto been taken to repress and restrain it; such men are known under the name of schopans.”
Among the Konyagas Langsdorff found the custom much more common than among the Aleuts; he remarks that, although the mothers brought up some of their children in this way, they seemed very fond of their offspring. Lisiansky, at about the same period, tells us that: “Of all the customs of these islanders, the most disgusting is that of men, called schoopans, living with men, and supplying the place of women. These are brought up from their infancy with females, and taught all the feminine arts. They even assume the manner and dress of the women so nearly that a stranger would naturally take them for what they are not. This odious practice was formerly so prevalent that the residence of one of these monsters in a house was considered as fortunate; it is, however, daily losing ground.” He mentions a case in which a priest had nearly married two males, when an interpreter chanced to come in and was able to inform him what he was doing.
The practice has, however, apparently continued to be fairly common among the Alaska Eskimos down to recent times. Thus Dr. Engelmann mentioned to me that he was informed by those who had lived in Alaska, especially near Point Barrow, that as many as 5 such individuals (regarded by uninstructed strangers as “hermaphrodites”) might be found in a single comparatively small community. It is stated by Davydoff, as quoted by Holmberg, that the boy is selected to be a schopan because he is girl-like. This is a point of some interest as it indicates that the schopan is not effeminated solely by suggestion and association, but is probably feminine by inborn constitution.
In Louisiana, Florida, Yucatan, etc., somewhat similar customs exist or have existed. In Brazil men are to be found dressed as women and solely occupying themselves with feminine occupations; they are not very highly regarded. They are called cudinas: i.e., circumcized. Among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico these individuals are called mujerados (supposed to be a corruption of mujeriego) and are the chief passive agents in the homosexual ceremonies of these people. They are said to be intentionally effeminated in early life by much masturbation and by constant horse-riding.
Among all the tribes of the northwest United States sexual inverts may be found. The invert is called a boté (“not man, not woman”) by the Montana, and a burdash (“half-man, half-woman”) by the Washington Indians. The boté has been carefully studied by Dr. A. B. Holder. Holder finds that the boté wears woman’s dress, and that his speech and manners are feminine. The dress and manners are assumed in childhood, but no sexual practices take place until puberty. These consist in the practice of fellatio by the boté, who probably himself experiences the orgasm at the same time. The boté is not a pederast, although pederasty occurs among these Indians. Holder examined boté who was splendidly made, prepossessing, and in perfect health. With much reluctance he agreed to a careful examination. The sexual organs were quite normal, though perhaps not quite so large as his physique would suggest, but he had never had intercourse with a woman. On removing his clothes he pressed his thighs together, as a timid woman would, so as to conceal completely the sexual organs; Holder says that the thighs “really, or to my fancy,” had the feminine rotundity. He has heard a boté ”beg a male Indian to submit to his caress,” and he tells that “one little fellow, while in the agency boarding-school, was found frequently surreptitiously wearing female attire. He was punished, but finally escaped from school and became a boté, which vocation he has since followed.”
At Tahiti at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Turnbull found that “there are a set of men in this country whose open profession is of such abomination that the laudable delicacy of our language will not admit it to be mentioned. These are called by the natives Mahoos; they assume the dress, attitude, and manners of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance. With the manners of the women they adopt their peculiar employments, making cloth, bonnets, and mats; and so completely are they unsexed that had they not been pointed out to me I should not have known them but as women. I add, with some satisfaction, that the encouragement of this abomination is almost solely confined to the chiefs.”
Among the Sakalaves of Madagascar there are certain boys called sekatra, as described by Lasnet, who are apparently chosen from childhood on account of weak or delicate appearance and brought up as girls. They live like women and have intercourse with men, with or without sodomy, paying the men who please them.
Among the negro population of Zanzibar forms of homosexuality which are believed to be congenital (as well as acquired forms) are said to be fairly common. Their frequency is thought to be due to Arab influence. The male congenital inverts show from their earliest years no aptitude for men’s occupations, but are attracted toward female occupations. As they grow older they wear women’s clothes, dress their hair in women’s fashion, and behave altogether like women. They associate only with women and with male prostitutes, and they obtain sexual satisfaction by passive pederasty or in ways simulating coitus. In appearance they resemble ordinary male prostitutes, who are common in Zanzibar, but it is noteworthy that the natives make a clear distinction between them and men prostitutes. The latter are looked down on with contempt, while the former, as being what they are “by the will of God,” are tolerated.
Homosexuality; occurs in various parts of Africa. Cases of effeminatio and passive sodomy have been reported from Unyamwezi and Uganda. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo sodomy between men is very common, especially when they are away from home, in strange towns, or in fishing camps. If, however, a man had intercourse with a woman per anum he was at one time liable to be put to death.[8]
Among the Papuans in some parts of New Guinea, as already mentioned, homosexuality is said to be well recognized, and is resorted to for convenience as well, perhaps, as for Malthusian reasons.[9] But in the Rigo district of British New Guinea, where habitual sodomy is not practised, Dr. Seligmann, of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, made some highly important observations on several men and women who clearly appeared to be cases of congenital sexual inversion with some degree of esthetic inversion and even some anatomical modification.[10] These people, it may be noted, belong to a primitive race, uncontaminated by contact with white races, and practically still in the Stone Age.
Finally, among another allied primitive people, the Australians, it would appear that homosexuality has long been well established in tribal customs. Among the natives of Kimberley, Western Australia (who are by no means of low type, quick and intelligent, with special aptitudes for learning languages and music), if a wife is not obtainable for a young man he is presented with a boy-wife between the ages of 5 and 10 (the age when a boy receives his masculine initiation). The exact nature of the relations between the boy-wife and his protector are doubtful; they certainly have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy.
Further light is thrown on homosexuality in Australia by the supposition of Spencer and Gillen that the mika operation (urethral subincision), an artificial hypospadias, is for the purpose of homosexual intercourse. Klaatsch has discussed the homosexual origin of the mika operation on the basis of information he received from missionaries at Niol-Niol, on the northwest coast. The subincised man acts as a female to the as yet unoperated boys, who perform coitus in the incised opening. Both informed Klaatsch in 1906 that at Boulia in Queensland the operated men are said to “possess a vulva.”
These various accounts are of considerable interest, though for the most part their precise significance remains doubtful. Some of them, however,—such as Holder’s description of the boté, Baumann’s account of homosexual phenomena in Zanzibar, and especially Seligmann’s observations in British New Guinea,—indicate not only the presence of esthetic inversion but of true congenital sexual inversion. The extent of the evidence will doubtless be greatly enlarged as the number of competent observers increases, and crucial points are no longer so frequently overlooked.
On the whole, the evidence shows that among lower races homosexual practices are regarded with considerable indifference, and the real invert, if he exists among them, as doubtless he does exist, generally passes unperceived or joins some sacred caste which sanctifies his exclusively homosexual inclinations.
Even in Europe today a considerable lack of repugnance to homosexual practices may be found among the lower classes. In this matter, as folklore shows in so many other matters, the uncultured man of civilization is linked to the savage. In England, I am told, the soldier often has little or no objection to prostitute himself to the “swell” who pays him, although for pleasure he prefers to go to women; and Hyde Park is spoken of as a center of male prostitution.
“Among the working masses of England and Scotland,” Q. writes, “‘comradeship’ is well marked, though not (as in Italy) very conscious of itself. Friends often kiss each other, though this habit seems to vary a good deal in different sections and coteries. Men commonly sleep together, whether comrades or not, and so easily get familiar. Occasionally, but not so very often, this relation delays for a time, or even indefinitely, actual marriage, and in some instances is highly passionate and romantic. There is a good deal of grossness, no doubt, here and there in this direction among the masses; but there are no male prostitutes (that I am aware of) whose regular clients are manual workers. This kind of prostitution in London is common enough, but I have only a slight personal knowledge of it. Many youths are ‘kept’ handsomely in apartments by wealthy men, and they are, of course, not always inaccessible to others. Many keep themselves in lodgings by this means, and others eke out scanty wages by the same device: just like women, in fact. Choirboys reinforce the ranks to a considerable extent, and private soldiers to a large extent. Some of the barracks (notably Knightsbridge) are great centres. On summer evenings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate is full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or out. In these cases it sometimes only amounts to a chat on a retired seat or a drink at a bar; sometimes recourse is had to a room in some known lodging-house, or to one or two hotels which lend themselves to this kind of business. In any case it means a covetable addition to Tommy Atkins’s pocket-money.” And Mr. Raffalovich, speaking of London, remarks: “The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men.” It is worth noting that there is a perfect understanding in this matter between soldiers and the police, who may always be relied upon by the former for assistance and advice. I am indebted to my correspondent “Z” for the following notes: “Soldiers are no less sought after in France than in England or in Germany, and special houses exist for military prostitution both in Paris and the garrison-towns. Many facts known about the French army go to prove that these habits have been contracted in Algeria, and have spread to a formidable extent through whole regiments. The facts related by Ulrichs about the French foreign legion, on the testimony of a credible witness who had been a pathic in his regiment, deserve attention (Ara Spei, p. 20; Memnon, p. 27). This man, who was a German, told Ulrichs that the Spanish, French, and Italian soldiers were the lovers, the Swiss and German their beloved (see also General Brossier’s Report, quoted by Burton, Arabian Nights, vol. x, p. 251). In Lucien Descaves’s military novel, Sous Offs (Paris, Tresse et Stock, 1890), some details are given regarding establishments for male prostitution. See pages 322, 412, and 417 for description of the drinking-shop called ‘Aux Amis de l’Armée,’ where a few maids were kept for show, and also of its frequenters, including, in particular, the Adjutant Laprévotte. Ulrichs reports that in the Austrian army lectures on homosexual vices are regularly given to cadets and conscripts (Memnon, p. 26). A soldier who had left the army told a friend of mine that he and many of his comrades had taken to homosexual indulgences when abroad on foreign service in a lonely station. He kept the practice up in England ‘because the women of his class were so unattractive.’ The captain of an English man-of-war said that he was always glad to send his men on shore after a long cruise at sea, never feeling sure how far they might not all go if left without women for a certain space of time.” I may add that A. Hamon (La France Sociale et Politique, 1891, pp. 653-55; also in his Psychologie du Militaire Professional, chapter x) gives details as to the prevalence of homosexuality in the French army, especially in Algeria; he regards it as extremely common, although the majority are free. A fragment of a letter by General Lamoricière (speaking of Marshal Changarnier) is quoted: En Afrique nous en étions tous, mais lui en est resté ici.
This primitive indifference is doubtless also a factor in the prevalence of homosexuality among criminals, although, here, it must be remembered, two other factors (congenital abnormality and the isolation of imprisonment) have to be considered. In Russia, Tarnowsky observes that all pederasts are agreed that the common people are tolerably indifferent to their sexual advances, which they call “gentlemen’s games.” A correspondent remarks on “the fact, patent to all observers, that simple folk not infrequently display no greater disgust for the abnormalities of sexual appetite than they do for its normal manifestations.”[11] He knows of many cases in which men of lower class were flattered and pleased by the attentions of men of higher class, although not themselves inverted. And from this point of view the following case, which he mentions, is very instructive:—
A pervert whom I can trust told me that he had made advances to upward of one hundred men in the course of the last fourteen years, and that he had only once met with a refusal (in which case the man later on offered himself spontaneously) and only once with an attempt to extort money. Permanent relations of friendship sprang up in most instances. He admitted that he looked after these persons and helped them with his social influence and a certain amount of pecuniary support—setting one up in business, giving another something to marry on, and finding places for others.
Among the peasantry in Switzerland, I am informed, homosexual relationships are not uncommon before marriage, and such relationships are lightly spoken of as “Dummheiten”. No doubt, similar traits might be found in the peasantry of other parts of Europe.
What may be regarded as true sexual inversion can be traced in Europe from the beginning of the Christian era (though we can scarcely demonstrate the congenital element) especially among two classes—men of exceptional ability and criminals; and also, it may be added, among those neurotic and degenerate individuals who may be said to lie between these two classes, and on or over the borders of both. Homosexuality, mingled with various other sexual abnormalities and excesses, seems to have flourished in Rome during the empire, and is well exemplified in the persons of many of the emperors.[12] Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Commodus, and Heliogabalus—many of them men of great ability and, from a Roman standpoint, great moral worth—are all charged, on more or less solid evidence, with homosexual practices. In Julius Cæsar—”the husband of all women and the wife of all men” as he was satirically termed—excess of sexual activity seems to have accompanied, as is sometimes seen, an excess of intellectual activity. He was first accused of homosexual practices after a long stay in Bithynia with King Nikomedes, and the charge was very often renewed. Cæsar was proud of his physical beauty, and, like some modern inverts, he was accustomed carefully to shave and epilate his body to preserve the smoothness of the skin. Hadrian’s love for his beautiful slave Antinoüs is well known; the love seems to have been deep and mutual, and Antinoüs has become immortalized, partly by the romance of his obscure death and partly by the new and strangely beautiful type which he has given to sculpture. Heliogabalus, “the most homosexual of all the company,” as he has been termed, seems to have been a true sexual invert, of feminine type; he dressed as a woman and was devoted to the men he loved.
Homosexual practices everywhere flourish and abound in prisons. There is abundant evidence on this point. I will only bring forward the evidence of Dr. Wey, formerly physician to the Elmira Reformatory, New York. “Sexuality” (he wrote in a private letter) “is one of the most troublesome elements with which we have to contend. I have no data as to the number of prisoners here who are sexually perverse. In my pessimistic moments I should feel like saying that all were; but probably 80 per cent, would be a fair estimate.” And, referring to the sexual influence which some men have over others, he remarks that “there are many men with features suggestive of femininity that attract others to them in a way that reminds me of a bitch in heat followed by a pack of dogs.”[13] In Sing Sing prison of New York, 20 per cent, of the prisoners are said to be actively homosexual and a large number of the rest passively homosexual. These prison relationships are not always of a brutal character, McMurtrie states, the attraction sometimes being more spiritual than physical.
Prison life develops and fosters the homosexual tendency of criminals; but there can be little doubt that that tendency, or else a tendency to sexual indifference or bisexuality, is a radical character of a very large number of criminals. We may also find it to a considerable extent among tramps, an allied class of undoubted degenerates, who, save for brief seasons, are less familiar with prison life. I am able to bring forward interesting evidence on this point by an acute observer who lived much among tramps in various countries, and largely devoted himself to the study of them.
The fact that homosexuality is especially common among men of exceptional intellect was long since noted by Dante:—
“In somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci
E litterati grandi, et di gran fama
D’un medismo peccato al mondo lerci.”
It has often been noted since and remains a remarkable fact.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that intellectual and artistic abilities of the highest order have frequently been associated with a congenitally inverted sexual temperament. There has been a tendency among inverts themselves to discover their own temperament in many distinguished persons on evidence of the most slender character. But it remains a demonstrable fact that numerous highly distinguished persons, of the past and the present, in various countries, have been inverts. I may here refer to my own observations on this point in the preface. Mantegazza (Gli Amori degli Uomini) remarks that in his own restricted circle he is acquainted with “a French publicist, a German poet, an Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist, all men of exquisite taste and highly cultivated mind,” who are sexually inverted. Krafft-Ebing, in the preface to his Psychopathia Sexualis, referring to the “numberless” communications he has received from these “step-children of nature,” remarks that “the majority of the writers are men of high intellectual and social position, and often possess very keen emotions.” Raffalovich (Uranisme, p. 197) names among distinguished inverts, Alexander the Great, Epaminondas, Virgil, the great Condé, Prince Eugène, etc. (The question of Virgil’s inversion is discussed in the Revista di Filologia, 1890, fas. 7-9, but I have not been able to see this review.) Moll, in his Berühmte Homosexuelle (1910, in the series of Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens) discusses the homosexuality of a number of eminent persons, for the most part with his usual caution and sagacity; speaking of the alleged homosexuality of Wagner he remarks, with entire truth, that “the method of arguing the existence of homosexuality from the presence of feminine traits must be decisively rejected.” Hirschfeld has more recently included in his great work Die Homosexualität (1913, pp. 650-674) two lists, ancient and modern, of alleged inverts among the distinguished persons of history, briefly stating the nature of the evidence in each case. They amount to nearly 300. Not all of them, however, can be properly described as distinguished. Thus we end in the list 43 English names; of these at least half a dozen were noblemen who were concerned in homosexual prosecutions, but were of no intellectual distinction. Others, again, are of undoubted eminence, but there is no good reason to regard them as homosexual; this is the case, for instance, as regards Swift, who may have been mentally abnormal, but appears to have been heterosexual rather than homosexual; Fletcher, of whom we know nothing definite in this respect, is also included, as well as Tennyson, whose youthful sentimental friendship for Arthur Hallam is exactly comparable to that of Montaigne for Etienne de la Boëtie, yet Montaigne is not included in the list. It may be added, however, that while some of the English names in the list are thus extremely doubtful, it would have been possible to add some others who were without doubt inverts.
It has not, I think, been noted—largely because the evidence was insufficiently clear—that among moral leaders, and persons with strong ethical instincts, there is a tendency toward the more elevated forms of homosexual feeling. This may be traced, not only in some of the great moral teachers of old, but also in men and women of our own day. It is fairly evident why this should be so. Just as the repressed love of a woman or a man has, in normally constituted persons, frequently furnished the motive power for an enlarged philanthropic activity, so the person who sees his own sex also bathed in sexual glamour, brings to his work of human service an ardor wholly unknown to the normally constituted individual; morality to him has become one with love.[14] I am not prepared here to insist on this point, but no one, I think, who studies sympathetically the histories and experiences of great moral leaders can fail in many cases to note the presence of this feeling, more or less finely sublimated from any gross physical manifestation.
If it is probable that in moral movements persons of homosexual temperament have sometimes become prominent, it is undoubtedly true, beyond possibility of doubt, that they have been prominent in religion. Many years ago (in 1885) the ethnologist, Elie Reclus, in his charming book, Les Primitifs, setting forth the phenomena of homosexuality among the Eskimo Innuit tribe, clearly insisted that from time immemorial there has been a connection between the invert and the priest, and showed how well this connection is illustrated by the Eskimo schupans. Much more recently, in his elaborate study of the priest, Horneffer discusses the feminine traits of priests and shows that, among the most various peoples, persons of sexually abnormal and especially homosexual temperament have assumed the functions of priesthood. To the popular eye the unnatural is the supernatural, and the abnormal has appeared to be specially close to the secret Power of the World. Abnormal persons are themselves of the same opinion and regard themselves as divine. As Horneffer points out, they often really possess special aptitude. Karsch in his Gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker (1911) has brought out the high religious as well as social significance of castes of cross-dressed and often homosexual persons among primitive peoples. At the same time Edward Carpenter in his remarkable book, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk (1914), has shown with much insight how it comes about that there is an organic connection between the homosexual temperament and unusual psychic or divinatory powers. Homosexual men were non-warlike and homosexual women non-domestic, so that their energies sought different outlets from those of ordinary men and women; they became the initiators of new activities. Thus it is that from among them would in some degree issue not only inventors and craftsmen and teachers, but sorcerers and diviners, medicine-men and wizards, prophets and priests. Such persons would be especially impelled to thought, because they would realize that they were different from other people; treated with reverence by some and with contempt by others, they would be compelled to face the problems of their own nature and, indirectly, the problems of the world generally. Moreover, Carpenter points out, persons in whom the masculine and feminine temperaments were combined would in many cases be persons of intuition and complex mind beyond their fellows, and so able to exercise divination and prophecy in a very real and natural sense.
This aptitude of the invert for primitive religion, for sorcery and divination, would have its reaction on popular feeling, more especially when magic and the primitive forms of religion began to fall into disrepute. The invert would be regarded as the sorcerer of a false and evil religion and be submerged in the same ignominy. This point has been emphasized by Westermarck in the instructive chapter on homosexuality in his great work on Moral Ideas. He points out the significance of the fact, at the first glance apparently inexplicable, that homosexuality in the general opinion of medieval Christianity was constantly associated, even confounded, with heresy, as we see significantly illustrated by the fact that in France and England the popular designation for homosexuality is derived from the Bulgarian heretics. It was, Westermarck believes, chiefly as a heresy and out of religious zeal that homosexuality was so violently reprobated and so ferociously punished.
In modern Europe we find the strongest evidence of the presence of what may fairly be called true sexual inversion when we investigate the men of the Renaissance. The intellectual independence of those days and the influence of antiquity seem to have liberated and fully developed the impulses of those abnormal individuals who would otherwise have found no clear expression, and passed unnoticed.
Muret, the Humanist, may perhaps be regarded as a typical example of the nature and fate of the superior invert of the Renaissance. Born in 1526 at Muret (Limousin), of poor but noble family, he was of independent, somewhat capricious character, unable to endure professors, and consequently he was mainly his own teacher, though he often sought advice from Jules-César Scaliger. Muret was universally admired in his day for his learning and his eloquence, and is still regarded not only as a great Latinist and a fine writer, but as a notable man, of high intelligence, and remarkable, moreover, for courtesy in polemics in an age when that quality was not too common. His portrait shows a somewhat coarse and rustic but intelligent face. He conquered honor and respect before he died in 1585, at the age of 59. In early life Muret wrote wanton erotic poems to women which seem based on personal experience. But in 1553 we find him imprisoned in the Châtelet for sodomy and in danger of his life, so that he thought of starving himself to death. Friends, however, obtained his release and he settled in Toulouse. But the very next year he was burnt in effigy in Toulouse, as a Huguenot and sodomist, this being the result of a judicial sentence which had caused him to flee from the city and from France. Four years later he had to flee from Padua owing to a similar accusation. He had many friends but none of them protested against the charge, though they aided him to escape from the penalty. It is very doubtful whether he was a Huguenot, and whenever in his works he refers to pederasty it is with strong disapproval. But his writings reveal passionate friendship for men, and he seems to have expended little energy in combating a charge which, if false, was a shameful injustice to him. It was after fleeing into Italy and falling ill of a fever from fatigue and exposure that Muret is said to have made the famous retort (to the physician by his bedside who had said: “Faciamus experimentum in anima vili”): “Vilem animam appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori.”
A greater Humanist than Muret, Erasmus himself, seems as a young man, when in the Augustinian monastery of Stein, to have had a homosexual attraction to another Brother (afterward Prior) to whom he addressed many passionately affectionate letters; his affection seems, however, to have been unrequited.
As the Renaissance developed, homosexuality seems to become more prominent among distinguished persons. Poliziano was accused of pederasty. Aretino was a pederast, as Pope Julius II seems also to have been. Ariosto wrote in his satires, no doubt too extremely:—
“Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti.”
Tasso had a homosexual strain in his nature, but he was of weak and feminine constitution, sensitively emotional and physically frail.
It is, however, among artists, at that time and later, that homosexuality may most notably be traced. Leonardo da Vinci, whose ideals as revealed in his work are so strangely bisexual, lay under homosexual suspicion in his youth. In 1476, when he was 24 years of age, charges were made against him before the Florentine officials for the control of public morality, and were repeated, though they do not appear to have been substantiated. There is, however, some ground for supposing that Leonardo was imprisoned in his youth. Throughout life he loved to surround himself with beautiful youths and his pupils were more remarkable for their attractive appearance than for their skill; to one at least of them he was strongly attached, while there is no record of any attachment to a woman. Freud, who has studied Leonardo with his usual subtlety, considers that his temperament was marked by “ideal homosexuality.”
Michelangelo, one of the very chief artists of the Renaissance period, we cannot now doubt, was sexually inverted. The evidence furnished by his own letters and poems, as well as the researches of numerous recent workers,—Parlagreco, Scheffler, J. A. Symonds, etc.,—may be said to have placed this beyond question. He belonged to a family of 5 brothers, 4 of whom never married, and so far as is known left no offspring; the fifth only left 1 male heir. His biographer describes Michelangelo as “a man of peculiar, not altogether healthy, nervous temperament.” He was indifferent to women; only in one case, indeed, during his long life is there evidence even of friendship with a woman, while he was very sensitive to the beauty of men, and his friendships were very tender and enthusiastic. At the same time there is no reason to suppose that he formed any physically passionate relationships with men, and even his enemies seldom or never made this accusation against him. We may probably accept the estimate of his character given by Symonds:—
Michelangelo Buonarotti was one of those exceptional, but not uncommon men who are born with sensibilities abnormally deflected from the ordinary channel. He showed no partiality for women, and a notable enthusiasm for the beauty of young men.... He was a man of physically frigid temperament, extremely sensitive to beauty of the male type, who habitually philosophized his emotions, and contemplated the living objects of his admiration as amiable, not only for their personal qualities, but also for their esthetical attractiveness.
A temperament of this kind seems to have had no significance for the men of those days; they were blind to all homosexual emotion which had no result in sodomy. Plato found such attraction a subject for sentimental metaphysics, but it was not until nearly our own time that it again became a subject of interest and study. Yet it undoubtedly had profound influence on Michelangelo’s art, impelling him to find every kind of human beauty in the male form, and only a grave dignity or tenderness, divorced from every quality that is sexually desirable, in the female form. This deeply rooted abnormality is at once the key to the melancholy of Michelangelo and to the mystery of his art.
Michelangelo’s contemporary, the painter Bazzi (1477-1549), seems also to have been radically inverted, and to this fact he owed his nickname Sodoma. As, however, he was married and had children, it may be that he was, as we should now say, of bisexual temperament. He was a great artist who has been dealt with unjustly, partly, perhaps, because of the prejudice of Vasari,—whose admiration for Michelangelo amounted to worship, but who is contemptuous toward Sodoma and grudging of praise,—partly because his work is little known out of Italy and not very easy of access there. Reckless, unbalanced, and eccentric in his life, Sodoma revealed in his painting a peculiar feminine softness and warmth—which indeed we seem to see also in his portrait of himself at Monte Oliveto Maggiore—and a very marked and tender feeling for masculine, but scarcely virile, beauty.
Cellini was probably homosexual. He was imprisoned on a charge of unnatural vice and is himself suspiciously silent in his autobiography concerning this imprisonment.
In the seventeenth century another notable sculptor who has been termed the Flemish Cellini, Jérôme Duquesnoy (whose still more distinguished brother François executed the Manneken Pis in Brussels), was an invert; having finally been accused of sexual relations with a youth in a chapel of the Ghent Cathedral, where he was executing a monument for the bishop, he was strangled and burned, notwithstanding that much influence, including that of the bishop, was brought to bear in his behalf.
In more recent times Winkelmann, who was the initiator of a new Greek Renaissance and of the modern appreciation of ancient art, lies under what seems to be a well-grounded suspicion of sexual inversion. His letters to male friends are full of the most passionate expressions of love. His violent death also appears to have been due to a love-adventure with a man. The murderer was a cook, a wholly uncultivated man, a criminal who had already been condemned to death, and shortly before murdering Winkelmann for the sake of plunder he was found to be on very intimate terms with him. It is noteworthy that sexual inversion should so often be found associated with the study of antiquity. It must not, however, be too hastily concluded that this is due to suggestion and that to abolish the study of Greek literature and art would be largely to abolish sexual inversion. What has really occurred in those recent cases that may be studied, and therefore without doubt in the older cases, is that the subject of congenital sexual inversion is attracted to the study of Greek antiquity because he finds there the explanation and the apotheosis of his own obscure impulses. Undoubtedly that study tends to develop these impulses.
While it is peculiarly easy to name men of distinguished ability who, either certainly or in all probability, have been affected by homosexual tendencies, they are not isolated manifestations. They spring out of an element of diffused homosexuality which is at least as marked in civilization as it is in savagery. It is easy to find illustrations in every country. Here it may suffice to refer to France, Germany, and England.
In France in the thirteenth century the Church was so impressed by the prevalence of homosexuality that it reasserted the death penalty for sodomy at the Councils of Paris (1212) and Rouen (1214), while we are told that even by rejecting a woman’s advances (as illustrated in Marie de France’s Lai de Lanval) a man fell under suspicion as a sodomist, which was also held to involve heresy. At the end of this century (about 1294) Alain de Lille was impelled to write a book, De Planctu Naturæ, in order to call attention to the prevalence of homosexual feeling; he also associated the neglect of women with sodomy. “Man is made woman,” he writes; “he blackens the honor of his sex, the craft of magic Venus makes him of double gender”; nobly beautiful youths have “turned their hammers of love to the office of anvils,” and “many kisses lie untouched on maiden lips.” The result is that “the natural anvils,” that is to say the neglected maidens, “bewail the absence of their hammers and are seen sadly to demand them.” Alain de Lille makes himself the voice of this demand.
A few years later, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, sodomy was still regarded as very prevalent. At that time it was especially associated with the Templars who, it has been supposed, brought it from the East. Such a supposition, however, is not required to account for the existence of homosexuality in France. Nor is it necessary, at a somewhat later period, to invoke, as is frequently done, the Italian origin of Catherine de Medici, in order to explain the prevalence of homosexual practices at her court.
Notwithstanding its prevalence, sodomy was still severely punished from time to time. Thus in 1586, Dadon, who had formerly been Rector of the University of Paris, was hanged and then burned for injuring a child through sodomy. In the seventeenth century, homosexuality continued, however, to flourish, and it is said that nearly all the numerous omissions made in the published editions of Tallement des Reaux’s Historiettes refer to sodomy.
How prominent homosexuality was, in the early eighteenth century in France, we learn from the frequent references to it in the letters of Madame, the mother of the Regent, whose husband was himself effeminate and probably inverted.[15] For the later years of the century the evidence abounds on every hand. At this time the Bastille was performing a useful function, until recently overlooked by historians, as an asile de sureté for abnormal persons whom it was considered unsafe to leave at large. Inverts whose conduct became too offensive to be tolerated were frequently placed in the Bastille which, indeed “abounded in homosexual subjects,” to a greater extent than any other class of sexual perverts. Some of the affairs which led to the Bastille have a modern air. One such case on a large scale occurred in 1702, and reveals an organized system of homosexual prostitution; one of the persons involved in this affair was a handsome, well-made youth named Lebel, formerly a lackey, but passing himself off as a man of quality. Seduced at the age of 10 by a famous sodomist named Duplessis, he had since been at the disposition of a number of homosexual persons, including officers, priests, and marquises. Some of the persons involved in these affairs were burned alive; some cut their own throats; others again were set at liberty or transferred to the Bicêtre. During the latter part of the eighteenth century, also, we find another modern homosexual practice recognized in France; the rendezvous or center where homosexual persons could quietly meet each other.
Inversion has always been easy to trace in Germany. Ammianus Marcellinus bears witness to its prevalence among some German tribes in later Roman days.[16] In mediæval times, as Schultz points out, references to sodomy in Germany were far from uncommon. Various princes of the German Imperial house, and of other princely families in the Middle Ages, were noted for their intimate friendships. At a later date, attention has frequently been called to the extreme emotional warmth which has often marked German friendship, even when there has been no suspicion of any true homosexual relationship.[17] The eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that abandonment to sentiment initiated by Rousseau, proved peculiarly favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. On this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come to the surface and find expression. We find this well illustrated in the poet Heinrich von Kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament, and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler than those for his friend. To this friend, Ernst von Pfuël (afterward Prussian war minister), Kleist wrote in 1805 at the age of 28: “You bring the days of the Greeks back to me; I could sleep with you, dear youth, my whole soul so embraces you. When you used to bathe in the Lake of Thun I would gaze with the real feelings of a girl at your beautiful body. It would serve an artist to study from.” There follows an enthusiastic account of his friend’s beauty and of the Greek “idea of the love of youths,” and Kleist concludes: “Go with me to Anspach, and let us enjoy the sweets of friendship.... I shall never marry; you must be wife and children to me.”
In all social classes and in all fields of activity, Germany during the nineteenth century produced a long series of famous or notorious homosexual persons. At the one end we find people of the highest intellectual distinction, such as Alexander von Humboldt, whom Näcke, a cautious investigator, stated that he had good ground for regarding as an invert.[18] At the other end we find prosperous commercial and manufacturing people who leave Germany to find solace in the free and congenial homosexual atmosphere of Capri; of these F. A. Krupp, the head of the famous Essen factory, may be regarded as the type.[19]
In England (and the same is true today of the United States), although homosexuality has been less openly manifest and less thoroughly explored, it is doubtful whether it has been less prevalent than in Germany. At an early period, indeed, the evidence may even seem to show that it was more prevalent. In the Penitentials of the ninth and tenth centuries “natural fornication and sodomy” were frequently put together and the same penance assigned to both; it was recognized that priests and bishops, as well as laymen, might fall into this sin, though to the bishop nearly three times as much penance was assigned as to the layman. Among the Normans, everywhere, homosexuality was markedly prevalent; the spread of sodomy in France about the eleventh century is attributed to the Normans, and their coming seems to have rendered it at times almost fashionable, at all events at court. In England William Rufus was undoubtedly inverted, as later on were Edward II, James I, and, perhaps, though not in so conspicuous a degree, William III.[20]
Ordericus Vitalis, who was himself half Norman and half English, says that the Normans had become very effeminate in his time, and that after the death of William the Conqueror sodomy was common both in England and Normandy. Guillaume de Nangis, in his chronicle for about 1120, speaking of the two sons of Henry and the company of young nobles who went down with them, in the White Ship, states that nearly all were considered to be sodomists, and Henry of Huntingdon, in his History, looked upon the loss of the White Ship as a judgment of heaven upon sodomy. Anselm, in writing to Archdeacon William to inform him concerning the recent Council at London (1102), gives advice as to how to deal with people who have committed the sin of sodomy, and instructs him not to be too harsh with those who have not realized its gravity, for hitherto “this sin has been so public that hardly anyone has blushed for it, and many, therefore, have plunged into it without realizing its gravity.”[21] So temperate a remark by a man of such unquestionably high character is more significant of the prevalence of homosexuality than much denunciation.
In religious circles far from courts and cities, as we might expect, homosexuality was regarded with great horror, though even here we may discover evidence of its wide prevalence. Thus in the remarkable Revelation of the Monk of Evesham, written in English in 1196, we find that in the very worst part of Purgatory are confined an innumerable company of sodomists (including a wealthy, witty, and learned divine, a doctor of laws, personally known to the Monk), and whether these people would ever be delivered from Purgatory was a matter of doubt; of the salvation of no other sinners does the Monk of Evesham seem so dubious.
Sodomy had always been an ecclesiastical offense. The Statute of 1533 (25 Henry VIII, c. 6) made it a felony; and Pollock and Maitland consider that this “affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long time past.” The temporal law has never, however, proved very successful in repressing homosexuality. At this period the Renaissance movement was reaching England, and here as elsewhere it brought with it, if not an increase, at all events a rehabilitation and often an idealization of homosexuality.[22]
An eminent humanist and notable pioneer in dramatic literature, Nicholas Udall, to whom is attributed Ralph Roister Doister, the first English comedy, stands out as unquestionably addicted to homosexual tastes, although he has left no literary evidence of this tendency. He was an early adherent of the Protestant movement, and when head-master of Eton he was noted for his love of inflicting corporal punishment on the boys. Tusser says he once received from Udall 53 stripes for “fault but small or none at all.” Here there was evidently a sexual sadistic impulse, for in 1541 (the year of Ralph Roister Doister) Udall was charged with unnatural crime and confessed his guilt before the Privy Council. He was dismissed from the head-mastership and imprisoned, but only for a short time, “and his reputation,” his modern biographer states, “was not permanently injured.” He retained the vicarage of Braintree, and was much favored by Edward VI, who nominated him to a prebend of Windsor. Queen Mary was also favorable and he became head-master of Westminster School.
An Elizabethan lyrical poet of high quality, whose work has had the honor of being confused with Shakespeare’s, Richard Barnfield, appears to have possessed the temperament, at least, of the invert. His poems to male friends are of so impassioned a character that they aroused the protests of a very tolerant age. Very little is known of Barnfield’s life. Born in 1574 he published his first poem, The Affectionate Shepherd, at the age of 20, while still at the University. It was issued anonymously, revealed much fresh poetic feeling and literary skill, and is addressed to a youth of whom the poet declares:—
“If it be sin to love a lovely lad,
Oh then sin I.”
In his subsequent volume, Cynthia (1595), Barnfield disclaims any intention in the earlier poem beyond that of imitating Virgil’s second eclogue. But the sonnets in this second volume are even more definitely homosexual than the earlier poem, though he goes on to tell how at last he found a lass whose beauty surpassed that
“of the swain
Whom I never could obtain.”
After the age of 31 Barnfield wrote no more, but, being in easy circumstances, retired to his beautiful manor house and country estate in Shropshire, lived there for twenty years and died leaving a wife and son.[23] It seems probable that he was of bisexual temperament, and that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, the homosexual element developed early under the influence of a classical education and university associations, while the normal heterosexual element developed later and, as may happen in bisexual persons, was associated with the more commonplace and prosaic side of life. Barnfield was only a genuine poet on the homosexual side of his nature.
Greater men of that age than Barnfield may be suspected of homosexual tendencies. Marlowe, whose most powerful drama, Edward II, is devoted to a picture of the relations between that king and his minions, is himself suspected of homosexuality. An ignorant informer brought certain charges of freethought and criminality against him, and further accused him of asserting that they are fools who love not boys. These charges have doubtless been colored by the vulgar channel through which they passed, but it seems absolutely impossible to regard them as the inventions of a mere gallows-bird such as this informer was. Moreover, Marlowe’s poetic work, while it shows him by no means insensitive to the beauty of women, also reveals a special and peculiar sensitiveness to masculine beauty. Marlowe clearly had a reckless delight in all things unlawful, and it seems probable that he possessed the bisexual temperament. Shakespeare has also been discussed from this point of view. All that can be said, however, is that he addressed a long series of sonnets to a youthful male friend. These sonnets are written in lover’s language of a very tender and noble order. They do not appear to imply any relationship that the writer regarded as shameful or that would be so regarded by the world. Moreover, they seem to represent but a single episode in the life of a very sensitive, many-sided nature.[24] There is no other evidence in Shakespeare’s work of homosexual instinct such as we may trace throughout Marlowe’s, while there is abundant evidence of a constant preoccupation with women.
While Shakespeare thus narrowly escapes inclusion in the list of distinguished inverts, there is much better ground for the inclusion of his great contemporary, Francis Bacon. Aubrey in his laboriously compiled Short Lives, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by Sir Simonds D’Ewes in his Autobiography. D’Ewes, whose family belonged to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon’s sprang from, was not friendly to Bacon, but that fact will not suffice to account for his statement. He was an upright and honorable man of scholarly habits, and, moreover, a trained lawyer, who had many opportunities of obtaining first-hand information, for he had lived in the Chancery office from childhood. He is very precise as to Bacon’s homosexual practices with his own servants, both before and after his fall, and even gives the name of a “very effeminate-faced youth” who was his “catamite and bedfellow”; he states, further, that there had been some question of bringing Bacon to trial for sodomy. These allegations may be supported by a letter of Bacon’s own mother (printed in Spedding’s Life of Bacon), reproving him on account of what she had heard concerning his behavior with the young Welshmen in his service whom he made his bedfellows. It is notable that Bacon seems to have been specially attracted to Welshmen (one might even find evidence of this in the life of the Welshman, Henry VII), a people of vivacious temperament unlike his own; this is illustrated by his long and intimate friendship with the mercurial Sir Toby Mathew, his “alter ego,” a man of dissipated habits in early life, though we are not told that he was homosexual. Bacon had many friendships with men, but there is no evidence that he was ever in love or cherished any affectionate intimacy with a woman. Women play no part at all in his life. His marriage, which was childless, took place at the mature age of 46; it was effected in a business-like manner, and though he always treated his wife with formal consideration it is probable that he neglected her, and certain that he failed to secure her devotion; it is clear that toward the end of Bacon’s life she formed a relationship with her gentleman usher, whom subsequently she married. Bacon’s writings, it may be added, equally with his letters, show no evidence of love or attraction to women; in his Essays he is brief and judicial on the subject of Marriage, copious and eloquent on the subject of Friendship, while the essay on Beauty deals exclusively with masculine beauty.
During the first half of the eighteenth century we have clear evidence that homosexuality flourished in London with the features which it presents today in all large cities everywhere. There was a generally known name, “Mollies,” applied to homosexual persons, evidently having reference to their frequently feminine characteristics; there were houses of private resort for them (“Molly houses”), there were special public places of rendezvous whither they went in search of adventure, exactly as there are today. A walk in Upper Moorfields was especially frequented by the homosexual about 1725. A detective employed by the police about that date gave evidence as follows at the Old Bailey; “I takes a turn that way and leans over the wall. In a little time the prisoner passes by, and looks hard at me, and at a small distance from me stands up against the wall as if he was going to make water. Then by degrees he siddles nearer and nearer to where I stood, till at last he was close to me. ‘Tis a very fine night,’ says he. ‘Aye,’ say I, ‘and so it is.’ Then he takes me by the hand, and after squeezing and playing with it a little, he conveys it to his breeches,” whereupon the detective seizes the man by his sexual organs and holds him until the constable comes up and effects an arrest.
At the same period Margaret Clap, commonly called Mother Clap, kept a house in Field Lane, Holborn, which was a noted resort of the homosexual. To Mother Clap’s Molly-house 30 or 40 clients would resort every night; on Sunday there might be as many as 50, for, as in Berlin and other cities today, that was the great homosexual gala night; there were beds in every room in this house. We are told that the “men would sit in one another’s laps, kissing in a lewd manner and using their hands indecently. Then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women, ‘Oh, fie, sir,’—’Pray, sir,’—’Dear sir,’—’Lord, how can you serve me so?’—’I swear I’ll cry out,’—’You’re a wicked devil,’—’And you’re a bold face,’—’Eh, ye dear little toad,’—’Come, bus.’ They’d hug and play and toy and go out by couples into another room, on the same floor, to be ‘married,’ as they called it.”
On the whole one gains the impression that homosexual practices were more prevalent in London in the eighteenth century, bearing in mind its population at that time, than they are today.[25] It must not, however, be supposed that the law was indulgent and its administration lax. The very reverse was the case. The punishment for sodomy, when completely effected, was death, and it was frequently inflicted. Homosexual intercourse, without evidence of penetration, was regarded as “attempt” and was usually punished by the pillory and a heavy fine, followed by two years’ imprisonment. Moreover, it would appear that more activity was shown by the police in prosecution than is nowadays the case; this is, for instance, suggested by the evidence of the detective already quoted.
To keep a homosexual resort was also a severely punishable offense. Mother Clap was charged at the Old Bailey in 1726 with “keeping a sodomitical house”; she protested that she could not herself have taken part in these practices, but that availed her nothing; she could bring forward no witnesses on her behalf and was condemned to pay a fine, to stand in the pillory, and to undergo imprisonment for two years. The cases were dealt with in a matter-of-fact way which seems to bear further witness to the frequency of the offense, and with no effort to expend any specially vindictive harshness on this class of offenders. If there was the slightest doubt as to the facts, even though the balance of evidence was against the accused, he was usually acquitted, and the man who could bring witnesses to his general good character might often thereby escape. In 1721 a religious young man, married, was convicted of attempting sodomy with two young men he slept with; he was fined, placed in the pillory and imprisoned for two months. Next year a man was acquitted on a similar charge, and another man, of decent aspect, although the evidence indicated that he might have been guilty of sodomy, was only convicted of attempt, and sentenced to fine, pillory, and two years’ imprisonment. In 1723, again, a schoolmaster was acquitted, on account of his good reputation, of the charge of attempt on a boy of 15, his pupil, though the evidence seemed decidedly against him. In 1730 a man was sentenced to death for sodomy effected on his young apprentice; this was a bad case and the surgeon’s evidence indicated laceration of the perineum. Homosexuality of all kinds flourished, it will be seen, notwithstanding the fearless yet fair application of a very severe law.[26]
In more recent times Byron has frequently been referred to as experiencing homosexual affections, and I have been informed that some of his poems nominally addressed to women were really inspired by men. It is certain that he experienced very strong emotions toward his male friends. “My school-friendships,” he wrote, “were with me passions.” When he afterward met one of these friends, Lord Clare, in Italy, he was painfully agitated; and could never hear the name without a beating of the heart. At the age of 22 he formed one of his strong attachments for a youth to whom he left £7000 in his will. It is probable, however, that here, as well as in the case of Shakespeare, and in that of Tennyson’s love for his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, as well as of Montaigne for Etienne de la Boëtie, although such strong friendships may involve an element of sexual emotion, we have no true and definite homosexual impulse; homosexuality is merely simulated by the ardent and hyperesthetic emotions of the poet.[27] The same quality of the poet’s emotional temperament may doubtless, also, be invoked in the case of Goethe, who is said to have written elegies which, on account of their homosexual character, still remain unpublished.
The most famous homosexual trial of recent times in England was that of Oscar Wilde, a writer whose literary reputation may be said to be still growing, not only in England but throughout the world. Wilde was the son of parents who were both of unusual ability and somewhat eccentric. Both these tendencies became in him more concentrated. He was born with, as it were, a congenital antipathy to the commonplace, a natural love of paradox, and he possessed the skill to embody the characteristic in finished literary form. At the same time, it must not be forgotten, beneath this natural attitude of paradox, his essential judgments on life and literature were usually sound and reasonable. His essay on “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” witnessed to his large and enlightened conception of life, and his profound admiration for Flaubert to the sanity and solidity of his literary taste. In early life he revealed no homosexual tendencies; he married and had children. After he had begun to outgrow his youthful esthetic extravagances, however, and to acquire success and fame, he developed what was at first a simply inquisitive interest in inversion. Such inquisitive interest is sometimes the sign of an emerging homosexual impulse. It proved to be so in Wilde’s case and ultimately he was found to be cultivating the acquaintance of youths of low class and doubtful character. Although this development occurred comparatively late in life, we must hesitate to describe Wilde’s homosexuality as acquired. If we consider his constitution and his history, it is not difficult to suppose that homosexual germs were present in a latent form from the first, and it may quite well be that Wilde’s inversion was of that kind which is now described as retarded, though still congenital.
As is usual in England, no active efforts were made to implicate Wilde in any criminal charge. It was his own action, as even he himself seems to have vaguely realized beforehand, which brought the storm about his head. He was arrested, tried, condemned, and at once there arose a general howl of execration, joined in even by the judge, whose attitude compared unfavorably with the more impartial attitude of the eighteenth century judges in similar cases. Wilde came out of prison ambitious to retrieve his reputation by the quality of his literary work. But he left Reading gaol merely to enter a larger and colder prison. He soon realized that his spirit was broken even more than his health. He drifted at last to Paris, where he shortly after died, shunned by all but a few of his friends.[28]
In a writer of the first order, Edward Fitzgerald, to whom we owe the immortal and highly individualized version of Omar Khayyam, it is easy to trace an element of homosexuality, though it appears never to have reached full and conscious development. Fitzgerald was an eccentric person who, though rich and on friendly terms with some of the most distinguished men of his time, was always out of harmony with his environment. He felt himself called on to marry, very unhappily, a woman whom he had never been in love with and with whom he had nothing in common. All his affections were for his male friends. In early life he was devoted to his friend W. K. Browne, whom he glorified in Euphranor. “To him Browne was at once Jonathan, Gamaliel, Apollo,—the friend, the master, the God,—there was scarcely a limit to his devotion and admiration.” On Browne’s premature death Fitzgerald’s heart was empty. In 1859 at Lowestoft, Fitzgerald, as he wrote to Mrs. Browne, “used to wander about the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost me who might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my heart.” It was then that he met “Posh” (Joseph Fletcher), a fisherman, 6 feet tall, said to be of the best Suffolk type, both in body and character. Posh reminded Fitzgerald of his dead friend Browne; he made him captain of his lugger, and was thereafter devoted to him. Posh was, said Fitzgerald, “a man of the finest Saxon type, with a complexion vif, mâle et flamboyant, blue eyes, a nose less than Roman, more than Greek, and strictly auburn hair that any woman might envy. Further he was a man of simplicity; of soul, justice of thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of Nature’s grandest type,” in fact the “greatest man” Fitzgerald had ever met. Posh was not, however, quite so absolutely perfect as this description suggests, and various misunderstandings arose in consequence between the two friends so unequal in culture and social traditions. These difficulties are reflected in some of the yet extant letters from the enormous mass which Fitzgerald addressed to “my dear Poshy.”
A great personality of recent times, widely regarded with reverence as the prophet-poet of Democracy[29]—Walt Whitman—has aroused discussion by his sympathetic attitude toward passionate friendship, or “manly love” as he calls it, in Leaves of Grass. In this book—in “Calamus,” “Drumtaps,” and elsewhere—Whitman celebrates a friendship in which physical contact and a kind of silent voluptuous emotion are essential elements. In order to settle the question as to the precise significance of “Calamus,” J. A. Symonds wrote to Whitman, frankly posing the question. The answer (written from Camden, N. J., on August 19, 1890) is the only statement of Whitman’s attitude toward homosexuality, and it is therefore desirable that it should be set on record:—
“About the questions on ‘Calamus,’ etc., they quite daze me. Leaves of Grass is only to be rightly construed by and within its own atmosphere and essential character—all its pages and pieces so coming strictly under. That the ‘Calamus’ part has ever allowed the possibility of such construction as mentioned is terrible. I am fain to hope that the pages themselves are not to be even mentioned for such gratuitous and quite at the time undreamed and unwished possibility of morbid inferences—which are disavowed by me and seem damnable.”
It would seem from this letter[30] that Whitman had never realized that there is any relationship whatever between the passionate emotion of physical contact from man to man, as he had experienced it and sung it, and the act which with other people he would regard as a crime against nature. This may be singular, for there are many inverted persons who have found satisfaction in friendships less physical and passionate than those described in Leaves of Grass, but Whitman was a man of concrete, emotional, instinctive temperament, lacking in analytical power, receptive to all influences, and careless of harmonizing them. He would most certainly have refused to admit that he was the subject of inverted sexuality. It remains true, however, that “manly love” occupies in his work a predominance which it would scarcely hold in the feelings of the “average man,” whom Whitman wishes to honor. A normally constituted person, having assumed the very frank attitude taken up by Whitman, would be impelled to devote far more space and far more ardor to the subject of sexual relationships with women and all that is involved in maternity than is accorded to them in Leaves of Grass. Some of Whitman’s extant letters to young men, though they do not throw definite light on this question, are of a very affectionate character,[31] and, although a man of remarkable physical vigor, he never felt inclined to marry.[32] It remains somewhat difficult to classify him from the sexual point of view, but we can scarcely fail to recognize the presence of a homosexual tendency.
I should add that some friends and admirers of Whitman are not prepared to accept the evidence of the letter to Symonds. I am indebted to “Q.” for the following statement of the objections:—
“I think myself that it is a mistake to give much weight to this letter—perhaps a mistake to introduce it at all, since if introduced it will, of course, carry weight. And this for three or four reasons:—
“1. That it is difficult to reconcile the letter itself (with its strong tone of disapprobation) with the general ‘atmosphere’ of Leaves of Grass, the tenor of which is to leave everything open and free.
“2. That the letter is in hopeless conflict with the ‘Calamus’ section of poems. For, whatever moral lines Whitman may have drawn at the time of writing these poems, it seems to me quite incredible that the possibility of certain inferences, morbid or other, was undreamed of.
“3. That the letter was written only a few months before his last illness and death, and is the only expression of the kind that he appears to have given utterance to.
“4. That Symonds’s letter, to which this was a reply, is not forth coming; and we consequently do not know what rash expressions it may have contained—leading Whitman (with his extreme caution) to hedge his name from possible use to justify dubious practices.”
I may add that I endeavored to obtain Symonds’s letter, but he was unable to produce it, nor has any copy of it been found among his papers.
It should be said that Whitman’s attitude toward Symonds was marked by high regard and admiration. “A wonderful man is Addington Symonds,” he remarked shortly before his own death; “some ways the most indicative and penetrating and significant man of our time. Symonds is a curious fellow; I love him dearly. He is of college breed and education, horribly literary and suspicious, and enjoys things. A great fellow for delving into persons and into the concrete, and even into the physiological and the gastric, and wonderfully cute.” But on this occasion he delved in vain.
The foregoing remarks (substantially contained in the previous editions of this book) were based mainly on the information received from J. A. Symonds’s side. But of more recent years interesting light has been thrown on this remarkable letter from Walt Whitman’s side. The Boswellian patience, enthusiasm, and skill which Horace Traubel has brought to his full and elaborate work, now in course of publication, With Walt Whitman in Camden, clearly reveal, in the course of various conversations, Whitman’s attitude to Symonds’s question and the state of mind which led up to this letter.
Whitman talked to Traubel much about Symonds from the twenty-seventh of April, 1888 (very soon after the date when Traubel’s work begins), onward. Symonds had written to him repeatedly, it seems, concerning the “passional relations of men with men,” as Whitman expressed it. “He is always driving at me about that: is that what Calamus means?—because of me or in spite of me, is that what it means? I have said no, but no does not satisfy him. [There is, however, no record from Symonds’s side of any letter by Whitman to Symonds in this sense up to this date.] But read this letter—read the whole of it: it is very shrewd, very cute, in deadliest earnest: it drives me hard, almost compels me—it is urgent, persistent: he sort of stands in the road and says ‘I won’t move till you answer my question.’ You see, this is an old letter—sixteen years old—and he is still asking the question: he refers to it in one of his latest notes. He is surely a wonderful man—a rare, cleaned-up man—a white-souled, heroic character.... You will be writing something about Calamus some day,” said W. [to Traubel], “and this letter, and what I say, may help to clear your ideas. Calamus needs clear ideas; it may be easily, innocently distorted from its natural, its motive, body of doctrine.”
The letter, dated Feb. 7, 1872, of some length, is then reproduced. It tells how much Leaves of Grass, and especially the Calamus section, had helped the writer. “What the love of man for man has been in the past,” Symonds wrote, “I think I know. What it is here now, I know also—alas! What you say it can and should be I dimly discern in your Poems. But this hardly satisfies me—so desirous am I of learning what you teach. Some day, perhaps,—in some form, I know not what, but in your own chosen form,—you will tell me more about the Love of Friends. Till then I wait.”
“Said W: ‘Well, what do you think of that? Do you think that could be answered?’ ‘I don’t see why you call that letter driving you hard. It’s quiet enough—it only asks questions, and asks the questions mildly enough,’ ‘I suppose you are right—”drive” is not exactly the word: yet you know how I hate to be catechised. Symonds is right, no doubt, to ask the questions: I am just as much right if I do not answer them: just as much right if I do answer them. I often say to myself about Calamus—perhaps it means more or less than what I thought myself—means different: perhaps I don’t know what it all means—perhaps never did know. My first instinct about all that Symonds writes is violently reactionary—is strong and brutal for no, no, no. Then the thought intervenes that I maybe do not know all my own meanings: I say to myself: “You, too, go away, come back, study your own book—as alien or stranger, study your own book, see what it amounts to.” Some time or other I will have to write to him definitely about Calamus—give him my word for it what I meant or mean it to mean.’”
Again, a month later (May 24, 1888), Whitman speaks to Traubel of a “beautiful letter” from Symonds. “You will see that he harps on the Calamus poems again. I don’t see why it should, but his recurrence to that subject irritates me a little. I suppose you might say—why don’t you shut him up by answering him? There is no logical answer to that I suppose: but I may ask in my turn: ‘What right has he to ask questions anyway?’” W. laughed a bit. “Anyway the question comes back to me almost every time he writes. He is courteous enough about it—that is the reason I do not resent him. I suppose the whole thing will end in an answer some day.”
The letter follows. The chief point in it is that the writer hopes he has not been importunate in the question he had asked about Calamus three years before.
“I [Traubel] said to W.: ‘That’s a humble letter enough: I don’t see anything in that to get excited about. He doesn’t ask you to answer the old question. In fact he rather apologizes for having asked it.’ W. fired up ‘Who is excited? As to that question, he does ask it again and again: asks it, asks it, asks it.’ I laughed at his vehemence. ‘Well, suppose he does? It does not harm. Besides, you’ve got nothing to hide. I think your silence might lead him to suppose there was a nigger in your wood pile.’ ‘Oh, nonsense! But for thirty years my enemies and friends have been asking me questions about the Leaves: I’m tired of not answering questions.’ It was very funny to see his face when he gave a humorous twist to the fling in his last phrase. Then he relaxed and added: ‘Anyway I love Symonds. Who could fail to love a man who could write such a letter? I suppose he will yet have to be answered, damn ‘im!’”
It is clear that these conversations considerably diminish the force of the declaration in Whitman’s letter. We see that the letter which, on the face of it, might have represented the swift and indignant reaction of a man who, suddenly faced by the possibility that his work may be interpreted in a perverse sense, emphatically repudiates that interpretation, was really nothing of the kind. Symonds for at least eighteen years had been gently, considerately, even humbly, yet persistently, asking the same perfectly legitimate question. If the answer was really an emphatic no, it would more naturally have been made in 1872 than 1890. Moreover, in the face of this ever-recurring question, Whitman constantly speaks to his friends of his great affection for Symonds and his admiration for his intellectual cuteness, feelings that would both be singularly out of place if applied to a man who was all the time suggesting the possibility that his writings contained inferences that were “terrible,” “morbid,” and “damnable.” Evidently, during all those years, Whitman could not decide what to reply. On the one hand he was moved by his horror of being questioned, by his caution, by his natural aversion to express approval of anything that could be called unnatural or abnormal. On the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open, and possibly by a more or less conscious sympathy with the inferences presented to him. It was not until the last years of his life, when his sexual life belonged to the past, when weakness was gaining on him, when he wished to put aside every drain on his energies, that—being constitutionally incapable of a balanced scientific statement—he chose the simplest and easiest solution of the difficulty.[33]
Concerning another great modern writer—Paul Verlaine, the first of modern French poets—it seems possible to speak with less hesitation. A man who possessed in fullest measure the irresponsible impressionability of genius, Verlaine—as his work shows and as he himself admitted—all his life oscillated between normal and homosexual love, at one period attracted to women, at another to men. He was without doubt, it seems to me, bisexual. An early connection with another young poet, Arthur Rimbaud, terminated in a violent quarrel with his friend, and led to Verlaine’s imprisonment at Mons. In after-years he gave expression to the exalted passion of this relationship—mon grand péché radieux—in Læti et Errabundi, published in the volume entitled Parallèlement; and in later poems he has told of less passionate and less sensual relationships which yet were more than friendship, for instance, in the poem, “Mon ami, ma plus belle amitié, ma Meilleure” in Bonheur.[34]
In this brief glance at some of the ethnographical, historical, religious, and literary aspects of homosexual passion there is one other phenomenon which may be mentioned. This is the alleged fact that, while the phenomena exist to some extent everywhere, we seem to find a special proclivity to homosexuality (whether or not involving a greater frequency of congenital inversion is not usually clear) among certain races and in certain regions.[35] In Europe this would be best illustrated by the case of southern Italy, which in this respect is held to be distinct from northern Italy, although Italians generally are franker than men of northern race in admitting their sexual practices.[36] How far the supposed greater homosexuality of southern Italy may be due to Greek influence and Greek blood it is not very easy to say.
It must be remembered that, in dealing with a northern country like England, homosexual phenomena do not present themselves in the same way as they do in southern Italy today, or in ancient Greece. In Greece the homosexual impulse was recognized and idealized; a man could be an open homosexual lover, and yet, like Epaminondas, be a great and honored citizen of his country. There was no reason whatever why a man, who in mental and physical constitution was perfectly normal, should not adopt a custom that was regarded as respectable, and sometimes as even specially honorable. But it is quite otherwise today in a country like England or the United States.[37] In these countries all our traditions and all our moral ideals, as well as the law, are energetically opposed to every manifestation of homosexual passion. It requires a very strong impetus to go against this compact social force which, on every side, constrains the individual into the paths of heterosexual love. That impetus, in a well-bred individual who leads the normal life of his fellow-men and who feels the ordinary degree of respect for the social feeling surrounding him, can only be supplied by a fundamental—usually, it is probable, inborn—perversion of the sexual instinct, rendering the individual organically abnormal. It is with this fundamental abnormality, usually called sexual inversion, that we shall here be concerned. There is no evidence to show that homosexuality in Greece was a congenital perversion, although it appears that Cœlius Aurelianus affirms that in the opinion of Parmenides it was hereditary. Aristotle also, in his fragment on physical love, though treating the whole matter with indulgence, seems to have distinguished abnormal congenital homosexuality from acquired homosexual vice. Doubtless in a certain proportion of cases the impulse was organic, and it may well be that there was an organic and racial predisposition to homosexuality among the Greeks, or, at all events, the Dorians. But the state of social feeling, however it originated, induced a large proportion of the ordinary population to adopt homosexuality as a fashion, or, it may be said, the environment was peculiarly favorable to the development of latent homosexual tendencies. So that any given number of homosexual persons among the Greeks would have presented a far smaller proportion of constitutionally abnormal individuals than a like number in England. In a similar manner—though I do not regard the analogy as complete—infanticide or the exposition of children was practised in some of the early Greek States by parents who were completely healthy and normal; in England a married woman who destroys her child is in nearly every case demonstrably diseased or abnormal. For this reason I am unable to see that homosexuality in ancient Greece—while of great interest as a social and psychological problem—throws light on sexual inversion as we know it in England or the United States.
Concerning the wide prevalence of sexual inversion and of homosexual phenomena generally, there can be no manner of doubt. This question has been most fully investigated in Germany. In Berlin, Moll states that he has himself seen between 600 and 700 homosexual persons and heard of some 250 to 350 others. Hirschfeld states that he has known over 10,000 homosexual persons.
There are, I am informed, several large cafés in Berlin which are almost exclusively patronized by inverts who come here to flirt and make acquaintances; as these cafés are frequented by male street prostitutes (Pupenjunge) the invert risks being blackmailed or robbed if he goes home or to a hotel with a café acquaintance. There are also a considerable number of homosexual Kneipen, small and unpretentious bar-rooms, which are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money; these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as the proprietors insist on good order and allow no extortion, while the police, though of course aware of their existence, never interfere. Homosexual cafés for women are also found in Berlin.
There is some reason for believing that homosexuality is especially prominent in Germany and among Germans. I have elsewhere referred to the highly emotional and sentimental traits which have frequently marked German friendships. Germany is the only country in which there is a definite and well-supported movement for the defense and social rehabilitation of inverts. The study of sexual inversion began in Germany, and the scientific and literary publications dealing with homosexuality issued from the German press probably surpass in quantity and importance those issued from all other countries put together. The homosexual tendencies of Germans outside Germany have been noted in various countries. Among my English cases I have found that a strain of German blood occurs much more frequently than we are entitled to expect; Parisian prostitutes are said to be aware of the homosexual tastes of Germans; it is significant that (as a German invert familiar with Turkey informed Näcke), at Constantinople, the procurers, who naturally supply girls as well as youths, regard Germans and Austrians as more tending to homosexuality than the foreigners from any other land. Germans usually deny, however, that there is any special German proclivity to inversion, and it would not appear that such statistics as are available (though all such statistics cannot be regarded as more than approximations) show any pronounced predominance of inversion among Germans. It is to Hirschfeld that we owe the chief attempt to gain some notion of the percentage of homosexual persons among the general population. It may be said to vary in different regions and more especially in different occupations, from 1 to 10 per cent. But the average when the individuals belonging to a large number of groups are combined is generally found to be rather over 2 per cent. So that there are about a million and a half inverted persons in Germany. This would be a minimum which can scarcely fail to be below the actual proportion, as no one can be certain that he is acquainted with the real proclivities of all the persons comprising a larger group of acquaintances.[38] It is not found in the estimates which have reached Hirschfeld that the French groups show a smaller proportion of homosexual persons than the German groups, and a Japanese group comes out near to the general average for the whole. Various authorities, especially Germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common in France as in Germany. Saint-Paul (“Dr. Laupts”), on the other hand, is unable to accept this view. As an army surgeon who has long served in Africa he can (as also Rebierre in his Joyeux et demifous) bear witness to the frequency of homosexuality among the African battalions of the French army, especially in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the French army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general population. Näcke is also inclined to believe that homosexuality is rarer in Celtic lands, and in the Latin countries generally, than in Teutonic and Slavonic lands, and believes that it may be a question of race. The question is still undecided. It is possible that the undoubted fact that homosexuality is less conspicuous in France and the other Latin countries than in Teutonic lands, may be due not to the occurrence of a smaller proportion of congenital inverts in the former lands, but mainly to general difference in temperament and in the social reaction.[39] The French idealize and emphasize the place of women to a much greater degree than the Germans, while at the same time inverts in France have much less occasion than in Germany to proclaim their legal grievances. Apart from such considerations as these it seems very doubtful whether inborn inversion is in any considerable degree rarer in France than in Germany.
As to the frequency of homosexuality in England and the United States there is much evidence. In England its manifestations are well marked for those whose eyes have once been opened. The manifestations are of the same character as those in Germany, modified by social and national differences, and especially by the greater reserve, Puritanism, and prudery of England.[40] In the United States these same influences exert a still greater effect in restraining the outward manifestations of homosexuality. Hirschfeld, though so acute and experienced in the investigation of homosexuality, states that when visiting Philadelphia and Boston he could scarcely detect any evidence of homosexuality, though he was afterward assured by those acquainted with local conditions that its extension in both cities is “colossal.” There have been numerous criminal cases and scandals in the United States in which homosexuality has come to the surface, and the very frequently occurring cases of transvestism or cross-dressing in the States seem to be in a large proportion associated with homosexuality.
In the opinion of some, English homosexuality has become much more conspicuous during recent years, and this is sometimes attributed to the Oscar Wilde case. No doubt, the celebrity of Oscar Wilde and the universal publicity given to the facts of the case by the newspapers may have brought conviction of their perversion to many inverts who were before only vaguely conscious of their abnormality, and, paradoxical though it may seem, have imparted greater courage to others; but it can scarcely have sufficed to increase the number of inverts. Rather, one may say, the development of urban life renders easier the exhibition and satisfaction of this as of all other forms of perversion. Regarding the proportion of inverts among the general population, it is very difficult to speak positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, is also misleading, because his homosexual acquaintances are careful not to inform him concerning their proclivities. A writer who has studied the phenomena of homosexuality is apt to be misguided in the same way as the invert himself, and to overestimate the prevalence of the perversion. Striving to put aside this source of fallacy, and only considering those individuals with whom I have been brought in contact by the ordinary circumstances of life, and with whose modes of feeling I am acquainted, I am still led to the conclusion that the proportion is considerable. Among the professional and most cultured element of the middle class in England, there must be a distinct percentage of inverts which may sometimes be as much as 5 per cent., though such estimates must always be hazardous. Among women of the same class the percentage seems to be at least double, though here the phenomena are less definite and deep-seated. This seems to be a moderate estimate for this class, which includes, however, it must be remembered, a considerable proportion of individuals who are somewhat abnormal in other respects. As we descend the scale the phenomena are doubtless less common, though when we reach the working class we come to that comparative indifference to which allusion has already been made. Taken altogether we may probably conclude that the proportion of inverts is the same as in other related and neighboring lands, that is to say, slightly over 2 per cent. That would give the homosexual population of Great Britain as somewhere about a million.
2. The Study Of Sexual Inversion
Westphal—Hössli—Casper—Ulrichs—Krafft-Ebing—Moll—Féré—Kiernan—Lydston—Raffalovich—Edward Carpenter—Hirschfeld.
Westphal, an eminent professor of psychiatry at Berlin, may be said to be the first to put the study of sexual inversion on an assured scientific basis. In 1870 he published, in the Archiv für Psychiatrie, of which he was for many years editor, the detailed history of a young woman who, from her earliest years, differed from other girls: she liked to dress as a boy, only cared for boys’ games, and as she grew up was sexually attracted only to women, with whom she formed a series of tender relationships, in which the friends obtained sexual gratification by mutual caresses; while she blushed and was shy in the presence of women, more especially the girl with whom she chanced to be in love, she was always absolutely indifferent in the presence of men. Westphal—a pupil, it may be noted, of Griesinger, who had already called attention to the high character sometimes shown by subjects of this perversion—combined keen scientific insight with a rare degree of personal sympathy for those who came under his care, and it was this combination of qualities which enabled him to grasp the true nature of a case such as this, which by most medical men at that time would have been hastily dismissed as a vulgar instance of vice or insanity. Westphal perceived that this abnormality was congenital, not acquired, so that it could not be termed vice; and, while he insisted on the presence of neurotic elements, his observations showed the absence of anything that could legitimately be termed insanity. He gave to this condition the name of “contrary sexual feeling” (Konträre Sexualempfindung), by which it was long usually known in Germany. The way was thus made clear for the rapid progress of our knowledge of this abnormality. New cases were published in quick succession, at first exclusively in Germany, and more especially in Westphal’s Archiv, but soon in other countries also, chiefly Italy and France.[41]
While Westphal was the first to place the study of sexual inversion on a progressive footing, many persons had previously obtained glimpses into the subject. Thus, in 1791, two cases were published of men who showed a typical emotional attraction to their own sex, though it was not quite clearly made out that the inversion was congenital. In 1836, again, a Swiss writer, Heinrich Hössli, published a rather diffuse but remarkable work, entitled Eros, which contained much material of a literary character bearing on this matter. He seems to have been moved to write this book by a trial which had excited considerable attention at that time. A man of good position had suddenly murdered a youth, and was executed for the crime, which, according to Hössli, was due to homosexual love and jealousy. Hössli was not a trained scholar; he was in business at Glarus as a skillful milliner, the most successful in the town. His own temperament is supposed to have been bisexual. His book was prohibited by the local authorities and at a later period the entire remaining stock was destroyed in a fire, so that its circulation was very small. It is now, however, regarded by some as the first serious attempt to deal with the problem of homosexuality since Plato’s Banquet.
Some years later, in 1852, Casper, the chief medico-legal authority of his time in Germany,—for it is in Germany that the foundations of the study of sexual inversion have been laid,—pointed out in Casper’s Vierteljahrsschrift that pederasty, in a broad sense of the word, was sometimes a kind of “moral hermaphroditism,” due to a congenital psychic condition, and also that it by no means necessarily involved sodomy (immissio penis in anum). Casper brought forward a considerable amount of valuable evidence concerning these cardinal points, which he was the first to note,[42] but he failed to realize the full significance of his observations, and they had no immediate influence, though Tardieu, in 1858, admitted a congenital element in some pederasts.
The man, however, who more than anyone else brought to light the phenomena of sexual inversion had not been concerned either with the medical or the criminal aspects of the matter. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (born in 1825 near Aurich), who for many years expounded and defended homosexual love, and whose views are said to have had some influence in drawing Westphal’s attention to the matter, was a Hanoverian legal official (Amtsassessor), himself sexually inverted. From 1864 onward, at first under the name of “Numa Numantius” and subsequently under his own name, Ulrichs published, in various parts of Germany, a long series of works dealing with this question, and made various attempts to obtain a revision of the legal position of the sexual invert in Germany.
Although not a writer whose psychological views can carry much scientific weight, Ulrichs appears to have been a man of most brilliant ability, and his knowledge is said to have been of almost universal extent; he was not only well versed in his own special subjects of jurisprudence and theology, but in many branches of natural science, as well as in archeology; he was also regarded by many as the best Latinist of his time. In 1880 he left Germany and settled in Naples, and afterward at Aquila in the Abruzzi, whence he issued a Latin periodical. He died in 1895. John Addington Symonds, who went to Aquila in 1891, wrote: “Ulrichs is chrysostomos to the last degree, sweet, noble, a true gentleman and man of genius. He must have been at one time a man of singular personal distinction, so finely cut are his features, and so grand the lines of his skull.”
For many years Ulrichs was alone in his efforts to gain scientific recognition for congenital homosexuality. He devised (with allusion to Uranos in Plato’s Symposium) the word uranian or urning, ever since frequently used for the homosexual lover, while he called the normal heterosexual lover a dioning (from Dione). He regarded uranism, or homosexual love, as a congenital abnormality by which a female soul had become united with a male body—anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa—and his theoretical speculations have formed the starting point for many similar speculations. His writings are remarkable in various respects, although, on account of the polemical warmth with which, as one pleading pro domo, he argued his cause, they had no marked influence on scientific thought.[43]
This privilege was reserved for Westphal. After he had shown the way and thrown open his journal for their publication, new cases appeared in rapid succession. In Italy, also, Ritti, Tamassia, Lombroso, and others began to study these phenomena. In 1882 Charcot and Magnan published in the Archives de Neurologie the first important study which appeared in France concerning sexual inversion and allied sexual perversions. They regarded sexual inversion as an episode (syndrome) in a more fundamental process of hereditary degeneration, and compared it with such morbid obsessions as dipsomania and kleptomania. From a somewhat more medico-legal standpoint, the study of sexual inversion in France was furthered by Brouardel, and still more by Lacassagne, whose stimulating influence at Lyons has produced fruitful results in the work of many pupils.
Of much more importance in the history of the theory of sexual inversion was the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (born at Mannheim in 1840 and died at Graz in 1902), for many years professor of psychiatry at Vienna University and one of the most distinguished alienists of his time. While active in all departments of psychiatry and author of a famous textbook, from 1877 onward he took special interest in the pathology of the sexual impulse. His Psychopathia Sexualis contained over two hundred histories, not only of sexual inversion but of all other forms of sexual perversion. For many years it was the only book on the subject and it long remained the chief storehouse of facts. It passed through many editions and was translated into many languages (there are two translations in English), enjoying an immense and not altogether enviable vogue.
Krafft-Ebing’s methods were open to some objection. His mind was not of a severely critical order. He poured out the new and ever-enlarged editions of his book with extraordinary rapidity, sometimes remodelling them. He introduced new subdivisions from time to time into his classification of sexual perversions, and, although this rather fine-spun classification has doubtless contributed to give precision to the subject and to advance its scientific study, it was at no time generally accepted. Krafft-Ebing’s great service lay in the clinical enthusiasm with which he approached the study of sexual perversions. With the firm conviction that he was conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly belongs to the physician, he accumulated without any false shame a vast mass of detailed histories, and his reputation induced sexually abnormal individuals in all directions to send him their autobiographies, in the desire to benefit their fellow-sufferers.
It is as a clinician, rather than as a psychologist, that we must regard Krafft-Ebing. At the outset he considered inversion to be a functional sign of degeneration, a partial manifestation of a neuropathic and psychopathic state which is in most cases hereditary. This perverse sexuality appears spontaneously with the developing sexual life, without external causes, as the individual manifestation of an abnormal modification of the vita sexualis, and must then be regarded as congenital; or it develops as a result of special injurious influences working on a sexuality which had at first been normal, and must then be regarded as acquired. Careful investigation of these so-called acquired cases, however, Krafft-Ebing in the end finally believed, would indicate that the predisposition consists in a latent homosexuality, or at least bisexuality, which requires for its manifestation the operation of accidental causes. In the last edition of his work Krafft-Ebing was inclined to regard inversion as being not so much a degeneration as a variation, a simple anomaly, and acknowledged that his opinion thus approximated to that which had long been held by inverts themselves.
At the time of his death, Krafft-Ebing, who had begun by accepting the view, at that time prevalent among alienists, that homosexuality is a sign of degeneration, thus fully adopted and set the seal of his authority on the view, already expressed alike by some scientific investigators as well as by inverts themselves, that sexual inversion is to be regarded simply as an anomaly, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the value of the anomaly. The way was even opened for such a view as that of Freud and most of the psychoanalysts today who regard a strain of homosexuality as normal and almost constant, with a profound significance for the psychonervous life. In 1891 Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, published his work, Die Konträre Sexualempfindung, which subsequently appeared in much enlarged and revised editions. It speedily superseded all previous books as a complete statement and judicious discussion of sexual inversion. Moll was not content merely to present fresh clinical material. He attacked the problem which had now become of primary importance: the nature and causes of sexual inversion. He discussed the phenomena as a psychologist even more than as a physician, bearing in mind the broader aspects of the problem, keenly critical of accepted opinions, but judiciously cautious in the statement of conclusions. He cleared away various ancient prejudices and superstitions which even Krafft-Ebing sometimes incautiously repeated. He accepted the generally received doctrine that the sexually inverted usually belong to families in which various nervous and mental disorders prevail, but he pointed out at the same time that it is not in all cases possible to prove that we are concerned with individuals possessing a hereditary neurotic taint. He also rejected any minute classification of sexual inverts, only recognizing psycho-sexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality. At the same time he cast doubt on the existence of acquired homosexuality, in a strict sense, except in occasional cases, and he pointed out that even when a normal heterosexual impulse appears at puberty, and a homosexual impulse later, it may still be the former that was acquired and the latter that was inborn.
In America attention had been given to the phenomena at a fairly early period. Mention may be specially made of J. G. Kiernan and G. Frank Lydston, both of whom put forward convenient classifications of homosexual manifestations some thirty years ago. More recently (1911) an American writer, under the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne, privately printed an extensive work entitled The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life, popularly written and compiled from many sources. This book, from a subjective and scarcely scientific standpoint, claims that homosexual relationships are natural, necessary, and legitimate.
In England the first attempts to deal seriously, from the modern point of view, with the problem of homosexuality came late, and were either published privately or abroad. In 1883 John Addington Symonds privately printed his discussion of paiderastia in ancient Greece, under the title of A Problem in Greek Ethics, and in 1889-1890 he further wrote, and in 1891 privately printed, A Problem of Modern Ethics: Being an Enquiry into the Phenomena of Sexual Inversion. In 1886 Sir Richard Burton added to his translation of the Arabian Nights a Terminal Essay on the same subject. In 1894 Edward Carpenter privately printed in Manchester a pamphlet entitled Homogenic Love, in which he criticised various psychiatric views of inversion at that time current, and claimed that the laws of homosexual love are the same as those of heterosexual love, urging, however, that the former possesses a special aptitude to be exalted to a higher and more spiritual level of comradeship, so fulfilling a beneficent social function. More recently (1907) Edward Carpenter published a volume of papers on homosexuality and its problems, under the title of The Intermediate Sex, and later (1914) a more special study of the invert in early religion and in warfare, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk.
In 1896 the most comprehensive book so far written on the subject in England was published in French by Mr. André Raffalovich (in Lacassagne’s Bibliothèque de Criminologie), Uranisme et Unisexualité. This book dealt chiefly with congenital inversion, publishing no new cases, but revealing a wide knowledge of the matter. Raffalovich put forward many just and sagacious reflections on the nature and treatment of inversion, and the attitude of society toward perverted sexuality. The historical portions of the book, which are of special interest, deal largely with the remarkable prevalence of inversion in England, neglected by previous investigators. Raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition.
In recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of homosexuality in all their aspects. He has studied the matter exhaustively in Germany and to some extent in other countries also; he has received the histories of a thousand inverts; he is said to have met over ten thousand homosexual persons. As editor of the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, which he established in 1899, and author of various important monographs—more especially on transitional psychic and physical stages between masculinity and femininity—Hirschfeld had already contributed greatly to the progress of investigation in this field before the appearance in 1914 of his great work, Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes. This is not only the largest but the most precise, detailed, and comprehensive—even the most condensed—work which has yet appeared on the subject. It is, indeed, an encyclopedia of homosexuality. For such a task Hirschfeld had been prepared by many years of strenuous activity as a physician, an investigator, a medico-legal expert before the courts, and his position as president of the Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitee which is concerned with the defense of the interests of the homosexual in Germany. In Hirschfeld’s book the pathological conception of inversion has entirely disappeared; homosexuality is regarded as primarily a biological phenomenon of universal extension, and secondarily as a social phenomenon of serious importance. There is no attempt to invent new theories; the main value of Hirschfeld’s work lies, indeed, in the constant endeavor to keep close to definite facts. It is this quality which renders the book an indispensable source for all who seek enlightened and precise information on this question.
Even the existence of such a treatise as this of Hirschfeld’s is enough to show how rapidly the study of this subject has grown. A few years ago—for instance, when Dr. Paul Moreau wrote his Aberrations du Sens Génésique—sexual inversion was scarcely even a name. It was a loathsome and nameless vice, only to be touched with a pair of tongs, rapidly and with precautions. As it now presents itself, it is a psychological and medico-legal problem so full of interest that we need not fear to face it, and so full of grave social actuality that we are bound to face it.
3. Sexual Inversion In Men
Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life—The Freudian View—Homosexuality in Schools—The Question of Acquired Homosexuality—Latent Inversion—Retarded Inversion—Bisexuality—The Question of the Invert’s Truthfulness—Histories.
When the sexual instinct first appears in early youth, it is much less specialized than normally it becomes later. Not only is it, at the outset, less definitely directed to a specific sexual end, but even the sex of its object is sometimes uncertain.[44] This has always been so well recognized that those in authority over young men have sometimes forced women upon them to avoid the risk of possible unnatural offenses.[45]
The institution which presents these phenomena to us in the most marked and the most important manner is, naturally, the school, in England especially the Public School. In France, where the same phenomena are noted, Tarde called attention to these relationships, “most usually Platonic in the primitive meaning of the word, which indicate a simple indecision of frontier between friendship and love, still undifferentiated in the dawn of the awakening heart,” and he regretted that no one had studied them. In England we are very familiar with vague allusions to the vices of public schools. From time to time we read letters in the newspapers denouncing public schools as “hot-beds of vice” and one anonymous writer remarks that “some of our public schools almost provoke the punishment of the cities of the Plain.” But these allegations are rarely or never submitted to accurate investigation. The physicians and masters of public schools who are in a position to study the matter usually possess no psychological training, and appear to view homosexuality with too much disgust to care to pay any careful attention to it. What knowledge they possess they keep to themselves, for it is considered to be in the interests of public schools that these things should be hushed up. When anything very scandalous occurs one or two lads are expelled, to their own grave and, perhaps, lifelong injury, and without benefit to those who remain, whose awakening sexual life rarely receives intelligent sympathy.
In several of the Histories which follow in this chapter, as well as in Histories contained in other volumes of these Studies, details will be found concerning homosexuality as it occurs in English schools, public or private. (See also the study “Auto-erotism” in vol. i.) The prevalence of homosexual and erotic phenomena in schools varies greatly at different schools and at different times in the same school, while in small private schools such phenomena may be entirely unknown. As an English schoolboy I never myself saw or heard anything of such practices, and in Germany, Professor Gurlitt (Die Neue Generation, January, 1909), among others, testifies to similar absence of experience during his whole school life, although there was much talk and joking among the boys over sexual things. I have added some observations by a correspondent whose experiences of English public school life are still recent:—
“In the years I was a member of a public school, I saw and heard a good deal of homosexuality, though till my last two years I did not understand its meaning. As a prefect, I discussed with other prefects the methods of checking it, and of punishing it when detected. My own observations, supported by those of others, led me to think that the fault of the usual method of dealing with homosexuality in schools is that it regards all school homosexualists as being in one class together, and has only one way of dealing with them—the birch for a first offense, expulsion for a second. Now, I think we may distinguish three classes of school homosexualists:—
“(a) A very small number who are probably radically inverted, and who do not scruple to sacrifice young and innocent boys to their passions. These, and these only, are a real moral danger to others, and I believe them to be rare.
“(b) Boys of various ages who, having been initiated into the passive part in their young days, continue practices of an active or passive kind; but only with boys already known to be homosexualists; they draw the line at corrupting fresh victims. This class realize more or less what they are about, but cannot be called a danger to the morals of pure boys.
“(c) Young boys who, whether in the development of their own physical nature, or by the instruction of older boys of the class (a), find out the pleasures of masturbation or intercrural connection. (I never heard of a case of pedicatio at my school, and only once of fellatio, which was attempted on a quite young boy, who complained to his house master, and the offender was expelled). Boys in this class have probably little or no idea of what sexual morality means, and can hardly be accused of a moral offense at all.
“I submit that these three classes should receive quite different treatment. Expulsion may occasionally be necessary for class (a), but the few who belong to this class are usually too cunning to get caught. It used to be notorious at school that it was almost always the wrong people who got dropped on. I do not think a boy in the other two classes should ever be expelled, and even when expulsion is unavoidable, it should, if possible, be deferred till the end of the term, so as to make it indistinguishable from an ordinary departure. After all, there is no reason to ruin a boy’s prospects because he is a little beast at sixteen; there are very few hopeless incorrigibles at that age.
“As regards the other two classes, I should begin by giving boys very much fuller enlightenment on sexual subjects than is usually done, before they go to a public school at all. Either a boy is pitchforked into the place in utter innocence and ignorance, and yields to temptations to do things which he vaguely, if at all, realizes are wrong, and that only because a puzzling sort of instinct tells him so; or else he is given just enough information to whet his curiosity, usually in the shape of warnings against certain apparently harmless bodily acts, which he not unnaturally tries out of curiosity, and finds them very pleasant. It may be undesirable that a boy should have full knowledge, at the time he goes to school, but it is more undesirable that he should go with a burning curiosity, or a total ignorance on the subject. I am convinced that much might be done in the way of prevention if boys were told more, and allowed to be open. Much of the pleasure of sexual talk among boys I believe to be due to the spurious interest aroused by the fact that it is forbidden fruit, and involves risk if caught. It seems to me that frankness is far more moral than suggestion. I would not ‘expurgate’ school editions of great authors; the frank obscenity of parts of Shakespeare is far less immoral than the prurient prudishness which declines to print it, but numbers the lines in such a way that the boy can go home and look up the omitted passage in a complete edition, with a distinct sense of guilt, which is where the harm comes in.”
It is probable that only a small proportion of homosexual boys in schools can properly be described as “vicious.” A. Hoche, describing homosexuality in German schools (“Zür Frage der forensischen Beurteilung sexuellen Vergehen,” Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, No. 2), and putting together communications received from various medical men regarding their own youthful experiences at school, finds relationships of the kind very common, usually between boys of different ages and school-classes. According to one observer, the feminine, or passive, part was always played by a boy of girlish form and complexion, and the relationships were somewhat like those of normal lovers, with kissing, poems, love-letters, scenes of jealousy, sometimes visits to each other in bed, but without masturbation, pederasty, or other grossly physical manifestations. From his own youthful experience Hoche records precisely similar observations, and remarks that the lovers were by no means recruited from the vicious elements in the school. (The elder scholars, of 21 or 22 years of age, formed regular sexual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) It is probable that the homosexual relationships in English schools are, as a rule, not more vicious than those described by Hoche, but that the concealment in which they are wrapped leads to exaggeration. In the course of a discussion on this matter over thirty years ago, “Olim Etoniensis” wrote (Journal of Education, 1882, p. 85) that, on making a list of the vicious boys he had known at Eton, he found that “these very boys had become cabinet ministers, statesmen, officers, clergymen, country-gentlemen, etc., and that they are nearly all of them fathers of thriving families, respected and prosperous.” But, as Marro has remarked, the question is not thus settled. Public distinction by no means necessarily implies any fine degree of private morality.
Sometimes the manifestations thus appearing in schools or wherever youths are congregated together are not truly homosexual, but exhibit a more or less brutal or even sadistic perversion of the immature sexual instinct. This may be illustrated by the following narrative concerning a large London city warehouse: “A youth left my class at the age of 16½,” writes a correspondent, “to take up an apprenticeship in a large wholesale firm in G—— Street. Fortunately he went on probation of three weeks before articling. He came to me at the end of the first week asking me to intercede with his mother (he had no father) not to let him return. He told me that almost nightly, and especially when new fellows came, the youths in his dormitory (eleven in number) would waylay him, hold him down, and rub his parts to the tune of some comic song or dance-music. The boy who could choose the fastest time had the privilege of performing the operation, and most had to be the victim in turn unless new boys entered, when they would sometimes be subjected to this for a week. This boy, having been brought up strictly, was shocked, dazed, and alarmed; but they stopped him from calling out, and he dared not report it. Most boys entered direct on their apprenticeship without probation, and had no chance to get out. I procured the boy’s release from the place and gave the manager to understand what went on.” In such a case as this it has usually happened that a strong boy of brutal and perverse instincts and some force of character initiates proceedings which the others either fall into with complacency or are too weak to resist.
Max Dessoir came to the conclusion that “an undifferentiated sexual feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of puberty,—i.e., from 13 to 15 in boys and from 12 to 14 in girls,—while in later years it must be regarded as pathological.” He added very truly that in this early period the sexual emotion has not become centered in the sexual organs. This latter fact is certainly far too often forgotten by grown-up persons who suspect the idealized passion of boys and girls of a physical side which children have often no suspicion of, and would view with repulsion and horror. How far the sexual instinct may be said to be undifferentiated in early puberty as regards sex is a little doubtful. It is comparatively undifferentiated, but except in rare cases it is not absolutely undifferentiated.
We have to admit, however, that, in the opinion of the latest physiologists of sex, such as Castle, Heape, and Marshall, each sex contains the latent characters of the other or recessive sex. Each sex is latent in the other, and each, as it contains the characters of both sexes (and can transmit those of the recessive sex) is latently hermaphrodite. A homosexual tendency may thus be regarded as simply the psychical manifestation of special characters of the recessive sex, susceptible of being evolved under changed circumstances, such as may occur near puberty, and associated with changed metabolism.
William James (Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 439) considered inversion “a kind of sexual appetite of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility.” Conolly Norman (Article “Sexual Perversion,” Tuke’s Dictionary of Psychological Medicine) also stated that “the sexual passion, at its first appearance, is always indefinite, and is very easily turned in a wrong direction,” and he apparently accounted for inversion by this fact, and by the precocity of neurotics. Obici and Marchesini (Le ‘Amicizie’ di collegio, p. 126) refer to the indeterminate character of the sexual feelings when they first begin to develop. A correspondent believes that sexual feelings are undifferentiated in the early years about puberty, but at the same time considers that school life is to some extent responsible; “the holidays,” he adds, “are sufficiently long to counteract it, however, provided the boy has sisters and they have friends; the change from school fare and work to home naturally results in a greater surplus of nerve-force, and I think most boys ‘fool about’ with servants or their sisters’ friends.” Moll (Konträre Sexualempfindung, 1889, pp. 6 and 356) does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated sexual feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is of frequent occurrence. In his later work (1909, Das Sexualleben des Kindes, English translation, The Sexual Life of the Child, ch. iv), Moll remains of the same opinion that a homosexual tendency is very frequent in normal children, whose later development is quite normal; it begins between the ages of 7 and 10 (or even at 5) and may last to 20.
In recent years Freud has accepted and developed the conception of the homosexual strain; as normal in early life. Thus, in 1905, in his “Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse” (reprinted in the second series of Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1909), Freud regards it as a well-known fact that boys and girls at puberty normally show plain signs of the existence of a homosexual tendency. Under favorable circumstances this tendency is overcome, but when a happy heterosexual love is not established it remains liable to reappear under the influence of an appropriate stimulus. In the neurotic these homosexual germs are more highly developed. “I have never carried through any psychoanalysis of a man or a woman,” Freud states, “without discovering a very significant homosexual tendency.” Ferenczi, again (Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. iii, 1911, p. 119), without reference to any physical basis of the impulse, accepts “the psychic capacity of the child to direct his originally objectless eroticism to one or both sexes,” and terms this disposition ambisexuality. The normality of a homosexual element in early life may be said to be accepted by most psychoanalysts, even of the schools that are separated from Freud. Stekel would go farther, and regards various psychic sexual anomalies as signs of a concealed bisexual tendency; psychic impotence, the admiration of men for masculine women and of women for feminine men, various forms of fetichism,—they are all masks of homosexuality (Stekel, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vol. ii, April, 1912).
These schoolboy affections and passions arise, to a large extent, spontaneously, with the evolution of the sexual emotions, though the method of manifestation may be a matter of example or suggestion. As the sexual emotions become stronger, and as the lad leaves school or college to mix with men and women in the world, the instinct usually turns into the normal channel, in which channel the instincts of the majority of boys have been directed from the earliest appearance of puberty, if not earlier. But a certain proportion remain insensitive to the influence of women, and these may be regarded as true sexual inverts. Some of them are probably individuals of somewhat undeveloped sexual instincts. The members of this group are of some interest psychologically, although from the comparative quiescence of their sexual emotions they have received little attention. The following communication which I have received from a well-accredited source is noteworthy from this point of view:—
“The following facts may possibly be of interest to you, though my statement of them is necessarily general and vague. I happen to know intimately three cases of men whose affections have chiefly been directed exclusively to persons of their own sex. The first, having practised masturbation as a boy, and then for some ten years ceased to practise it (to such an extent that he even inhibited his erotic dreams), has since recurred to it deliberately (at about fortnightly intervals) as a substitute for copulation, for which he has never felt the least desire. But occasionally, when sleeping with a male friend, he has emissions in the act of embracing. The second is constantly and to an abnormal extent (I should say) troubled with erotic dreams and emissions, and takes drugs, by doctor’s advice, to reduce this activity. He has recently developed a sexual interest in women, but for ethical and other reasons does not copulate with them. Of the third I can say little, as he has not talked to me on the subject; but I know that he has never had intercourse with women, and has always had a natural and instinctive repulsion to the idea. In all these, I imagine, the physical impulse of sex is less imperative than in the average man. The emotional impulse, on the other hand, is very strong. It has given birth to friendships of which I find no adequate description anywhere but in the dialogues of Plato; and, beyond a certain feeling of strangeness at the gradual discovery of a temperament apparently different to that of most men, it has provoked no kind of self-reproach or shame. On the contrary, the feeling has been rather one of elation in the consciousness of a capacity of affection which appears to be finer and more spiritual than that which commonly subsists between persons of different sexes. These men are all of intellectual capacity above the average; and one is actively engaged in the world, where he is both respected for his capacity and admired for his character. I mention this particularly, because it appears to be the habit, in books upon this subject, to regard the relation in question as pathological, and to select cases where those who are concerned in it are tormented with shame and remorse. In the cases to which I am referring nothing of the kind subsists.
“In all these cases a physical sexual attraction is recognized as the basis of the relation, but as a matter of feeling, and partly also of theory, the ascetic ideal is adopted.
“These are the only cases with which I am personally and intimately acquainted. But no one can have passed through a public-school and college life without constantly observing indications of the phenomenon in question. It is clear to me that in a large number of instances there is no fixed line between what is called distinctively ‘friendship’ and love; and it is probably the influence of custom and public opinion that in most cases finally specializes the physical passion in the direction of the opposite sex.”
The classification of the varieties of homosexuality is a matter of difficulty, and no classification is very fundamental. The early attempts of Krafft-Ebing and others at elaborate classification are no longer acceptable. Even the most elementary groupings become doubtful when we have definitely to fit our cases into them. The old distinction between congenital and acquired homosexuality has ceased to possess significance. When we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be achieved along this line.[46] We have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined homosexuality,—a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same sex,—in addition to the more specific sexual inversion.
It may now be said to be recognized by all authorities, even by Freud who emphasizes a special psychological mechanism by which homosexuality may become established, that a congenital predisposition as well as an acquired tendency is necessary to constitute true inversion, apparent exceptions being too few to carry much weight. Krafft-Ebing, Näcke, Iwan Bloch, who at one time believed in the possibility of acquired inversion, all finally abandoned that view, and even Schrenck-Notzing, a vigorous champion of the doctrine of acquired inversion twenty years ago, admits the necessity of a favoring predisposition, an admission which renders the distinction between innate and acquired an unimportant, if not a merely verbal, distinction.[47] Supposing, indeed, that we are prepared to admit that true inversion may be purely acquired the decision in any particular case must be extremely difficult, and I have found very few cases which, even with imperfect knowledge, could fairly so be termed.
Even the cases (to which Schopenhauer long since referred) in which inversion is only established late in life, are no longer regarded as constituting a difficulty in accepting the doctrine of the congenital nature of inversion; in such cases the inversion is merely retarded. The conception of retarded inversion,—that is to say a latent congenital inversion becoming manifest at a late period in life,—was first brought forward by Thoinot in 1898 in his Attentats aux Mœurs, in order to supersede the unsatisfactory conception, as he considered it to be, of acquired inversion. Thoinot regarded retarded inversion as relatively rare and of no great importance but more accessible to therapeutic measures. Three years later, Krafft-Ebing, toward the close of his life, adopted the same conception; the cases to which he applied it were all, he considered, of bisexual disposition and usually, also, marked by sexual hyperesthesia. This way of looking at the matter was speedily championed by Näcke and may now be said to be widely accepted.[48]
Moll, earlier than Thoinot, had pointed out that it is difficult to believe that homosexuality in late life can ever be produced without at least some inborn weakness of the heterosexual impulse, and that we must not deny the possibility of heredity even when homosexuality appears at the age of 50 or 60.
Moll believes it is very doubtful whether heterosexual satiety alone can ever suffice to produce homosexuality. Näcke was careful to set aside the cases, to which much significance was once attached, in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to boys. In such cases, which include the majority of those appearing late, Näcke regarded the inversion as merely spurious, the faute de mieux of persons no longer apt for normal sexual activity.
Such cases no doubt need more careful psychological study than they usually receive. Féré once investigated a case of this kind in which a healthy young man (though with slightly neurotic heredity on one side) practised sexual intercourse excessively between the ages of 20 and 23—often impelled more by amour propre (or what Adler would term the “masculine protest” of the organically inferior) than sexual desire—and then suddenly became impotent, at the same time losing all desire, but without any other loss of health. Six months later potency slowly returned, though never to the same extent, and he married. At the age of 35 symptoms of locomotor ataxia began to appear, and some years later he again became impotent, but without losing sexual desire. Suddenly one day, on sitting in close contact with a young man at a table d’hôte, he experienced a violent erection; he afterward found that the same thing occurred with other young men, and, though he had no psychic desire for men, he was constrained to seek such contact, and a repugnance for women and their sexuality arose. Five months later a complete paraplegic impotence set in; and then both the homosexual tendency and the aversion to women disappeared. (Féré, L’Instinct Sexuel, p. 184.) In such a case, under the influence of disease, excessive stimulation seems to result in more or less complete sexual anesthesia, just as temporarily we may be more or less blinded by excess of light; and functional power reasserts itself under the influence of a different and normally much weaker stimulus.
Leppmann, who has studied the homosexual manifestations of previously normal old men toward boys (“Greisenalter und Kriminalität,” Zeitschrift für Psychotherapie, Bd. i, Heft 4, 1909), considers the chief factor to be a flaring up of the sexual impulse in a perverted direction in an early stage of morbid cerebral disturbance, not amounting to insanity and not involving complete irresponsibility. In such cases, Leppmann believes, the subject may, through his lack of power, be brought back to the beginning of his sexual life and to the perhaps unconsciously homosexual attractions of that age.
With the recognition that homosexuality in youth may be due to an as yet undifferentiated sexual impulse, homosexuality in mature age to a retarded development on a congenital basis, and homosexuality in sold age to a return to the attitude of youth, the area of spurious or “pseudo” homosexuality seems to me to be very much restricted. Most, perhaps all, authorities still accept the reality of this spurious homosexuality in heterosexual persons. But they enter into no details concerning it, and they bring forward no minutely observed cases in which it occurred. Hirschfeld, in discussing the diagnosis of homosexuality and seeking to distinguish genuine from spurious inverts, enumerates three classes of the latter: (1) those who practise homosexuality for purposes of gain, more especially male prostitutes and blackmailers; (2) persons who, from motives of pity, good nature, friendship, etc., allow themselves to be the objects of homosexual desire; (3) normal persons who, when excluded from the society of the opposite sex, as in schools, barracks, on board ship, or in prison, have sexual relations with persons of their own sex. Now Hirschfeld clearly realizes that the mere sexual act is no proof of the direction of the sexual impulse; it may be rendered possible by mechanical irritation (as by the stimulation of a full bladder) and in women without any stimulation at all; such cases can have little psychological significance. Moreover, he seems to admit that some subdivisions of his first class are true inverts. He further mentions that some 75 per cent. of the individuals included in these classes are between 15 and 25 years of age, that is to say, that they have scarcely emerged from the period when we have reason to believe that, in a large number of individuals at all events, the sexual impulse is not yet definitely differentiated; so that neither its homosexual nor its heterosexual tendencies can properly be regarded as spurious.
If, indeed, we really accept the very reasonable view, that the basis of the sexual life is bisexual, although its direction may be definitely fixed in a heterosexual or homosexual direction at a very early period in life, it becomes difficult to see how we can any longer speak with certainty of a definitely spurious class of homosexual persons. Everyone of Hirschfeld’s three classes may well contain a majority of genuinely homosexual or bisexual persons. The prostitutes and even the blackmailers are certainly genuine inverts in very many cases. Those persons, again, who allow themselves to be the recipients of homosexual attentions may well possess traces of homosexual feeling, and are undoubtedly in very many cases lacking in vigorous heterosexual impulse. Finally, the persons who turn to their own sex when forcibly excluded from the society of the opposite sex, can by no means be assumed, without question, to be normal heterosexual persons. It is only a small proportion of heterosexual persons who experience these impulses under such conditions. There are always others who under the same conditions remain emotionally attracted to the opposite sex and sexually indifferent to their own sex. There is evidently a difference, and that difference may most reasonably be supposed to be in the existence of a trace of homosexual feeling which is called into activity under the abnormal conditions, and subsides when the stronger heterosexual impulse can again be gratified.
The real distinction would seem, therefore, to be between a homosexual impulse so strong that it subsists even in the presence of the heterosexual object, and a homosexual impulse so weak that it is eclipsed by the presence of the heterosexual object. We could not, however, properly speak of the latter as any more “spurious” or “pseudo” than the former. A heterosexual person who experiences a homosexual impulse in the absence of any homosexual disposition is not today easy to accept. We can certainly accept the possibility of a mechanical or other non-sexual stimulus leading to a sexual act contrary to the individual’s disposition. But usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has little psychological significance or importance. We may expect, therefore, to find “pseudo-homosexuality,” or spurious homosexuality, playing a dwindling part in classification.
The simplest of all possible classifications, and that which I adopted in the earlier editions of the present Study, merely seeks to distinguish between those who, not being exclusively attracted to the opposite sex, are exclusively attracted to the same sex, and those who are attracted to both sexes. The first are the homosexual, whether or not the attraction springs from genuine inversion. The second are the bisexual, or, as they were formerly more often termed, following Krafft-Ebing, psycho-sexual hermaphrodites.[49] There would thus seem to be a broad and simple grouping of all sexually functioning persons into three comprehensive divisions: the heterosexual, the bisexual, and the homosexual.
Even this elementary classification seems however of no great practical use. The bisexual group is found to introduce uncertainty and doubt. Not only a large proportion of persons who may fairly be considered normally heterosexual have at some time in their lives experienced a feeling which may be termed sexual toward individuals of their own sex, but a very large proportion of persons who are definitely and markedly homosexual are found to have experienced sexual attraction toward, and have had relationships with, persons of the opposite sex. The social pressure, urging all persons into the normal sexual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of heterosexuality as homosexual persons may possess, and so to render them bisexual. In the majority of adult bisexual persons it would seem that the homosexual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heterosexual tendency. Bisexuality would thus in a large number of cases be comparable to ambidexterity, which Biervliet has found to occur most usually in people who are organically left-handed.[50] While therefore the division into heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual is a useful superficial division, it is scarcely a scientific classification.
In the face of these various considerations, and in view of the fact that, while I feel justified in regarding the histories of my cases as reliable so far as they go, I have not been always able to explore them extensively, it has seemed best to me to attempt no classification at all.
The order in which the following histories appear is not, therefore, to be regarded as possessing any significance.
It may be proper, at this point, to say a few words as to the reliability of the statements furnished by homosexual persons. This has sometimes been called in question. Many years ago we used to be told that inverts are such lying and deceitful degenerates that it was impossible to place reliance on anything they said. It was also usual to say that when they wrote autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to mold them in the fashion of those published by Krafft-Ebing. More recently the psychoanalysts have made a more radical attack on all histories not obtained by their own methods as being quite unreliable, even when put forth in good faith, in part because the subject withholds much that he either regards as too trivial or too unpleasant to bring forward, and in part because he cannot draw on that unconscious field within himself wherein, it is held, the most significant facts in his own sexual history are concealed. Thus Sadger (“Ueber den Wert der Autobiographien Sexuell Perverser,” Fortschritte der Medizin, nos. 26-28, 1913) vigorously puts forward this view and asserts that the autobiographies of inverts are worthless, although his assertions are somewhat discounted by the fact that they accompany an autobiography, written in the usual manner, to which he attributes much value.
The objection to homosexual autobiographic statements dates from a period when the homosexual were very little known, and it was supposed that their moral character generally was fairly represented by a small section among them which attracted more attention than the rest by reason of discreditable conduct. But, in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just as among normal people. Sadger (Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1913, p. 199) complains of the “great insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;” but, as Sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so long as inversion is counted a crime. The most normal persons, under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. If the homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the heterosexual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely emotional. These tendencies, while on the one hand they are liable to induce a very easily detectable vanity, may also lead to an unusual self-subordination to veracity. On the whole, it may be said, in my own experience, that the best histories written by the homosexual compare favorably for frankness, intelligence, and power of self-analysis with those written by the heterosexual.
The ancient allegation that inverts have written their own histories on the model, or under the suggestion, of those published in Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis can scarcely have much force now that the published histories are so extremely varied and numerous that they cannot possibly produce any uniform impression on the most sensitively receptive mind. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that inverts have frequently been stimulated to set down the narrative of their own experiences through reading those written by others. But the stimulation has, as often as not, lain in the fact that their own experiences have seemed different, not that they have seemed identical. The histories that they read only serve as models in the sense that they indicate the points on which information is desired. I have often been able to verify this influence, which would in any case seem to be fairly obvious.
Psycho-analysis is, in theory, an ideal method of exploring many psychic conditions, such as hysteria and obsessions, which are obscure and largely concealed beneath the psychic surface. In most homosexual cases the main facts are, with the patient’s good-will and the investigator’s tact, not difficult to ascertain. Any difficulties which psychoanalysis may help to elucidate mainly concern the early history of the case in childhood, and, regarding these, psychoanalysis may sometimes raise questions which it cannot definitely settle. Psycho-analysis reveals an immense mass of small details, any of which may or may not possess significance, and in determining which are significant the individuality of the psychoanalyst cannot fail to come into play. He will necessarily tend to arrange them according to a system. If, for instance, he regards infantile incestuous emotions or early Narcissism as an essential feature of the mechanism of homosexuality, a conscientious investigator will not rest until he has discovered traces of them, as he very probably will. (See, e.g., Sadger, “Fragment der Psychoanalyse eines Homosexuellen,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. ix, 1908; and cf. Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 164). But the exact weight and significance of these traces may still be doubtful, and, even if considerable in one case, may be inconsiderable in another. Freud, who sets forth one type of homosexual mechanism, admits that there may be others. Moreover, it must be added that the psychoanalytic method by no means excludes unconscious deception by the subject, as Freud found, and so was compelled to admit the patient’s tendency to “fantasy,” as Adler has to “fictions,” as a fundamental psychic tendency of the “unconscious.”
The force of these considerations is now beginning to be generally recognized. Thus Moll (art. “Homosexualität,” in 4th ed. of Eulenburg’s Realencyclopädie der gesamten Heilkunde, 1909, p. 611) rightly says that while the invert may occasionally embroider his story, “the expert can usually distinguish between the truth and the poetry, though it is unnecessary to add that complete confidence on the patient’s part is necessary,” Näcke, again (Sexual-Probleme, September, 1911, p. 619), after quoting with approval the remark of one of the chief German authorities, Dr. Numa Praetorius, that “a great number of inverts’ histories are at the least as trustworthy as the attempts of psychoanalysts, especially when they come from persons skillful in self-analysis,” adds that “even Freudian analysis gives no absolute guarantee for truth. A healthy skepticism is justifiable—but not an unhealthy skepticism!” Hirschfeld, also (Die Homosexualität, p. 164), whose knowledge of such histories is unrivalled, remarks that while we may now and then meet with a case of pseudo-logia fantastica in connection with psychic debility on the basis of a psychopathic constitution, “taken all in all any generalized assertion of the falsehood of inverts is an empty fiction, and is merely a sign that the physicians who make it have not been able to win the trust of the men and women who consult them.” My own experience has fully convinced me of the truth of this, statement. I am assured that many of the inverts I have met not only possess a rare power of intellectual self-analysis (stimulated by the constant and inevitable contrast between their own feelings and those of the world around them), but an unsparing sincerity in that self-analysis not so very often attained by normal people.
The histories which follow have been obtained in various ways, and are of varying degrees of value. Some are of persons whom I have known very well for very long periods, and concerning whom I can speak very positively. A few are from complete strangers whose good faith, however, I judge from internal evidence that I am able to accept. Two or three were written by persons who—though educated, in one case a journalist—had never heard of inversion, and imagined that their own homosexual feelings were absolutely unique in the world. A fair number were written by persons whom I do not myself know, but who are well known to others in whose judgment I feel confidence. Perhaps the largest number are concerned with individuals who wrote to me spontaneously in the first place, and whom I have at intervals seen or heard from since, in some cases during a very long period, so that I have slowly been able to fill in their histories, although the narratives, as finally completed, may have the air of being written down at a single sitting. I have not admitted any narrative which I do not feel that I am entitled to regard as a substantially accurate statement of the facts, although allowance must occasionally be made for the emotional coloring of these facts, the invert sometimes cherishing too high an opinion, and sometimes too low an opinion, of his own personality.
HISTORY I.—Both parents healthy; father of unusually fine physique. He is himself a manual worker and also of exceptionally fine physique. He is, however, of nervous temperament. He is mentally bright, though not highly educated, a keen sportsman, and in general a good example of an all-around healthy Englishman.
While very affectionate, his sexual desires are not strongly developed on the physical side, and seem never to have been so. He sometimes masturbated about the age of puberty, but never afterward. He does not appear to have well-marked erotic dreams. There used to be some attraction toward women, though it was never strong. At the age of 26 he was seduced by a woman and had connection with her once. Afterward he had reason to think she had played him false in various ways. This induced the strongest antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women. A year after this episode homosexual feeling first became clear and defined. He is now 33, and feels the same antipathy to women; he hates even to speak of marriage.
There has only been one really strong attraction, toward a man of about the same age, but of different social class, and somewhat a contrast to him, both physically and mentally. So far as the physical act is concerned this relationship is not definitely sexual, but it is of the most intimate possible kind, and the absence of the physical act is probably largely due to circumstances. At the same time there is no conscious desire for the act for its own sake, and the existing harmony and satisfaction are described as very complete. There is no repulsion to the physical side, and he regards the whole relationship as quite natural.
HISTORY II.—B. O., English, aged 35, missionary abroad. A brother is more definitely inverted. B. O. has never had any definitely homosexual relationships, although he has always been devoted to boys; nor has he had any relationships with women. “As regards women,” he says, “I feel I have not the patience to try and understand them; they are petulant and changeable,” etc. He objects to being called “abnormal,” and thinks that people like himself are “extremely common.”
“I have never wanted to kiss boys,” he writes, “nor to handle them in any way except to put my arm around them at their studies and at other similar times. Of course, with really little boys, it is different, but boys and girls under 14 seem to me much alike, and I can love either equally well. As to any sort of sexual connection between myself and one of my own sex, I cannot think of it otherwise than with disgust. I can imagine great pleasure in having connection with a woman, but their natures do not attract me. Indeed, my liking for my own sex seems to consist almost entirely in a preference for the masculine character, and the feeling that as an object to look at the male body is really more beautiful than the female. When any strong temptations to sexual passion come over me in my waking moments, it is of women I think. On the other hand, I have to confess that after being with some lad I love for an hour or two, I have sometimes felt my sexual organs roused. But only once in my life have I experienced a strong desire to sleep in the same bed with a particular lad, and even then no idea of doing anything entered my mind. Needless to say, I did not sleep with him.
“I never feel tempted by any girls here, although I see so many with their bodies freely exposed, and plenty of them have really pretty faces. Neither do I feel tempted to do anything improper with any of the boys, although I frequently sit talking with one who has very little on. But I find the constant sight of well-shaped bare limbs has a curious effect on the mind and comes before one’s imagination as a picture at unlooked-for times. But the most curious thing of all is this: There are several lads here of whom I am very fond. Now when they are near me I think of them with only the purest and most tender feelings, but sometimes at night when I am half asleep, or when I am taking my midday siesta, my imagination pictures one of these lads approaching a girl, or actually lying with her, and the strange thing is that I do not feel any desire myself to approach the girl, but I feel I wish I were in her place and the lad was coming to me. In my calm, waking moments it disgusts and rather horrifies me to find myself apparently so unsexed—yet such is the fact, and the experience, with only slight changes, repeats itself over and over again. It is not that I, as a man, wish even in imagination to act improperly with a boy, but I feel I would like to be in the girl’s place, and the strange thing is that in all these dreams and imaginings I can always apparently enter into the feelings of the woman better than into those of the man. Sometimes I fancy for a moment that perhaps reincarnation is true and I was a woman in my last life. Sometimes I fancy that when I was in the womb I was formed as a girl and the sexual organs changed just at the last moment. It is a curious problem. Don’t think I worry about it. Only at long intervals do I think of it.... The thing has its bright side. Boys and men seem to have tender feelings toward me, such as one expects them to have for members of the opposite sex, and I get into all the closer contact with them in consequence.”
HISTORY III.—F. R., English, aged 50, Belongs on both sides to healthy, normal families, of more than average ability. Father was 35 at birth, and mother 27. He is the second of four children. There was a considerable interval between the births of the children, which were spread over twenty-one years. All are normal, except F. R., two of them married and with families.
Owing to the difference of age between the children, F. R. (who was three years younger than his elder brother, and more than four years older than his sister, the third child) had no male companionship and was constantly alone with his mother. “Being naturally imitative,” he remarks, “I think I acquired her tastes and interests and habits of thought. However that may be, I feel sure that my interests and amusements were more girlish than boyish. By way of illustration, I may mention that I have often been told by a friend of my mother’s that, on one occasion, I was wanting a new hat, and none being found of a size to fit me, I congratulated myself that I should therefore be obliged to have a bonnet! As regards my feminine tastes and instincts, I have always been conscious of taking interest in questions of family relationships, etiquette, dress (women’s as much as, or more than, men’s) and other things of that kind, which, as a rule, were treated with indifference or contempt. In the house I take more notice than my sister does of the servants’ deficiencies and neglects, and am much more orderly in my arrangements than she is.”
There is nothing markedly feminine in the general appearance. Pubertal development took place at an early age, long before fourteen, with nocturnal emissions, but without erotic dreams. The testicles are well developed, the penis perhaps rather below the average in size, and the prepuce long and narrow. Erection occurs with much facility, especially at night. When young he knew nothing of masturbation, but he began the habit about ten years ago, and has practised it occasionally ever since.
Although he likes the society of women to a certain extent, he soon grows tired of it, and has never had any desire to marry. His sexual dreams never have any relation to women. “I am generally doing or saying something,” he remarks, “to some man whom I know when awake, something which I admit I might wish to do or say if it were not quite out of the question on grounds of propriety and self-respect.”
He has, however, never had any intimate relationships with men, and much that he has heard of such relationships fills him with horror.
“What I feel about myself is,” he writes, “that I have to a certain extent, or in some respects, a feminine mind in a male body; or, I might put it that I am a combination of an immoral (in tendency, rather than in act) woman and a religious man. From time to time I have felt strong affection for young men, but I cannot flatter myself that my affection has been reciprocated. At the present time there is a young fellow (23 years old) who acts as my clerk and sits in my room. He is extremely good-looking, and of a type which is generally considered ‘aristocratic,’ but so far as I (or he) know, he is quite of the lower middle class. He has little to recommend him but a fine face and figure, and there is nothing approaching to mental or social equality between us. But I constantly feel the strongest desire to treat him as a man might a young girl he warmly loved. Various obvious considerations keep me from more than quasi-paternal caresses, and I feel sure he would resent very strongly anything more. This constant repression is trying beyond measure to the nerves, and I often feel quite ill from that cause. Having had no experiences of my own, I am always anxious to learn anything I can of the sexual relations of other men, and their organs, but I have no curiosity whatever concerning the other sex. My chief pleasure and source of gratification is found in the opportunities afforded by Turkish and other baths; wherever, in fact, there is the nude male to be found. But I seldom find in these places anyone who seems to have the same tendency as myself, and certainly I have not met with more than two cases among the attendants, who responded to my hinted desire to see everything. Under a shampooer, particularly an unfamiliar one, I occasionally experience an orgasm, but less often now than when I was younger.”
F. R. is very short-sighted. His favorite color is blue. He is able to whistle. His tastes are chiefly of a literary character, and he has never had any liking for sports. “I have been generally considered ineffective in the use of my hands,” he writes, “and I am certainly not skillful. All I have ever been able to do in that way is to net and do the simpler forms of needlework; but it seems more natural to me to do, or try to do, everything of that sort, and to play on the piano, rather than to shoot or play games. I may add that I am fonder of babies than many women, and am generally considered to be surprisingly capable of holding them! Certainly I enjoy doing so. As a youth, I used to act in charades; but I was too shy to do so unless I was dressed as a woman and veiled; and when I took a woman’s part I felt less like acting than I have done in propria persona. A remark made by an uncle once rather annoyed me: that it seemed more like nature than art. But he was quite right.”
HISTORY IV.—Of Lowland Scotch parentage. Both sides of house healthy and without cerebral or nervous disease. Homosexual desires began at puberty. He practised onanism to a limited extent at school and up to the age of about 22. His erotic dreams are exclusively about males. While very friendly and intimate with women of all ages, he is instantly repelled by any display of sexual affection on their side. This has happened in varying degree in three or four cases. With regard to marriage, he remarks: “As there seems no immediate danger of the race dying out, I leave marriage to those who like it.” His male ideal has varied to some extent. It has for some years tended toward a healthy, well-developed, athletic or out-of-door working type, intelligent and sympathetic, but not specially intellectual.
At school his sexual relations were of the simplest type. Since then there have been none. “This,” he says, “is not due either to absence of desire or presence of ‘morals.’ To put it shortly, ‘there were never the time and the place and the loved one together.’ In another view, physical desire and the general affection have not always coexisted toward the same person; and the former without the latter is comparatively transient; while the latter stops the gratification of the former, if it is felt that that gratification could in any way make the object of affection unhappy, mentally or emotionally.”
He is healthy and fairly well developed; of sensitive, emotional nature, but self-controlled; mentally he is receptive and aggressive by turns, sometimes uncritical, sometimes analytical. His temper is equable, and he is strongly affectionate. Very fond of music and other arts, but not highly imaginative.
Of sexual inversion in the abstract he says he has no views, but he thus sums up his moral attitude: “I presume that, if it is there, it is there for use or abuse, as men please. I condemn gratification of bodily desire at the expense of others, in whatever form it may take. I condemn it no more in its inverted form than in the ordinary. I believe that affection between persons of the same sex, even when it includes the sexual passion and its indulgences, may lead to results as splendid as human nature can ever attain to. In short, I place it on an absolute equality with love as ordinarily understood.”
HISTORY V.—S. W., aged 64, English, musical journalist. The communication which follows (somewhat abbreviated) was written before S. W. had heard or read anything about sexual inversion, and when he still believed that his own case was absolutely unique.
“I am the son of a clergyman, and lived for the first thirteen years of my life in the country town where I was born. Then my father became the vicar of a country village, where I lived until I went out into the world at the age of 18. As during the whole of this time my father had a few pupils, I was educated with them, and never went to school. I was born, I fancy, with sexual passions about as strong as can well be imagined, and at the same time was very precocious in my entry into the stage of puberty. Semen began to form a little before my twelfth birthday; hair soon followed, and in a year I was in that respect the equal of an average boy of 15 or 16. I conversed freely with my companions on the relations of the sexes, but, unlike them, had no personal feeling toward girls. In time I became conscious that I was different, as I then believed, and believe now, from all other men. My sexual organs were quite perfect. But in the frame of a man I had the sexual mind of a female. I distinctly disclaim the faintest inclination to perform unnatural acts; the idea of committing sodomy would be most disgusting.
“To come to my actual condition of mind: While totally indifferent to the person of woman (I always enjoyed their friendship and companionship, and many of my best friends have been ladies), I had a burning desire to have carnal intercourse with a male, and had the capacity for falling in love, as it is called, to the utmost extent. In imagination, I possessed the female organ, and felt toward man exactly as an amorous female would. At the time when I became fully conscious of my condition, I attached little importance to it; I had not a notion of its terrible import, nor of the future misery it would entail. All that I had to learn by bitter experience.
“I did once think of forcing myself to have connection with a prostitute in order to see whether the actual sensual enjoyment might bring a change, and so have the power to marry. But when it came to thinking over ways and means, my repugnance to the act became so strong that it was quite out of the question. In the case of any male to whom I became attached, I wanted to feel ourselves together, skin to skin, and to be privileged to take such liberties as an amorous female would take if that were all permitted. I sought no purely sensual gratification of any kind; my love was far too genuine for that.
“During the rather more than half a century which has elapsed since my twelfth birthday, I have been genuinely in love about thirteen times. I despair attempting to give an idea of the depth and reality of my feelings. I have alluded to my precocity. I was in love when 12 years old, the object being a man of 24, a well-known analytical chemist. He came to my father’s house very frequently; and my heart beat almost at the mention of his name.
“The next serious time I was about 15. It was a farmer’s son, about two years older. I don’t think that I was ever alone with him, and really only knew him as a member of his family, yet for a time he was my chief interest in life.
“When 21 I had a ‘chum,’ a youth of 17, who entertained for me, at any rate, a brotherly affection. We were under the same roof, and early one summer morning he got out of bed and came direct to my room to talk about some matter or other. In order to talk more comfortably he got into bed with me and we lay there just as two school-girls might have done. This proximity was more than I could stand, and my heart began to beat so that it was impossible that he should not notice it. As, of course, he could not have the slightest notion of the reason, he said in all innocence, ‘Why, how your heart beats. I can hear it quite plainly.’
“So far my details are purely innocent. Up to 18, familiarities passed at intervals between me and the son of the village doctor, a youth about two years older than myself, and precociously immoral. I did not really care for him much, but he was my chief companion. Then I became a school-assistant, and for about six years managed to control myself, only, alas, to fall again. Another resolution I kept for eight years, one long fight with my nature. Again I sinned in three instances, extending over three or four years. I now come to a very painful and eventful episode in my unhappy life which I would gladly pass over were it possible. It was a case, in middle life, of sin, discovery, and great folly in addition.
“Before going into details, so far as may be necessary, I cannot help asking you to consider calmly and dispassionately my exact condition compared with that of my fellow-creatures as a whole. In my struggles to resist in the past, I have at times felt as if wrestling in the folds of a python. I again sinned, then, with a youth and his friend. Oddly enough, discovery followed through a man who was actuated by a feeling of revenge for a strictly right act on my part. The lads refused to state more than the truth, and this did not satisfy the man, and a third lad was introduced, who was prepared to say anything. This was not all; some twelve or fifteen more boys made similar accusations! The general belief, in consequence, was that I had committed ‘nameless’ crimes in all directions, ad lib. If you were to ask me for an explanation of the action of all these boys beyond the third, who, of course, had some special inducements, I can offer none. They may have thought that the original trio were regarded rather in the light of heroes; why should they not be heroes, too?
“I might well feel crushed under such a load of accusations, but that does not excuse the incredible folly of my conduct. I denied alike the modicum of truth and the mass of lying, and went off to America. However, as time passed on and my mind got into a proper state, I felt that the truth must be told some time or other. I accordingly wrote from America to the proper quarter a full confession of my sin with regard to the two youths who had told merely the truth, at the same time pointing out the falsehood of all the rest of the accusations.
“I remained in America six years, and actually made money, so that I could return to England with a small capital. I was also under a promise to my three sisters (all older than myself) that I would return in their lifetime. My programme was to purchase a small, light business in London, and quietly earn my living; at the same time making my presence known to no one. I did buy such a business, got swindled in the most clever way, and lost every farthing I possessed in the world! I had to make my plight known to old friends who all either gave or lent me money. Still my position was a very precarious one. I tried an insurance agency, one of the last resources of the educated destitute, but soon found out that I was unfitted for work in which impudence is a prime factor. Then an extraordinary stroke of good fortune took place; almost simultaneously I began to get a few music pupils, and literary work in connection with a good musical journal.
“Making my presence known to old friends involved the same information to those who were not friends. My identity as a journalist became known, and as time passed by it seemed to me as if half the world had heard of my alleged iniquities. People who have never set eyes on me seem to regard me in the light of a monster of iniquity who ought not to be suffered to exist. All these outsiders believe that I have committed ‘nameless’ offenses times innumerable and lift up their hands in speechless horror at the audacity of a man who, so situated, dares to appear openly in public, under his own name, and look people in the face. They have not even the brains to see that this very fearlessness proves the fictitious character of their beliefs. Next, they believe that if only they could get my dismissal from my journalistic post I should be brought to starvation point. This up to a year ago was true. Then an old relative died and left me some property which I sold to invest in an annuity, and thus have just enough to live on quietly, apart from what I may earn. Under such strange conditions it might be asked whether life was not unendurable. Frankly speaking, I cannot say that I find it so. I have in London a few bachelor friends who go with me to theaters, etc. In the suburbs I have about half a dozen family friends. Here I meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. I am passionately fond of music, have an excellent piano, and can hear the best concerts in Europe. I go to all good plays. I am a good chess player. Lastly, I am an omnivorous reader. You will allow that my resources for passing the time are not limited.
“Of course, I am sorry that I sinned, and wish that I had not done so. But I disclaim any feeling of shame.”
S. W. was the youngest of four children and the only boy. His father was 40 at his birth, his mother 33. The father was an intellectual man of weak character, the mother a woman of violent and eccentric temper, with, he believes, strong sexual passions. S. W. knows of nothing in the family to account for his own abnormal condition.
He is short (five feet five inches), but well built, with strong chest and a powerful voice. His arms are weak and flabby (feminine, he thinks), but the legs muscular. As a boy of 14 he could walk forty miles with ease, and he played football till near the age of 45. He is considered manly in character and tastes, but is easily moved to tears under strong excitement. There is no information as to the type of man to whom he is attracted. I may observe, however, that the analytical chemist who first evoked S. W.’s admiration was well known to me some thirty years later, as he was my own teacher in chemistry. At that time he was an elderly man of attractive appearance and character, sympathetic and winning in manner to an almost feminine extent.
S. W. has never felt the slightest sexual attraction toward the opposite sex. The first indications of inverted feeling were at the age of 6 or 7. Watching his father’s pupils, boys of 13 or 14, from the windows, he speculated on what their organs of generation were like. “In connection with a girl,” he writes, “I should no more have thought of such a thing than in the case of a block of marble.” About this time, indeed, he at times slept with a sister of 10, who induced him to go through the form of sexual connection, saying that it felt “so funny;” but he merely did this to please her, and without the slightest interest or feeling on his own part. This attitude became more marked with increased knowledge, until he fell ardently in love at the age of 12. Throughout life he has practised masturbation to a certain extent, and is prepared to defend the practice in his own case. His erotic dreams have been of only the vaguest and most shadowy character. He is able to whistle. He takes a warm interest in politics and in philanthropic work. But his chief love is for music and he has published many musical compositions. On the whole, and notwithstanding the persecution he has endured, he does not regard his life as unhappy. At the same time he is keenly conscious of the atmosphere of “Pariahdom” which surrounds inverts, and in his own case this has never been alleviated by any sense of companionship in misery. The facility with which some inverts are said to recognize others of their own kind is quite incomprehensible to him; he has never to his knowledge met one.
HISTORY VI.—E. S., physician, aged 50.
“I have some reason,” he writes, “for believing that some of my relatives (on the paternal side) were not normal in their sexual life. But I am sure that no such suspicion was entertained by their friends or associates; they were very reticent people. A great proportion of my near relatives have remained unmarried or deferred marriage until late in life. None of them have been good business men; all seem to have been more deeply concerned in other things than in making—or in keeping—money. They have mostly taken little or no share in public life, and not cared much for society. Yet they have been folk of more than average ability, with intellectual and æsthetic interests. We are prone to enthusiasms, but lack perseverance. We are discursive and superficial, perhaps, but none would call us stupid. We are perhaps abnormally self-centered and self-conscious—never cruel or vicious. Our powers of self-control are considerable; we are conventional people only because we are lazy and intensely dislike any open self-assertion. Yet we are nervous rather than phlegmatic. All that is on the father’s side. My maternal ancestors have been concerned with farming and the sea and have also had a similar lack of business capacity, but with less mental adaptiveness and alertness, with more steadiness of purpose, however, always doers rather than dreamers. Among them I remember one cousin who was probably abnormal, although he died when I was too young to notice much. Again, they were all rather reserved people, but more genial with strangers, more socially inclined, and with less self-control.
“I was an only child and a spoilt one. I was always quick at school, fond of learning, and finding my lessons no trouble. Serious study I disliked. But for school purposes I did not find it necessary, and had no difficulty in carrying all before me. I was never fond of games, although very fond of being out of doors and of walking. Few of my relatives have been at all keen on sport. I made no close friendships at school and was never very popular with my schoolfellows, who, however, tolerated my odd ways better than might have been expected. I was easily brought to appreciate good literature, but I never had much power of expression or of strenuous thought. I was extremely susceptible and impressible, moved by beauty of any kind, but never at all ambitious or in any way creative. I was easily stimulated to work, and then loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were maintained the natural indolence of my disposition asserted itself, and I wasted my powers in dreams and trifles. My memory was very quick and retentive, in the main, but curiously capricious. I always lacked initiative and decision. At college my successes were continued. I gained medals and prizes, passed my examinations easily, and graduated ‘with first-class honors.’ In my professional lifework I have been successful rather beyond the average. I love it with all my heart.
“I cannot speak with any confidence about the first stirrings of my sexual instincts, but I think I can assert that they have at no time led me to any desire for the opposite sex. It is true that my earliest recollection of the kind is concerned with intimacies with a girl play-fellow, but as we had at the time reached only the mature age of 7 (at the most) I fancy that our mutual exhibitions—for there was nothing more—simply satisfied our natural curiosity. Certainly these memories are, in my mind, in no way set apart from the recollections of other kinds of play. Next to that I remember the usual schoolboy talk about things hidden and forbidden, but up till I was 12 or so this was simply dirty talk, concerned more with renal and intestinal functions than with any sexual feelings or understanding. One boy was known to us all (and of my not inconsiderable circle of early friends, all grew up to be normal people, who married and had children in due course) for the unusual size of his parts and for the freedom with which he invited and satisfied the curiosity of his friends. He must have been precocious, for he could not have been more than 12, and I remember to have heard that he had a thick growth of pubic hair. Even then, although I know that my curiosity—to put it at that only—was active, I never allowed myself to have any dealings with him; and I think I should have discouraged them had they been suggested to me. That is the odd thing about my life: the things I longed intensely to do I would not let myself do, not from any religious or moral scruple, but from some inexplicable fastidiousness or scrupulosity which is yet as active as ever, although I am sure that it would not be able to hold its own could these favorable conditions be repeated, but would be overcome by the imperious and fully grown desires which, by long repression, or by unsatisfactory diversion, have grown to be so strong. Indeed, given the opportunity, and the assurance that no first seduction or corruption of anyone was in question, they would prove quite irrepressible.
“Certainly, long before puberty—which was early with me—I remember being greatly attracted to certain boys, and wishing to have an opportunity of sleeping with them. Had I been able to do so, I am sure I should have been impelled to get into as close contact with their naked body as possible, and I do not think I should then have craved for anything more. I knew some boys—perhaps a little older—who even then had relations, which were certainly not innocent, with a girl who was a year or two older than any of us. She once kissed me, to my intense shame. But I felt that these relations would have been unspeakably disgusting and I took no particular interest in hearing about them. I remember being fondled and caressed by a very good-looking boy of 16 when I was three or four years younger and had sustained some hurt at play; and I am still able to recall the thrill of delight that I experienced at his touch. Nothing took place that all the world might not have seen, but I remember being taken between his knees as he sat, and his arms being put around my neck, and the warm, soft pressure of his thighs had an unspeakable effect on me.
“About this time, too, an older boy, perhaps about 18, used to get hold of smaller boys when on country walks, to throw them down and then look at and toy with their genitals. He was himself a handsome boy, and I was greatly excited when told about this by boys who had experienced it, and wished greatly to have it done to me. It never was; and if it had been attempted I know I should have resisted with all my strength, although my desires would have set me aflame. This boy died before he was 20, with a psoas abscess, and I remember crying myself to sleep the night I learned of his death. Another boy, about three years older than myself, who had very silky hair, I used to be attracted by and I was always trying to stroke his hair, but he always objected.
“I must have been about 12 when I first was taught to masturbate by a cousin who was slightly older. At first I thought it silly, but I used to watch him at it, and practised it myself from time to time until I became old enough to experience the proper sensation. Then I have reason to think I gave myself up to it rather freely, but it was generally done in solitude, although it was long before I realized that there was anything wrong about it or that it might prove hurtful. Looking back now, I feel perfectly certain that my instincts were wholly homosexual from the very first. This cousin, who possessed notable intellectual and artistic gifts, married, but I feel sure his liking for his own sex was not normal.
“With another cousin, almost years my junior, I was always on terms of the most affectionate intimacy. My holidays at his parents’ house were my greatest delight. We were always together by night or day; we slept in the same bed, literally in each other’s arms. To me it afforded the keenest sexual pleasure to press close to his naked body. We used mutually to handle and caress our parts, but without any attempt at mutual masturbation, although at that period I regularly practised it on myself. I asked him once about it, but he had not been taught it by others; and to my great pride and satisfaction I can say that I never either did it to him or asked him to do it to me. This I mention as an instance of my restraint in act, although my thoughts and desires knew no such curb. I remember also an elder brother of his, perhaps three or four years my senior, once showing me (then about 12, I suppose) his semierect penis. He would not allow me to touch it, but showed me how to draw back the foreskin so as to uncover the glans. His penis was large, and the incident was not forgotten. We had no other relation and I know that both he and my own friend grew up to be quite normal men.
“I think I must have been about 17 when I got frightened about the occurrence of nocturnal emissions, which I believed were the evil result of masturbation, and for two or three years I continued in considerable mental distress until, when in my second or third year at college, I summoned up courage enough to consult our good old family doctor, who reassured me, but made, I now think, too light of my confidences, so that I relapsed the more readily, although much later on, into old habits.
“From our windows at home we looked over a bit of common or down to the beach, and I used to keep watch on warm summer afternoons; over boys who might be bathing, to observe them through our telescope. All this I kept strictly secret and I was never surprised. I might just as well, and without arousing the slightest suspicion of my motive, have walked down to the beach and seen them and chatted with them; but this I could not have brought myself to do. It gave me considerable sexual satisfaction when I was able to see them bathing without pants. I also used to watch them at play on the common, and felt rewarded when I saw, as I not infrequently did, sexual familiarities taking place. These violently excited me and sometimes brought on orgasm, always erection with pleasure. Indeed, it was an experience of this kind that made me return to masturbation after I had given it up for a while. I remember one day seeing two lads of about 16 lying on the grass in the sunshine; all at once the bigger lad put out his hand and tried to open his companion’s trousers. He resisted with all his might, and a long struggle ensued, ending in the smaller lad having his penis exposed and manipulated by the other. Even at this day the recollection of this excites me. Both lads grew up to be normal men.
“Twice only have I been approached by grown-up people. When I was about 13 I used to meet often, when going to school by train, an old gentleman who courted me, as it were, used often to talk to me and asked me to come to see his well-known scientific collections, but I always had a vague distrust of him and never went. One day in the summer during a spare hour I met him in an empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave concealment. He came up to me and told me he had been away in the country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes and were still giving him uneasiness. ‘I would be very grateful,’ he said, ‘if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.’ He then unbuttoned his braces on one side, undid his trousers and made me thrust my hand over his groin and lower abdomen. I avoided touching his genitals, but he pushed my hand down in that direction until, burning with shame, I made my escape and ran off, not stopping until I was safe in school. I scarcely understood it, but never spoke of it, and avoided him ever afterward. I learned later on that he was a well-off bachelor who took a great interest in working lads and young men and did much to help them on in life and keep them, so it was said, from falling into bad company. He died at a great age and left most of his fortune to an institution for lads, as well as large legacies to youths in whom he had been interested.
“The other time was on top of a tramcar when a grown-up man who was near pressed as close to me as he could, began to talk, praised my dark eyes, then put his hand on my thigh under my loose cloak and felt up toward my parts. At the same time he took hold of my hand, caressed it and put it over his parts (it was in the dusk). This excited me and, if we had not been at our destination, I think I would gladly have permitted further familiarities. He tried to ask me where I lived, but there was no time to answer, and the female relative who was with me (on another seat) would no doubt have prevented this from having any further sequel.
“On more than one occasion I have experienced the sexual orgasm as the result of mental anxiety. The first time this occurred was when I was hurrying to avoid being late for school. Another time was when I was about 24, and was extremely anxious to fill an appointment for which I was late. So copious was the emission that I had to go home and change.
“As a medical student, the first reference bearing definitely on the subject of sexual inversion was made in the class of Medical Jurisprudence, where certain sexual crimes were alluded to—very summarily and inadequately—but nothing was said of the existence of sexual inversion as the ‘normal’ condition of certain unhappy people, nor was any distinction drawn between the various non-normal acts, which were all classed together as manifestations of the criminal depravity of ordinary or insane people. To a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows, nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me up more completely in my reserve than ever. I felt that this teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or misapprehension, for I knew from my own very clear remembrance of my own development that my peculiarity was not acquired, but inborn; my great misfortune undoubtedly, but not my fault.
“It was still more unfortunate that in the course of the lectures on Clinical Medicine there was not the slightest allusion to the subject. All sorts of rare diseases—some of which I have not yet met with in the course of twenty-one years of a busy practice—were fully discussed, but we were left entirely ignorant of a subject so vitally important to me personally, and, as it seems to me, to the profession to which I aspired. There might have been an incidental reference to masturbation—although I do not remember it—but its real significance received no attention; and what we students knew of it was the result of our reading or of our personal experiences.
“In the class of Mental Disease there was, naturally, more detailed and systematic reference to facts in the sexual life and to sexual inversion as a rare pathological condition. But still there was not a comforting word to reassure me, growing ever more hopelessly ashamed of what it seemed was a criminal or a gravely morbid nature.
“Among all my fellow-students I knew of no one constituted like myself; but my natural reserve—increased, of course, by my consciousness of what I saw would be thought to be a criminal tendency—did not urge me to exchange of confidences or to the formation of; close friendships.
“After graduation I became a resident medical officer in the hospital and private assistant to one of the professors—a physician and teacher of worldwide reputation. With him I associated on the most cordial and affectionate terms; and often in the course of conversation I tried to bring him to discuss the subject, but without success. It was obviously unpleasant and uninteresting to him. Enough was said, however, to enable me to realize that he held the current ideas on the subject; and I would not for worlds have allowed him, to guess that I myself came under the despised and tainted category.
“I have seldom heard sexual inversion discussed among my professional friends. They speak of it with disgust or amusement. I have never met a professional man who would consider it dispassionately and scientifically. For them it was a subject entirely belonging to psychological medicine.
“I have had no admitted case of it among my patients; but I have often instinctively felt that some who consulted me about other matters would have taken me into their confidence about that, but for their fear of being cruelly misunderstood.
“As to my moral attitude I fear to speak. Grossness disgusts me; but I am not sure that I should be able to resist temptation placed in my way. But I am absolutely sure that I should never, under any circumstances, tempt others to any disgraceful act. If I ever committed any sexual act with one of my own sex whom I loved, I could not look at it or approach it in any other than a sacramental way. This sounds blasphemous and shocking, but I cannot otherwise express my meaning.
“As regards the marriage of inverts, my own feeling is that for a congenital invert—no matter how fully the situation be explained beforehand—it is a step fraught with too great possibilities of tragedy and of the deepest unhappiness, to be advised at all. My view is that for the invert, far more than for the ordinary person, there is no escape from the supreme necessity of self-control in any relationship he may form. If that be attained then the ideal is a relationship with another man of similar temperament—not a platonic one, necessarily—by means of which the highest happiness of both may be reached. But this can occur very seldom.
“To poetry and the fine arts I am very susceptible, and I have given a great deal of time to this study. I am devoted heart and soul to music, which is more and more to me every year I live. Trivial or light music I cannot endure, but of Beethoven, Bach, Händel, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Wagner I should never hear enough. Here, too, my sympathies, are very catholic, and I delight in McDowell, Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf.”
HISTORY VII.—”My parentage is very sound and healthy. Both my parents (who belong to the professional middle class) have good general health; nor can I trace any marked abnormal or diseased tendency, of mind or body, in any records of the family.
“Though of a strongly nervous temperament myself, and sensitive, my health is good. I am not aware of any tendency to physical disease. In early manhood, however, owing, I believe, to the great emotional tension under which I lived, my nervous system was a good deal shattered and exhausted. Mentally and morally my nature is pretty well balanced, and I have never had any serious perturbations in these departments.
“At the age of 8 or 9, and long before distinct sexual feelings declared themselves, I felt a friendly attraction toward my own sex, and this developed after the age of puberty into a passionate sense of love, which, however, never found any expression for itself till I was fully 20 years of age. I was a day-boarder at school and heard little of school-talk on sex subjects, was very reserved and modest besides; no elder person or parent ever spoke to me on such matters; and the passion for my own sex developed gradually, utterly uninfluenced from the outside. I never even, during all this period, and till a good deal later, learned the practice of masturbation. My own sexual nature was a mystery to me. I found myself cut off from the understanding of others, felt myself an outcast, and, with a highly loving and clinging temperament, was intensely miserable. I thought about my male friends—sometimes boys of my own age, sometimes elder boys, and once even a master—during the day and dreamed about them at night, but was too convinced that I was a hopeless monstrosity ever to make any effectual advances. Later on it was much the same, but gradually, though slowly, I came to find that there were others like myself. I made a few special friends, and at last it came to me occasionally to sleep with them and to satisfy my imperious need by mutual embraces and emissions. Before this happened, however, I was once or twice on the brink of despair and madness with repressed passion and torment.
“Meanwhile, from the first, my feeling, physically, toward the female sex was one of indifference, and later on, with the more special development of sex desires, one of positive repulsion. Though having several female friends, whose society I like and to whom I am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or cohabitation with any such has always been odious to me.
“As a boy I was attracted in general by boys rather older than myself; after leaving school I still fell in love, in a romantic vein, with comrades of my own standing. Now,—at the age of 37,—my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my own age or rather younger—preferably of the working class. Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the cheap intellectual style, repels me very decisively.
“I have never had to do with actual pederasty, so called. My chief desire in love is bodily nearness or contact, as to sleep naked with a naked friend; the specially sexual, though urgent enough, seems a secondary matter. Pederasty, either active or passive, might seem in place to me with one I loved very devotedly and who also loved me to that degree; but I think not otherwise. I am an artist by temperament and choice, fond of all beautiful things, especially the male human form; of active, slight, muscular build; and sympathetic, but somewhat indecisive character, though possessing self-control.
“I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. All that I have read in books or heard spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, lifelong devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be easily matched by my own experiences in the homosexual form; and, with regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and woman, namely: that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person’s distress or degradation. I am sure that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind, if not more so; and I think that for a perfect relationship the actual sex gratifications (whatever they may be) probably hold a less important place in this love than in the other.”
HISTORY VIII.—M. N., aged 30. “My grandfather might be said to be of abnormal temperament, for, though of very humble origin, he organized and carried out an extremely arduous mission work and became an accomplished linguist, translating the Bible into an Eastern tongue and compiling the first dictionary of that language. He died, practically of overwork, at the age of 45. He was twice married, my father being his third son by the second wife. I believe that two, if not more, of the family (numbering seven in all) were inverted, and the only one of them to marry was my father. My grandmother was the last representative of an old and very ‘wild’ Irish family. She died at an advanced age, of paralysis. My father was 36 and my mother 21 at the time of their marriage. I was born three years after and was their only child. The marriage proved a most unhappy one, they being utterly unsuited to each other in every way.
“My father’s health during the first years of his marriage was very delicate, and I have reason to believe that it had been undermined in certain ways by his life abroad. I understand I was born with slight gonorrheal affection, and as a child my health was very indifferent. This latter may have been brought about by the peculiarly unhappy and unnatural life I led. I had no companions of my own age, and did not even attend any school until after my mother’s death. My father superintended my education up to that time, and I had free access to a large and very varied library, and a great deal of solitary leisure to enjoy it in. There were a number of medical and scientific books in it, which were my principal favorites, and I remember deciding at a very early age to be a doctor. When about 5 years old I recollect having a sexual dream connected with a railway porter. It afforded me great pleasure to recall this dream, and about that time I discovered a method of self-gratification (there is not much ‘teaching’ required in these matters!).
“I cannot say that the dream I have mentioned constituted absolutely the first intimation of inverted feeling, but rather that it crystallized vague ideas which I might have already had on the subject. I can recollect that when about between 3 and 4 years of age a young fellow of about 20 came to our house several times as a visitor. He was fond of children, I suppose, and I generally sat on his knee and was kissed by him. This was a source of great pleasure to me, but I cannot remember if it was accompanied by erection. I can only recall that his attention and caresses made a greater impression upon me than those of women. When about that age too I was often aroused when sleeping with my mother, and told not to lie on my face. I remember that erection was always present on these occasions. The dream was the first of many of its kind, and in my case they have never been accompanied by emission. They have always been of an ‘inverted’ character, though I have occasionally had dreams about women. These latter, however, have usually partaken somewhat of the nature of a nightmare!
“Up to the age of 14 I felt much perplexed and depressed by my views on sexual desire, and was convinced that they were peculiar to myself. This, combined with the solitary condition of my life, and about four years’ continued ill-treatment prior to my mother’s death (she had given way to drink for that period), had a very injurious effect on my health, mental and bodily. Looking back from my present point of view, I can understand and forgive many things which appeared monstrous and unjust to me as a child. My mother’s life must have been a very unhappy one, and she was bitterly disappointed in many ways, very likely in me as well. My unfortunate, misunderstood temperament led me to be shy and secretive, and I was often ailing, and my training was not calculated to improve matters. At last, however, change and freedom came, and I was sent to a boarding-school. Here, of course, I soon met with attachments and gratifications with other boys. I arrived at puberty, and my health improved under happier surroundings. I was not long in discovering that my companions viewed the pleasures that meant so much to me from an entirely different standpoint. Their gratifications were usually accompanied by conversation about, and a general direction of thought toward, females. When I had turned 15, owing to monetary difficulties I was obliged to leave school, and was soon not only thrown on my own resources, but accountable to no one but myself for my conduct. Of course, my next discovery was that my case, so far from being peculiar, was a most common one, and I was quickly initiated into all the mysteries of inversion, with its freemasonry and ‘argot.’ Altogether my experience of inverts has been a pretty wide and varied one, and I have always endeavored to classify and compare cases which have come under my notice with a view to arriving at some sort of conclusion or explanation.
“I suppose it is due to female versatility or impressibility that it is possible for me to experience mentally the emotions attributable to either sex, according to the age and temperament of my companion; for instance, with one older than myself, possessing well-marked male characteristics, I am able to feel all that surrender and dependence which is so essentially feminine. On the other hand, if with a youth of feminine type and behavior I can realize, with an equal amount of pleasure, the tender, yet dominant, attitude of the male.
“I experience no particular ‘horror’ of women sexually. I should imagine that my feeling toward them resembles very much what normal people feel with regard to others of their own sex.” M. N. remarks that he cannot whistle, and that his favorite color is green.
In this case the subject easily found a moral modus vivendi with his inverted instinct, and he takes its gratification for granted. In the following case, which, I believe, is typical of a large group, the subject has never yielded to his inverted impulses, and, except so far as masturbation is concerned, has preserved strict chastity.
HISTORY IX.—R. S., aged 31, American of French descent. “Upon the question of heredity I may say that I belong to a reasonably healthy, prolific, and long-lived family. On my father’s side, however, there is a tendency toward pulmonary troubles. He himself died of pneumonia, and two of his brothers and a nephew of consumption. Neither of my parents were morbid or eccentric. Excepting for a certain shyness with strangers, my father was a very masculine man. My mother is somewhat nervous, but is not imaginative, nor at all demonstrative in her affections. I think that my own imaginative and artistic temperament must come from my father’s side. Perhaps my French ancestry has something to do with it. With the exception of my maternal grandfather, all my progenitors have been of French descent. My mother’s father was English.
“I possess a mercurial temperament and a strong sense of the ludicrous. Though my physique is slight, my health has always been excellent. Of late years especially I have been greatly given to introspection and self-scrutiny, but have never had any hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at all superstitious. Spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or no attraction for me. In fact, I have always been skeptical of them, and they rather bore me.
“At school I was an indolent, dreamy boy, shirking study, but otherwise fairly docile to my teachers. From earliest childhood I have indulged in omnivorous taste for reading, my particular likings being for travels, esthetics, metaphysical and theological subjects, and more recently for poetry and certain forms of mysticism. I never cared much for history or for scientific subjects. From the beginning, too, I showed a strong artistic bent, and possessed an overpowering love for all things beautiful. As a child I was passionately fond of flowers, loved to be in the woods and alone, and wanted to become an artist. My parents opposed the latter wish and I gave way before their opposition.
“In me the homosexual nature is singularly complete, and is undoubtedly congenital. The most intense delight of my childhood (even when a tiny boy in a nurse’s charge) was to watch acrobats and riders at the circus. This was not so much for the skillful feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even then I cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful fellows. People told me that circus actors were wicked, and would steal little boys, and so I came to look upon my favorites as half-devil and half-angel. When I was older and could go about alone, I would often hang around the tents of travelling shows in hope of catching a glimpse of the actors. I longed to see them naked, without their tights, and used to lie awake at night thinking of them and longing to be loved and embraced by them. A certain bareback rider, a sort of jockey, used especially to please me on account of his handsome legs, which were clothed in fleshlings up to his waist, leaving his beautiful loins uncovered by a breech-clout. There was nothing consciously sensual about these reveries, because at the time I had no sensual feelings or knowledge. Curiously enough, the women-actors repelled me then (as they do to this day) quite as strongly as I was attracted by the men.
“I used, also, to take great pleasure in watching men and boys in swimming, but my opportunities for seeing them thus were extremely rare. I never dared let my comrades know how I felt about these matters, but the sight of a well-formed, naked youth or man would fill me (and does now) with mingled feelings of bashfulness, anguish, and delight. I used to tell myself endless stories of a visionary castle inhabited by beautiful boys, one of whom was especially my dear chum.
“It was always the prince, in fairy tales, who held my interest or affection. I was constantly falling in love with handsome boys whom I never knew; nor did I ever try to mix in their company, for I was abashed before them, and had no liking nor aptitude for boyish games. Sometimes I played with girls because they were more quiet and gentler, but I cared for them little or not at all.
“As is usually the case, my parents neglected to impart to me any sexual knowledge, and such as I possessed was gathered furtively from tainted sources, bad boys’ talk at school and elsewhere. My elders let me know, in a vague way, that talk of the kind was wicked, and natural timidity and a wish to be ‘good’ kept me from learning much about sexual matters. As I never went to boarding-school, I was spared, perhaps, many of the degrading initiations administered by knowing boys at such institutions.
“In spite of what has been said above, I do not believe that I was sexually very precocious, and even now I feel that more pleasure would ensue from merely contemplating than from personal contact with the object of my amorous attentions.
“As I grew older there came, of course, an undefined physical longing, but it was the beauty of those I admired which mainly appealed to me. At the time of puberty I spontaneously acquired the habit of masturbation. Once while bathing I found that a pleasant feeling came with touching the sexual organs. It was not long before I was confirmed in the habit. At first I practised it but seldom, but afterward much more frequently (say, once a week), though at times months have elapsed without any indulgences on my part. I have only had erotic dreams three or four times in my life. The masturbation habit I regard as morally reprehensible and have made many resolutions to break it, but without avail. It affords me only the most momentary satisfaction, and is always followed by remorseful scruples.
“I have never in my life had any sexual feeling for a woman, nor any sexual connection with any woman whatsoever. The very thought of such a thing is excessively repugnant and disgusting to me. This is true, apart from any moral considerations, and I do not think I could bring myself to it. I am not attracted by young women in any way. Even their physical beauty has little or no charm for me, and I often wonder how men can be so affected by it. On the other hand, I am not a woman-hater, and have several strong friends of the opposite sex. They are, however, women older than myself, and our friendship is based solely on certain intellectual or esthetic tastes we have in common.
“I have had practically no physical relations with men; at any rate, none specifically sexual. Once, when about 19 or 21, I started to embrace a beautifully formed youth with whom I was sleeping, but timidity and scruples got the better of my feelings, and, as my bedfellow was not amorously inclined toward me, nothing came of it. A few years after this I became strongly attached to a friend whom I had already known for several years. Circumstances threw us very much together during one summer. It was now that I felt for the first time the full shock of love. He returned my affection, but both of us were shy of showing our feelings or speaking of them. Often when walking together after night-fall we would put our arms about each other. Sometimes, too, when sleeping together we would lie in close contact, and my friend once suggested that I put my legs against his. He frequently begged me to spend the night with him; but I began to fear my feelings, and slept with him but seldom. We neither of us had any definite ideas about homosexual relations, and, apart from what I have related above, we had no further contact with each other. A few months after our amorous feelings had developed my friend died. His death caused me great distress, and my naturally religious temperament began to manifest itself quite strongly. At this time, too, I first read some writings of Mr. Addington Symonds, and certain allusions in his work, coupled with my recent experience, soon stirred me to a full consciousness of my inverted nature.
“About eight months after my friend’s death I happened to meet in a strange town a youth of about my own age who exerted upon me a strong and instant attraction. He possessed a refined, handsome face, was gracefully built, and, though he was rather undemonstrative, we soon became fast friends.
“We were together only for a few days, when I was obliged to leave for my home, and the parting caused me great unhappiness and depression. A few months after we spent a vacation together. One day during our trip we went swimming, and undressed in the same bathhouse. When I saw my friend naked for the first time he seemed to me so beautiful that I longed to throw my arms about him and cover him with kisses. I kept my feelings hidden, however, hardly daring to look at him for fear of being unable to restrain my desires. Several times afterward, in his room, I saw him stripped, with the same effect upon my emotions. Until I had seen him naked my feelings for him were not of a physical character, but afterward I longed for actual contact, but only by embraces and kisses. Though he was fond of me, he had absolutely no amorous longings for me, and being a simple, pure-minded fellow, would have loathed me for mine and my inverted nature. I was careful never to let him discover it, and I was made very unhappy when he confided that he was in love with a young girl whom he wished to marry. This episode took place several years ago, and though we are still friends my emotional feelings for him have cooled considerably.
“I have always been very shy of showing any affectionate tendencies. Most of my acquaintances (and close friends even) think me curiously cold, and often wonder why I have never fallen in love or married. For obvious reasons I have never been able to tell them.
“Three or four years ago a little book by Coventry Patmore fell into my hands, and from its perusal resulted a strange blending of my religious and erotic notions. The desire to love and be loved is hard to drown, and, when I realized that homosexually it was neither lawful nor possible for me to love in this world, I began to project my longings into the next. By birth I am a Roman Catholic, and in spite of a somewhat skeptical temper, manage to remain one by conviction.
“From the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist, I have drawn conclusions which would fill the minds of the average pietist with holy horror; nevertheless I believe that (granting the premises) these conclusions are both logically and theologically defensible. The Divinity of my fancied paradise resembles in no way the vapid conceptions of Fra Angelico, or the Quartier St. Sulpice. His physical aspect, at least, would be better represented by some Praxitilean demigod or Flandrin’s naked, brooding boy.
“While these imaginings have caused me considerable moral disquietude, they do not seem wholly reprehensible, because I feel that the chief happiness I would derive by their realization would be mainly from the contemplation of the loved one, rather than from closer joys.
“I possess only a slight knowledge of the history and particulars of erotic mysticism, but it is likely that my notions are neither new nor peculiar, and many utterances of the few mystical writers with whose works I am acquainted seem substantially in accord with my own longings and conclusions. In endeavoring to find for them some sanction of valid authority, I have always sought corroboration from members of my own sex; hence am less likely to have fashioned my views after those of hypersensitive or hysterical women.
“You will rightly infer that it is difficult for me to say exactly how I regard (morally) the homosexual tendency. Of this much, however, I am certain, that, even, if it were possible, I would not exchange my inverted nature for a normal one. I suspect that the sexual emotions and even inverted ones have a more subtle significance than is generally attributed to them; but modern moralists either fight shy of transcendental interpretations or see none, and I am ignorant and unable to solve the mystery these feelings seem to imply.
“Patmore speaks boldly enough, in his way, and Lacordaire has hinted at things, but in a very guarded manner. I have neither the ability nor opportunity to study what the mystics of the Middle Ages have to say along these lines, and, besides, the medieval way of looking at things is not congenial to me. The chief characteristic of my tendency is an overpowering admiration for male beauty, and in this I am more akin to the Greeks.
“I have absolutely no words to tell you how powerfully such beauty affects me. Moral and intellectual worth is, I know, of greater value, but physical beauty I see more clearly, and it appears to me the most vivid (if not the most perfect) manifestation of the divine. A little incident may, perhaps, reveal to you my feelings more completely. Not long ago I happened to see an unusually well-formed young fellow enter a house of assignation with a common woman of the streets. The sight filled me with the keenest anguish, and the thought that his beauty would soon be at the disposal of a prostitute made me feel as if I were a powerless and unhappy witness to a sacrilege. It may be that my rage for male loveliness is only another outbreaking of the old Platonic mania, for as time goes on I find that I long less for the actual youth before me, and more and more for some ideal, perfect being whose bodily splendor and loving heart are the realities whose reflections only we see in this cave of shadows. Since the birth and development within me of what, for lack of a better name, I term my homosexualized Patmorean ideal, life has become, in the main, a weary business. I am not despondent, however, because many things still hold for me a certain interest. When that interest dies down, as it is wont from time to time, I endeavor to be patient. God grant that, after the end here, I may be drawn from the shadow, and seemingly vain imaginings into the possession of their never-ending reality hereafter.”
HISTORY X.—A. H., aged 62. Belongs to a family which cannot be regarded as healthy, but there is no insanity among near relations. Father a very virile man of high character and good intelligence, but not sound physical health. Mother was high-strung and nervous, but possessed of indomitable courage and very affectionate; she lived very happily with her husband. She became a chronic invalid and died of consumption. A. H. was a seven months’ child, the third in the family, who were born very rapidly, so that there is only three years difference in the ages of the first and third children. A. H. believes that one of his brothers, who has never married and prefers men to women, is also inverted, though not to the same degree as himself, and he also suspects that a relation of his mother’s may have been an invert. Sister, who resembles the father in character, is married, but is spoken of as a woman’s woman rather than a man’s woman. The family generally are considered proud and reserved, but of superior mental endowment.
In early life A. H. was delicate and his studies were often interrupted by illness. Though living under happy conditions he was shy and nervous, often depressed. In later life his health has been up to the average, and he has usually been able to conceal his mental doubts and diffidence.
As a child he played with dolls and made girls his companions until an age when he grew conscious that his conduct was unusual and became ashamed, while his father seemed troubled about him. He regards himself as having been a very childish child.
His conscious sexual life began between the ages of 8 and 10. He was playing in the garden when he saw a manservant who had long been with the family, standing at the door of a shed with his penis exposed and erect. The boy had never seen anything of the kind before, but felt great delight in the exhibition and moved shyly toward the man, who retreated into the shed. The boy followed and was allowed to caress and play with the penis until ejaculation took place, the man replying, in reply to the child’s innocent inquiries, that it “felt good.” This experience was frequently repeated with the same man, and the boy confided in a boy friend, with whom he tried to ascertain by personal experience what the “good feeling” was like, but they were too young to derive any pleasure from the attempt beyond the joy of what was instinctively felt to be “eating forbidden fruit.”
From this period his sexual tendencies began to become fixed and self-conscious. He has never at any period of life had a moment’s conscious sexual attraction toward a person of the opposite sex. His warmest friendships have, indeed, been with women and much, perhaps most, of the happiness he has enjoyed has been furnished by those friendships. But passion has only been aroused by persons of his own sex, generally by men much younger than himself. He feels shy and uncomfortable in the presence of men of his own age. But even at his present age, a touch of a man or boy may cause the liveliest gratification.
Shortly after the incident in boyhood, already narrated, A. H. induced a little boy companion to go to a quiet spot, where, at A. H.’s suggestion, each placed the other’s penis in his mouth by turns. A. H. had never heard of such a proceeding. It was a natural instinct. He began to masturbate at an early age. But he soon found a companion to share his passion. An older man, especially, married and with a family, became his accomplice on every possible opportunity, and they would manipulate each other. At the age of 21, fellatio began to be practised with this man. It became a lifelong practice, and the preferred method of sexual gratification. He likes best to have it performed on himself, but he has never asked anyone to do for him what he would not himself do for the other if desired. There has never been pedicatio. The penis, it may be added, is of good size, and the testicles rather large.
No one has ever suspected A. H.’s sexual perversion, not even his physician, with whom he has long had a close friendship, until at a time of great mental distress A. H. voluntarily revealed his state. He is accustomed to refined society, has always read much, abhorred athletic pursuits, and loved poetry, children, and flowers. His love of nature amounts, indeed, to a passion. Wherever he has been he has made friends among the best people. He confesses to occasional periods of addiction to intoxicants, induced by sociable companionship, and only controlled by force of will.
For business he has not the slightest aptitude, and cannot look after his own affairs. He is always dreading poverty and destitution. He believes, however, that he passes among his friends as fairly capable.
He considers that inversion is natural in his case and that he has a perfect right to gratify his own natural instincts, though he also admits they may be vices. He has never sought to influence an innocent person toward his own tendencies.
HISTORY XI.—T. D., knows of nothing abnormal in his ancestry. His brother has homosexual tendencies, but is also attracted to women. A sister, who is very religious, states that she has little or no sexual inclinations. They were all of a dreamy disposition when young, to the disgust of their teachers. He sent the following account of himself from the University at the age of 20:—
“When I was a child (before I went to school at 9),” he writes, “I was already of an affectionate disposition, an affection turned readily to either sex. No boy was the cause of my inclinations, which were quite spontaneous. (No doubt, part of the cause may be found in our social system, by which ladies are rather drawing-room creatures to be treated with distant respect.) When I was 10, at a preparatory school, I first began to form attachments with other boys of my own age, in which I always had regard to physical beauty. It is this stage, in which the sexual element is latent, that Shelley speaks of as preceding love in ardent natures.
“At 12 I learned masturbation, apparently by instinct, and, I regret to say, practised it to excess for the next seven years, always secretly and with shame, and often with the accompaniment of prurient imaginings which did not prevent my relations with those I loved being of a very spiritual nature. Masturbation was often practised daily, with bursts of repentance and abstinence, latterly more rarely. But until I was 15 I really knew nothing of sexual matters, and it was not till I was at least 17 that I was conscious of sexual desire, which I repressed with shame.
“Owing to excessive self-abuse, I am unable to emit except manually, but desire is strong. I think naked contact would suffice, and in any case intercrural connection. Pedicatio and fellatio I abhor. I love boys between the ages of 12 and 15; they must be of my own class, refined, and lovable. I only desire the active masculine part. I now regard my inclinations as natural and normal to me. The difficulty is that of leading the other party to regard it as such, besides the young age required and clandestine nature of proceedings necessary. The moral difficulties of circumstances are so strong that I have little hope of ever gratifying my passion fully. I have found myself deceived in the character of the boy twice. The last friendship lasted three years, during which time I only saw him naked two or three times (this caused erection), never touched him pruriently, and only kissed him once.
“I have never found a satisfactory object of my affections, and my happiness, perhaps my health, have been seriously injured. At my public school a master helped me to a truer understanding of these things. The merely animal sodomy which exists in many public schools was unknown. What I learned of sex I learned for myself. I am recommended to turn my aspirations to the abstract universal maid; but so far at least I cannot do it.
“Male Greek statuary and the Phœdrus of Plato have had a great, though only confirmatory, influence on my feelings. My ideal is that of Theocritus XIII, wherein Hercules was bringing Hylas to the perfect measure of a man. My first thought is the good of my friend, but, except for the good subjective influence of passion, I have failed utterly.
“I am very tall, dark, rather strong, fond of games, though I do not excel, owing to short sight. I am English, though I have French blood, which may account for an unreservedly passionate disposition. Though unlike other people, I am not in the least feminine, nor has anyone thought so to my knowledge. I can whistle easily and well. I am so masculine that I cannot even conceive of passive sexual pleasure in women, much less in men. (That is one of the difficulties in boy-love.) My affections are inextricably bound up in the ideals of protection of one weaker than myself. In the earlier days, when sexuality was less conscious, this was a great source of romantic feeling, the glamour of which is rather departing. I cannot understand love of adult males, much less if they are of lower class, and the idea of prostitution is nauseous to me.
“I think I may say that I have the esthetic and moral sense very strongly ingrained. Indeed, they are largely synonymous with me. I have no dramatic aptitude, and, though I flatter myself that my taste is good in music, I have no knowledge of music. If I have a favorite color, it is a dark crimson or blue, of the nature of old stained glass. I derive great pleasure from all literary and pictorial art and architecture; indeed, art of all kinds. I have facility in writing personal lyrical verse; it affords me relief.
“I think my inversion must be congenital, as the desire of contact with those boys I loved began before masturbation and has lasted through private and public resorts and into university life. The other sex does not attract me, but I am very fond of children, girls as well as boys. (If there is sexuality in this, which I trust there is not, it is latent).”
This statement is of interest because it may well lead us to suppose that the writer, who is of balanced mind and sound judgment, possesses a confirmed homosexual outlook on life. While, however, it is the rule for the permanent direction of the sexual impulse to be decided by the age of 20, that age is too early to permit us to speak positively, especially in a youth whose adolescent undifferentiated or homosexual impulses are fostered by university life. This proved to be! the case with T. D., who, though doubtless possessing a psychically anomalous strain, is yet predominantly masculine. On leaving the university his heterosexuality asserted itself normally. About six years after the earlier statement, he wrote that he had fallen in love. “I am on the eve of marrying a girl of nearly my own age. She has sympathy as well as knowledge in my fields of study; it was thus easier for me to explain my past, and I found that she could not understand the moral objections to homosexual practices. My own opinion always was that the moral objections were very considerable, but might in some cases be overcome. In any case I have entirely lost my sexual attraction toward boys; though I am glad to say that the appreciation of their charm and grace remains. My instincts, therefore, have undergone a considerable change, but the change is not entirely in the direction of normality. The instinct for sodomy in the proper sense of the word used to be unintelligible to me; since the object of attraction has become a woman this instinct is mixed with the normal in my desire. Further, an element which much troubled me, as being most foreign to my ideal feelings, has not quite left me—the indecent and often scatologic curiosity about immature girls. I can only hope that the realization of the normal in marriage may finally kill these painful aberrations. I should add that the practice of masturbation has been abandoned.”
HISTORY XII.—Aged 24. Father and mother both living; the latter is of a better social standing than the father. He is much attached to his mother, and she gives him some sympathy. He has a brother who is normally attracted to women. He himself has never been attracted to women, and takes no interest in them nor in their society.
At the age of 4 he first became conscious of an attraction for older males. From the ages of 11 and 19, at a large grammar-school, he had relationships with about one hundred boys. Needless to add, he considers homosexuality extremely common in schools. It was, however, the Oscar Wilde case which first opened his eyes to the wide prevalence of homosexuality, and he considers that the publicity of that case has done much, if not to increase homosexuality, at all events to make it more conspicuous and outspoken.
He is now attracted to youths about 5 or 6 years younger than himself; they must be good-looking. He has never perverted a boy not already inclined to homosexuality. In his relationship he does not feel exclusively like a male or a female: sometimes one, sometimes the other. He is often liked, he says, because of his masculine character.
He is fully developed and healthy, well over middle height, inclined to be plump, with full face and small moustache. He smokes many cigarettes and cannot get on without them. Though his manners are very slightly if at all feminine, he acknowledges many feminine ways. He is fond of jewelry, until lately always wore a bangle, and likes women’s rings; he is very particular about fine ties, and uses very delicate women’s handkerchiefs. He has always had a taste for music, and sings. He has a special predilection for green; it is the predominant color in the decoration of his room, and everything green appeals to him. He finds that the love of green (and also of violet and purple) is very widespread among his inverted friends.
HISTORY XIII.—Artist, aged 34. “The earliest sex impression that I am conscious of,” he writes, “is at the age of 9 or 10 falling in love with a handsome boy who must have been about two years my senior. I do not recollect ever having spoken to him, but my desire, so far as I can recall, was that he should seize hold of and handle me. I have a distinct impression yet of how pleasurable even physical pain or cruelty would have been at his hands. (I have noticed that in young children it is often difficult to differentiate the sexual emotions from what in the grown up would be definite cruelty.)
“It must have been at about this time that I discovered—entirely by myself—the act of masturbation. The process grew up quite naturally, though I cannot but think that the cooped-up life in a London street and a London school, with want of physical exercise, as well as want of landscape, color, and beautiful form, had much to do with it. The tone of the school I was at was singularly clean, but I question whether the vaunted cleanliness of tone of day-schools can compensate for the open life and large discipline of an English public school.
“How far the rather frequent masturbation between the ages of 10 and 13 may have had to do with weakly health I do not know, but when I was 12 I was taken by my mother to a famous doctor. He made no inquiries of a sexual nature, but he advised that I should be sent away from London. He had a sentimental horror of violent games, etc., for boys, and put aside various suggested public schools. Finally I was sent to a private school at the seaside.
“The private school was clean and wholesome. The plunge into the sexual cocytus of the great public school that followed was effectually sudden. In my day —— was a perfect stew of uncleanness. There was plenty of incontinence, not much cruelty, no end of dirty conversation, and a great deal of genuine affection, even to heroism, shown among the boys in their relations to one another. All these things were treated by masters and boys alike as more or less unholy, with the result that they were either sought after or flung aside, according to the sexual or emotional instinct of each. No attempt was made at discrimination. A kiss was as unclean as the act of fellatio, and no one had any gauge or principle whatever on which to guide the cravings of boyhood.
“My first initiation into the mysteries of sex was at the hands of the dormitory servant, who showed me his penis when he woke me in the mornings, and masturbated me when he gave me my hot bath on a Saturday night. This old reprobate of 45 committed the act of fellatio with most of the boys in turn as he went the dormitory rounds. For the older lads I cannot speak, but over us younger ones of 14 and 15 he exercised a sort of unholy terror and fascination. He was very popular; we came to him like doves to a snake. When I revisited my old school many years later he was occupying a very responsible position in the college chapel, and I noticed that he wore that expression of sly reverence which I think I can now instantly detect when I see it in a man.
“For the rest the dormitory was boisterous and lewd, and there was a good deal of bullying, which probably did little harm. My principal recollection now is of the filthy mystery of foul talk, that I neither cared for nor understood. What I really needed, like all the other boys, was a little timely help over the sexual problems, but this we none of us got, and each had to work out his own principle of conduct for himself. It was a long, difficult, and wasteful process, and I cannot but believe that many of us failed in the endeavor. We had come unprepared with any advice. The principle upon which we were apparently trained was the repression of every instinct. My mother was ignorant from innocence, my father from indifference, and so between them I was sent out helpless. A mother incurs great responsibility in sending her child away unprepared. A parent should not seek to shift his responsibility upon the schoolmaster. Love alone should be the fount from which revelations should flow; the master, from the very nature of his position, cannot reveal.
“An imminent breakdown in health—due, it would now appear, to quite obvious causes—relieved me from the purgatory of the college dormitory, and I was removed to one of the private houses. These establishments were considered more select and less ‘rough.’ The social atmosphere was, however, perhaps more unwholesome, because more effeminate, and was full of noble young sucklings. The nominal head of the house under normal conditions might have been a real leader; as it was, the real head of the house was a gilded young pariah, fairly low down in the school and full of hypocrisy and unnatural lusts. The boy who occupied the cubicle next to mine was also a bad case of sexual misdirection, though he had not the social distinction to make him quite so refined a terror. I had every opportunity of watching him until, two years later, he was fortunately asked to leave. He talked bawd from morning till night, got drunk on one or two occasions, masturbated constantly without concealment, had several of the younger boys inter femora, though without evincing any care or affection for them, and gave one the impression of having been born for a brothel. His one redeeming quality was an element of good nature: a characteristic one often finds among such as are selfish and irresponsible. I have since been told that he has gone completely to the dogs. Whether this young cub’s sexual instincts could have been turned or guided I do not know; but in a rougher and simpler life than that of a public school, in a more open and less hypocritical atmosphere, he might, perhaps, have been licked into better shape. Hypocrisy is a vice, however, that schoolboys themselves are fortunately free from. It comes later. The tone among the boys was frankly and violently unclean, though unclean not from instinct, but from want of direction and from repression.
“I have not a single happy recollection of this period of my school life. Yet out of this morass of misbegotten virtues I plucked my first blossom of genuine affection. I call it a blossom because it never ripened even to flower. I had been given the extreme of filth to feed upon at the outset, and now I found for myself the extreme of chastity. It will be a matter of lifelong regret to me that the love which was the lodestar of my school years was never fulfilled or set upon a sound basis of comradeship.
“When I was about 16½ years old there came into the house a boy about two years younger than myself, and who became the absorbing thought of my school days. I do not remember a moment, from the time I first saw him to the time I left school, that I was not in love with him, and the affection was reciprocated, if somewhat reservedly. He was always a little ahead of me in books and scholarship, but as our affection ripened we spent most of our spare time together, and he received my advances much as a girl who is being wooed, a little mockingly, perhaps, but with real pleasure. He allowed me to fondle and caress him, but our intimacy never went further than a kiss, and about that even was the slur of shame; there was always a barrier between us, and we never so much as whispered to one another concerning those things of which all the school obscenely talked. Any connection between our own emotions and the sexual morals of the school never occurred to us. In fact, we lived a dream-life of chastity that could not relate itself to any human conditions. This was suddenly broken in upon. My friend was very beautiful and an object of attraction to others. That some of the elder boys had made offers of sexual intercourse to him I knew, but to him, as to me, that was unspeakable wickedness. One day I heard that four or five of these suitors of his had mishandled him; they had, I believe, taken off his trousers and attempted to masturbate him. The offense was probably horse play of an animal nature; to me it seemed an unpardonable offense. The matter had been reported to the master by a servant, but confirmatory evidence was needed before punishment could follow. I was torn asunder by passions I could not then analyze and in the end committed the greatest of schoolboy crimes,—I sneaked. The action under the circumstances was courageous, but I was indifferent so long as the boy I loved judged me rightly. The result was that at the close of the term four or five of the senior boys were ‘asked to leave.’ The remaining brief period of my school life, which had previously been a living hell, became really happy. That this should have been brought about to the harm of four or five boys whose sin, after all, was but a misdirected impulse for which the system was responsible, seems to me now all very wrong. Of the boys sent away, however, certainly three have made honorable careers. For my friend and I, we became more afraid of each other than before; as our affections increased, so our fear of them increased also. The friendship was too ethereal to live; but even yet we still have a deep respect for one another.
“When at the age of 19 I left school I was allowed to knock about for a year before entering college. During this time I picked up a sexual experience that may or may not have been a valuable one, I certainly look back upon it now, with regret, if not with horror. My father had discovered, some months before this date, that I was in the habit of masturbating, and he gave me what he conceived to be the right counsel under the circumstances: ‘If you do this,’ he said, ‘you will never be able to use your penis with a woman. Therefore your best plan will be to go with a prostitute. Should you do this, however, you will probably pick up a beastly disease. Therefore the safest way would be to do it abroad if you get the chance, for there the houses are licensed.’ Having delivered himself of this advice he troubled himself no further in the matter, but left me to work out my own destiny. The great physician, to whom I was taken about this time, also gave me his advice on this point. ‘Masturbation,’ he said, ‘is death. A number of young men come to me with the same story. I tell them they are killing themselves, and you will kill yourself, too.’ The doctor’s hope was apparently to frighten his young patients into what he conceived to be natural conditions of life, and one went away from him with the impression that every sexual manifestation in one’s self was a physical infirmity, due to one’s own moral weakness. It took me some time before I could make up my mind to follow my father’s advice, but after a period of real moral agony I deliberately and entirely in cold blood acted upon it. I sought out a scarlet woman in the streets of —— and went home with her. From something she said to me I know that I gave her pleasure, and she asked me to come to her again. This I did twice, but without any real pleasure. The whole thing was too sordid and soulless, and the man who decides to take an evil medicine regularly has first to make up his mind that he really needs it.
“At about the same time I chanced to be, for a few months, in a German university town, and I determined, as I had the opportunity, to carry the parental advice to the logical conclusion. I tried a licensed house. The place was clean and decent, and the conditions, I take it, such as one would normally find in any properly regulated continental city; but to me the whole thing appeared unspeakably horrible. It was a purely commercial transaction, and it had not even the redeeming element of risk to one’s self, or of offense against a social or disciplinary code. I came away feeling that I had touched bottom in my sexual experiences, and I understood what it was that Faust saw when the red mouse sprang from the mouth of the witch in the Walpurgis dance.
“These were the only occasions upon which I have had sexual intercourse with women. Looking back to them now, they appear to me to have been almost inevitable; but if I had my life over again I would shun them as I would a lethal draught. I believe I came out of the fire unscathed; probably, indeed, it did me good, in the sense that it made it possible for me to look deeper into life; though to what extent seeing the torments of the damned makes us do this, perhaps only a Dante could tell. To gain knowledge at the expense of the shame and misery of others I hold to be fundamentally wrong and immoral. What is to me, however, the chief and bitterest thought is that I flung away the first spring of manhood where I got no love in return. His virginity is, or should be, as glorious and sacred a possession to a youth as to a maiden; to be guarded jealously; to be given only at the call of love, to one who loves him—be it comrade, mistress, or wife—and whom he can love in return.
“The full university life into which I now entered at the age of 20 brought with it a flood of new ideas, feelings and sensations. The friendships I made there will always remain the central ones in my life. Up to my last term at college at the age of 24 I still wore my chain-mail of artificial chastity; but then a change gradually set in, and I began to understand the relationship of the physical phenomena of sex to its intellectual and imaginative manifestations. (I was not destined to fully realize this for some years and then exclusively through and out of my own personal experience.) It was the study of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that first brought me light upon this question. Hitherto I had kept the two things locked up, as it were, in two separate air-tight compartments,—my friendships in one, my sex instincts in another,—to be kept under and repressed by the public-school code as I conceived it.
“It is needless to say that I was continually troubled by the customary sex phenomena: erotic dreams, loss of semen, troublesome erections at night, etc. These I repressed as best I could, by habitual masturbation and by the regular diet and exercise which academic life made possible. At one time, for the period of a year I should say, I tried to overcome the desire for masturbation by gradual stages, on the principle of the drunkard’s cure by which he took every day less tipple by the insertion of one pebble more in his bottle. I marked on my calendar the erotic dreams and the nights on which I masturbated, and sought gradually to extend the intervening periods. Six weeks, however, was the longest time for which I was able to abstain.”
A few years later the writer of this communication formed an intimate relationship (in which he did not make the first advances) with a youth, some years younger than himself and of lower social class, whose development he was able to assist. “But for my part,” he remarks, “I owe him as much as I gave him, for his love lighted up the gold of affection that was in me and consumed the dross. It was from him that I first learned that there was no such thing as a hard-and-fast line between the physical and the spiritual in friendship.” This relationship lasted for some years, when the young man married; its effects are described as very beneficial to both parties; all the sexual troubles vanished, together with the desire to masturbate. “Everything in life began to sing with joy, and what little of real creative work I may have done I attribute largely to the power of work that was born in me during those years.”
HISTORY XIV.—Scotchman, aged 38. His paternal ancestors were normal, so far as he knows. His mother belonged to a very eccentric old Celtic family. Soon after 5 he became so enamored of a young shepherd that the boy had to be sent away. He practised masturbation many years before the age of puberty, and attaches importance to this as a factor in the evolution of his homosexual life.
He has had erotic dreams rarely about men, about women more frequently. While indifferent to women, he has no repulsion toward them. He has had connection with women two or three times, but without experiencing the same passionate emotions as with men.
He would like a son, but he has never been able to get up the necessary amount of passion to lead to marriage.
He has always had a sentimental and Platonic affection for men. Of late years he has formed two friendships with adults of an affectionate and also erotic character. He cares little for anything beyond mutual masturbation and kissing; what he desires is the love of the male.
In appearance there is nothing abnormal about him except an air of youth. He is vigorous both in body and mind, and has enormous power of resisting fatigue. He is an excellent man of business. Is a patient student. He sees no harm in his homosexual passions. He is averse to promiscuity. His ideal is a permanent union which includes sexual relations.
HISTORY XV.—T. S., artist, aged 32. “I was born in England. My father was a Jew, the first to marry out of his family and to marry a Christian. My great-grandparents were cousins; he was a German and she was a Dane. My grandparents were also cousins; he was a Swede and she was a Dane.
“My maternal grandfather was an English Protestant, and my maternal grandmother was Irish, fanatically Roman Catholic, and a very eccentric woman.
“In my father’s family there have been many members of note. In my mother’s family there were many renowned lawyers.
“My father had an elder brother who was homosexual. He was already, at 31 years of age, a prominent author, when he died of consumption. I have also a second cousin on my father’s side who is a very good tenor; he is also homosexual. In my mother’s family I know of nothing abnormal.
“In neither family is there or has there been any insanity, but rather an overwealth of brain.
“My parents were an ideally happy couple. They were engaged after knowing each other six days, and after being separated three months they married. They were married thirty-five years without a quarrel. I have a brother three years older, born a year after their marriage, and a sister seven years younger.
“My brother takes after his father in appearance. He is a great lover of women and much spoiled by them. He is quite normal and abstemious.
“My sister is a very womanly woman. As a girl she disapproved very much of girl friendships and always confided in her mother. At 13 years of age she met the man she is now married to. They waited ten years before marrying and are now an ideally happy couple. My sister is perfectly normal and very abstemious.
“I lived my first ten years in England, eighteen years in Sweden, two years in Denmark, two years in Bavaria, Austria, and Italy, and am now living in Berlin. I consider myself English. I am mentally a man, but all my physical feelings and desires are those of a woman.
“I am middle height and very slight. Weigh 106 English pounds, without clothes. My hands and feet are small and well-shaped. Head of normal size. Features small. Eyes green. Have worn glasses since I was 7 years old. Complexion fair. Appearance not Jewish. The skin of my body is very white, without blemish. Very little hair on my face. Hair on head and abdomen luxuriant. No hair whatever on stomach and chest. Color of hair auburn everywhere except below navel, that black. (My father’s, mother’s, and brother’s hair was brown. My sister has auburn hair, and so had the aforementioned uncle.) My breasts are slightly round; my hips are normal. I do not gesticulate much. From my material self it would be difficult to draw the conclusion that I was homosexual. My sexual organs are normal.
“My disposition is apparently bright, but in reality melancholy. Have very little love for human nature, but have a partiality for the British and Jewish races. Hate business, politics, sports, and society. Love music, art, literature, and nature. Deep interest in mysticism. Am clairvoyant. Have been used many times as a medium. Lead two separate lives, an outer and inner psychic life. Am a fatalist and a theosophist. Profound belief in reincarnation, always have had, because when I was a little child I could ‘remember’ so much. Have an excellent memory, dating back to my third year. Have always been too self-analytical. Have from my earliest childhood felt myself an alien. Am very sensitive, physically and psychically. Have no wish to wear woman’s clothing or do woman’s work. As to clothes for myself, I prefer black and not much jewelry.
“I could only love a perfectly manly man from 21 to 40 years of age. He must be physically beautiful and well made. Size of sexual organs plays no part. The muscles must be developed and the hands must be especially well shaped. Hands are my fetish. (I could never love anyone with ugly hands.) He must have no odor issuing from his body (though I do not dislike faint perfume when clothed), and, above all, never have a bad breath. He must be intelligent, love music, art, literature, and nature. He must be refined and cultured and have been about the world. He must have simplicity in behavior, dress, and manner, and, above all, be clean-bodied as clean-minded. Cynicism I cannot stand. (Here I may state I once owned a St. Bernard dog which reminded me much of my ideal. He was always sedate, always loving, and faithful; generally quiet. He only got excited when out in the elements.) I have not been able to get on with people who have no sense of humor. From my birth I was physically weak. First I suffered from eczema. Being born with a double squint, I was operated on at 2½ and again at 3½ years of age, with excellent result. From 4 to 12 years of age I had convulsions (often), and all the illnesses of childhood. At the age of 12½ years I took scarlet fever, followed by a weak heart, which grew stronger after a year, and Bright’s disease, which lasted fifteen years with hardly a break. This illness had its wonted effect of producing melancholia and upsetting the whole nervous system. Bright’s disease stopped suddenly but was followed by a succession of illnesses. Then I had neuritis very badly. I then removed to Bavaria, and to regain nervous strength I was treated by Freud’s psychoanalytical method, with great success. I had a very bad relapse, as my brother, who had just heard I was homosexual, came to visit me and threatened to have me put under guardians, if my father should die. It took me weeks to recover from the shock. We broke off all intercourse and though my brother has been several times in the same town where I have been, we remain strangers. At this time my father died suddenly. Last spring four suicides of friends in so many weeks had a very bad effect on my nerves. I am now in Berlin in better spirits, but the cramp continues badly at times.
“To this I must add that since my fourteenth year, independent of any illness, I have suffered mentally and physically from menstrual pains recurring every twenty-eight days and lasting from six to eight days. That these were the equivalent pains to a woman’s menstruation periods I could get no doctor to admit till I was treated for a length of time by a German nerve specialist.
“The physical pains begin abruptly. Sudden congestions of blood in the brain and in the abdomen. Sudden perspirations, heat and cold. Great nervous pains in the small of the back, also in the nerve-centers of abdomen and stomach. Sharp, shooting pains in the breasts and especially the nipples. Sudden toothache which stops as suddenly. The skin becomes darker, sometimes mottled. I have the whole time a taste of blood in my mouth and often everything I eat tastes of blood. I have great difficulty at that time in eating meat. Physical longings for erotic adventure, counterbalanced by mental nausea at the bare idea.
“The mental symptoms are: sudden feeling of deep depression, suicidal tendencies, alternating with sudden inexplicable lightheartedness. Capriciousness and great dissatisfaction with myself and life generally. Horror at my own incompleteness of sex and sudden fits of hatred toward women and a great longing to be loved by men. This condition changes slowly back to the normal one. It takes several days for me to lose my physical weakness owing to it.
“Physically I was developed at 16 years of age. Mentally I was developed at a very early age, but I kept my inner life quite dark, always playing the innocent. Nobody at home believed me to know anything about life. They were at times very surprised when I fell out of the rôle I had planned for myself. Up till I was 17 years of age nothing to do with other people’s morals was ever discussed before me. I looked so pure, and do now, that people are always careful in front of me. My father never discussed such things with me. From my earliest childhood I loved men dearly, though I was always at daggers drawn with my father and brother. I worshipped my mother then, as I do now. My sister and I did not at all get on as children, though we are the best of friends now. She and her husband as well as my mother have been kindness itself ever since they knew of my condition. Not till I was over 30 years did I meet a man I loved as well as my mother, and he is heterosexual. I must have loved my father and brother at first, but continual conflicts, incompatible temperaments and mutual misunderstandings and want of sympathy made life at home horrible. I must admit from my earliest childhood I had a certain contempt for my father and brother because I found them so materialistic. I had all my childhood rows with my brother. My father took his part, my mother mine. After I had recovered from my father’s sudden death (my first words were after reading the letter: ‘Thank God it isn’t mother!’) I felt a great relief, but it took a long time for me to grasp that I was really free.
“I have always liked women’s society and, as a youth, I was very fond of gossip, which I by no means am now. I have many women friends, more than men friends. These women friends are all heterosexual except one. I very often like elderly women; I suppose I see mother in such women. A woman never could make me blush, but a man I admired could easily.
“I was 23 years of age when a married woman of good family asked me to come and spend the night with her. I went, and though she was beautifully built, cleanly, and though her garments and apartments were of the utmost good taste, I did not have any erection. On the other hand, I felt myself to be most unclean and bathed three times each of the following three days. Since then I have never tried to have sexual intercourse with women.
“In Copenhagen I tried to excite my feelings with every class of woman, in vain. I suppose it is that my nature is so like woman’s that there can be no reaction. With men I am often very shy and nervous, tongue-tied, and my hands perspire. Never so with women.
“As a child I loved men and used to fall desperately in love with some who came to the house. I would, when no one was there, kiss their hats, or gloves, or even their sticks.
“I can remember, when I was about 6 years, how I fell in love with a very good-looking 26-year-old German. He had very curly hair and his hands were very beautiful. He was very fond of me and I used to call him ‘my Boy.’ When visiting us he often used to ‘tuck me in’ after the nurse had gone down. He always had sweets or something for me. I can remember how I used to fling my arms round his neck and cover his face with kisses. I would then draw his head down on my pillow and he would tell me fairy-tales and I would go off to sleep quite happy.
“At 7 years of age, while staying in the country, a very good-looking groom, about 25 years of age, misbehaved himself with me. I often used to visit him in the stables, as this man had a strange attraction for me. One day he tickled me. While doing so he produced my penis and also his own, which was in full erection. He tried in every way to excite my feelings, in vain. For him the occasion terminated in an ejaculation. He forbade me to tell anyone, and I did not do so, but tried to find out all I could on the subject, with little or no result. From that day I hated the groom and I felt a sort of guilt, as if I had ‘lost something.’ Not till I was 12 years did I understand.
“From my earliest childhood I had one ideal of a man. From that ideal I have never swerved. At the age of 30 I found a friend who, though quite heterosexual, has, without giving me any sexual intercourse, given me the love I have always needed. He has been for the last couple of years a second mother, father, sister, brother, and lover. Through him I have regained my health, my love of nature, and he has helped to deaden my hatred toward human nature and my bitterness. A better friend I never wish to find. It has made up for all the years of mental and physical suffering. One strange thing is that the feeling is mutual. He has had a tragic life, for his wife, whom he loved beyond everything, died under very sad circumstances. He says I am the best male friend he has ever had. While with him, much of the lower nature in me was stamped out. I shall always look upon him as the turning point in my life. I think he wrought some of his finest influence through his music. He played Beethoven and Wagner for me for a couple of hours every day for months, and thus opened up a new world to me.... He is six years older than I am.
“At 10 years of age we moved to Sweden, a country I hated from first to last. About this time I began to notice that there was something strange about myself. I felt myself an alien, and have done so ever since. An event of importance in my life was, I feel sure, when my father’s sister tried to take away my mother’s character. It was done in jealousy and spite, and my aunt had to beg my parents’ pardon. Outwardly the affair was patched up; but I feel sure my father never really forgave his sister. Jews never forgive.
“This event awoke in me a great hatred toward women, and it was many years before I could at all control it.
“At the age of 14 I was much with a good-looking, musical American, a year older than myself. One day, while romping, very much the same thing occurred as with the groom. I still had no sexual feelings. We remained good friends. I often wished to kiss him. After the first time he would not allow it. He was very much liked among the officers and so-called high society men, and had always much money. About ten years later I heard he used to accept money after intimate intercourse with those society men.
“During my fifteenth year I had great longing for sexual intercourse with men. At this time the first signs of hair were to be seen on my abdomen.
“At the age of 16 a gardener, a married man with family, initiated me into mutual self-abuse. He lived in the back house of the apartment house we then inhabited. He was about 40 years of age, an ugly but muscularly developed man. These practices took place in the cellar, to which there were three entrances. I never allowed him to kiss me and the sight of his children always awoke in me a great feeling of nausea. That was the natural reaction of a bad conscience. For the man himself I had the utmost contempt. This man told me of several parks and pissoirs where men met, and I went to these places now and again for erotic adventure.
“I must here relate that at the age of 16 my mother warned me against self-abuse. It had the opposite effect, made me curious, so I began at once. I have continued ever since, at least once a day. (I have never had an involuntary emission in my whole life.) Between 17 and 22 it became necessary for me to do so several times a day. Working at art, painting, and above all music and beauty have a strong influence over me and set my erotic longings in violent motion. I have never found this do me any harm. Abstinence, on the other hand, has a very harmful effect on me, upsetting the whole nervous and physical system. I often find that there is a something very much wanting in self-abuse: the commingling of two human bodies who are mentally as well as physically in sympathy gives an electrical satisfaction which quiets the whole nervous system. That at least has been my experience.
“The gardener left and moved to the country. I then sometimes visited pissoirs or, as they are often called, ‘panoramas’ (because they are round and one sees much there). What I saw in the parks during the long summer nights was quite a revelation. During the summer, when the husbands had sent their families in the country, many of them led a very indiscreet life. What I saw the first summer killed all the respect I had for elderly people. I had always connected marriage and gray hairs with virtue and morals; then I learnt otherwise. I must say I became about this time a sensual pig. I knew how dangerous these places were on account of the police and blackmailers, but that gave the hunt a double zest. At this time I led a double life and was always watching and analyzing myself. I had to do with heaps of men of all classes. I was often offered money, but that I would on no condition accept. To pay or to be paid kills every sort of erotic feeling in me and always has done so. I once wished to experiment with myself. I was offered a small sum of money by a former schoolmaster. I accepted this just to see how it would affect me. The next moment I threw the money as far away as possible. Then I saw I had none of the prostitute nature in me. I was simply overwhelmed with sensuality. I considered I was a criminal and wished to see in how many ways my nature had the criminal instinct. I wanted to see if I could become a thief. I stole a silver button in a shop where antiquities were sold, but I went to the shop the same day again and returned the button, without the people knowing. I found I could not become a thief. Then the question came. Why had I felt a criminal since my seventh year? Was it my fault? If not, whose fault was it? Not till I studied Freud’s psychoanalytical system did I get a clear insight into my own character.
“When I was 20 years of age I met a gentleman one night in a heavy snow-storm. We walked and talked and understood each other. He belonged to one of Sweden’s first aristocratic families. He was extremely refined. He asked me to his rooms. We undressed and lay down. He had a very beautiful head and a still more beautiful body. I think that all my erotic feelings were numbed by looking at his beautiful body. To me anything sensual would have been sacrilege, I thought, and I can remember the feeling of awe which came over me. He was them 20 years of age, but his hair was quite white. First he did not understand, and then he was very gentle to me. I kept perfectly chaste for three whole months after the sight of his body. We saw each other often. Eight years later we met for the last time. He suffered much from melancholia. At that time I prevented him from committing suicide. This winter, however, he shot himself.
“At the age of 22 my sister introduced me to a charming, intelligent and refined, half-English, half-Swedish painter. We ‘recognized’ each other at once, though we had never seen each other before, and even knew each other’s characters to the smallest traits. My parents liked him better than any friend I had ever had. My sister and he were from the first like sister and brother. The first evening in my home he and I kissed each other. The women were mad about him. Later I found many men were too. I was three weeks his senior. He had his own rooms. I have never felt any such wonderful harmony as when our naked bodies mingled. It was like floating in ether. With him it was the only time I had been active in fellatio. We were much together, though not much physically, for he had many love affairs with women. What I loved was the way he would cut off all advances of men, I was his ‘little brother’ and so he calls me to this day. He is now married in America, and the father of a pretty little daughter. We are the best of friends to this day.
“The two years in Copenhagen were some of the happiest I have spent, though nearly the whole time I was in physical pain. In Austria I found, among the Tyrolese peasants, that the Englishmen, who come there in winter for sports and in the summer for mountain climbing, have demoralized the young male peasants with money. Homosexual intercourse is easy to get if you are willing to pay the price,—larger in season, less out of season.
“In Italy it is merely a question of money or passion, but everything in love there is quite transient.
“In Bavaria I found the love and peace ‘which passeth all understanding.’ This love and friendship without anything of a physically intimate nature brought me back from the ‘deep black gulf’ to which I was swiftly floating. When I met my friend I was nearly at the end of my tether. What his love and friendship has done for me, together with Freud’s psychoanalytical system, nobody will ever know.
“Since being in Berlin, a town I like very much, a new life has opened for me, a life where one lives as one likes if one does not have to do with young boys. Here are homosexual baths, pensions, restaurants, and hotels, where you can go with one of your own sex at a certain fee per hour. Berlin is a revelation. But since being here I find the physical erotic side of my nature is little excited. I suppose it is the old story of ‘forbidden fruit.’
“My parents kept a very hospitable home. The last two years in Sweden I was never at home. I hated society and knew much too much about the private histories of those who came to my home. They all belonged to the highest society. The highest society and the lowest are very much alike. Of course my parents knew nothing about these people. When I told my mother a great deal of private history of people who came to our house, she was thunderstruck and could at last understand my contempt for so-called good society. I have visited in later years only in artistic and theatrical circles; I consider that class of people more natural than the other class and much more kind-hearted.
“My life has quite another side, the mystic side. But that would be a much longer story than this. Suffice it to say, I am of a highly sensitive nature, gifted with second sight.” [A detailed record of the subject’s visions, premonitions of death of acquaintances, etc., has been furnished by him.]
“I tried on four occasions to commit suicide, but I now see there is nothing to be gained by doing so.
“Two years ago I told my parents about my sexual condition. It was a frightful blow to them. My father had the circumstances explained to him; he never understood the matter and never discussed it with me. Had I told him earlier I feel quite certain that, with his despotic nature, he would have put me in a madhouse. My mother and sister have treated me very kindly always. My brother has disowned me.”
HISTORY XVI.—Irish, aged 36; knows of nothing unusual in his ancestry. His tastes are masculine in every respect. He is strong, healthy, and fond of exercises and sports. The sexual instincts are abnormally developed; he confesses to an, enormous appetite for almost everything,—food, drink, smoking, and all the good things of life.
At about the age of 14 he practised masturbation with other boys of the same age, and also had much pleasure in being in bed with an uncle with whom the same thing was practised. Later on he practised masturbation with every boy or man with whom he was on terms of intimacy; to have been in bed with anyone without anything of the sort taking place would have made sleep impossible, and rendered him utterly wretched. His erotic dreams at first were concerned with women, but more recently they are usually of young men, and very rarely of women. He is mostly indifferent to women, as also they have always been to him. Although good-looking, strong, and masculine, he has never known a woman to be in love with him. When about the age of 18 he imagined he was in love with a girl; and he had often, between the ages of 20 to 30, cohabited with prostitutes. He remembers on one occasion, many years ago, having connection with a woman seven or eight times in one night, and then having to masturbate at noon the next day. He is unmarried, and thinks it is unlikely that he ever will marry, but he adds that if a healthy, handsome, and intelligent woman fell in love with him he might change his mind, as it would be lonely to be old and alone, and he would like to have children.
He is never attracted to men older than himself, and prefers youths between the ages of 18 and 25. They may be of any class, but he does not like common people, and is not attached to uniforms or liveries. The requisite attractions are an intelligent eye, a voluptuous mouth, and “intelligent teeth.” “If Alcibiades himself tried to woo me,” he says, “and had bad teeth, his labor would be in vain.” He has sometimes been the active participant in pedicatio, and has tried the passive rôle out of curiosity, but prefers fellatio.
He does not consider that he is doing anything wrong, and regards his acts as quite natural. His only regret is the absorbing nature of his passions, which obtrude themselves in season and out of season, seldom or never leaving him quiet, and sometimes making his life a hell. Yet he doubts whether he would change himself, even if he had the power.
HISTORY XVII.—Age 25; is employed in an ordinary workshop, and lives in the back alley of a large town in which he was born and bred. Fair, slight, and refined in appearance. The sexual organs are normal and well developed, and the sexual passions strong. His mother is a big masculine woman, and he is much attached to her. Father is slight and weakly. He has seven brothers and one sister. Homosexual desires began at an early age, though he does not seem to have come under any perverse influences. He is not inclined to masturbation. Erotic dreams are always of males. He declares he never cared for any woman except his mother, and that he could not endure to sleep with a woman.
He says he generally falls in love with a man at first sight—as a rule, some one older than himself and of higher class—and longs to sleep and be with him. In one case he fell in love with a man twice his own age, and would not rest until he had won his affection. He does not much care what form the sexual relation takes. He is sensitive and feminine by nature, gentle, and affectionate. He is neat and orderly in his habits, and fond of housework; helps his mother in washing, etc. He appears to think that male attachments are perfectly natural.
HISTORY XVIII.—Englishman, born in Paris; aged 26; an actor. He belongs to an old English family; his father, so far as he is aware, had no homosexual inclinations, nor had any of his ancestors on the paternal side; but he believes that his mother’s family, and especially a maternal uncle who had a strong feeling for beauty of form, were more akin to him in this respect.
His earliest recollections show an attraction for males. At children’s parties he incurred his father’s anger by kissing other small boys, and his feelings grew in intensity with years. He has never practised self-abuse, and seldom had erotic dreams; when they do occur they are about males.
His physical feeling for women is one of absolute indifference. He admires beautiful women in the same way as one admires beautiful scenery. At the same time he likes to talk with clever women, and has formed many friendships with frank, pure, and cultivated English girls, for whom he has the utmost admiration and respect. Marriage is impossible, because physical pleasure with women is impossible; he has tried, but cannot obtain, the slightest sexual feeling or excitement.
He especially admires youths (though they must not be immature) from 16 or 17 to about 25. The type which physically appeals to him most, and to which he appeals, is fair, smooth-skinned, gentle, rather girlish and effeminate, with the effeminacy of the ingénue, not the cocotte. His favorite to attract him must be submissive and womanly; he likes to be the man and the master. On this point he adds: “The great passion of my life is an exception, and stands on an utterly different level. It realizes an ideal of marriage in which neither is master, but both share a joint empire, and in which tyranny would be equally painful to both. But this friendship and love is for an equal, a year younger than myself, and does not preclude other and less creditable liaisons, physical constancy being impossible to men of our caliber.”
Pedicatio is the satisfaction he prefers, provided he takes the active, never the passive, rôle. He is handsome, with broad shoulders, good figure, and somewhat classic type of face, with fine blue eyes. He likes boating and skating, though not cricket or football, and is usually ready for fun, but has, at the same time, a taste for reading.
He has no moral feelings on these matters; he regards them as outside ethics, mere matters of temperament and social feeling. If England were underpopulated he thinks he might possibly feel some slight pangs of remorse; but, as things are, he feels that in prostituting males rather than females he is doing a meritorious action.
HISTORY XIX.—T. N. His history is given in his own words.
“From the time of my earliest imaginings I have always been attached by strength in men and often thought about being carried off by big warriors and living with them in caves and elsewhere. When about 7 a young man used to show me his penis and handle mine occasionally. At private boarding school masturbation was fairly frequent and I suppose I was initiated about 12 or 13. After leaving I occasionally indulged, but nothing happened until I was about 20, except that I was often attracted by strong, well-built young men of good character; a man who was not honest and good-hearted had no attraction. At 20 I was much attached to a young man of my own age. He was engaged. This did not prevent him on one occasion endeavoring playfully and with his brother to obtain access to my person. I successfully resisted, although if he only had been present I should not have done so, but welcomed the attempt, and I have often regretted I did not let him know this. But I had a dim idea that my penis was somewhat undeveloped and this made me shy. Circumstances separated us. About two years later I was crossing the Channel when I engaged in conversation with a man about eight years older, who was one of our travelling party. I think the attraction was a case of love at sight, certainly on my side. A few nights later he had so arranged that we shared a bedroom, and he very soon came over to me and tenderly handled my person. I reciprocated and I look back all these years to that night with pleasure and no feeling of shame. On one occasion, about this time, I happened to be sleeping with another young fellow (an office mate) on a holiday, when I awoke and found him handling my penis caressingly. I gently removed his hand and turned over. I thought none the less of him, but my body seemed to belong only to myself and the friend I loved. He was not an urning, I am sure, but we Were often together and I much entered into his interests and felt infinite satisfaction with life, made good progress and many friends. Our physical intimacy was repeated, he taking the active part in intercrural contact. Then he married very happily. Our friendship remains, but circumstances prevent our often meeting, and there is no longer desire on either part.
“For some years I was rather lonely in spite of friends. I was somewhat attracted to another man, but his superior social position was a defect to me. Then when about 28 I came in contact with a young man of 24, of the artisan class, but superior in ideals and intelligence to most men. I loved him at first glance and to this day. At first it was just friendship, but soon his form, voice, and thoughts entered into my very soul by day and night. I longed always to be near him, to see him progress and help him if I could. I would joyfully have given up home, friends, and income, and followed him to the end of the world, preferably an island where we two might at least be the only white men. He seemed to embody all I longed for in the way of knowledge of nature, of strength, of practical ability, and the desire to imitate him in these things widened and strengthened my character. The first time I slept with him I could only summon courage to put my arm over his chest, but I could not sleep for unsatisfied desire, and the unrelieved erection caused a dull pain on the morrow. I had always disliked conversation that might be regarded as bordering on the obscene, and consequently was very ignorant on most matters; it pained me even to hear him laugh at such remarks. I think if he had been intimate with me I should have not conversed much on such topics, but now I felt pleasure in such things with him as they expressed intimacy. I dreamed about him and was never really happy in his absence; the greatest joy would have been to have slept in his arms; the hairiness of his legs and arms were also most fascinating. Perhaps a year later, we were again at night together, and this time I by degrees felt his private organs, but he was cold and I felt a little unsatisfied. I wanted to be hugged. This happened once more, and then on a later occasion,—not that it afforded me much gratification, but because I wanted to stimulate him to ardor,—I attempted masturbation. This aroused his disgust and I was consequently dismayed. He told me I ought to marry and, although I knew his love was all I wanted, I did not feel but what I could make a woman happy. The constant unrelieved erections which took place when I saw my friend adopt a graceful attitude caused pain at the bottom of my back, and I consulted two specialists, who also advised marriage. I did not tell them I was an ‘invert,’ for I hardly knew it was a recognized thing, but I did tell them something of what had taken place, and they made next to no comment, but implied it was frequent. My friend now felt repulsion toward me, but did not express himself, and as other circumstances then caused a barrier between us to a certain extent, I did not realize the true reason of his coldness. But I felt utterly miserable. When I met a noble woman whom I had long known I asked her to be my wife and she consented. Although I told her very soon, and long before our marriage, of my limitations as a husband and of my continued longing for my friend, I feel now I did a great wrong, and I cannot understand why I was not more conscious of this at the time; that I was to a certain extent deceiving her relations was inevitable. I had expected to devote my life in making her happy, but I soon found that the true reason of my friend’s apparent unfaithfulness was my own action, combined with a feeling on his part that it was as well that our affection should cease even at the cost of misunderstanding. Since then, three years ago, I have not had a happy day or night, and am therefore quite unable to promote happiness in others. Without my friend, I can find no satisfaction with wife, child, or home. Life has become almost unbearable. Often I have seriously thought of committing suicide, only to postpone it to a time which would be less cruelly inopportune to others. I see my friend (now married) almost daily, and suffer tortures at seeing others nearer to him than myself. No explanation seems possible, as the whole idea of inversion is so repugnant to him, and being an honorable man he would feel marital ties preclude any warmth of affection. But all the longing of my life seems to be culminating in a driving force which will carry me to the male prostitute or to death. I can concentrate my mind on nothing else, and consequently have become inefficient in work and have no heart for play. I know if my longings could be occasionally satisfied I should immediately recover, but my fear is that if I killed myself those who knew me in happier days would only be confirmed in the impression of my degeneracy and would feel my instincts had caused it, whereas it is the denial and starvation of them which would have brought about the result. I know now by experience of self and others that my disposition is congenital and that I have been rendered unhappy myself and a cause of unhappiness to others by the too late knowledge of myself. The example of my former friend who married misled me to think I too could marry and make a happy home; so that when the man I loved advised me I resolved to do so, as I would have done almost anything else he suggested. If I could have withdrawn from the engagement without embarrassment to the devoted woman who became my wife I would have done so, if she gave me the opportunity. Nothing in my married state has brought me pleasure and I often wish my wife would cease to love me so that we might separate. But she would be heart-broken at the suggestion and I feel driven to attempt to relieve my feelings even in a way that has previously seemed repulsive to me,—I mean by use of money.
“About my feelings toward my child there is not much to say, as they are not very strong. I believe I carry him and help bathe and attend to him as much as most fathers, and when he is a few years older I hope I may find him very companionable. But he has brought me no real joy, though I see other men look at him almost with affection. But he has brought added happiness to his mother.”
The next case is interesting as showing the mental and emotional development in a very radical case of sexual inversion.
HISTORY XX.—Englishman, of independent means, aged 49. His father and his father’s family were robust, healthy, and prolific. On his mother’s side, phthisis, insanity, and eccentricity are traceable. He belongs to a large family, some of whom died in early childhood and at birth, while others are normal. He himself was a weakly and highly nervous child, subject to night-terrors and somnambulism, excessive shyness and religious disquietude.
Sexual consciousness awoke before the age of 8, when his attention was directed to his own penis. His nurse, while out walking with him one day, told him that when little boys grow’ up their penes fall off. The nursery-maid sniggered, and he felt that there must be something peculiar about the penis. He suffered from; irritability of the prepuce, and the nurse powdered it before he went to sleep. There was no transition from this to self-abuse.
About the same time he became subject to curious half-waking dreams. In these he imagined himself the servant of several adult naked sailors; he crouched between their thighs and called himself their dirty pig, and by their orders he performed services for their genitals and buttocks, which he contemplated and handled with relish. At about the same period, when these visions began to come to him, he casually heard that a man used to come and expose his person before the window of a room where the maids sat; this troubled him vaguely. Between the age of 8 and 11 he twice took the penis of a cousin into his mouth, after they had slept together; the feeling of the penis pleased him. When sleeping with another cousin, they used to lie with hands outstretched to cover each other’s penis or nates. He preferred the nates, but his cousin the penis. Neither of these cousins was homosexual, and there was no attempt at mutual masturbation. He was in the habit of playing with five male cousins. One of these boys was unpopular with the others, and they invented a method of punishing him for supposed offenses. They sat around the room on chairs, each with his penis exposed, and the boy to be punished went around the room on his knees and took each penis into his mouth in turn. This was supposed to humiliate him. It did not lead to masturbation. On one occasion the child accidentally observed a boy who sat next to him in school playing with his penis and caressing it. This gave him a powerful, uneasy sensation. With regard to all these points the subject observes that none of the boys with whom he was connected at this period, and who were exposed to precisely the same influences, became homosexual.
He was himself, from the first, indifferent to the opposite sex. In early childhood, and up to the age of 13, he had frequent opportunities of closely inspecting the sexual organs of girls, his playfellows. These roused no sexual excitement. On the contrary, the smell of the female parts affected him disagreeably. When he once saw a schoolfellow copulating with a little girl, it gave him a sense of mystical horror. Nor did the sight of the male organs arouse any particular sensations. He is, however, of opinion that, living with his sisters in childhood, he felt more curious about his own sex as being more remote from him. He showed no effeminacy in his preferences for games or work.
He went to a public school. Here he was provoked by boy friends to masturbate, but, though he often saw the act in process, it only inspired him with a sense of indecency. In his fifteenth year puberty commenced with nocturnal emissions, and, at the same time, he began to masturbate, and continued to do so about once a week, or once a fortnight, during a period of eight months; always with a feeling that that was a poor satisfaction and repulsive. His thoughts were not directed either to males or females while masturbating. He spoke to his father about these signs of puberty, and by his father’s advice he entirely abandoned onanism; he only resumed the practice, to some extent, after the age of 30, when he was without male comradeship.
The nocturnal emissions, after he had abandoned self-abuse, became very frequent and exhausting. They were medically treated by tonics such as quinine and strychnine. He thinks this treatment exaggerated his neurosis.
All this time, no kind of sexual feeling for girls made itself felt. He could not understand what his schoolfellows found in women, or the stories they told about wantonness and delight of coitus.
His old dreams about the sailors had disappeared. But now he enjoyed visions of beautiful young men and exquisite statues; he often shed tears when he thought of them. These dreams persisted for years. But another kind gradually usurped their place to some extent. These second visions took the form of the large, erect organs of naked young grooms or peasants. These gross visions offended his taste and hurt him, though, at the same time, they evoked a strong, active desire for possession; he took a strange, poetic pleasure in the ideal form. But the seminal losses which accompanied both kinds of dreams were a perpetual source of misery to him.
There is no doubt that at this time—that is, between the fifteenth and seventeenth years—a homosexual diathesis had become established. He never frequented loose women, though he sometimes thought that would be the best way of combating his growing inclination for males. And he thinks that he might have brought himself to indulge freely in purely sexual pleasure with women if he made their first acquaintance in a male costume, as débardeuses, Cherubino, court-pages, young halberdiers, as it is only when so clothed that women on the stage or in the ball-room have excited him.
His ideal of morality and fear of venereal infection, more than physical incapacity, kept him what is called chaste. He never dreamed of women, never sought their society, never felt the slightest sexual excitement in their presence, never idealized them. Esthetically, he thought them far less beautiful than men. Statues and pictures of naked women had no attraction for him, while all objects of art which represented handsome males deeply stirred him.
It was in his eighteenth year that an event occurred which he regards as decisive in his development. He read Plato. A new world opened, and he felt that his own nature had been revealed. Next year he formed a passionate, but pure, friendship with a boy of 15. Personal contact with the boy caused erection, extreme agitation, and aching pleasure, but not ejaculation. Through four years he never saw the boy naked or touched him pruriently. Only twice he kissed him. He says that these two kisses were the most perfect joys he ever felt.
His father now became seriously anxious both about his health and his reputation. He warned him of the social and legal dangers attending his temperament. But he did not encourage him to try coitus with women. He himself thinks that his own sense of danger might have made this method successful, or that, at all events, the habit of intercourse with women might have lessened neurosis and diverted his mind to some extent from homosexual thoughts.
A period of great pain and anxiety now opened for him. But his neurasthenia increased; he suffered from insomnia, obscure cerebral discomfort, stammering, chronic conjunctivitis, inability to concentrate his attention, and dejection. Meanwhile his homosexual emotions strengthened, and assumed a more sensual character. He abstained from indulging them, as also from onanism, but he was often forced, with shame and reluctance, to frequent places—baths, urinaries, and so forth—where there were opportunities of seeing naked men.
Having no passion for women, it was easy to avoid them. Yet they inspired him with no exact horror. He used to dream of finding an exit from his painful situation by cohabitation with some coarse, boyish girl of the people; but his dread of syphilis stood in the way. He felt, however, that he must conquer himself by efforts of will, and by a persistent direction of his thoughts to heterosexual images. He sought the society of distinguished women. Once he coaxed up a romantic affection for a young girl of 15, which came to nothing, probably because the girl felt the want of absolute passion in his wooing. She excited his imagination, and he really loved her; but she did not, even in the closest contact, stimulate his sexual appetite. Once, when he kissed her just after she had risen from bed in the morning, a curious physical repugnance came over him, attended with a sad feeling of disappointment.
He was strongly advised to marry by physicians. At last he did so. He found that he was potent, and begot several children, but he also found, to his disappointment, that the tyranny of the male genital organs on his fancy increased. Owing to this cause his physical, mental, and moral discomfort became acute. His health gave way.
At about the age of 30, unable to endure his position any longer, he at last yielded to his sexual inclinations. As he began to do this, he also began to regain calm and comparative health. He formed a close alliance with a youth of 19. This liaison was largely sentimental, and marked by a kind of etherealized sensuality. It involved no sexual acts beyond kissing, naked contact, and rare involuntary emissions. About the age of 36 he began freely to follow homosexual inclinations. After this he rapidly recovered his health. The neurotic disturbances subsided.
He has always loved men younger than himself. At about the age of 27 he had begun to admire young soldiers. Since he yielded freely to his inclinations the men he has sought are invariably persons of a lower social rank than his own. He carried on one liaison continuously for twelve years; it began without passion on the friend’s side, but gradually grew to nearly equal strength on both sides. He is not attracted by uniforms, but seeks some uncontaminated child of nature.
The methods of satisfaction have varied with the phases of his passion. At first they were romantic and Platonic, when a hand-touch, a rare kiss, or mere presence sufficed. In the second period sleeping side by side, inspection of the naked body of the loved man, embracements, and occasional emissions after prolonged contact. In the third period the gratification became more frankly sensual. It took every shape: mutual masturbation, intercrural coitus, fellatio, irrumatio, and occasionally active pedicatio; always according to the inclination or concession of the beloved male.
He himself always plays the active, masculine part. He never yields himself to the other, and he asserts that he never has the joy of finding himself desired with ardor equal to his own. He does not shrink from passive pedicatio; but it is never demanded of him. Coitus with males, as above described, always seems to him healthy and natural; it leaves a deep sense of well-being, and has cemented durable friendships. He has always sought to form permanent ties with the men whom he has adored so excessively.
He is of medium height, not robust, but with great nervous energy, with strong power of will and self-control, able to resist fatigue and changes of external circumstances.
In boyhood he had no liking for female occupations, or for the society of girls, preferring study and solitude. He avoided games and the noisy occupations of boys, but was only non-masculine in his indifference to sport, was never feminine in dress or habit. He never succeeded in his attempts to whistle. He is a great smoker, and has at times drunk much. He likes riding, skating, and climbing, but is a poor horseman, and is clumsy with his hands. He has no capacity for the fine arts and music, though much interested in them, and is a prolific author.
He has suffered extremely throughout life, owing to his sense of the difference between himself and normal human beings. No pleasure he has enjoyed, he declares, can equal a thousandth part of the pain caused by the internal consciousness of pariahdom. The utmost he can plead in his own defense, he admits, is irresponsibility, for he acknowledges that his impulse may be morbid. But he feels absolutely certain that in early life his health was ruined and his moral repose destroyed owing to the perpetual conflict with his own inborn nature, and that relief and strength came with indulgence. Although he always has before him the terror of discovery, he is convinced that his sexual dealings with men have been thoroughly wholesome to himself, largely increasing his physical, moral, and intellectual energy, and not injurious to others. He has no sense whatever of moral wrong in his actions, and he regards the attitude of society toward those in his position as utterly unjust and founded on false principles.
The next case is, like the foregoing, that of a successful man of letters who also passed through a long period of mental conflict before he became reconciled to his homosexual instincts. He belongs to a family who are all healthy and have shown marked ability in different intellectual departments. He feels certain that one of his brothers is as absolute an invert as himself and that another is attracted to both sexes. I am indebted to him for the following detailed narrative, describing his emotions and experiences in childhood, which I regard as of very great interest, not only as a contribution to the psychology of inversion, but to the embryology of the sexual emotions generally. We here see described, in an unduly precocious and hyperesthetic form, ideas and feelings which, in a slighter and more fragmentary shape, may be paralleled in the early experiences of many normal men and women. But it must be rare to find so many points in sexual psychology so definitely illustrated in a single child. It may be added that the narrative is also not without interest as a study in the evolution of a man of letters; a child whose imagination was thus early exercised and developed was predestined for a literary career.
HISTORY XXI.—”Almost the earliest recollection I have is of a dream, which, from my vivid recollection of its details, must have repeated itself, I think, more than once, unless my waking thoughts unconsciously added definition. From this dream dated my consciousness of the attraction to me of my own sex, which has ever since dominated my life. The dream, suggested in part, I think, by a picture in an illustrated newspaper of a mob murdering a church dignitary, took this form: I dreamed that I saw my own father murdered by a gang of ruffians, but I do not remember that I felt any grief, though I was actually an exceedingly affectionate child. The body was then stripped of its clothing and eviscerated. I had at the time no notion of anatomical details; but the particulars remain distinct to my mind’s eye, of entrails uniformly brown, the color of dung, and there was no accompaniment of blood. When the abdomen had been emptied, the incident in which I became an active participant occurred. I was seized (and the fact that I was overpowered contributed to the agony of delight it afforded me) and was laid between the thighs of my murdered parent; and from there I had presently crawled my way into the evacuated, abdomen. The act, so far as I can decide of a dream at an age when emission was out of the question, caused in me extreme organic excitement. At all events, I used afterward definitely to recur to it in the waking moments before sleep for the purpose of gaining a state of erection. The dream had no outcome; it seemed to reach its goal in the excitement it caused. I was at that time between 3 and 4 years old. (I have been told that erections occurred when I was only 2 years old. It was between 3 and 4 that I used to induce, at all events, the sensation of an erection. But I was nearer 5 when, sitting on my bed and waiting to be dressed, I got an involuntary erection and called my nurse’s attention to it, asking what it meant. The appearance must, therefore, have been usual to me at that date, but certainly the sensation was not.)
“At that time I was totally ignorant of the conditions, of puberty, which afterward, when I discovered them, so powerfully affected me. I could not even visualize the private organs of a man; I made no deductions from myself. The only naked bodies I had seen then—I judge from circumstances, not from any actual memory of the facts—were those of my own sisters. In the waking dreams which I began to construct, though I recurred often to the one already narrated, the goal of my desire was generally to nestle between the thighs or to have my face pressed against the hinder parts of the object of my worship. But for a time my first dream so engrossed me that I did not indulge in any promiscuity. Gradually, however, my horizon enlarged, and took in, besides the first mentioned, three others: a cousin very much my elder, an uncle, and the curate of the parish.
“At this stage I began to invent circumstances for the indulgence of my passion. One of the earliest was to imagine myself in a tank with my three lovers floating in the water above me. From this position I visited their limbs in turn; the attraction rested in the thighs and buttocks only. I fancy this limitation of the charm to the lower parts only lasted until actual experience of a more complete embrace made me as much a lover of the arms and breast; indeed, later I became more emotionally enamored of these parts than of all the rest. At the beginning of things I simply loved best what my mind could first get hold of.
“Quite early in my experience, when I was not more than 5, I awoke earlier than usual, and saw my nurse standing in complete nudity, commencing her toilet. She seemed to me a gross, coarse, and meaningless object; the hair under her armpits displeased me, and still more that on the lower part of her body. In the case of men, directly I came to have cognizance of the same thing on their bodies, the effect was exactly the opposite. It so happened that about this time the gardener had received some injury to his leg, and in showing the bruise to another exhibited before my eyes a skin completely shagged over with dark hair. Though the sight of the bruise repulsed me, my pleasure was intense, and the vision of the gardener’s legs was in my bed every night for a week afterward. My point is that the sight of my nurse was liable to rouse interest just as much as the far more prosaic display of the gardener’s wounded leg, but my nature made it impossible.
“It was about this time, if not before, that an enormous sense of shyness with regard to all my private duties began to afflict me. So great was it that I could endure from no hand except my mother’s or my nurse’s the necessary assistance in the buttoning and unbuttoning of my garments, always excepting those who were about my own age, toward whom I felt no privacy whatever.
“When I was a little more than 5 I formed a friendship with a young clerk, a youth of about 15, though he seemed to me a grown-up person. One day, as he sat at his desk writing, I sat down and began playing with his feet, investigating the height to which his socks went under his trousers; in this way I obtained six inches of bare leg. Conscious of my courage I fell to kissing it. My friend laughed, but left me to my devotions in peace. This was the first time in which a feeling of romance mixed itself in my dreams; the physical excitement was less, but the pleasure was greater. I cannot understand why I never repeated the experience. He remained to me an object of very special and tender consideration.
“In the next episode I have to relate the ideal was totally absent, and the part I played was passive rather than active. I was put to sleep with a boy considerably my senior. His initiation led to a physical familiarity between us which was not warm or kind, and I was allowed no scope for my own instinctive desires for a warmer kind of contact; if I sought it under cover of my companion’s slumbers I found myself kicked away. Only on one occasion did I find a few moments of supreme charm, while his sleep remained sound, by discovering in the recesses of the sheet an exposed surface of flesh against which I pressed my face in an abandonment of joy. For the rest I was a passive participant, his pleasure seeming to end in the mere handling of the fleshy portions of my body. For this purpose I usually lay face downward across his knees. So far as I can remember, this intimacy led to a decrease in my pursuit of imaginative pleasures; for about a year no further development took place.
“At about this date I was circumcised on account of the prepuce being too long.
“Between the 6th and 7th years a change of environment brought me into contact with a new set of faces. I had then a bed to myself, and once more my imagination awoke to life. It was at this time that I found myself constructing from men’s faces suppositions as to the rest of their bodies: a brown face led me to suppose a uniformly brown body, a pale face a pale body. This idea of variety began to charm me. I now made definite choice in my reveries whether I would go to sleep between white thighs, or red thighs, or brown thighs. Going to sleep definitely describes the goal of the method to which I had addicted myself. As soon as I entered my bed I abandoned myself to the construction of an amour and retained it as long as I had consciousness. I may say that I was not conscious of any emissions under these circumstances (until some years later, when I brought it about by my own act), but the pleasure was fairly acute.
“All this time there were secret meetings, with my bedfellow of the year before. But they now took place by day, in various hiding-places, with little unclothing or exposure, and my companion was cold and fastidious and repelled any warmth on my part; it became to me a dry sort of ritual. I had an idea at that time that the whole thing was so much an original invention of his and mine that there was no likelihood of it being practised by anyone else in the world. But this consideration did not restrain me in constructing love scenes with all those whose appearance attracted me. At this period nearly every man with whom I came in contact won at least my transient desire; only the quite old and deformed lay outside the scope of my wishes. Many of my amours developed in church; the men who sat near me were the objects of my attention, and the clergyman, whose sermon I did not listen to, supplied me with an occasion for reverie on the charms his person would have for me under other circumstances. It must have been at this time that I began to elaborate ideas of a serried rank of congregated thighs across which I lay and was dragged. I would arrange them in definite order and then imagine myself drawn across from one to the other somewhat forcibly. Admiration of strength was beginning at this time to have a definite part in my conceptions, but anything of the nature of cruelty had not then appealed to me. (I except the original dream of my childhood, which seems to me still to stand fantastically apart.) In the inventions to which I now gave myself the sense of being passed across limbs of different texture and color was subtle and pleasurable. I think the note of constructive cruelty which now followed arose from an imagined rivalry among my lovers for possession of me; the idea that I was desired made me soon take a delight in imagining myself torn and snatched about by the contending parties. Presently out of this I began constructing definite scenes of violence. I was able in imagination to lie in the thick and stress of conglomerated deliciousness of thighs struggling to hold me; I was able to imagine at least six bodies encircling me with passionate contact. At the same time I had an ingrained feeling of my own physical smallness in relation to the limbs whose contact threw me into such paroxysms of delight. A new and sufficiently ludicrous invention took possession of me; I imagined myself strapped to the thigh (always, I think, the right one) of the man on whom I chose, for the time, to concentrate my desires, and so to be worn by him during his day’s work, hidden beneath his garments. I was not conscious of any difficulty due to my size. The charm of bondage and compulsion was here, again, in the ascendant. I fancy that it was in this connection that I first anticipated whipping as the delightful climax to my emotions, administered when my possessor, at the end of his day’s work, unclothed himself for rest.
“Up to this stage my attraction to the male organ of generation had been slight and vague. Two things now contributed to bring thought of it into prominence. On two or three occasions when I accompanied farm laborers to their occupations I saw them pause by the way to relieve nature. My extreme shyness as regards such matters in my own person made this performance in my presence like an outrage on my modesty; it had about it the suggestion of an indecent solicitation to one whose inclination was to headlong and delirious surrender. I stood rooted and flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over and was conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and bewildered faculties. When I afterward reviewed the circumstances they had the same attraction for me that amorous cruelty was just then beginning to exercise on my imagination. My mind secretly embraced the fearful sweetness of the newly discovered sensation, surrounding the performance of the function with all sorts of atrocious and bizarre inventions. For a time my intellect hung back from accepting this as the central and most fiery secret of the male attraction; but shortly afterward, when out walking with my father, I saw him perform the same act; I was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even today, when my mind has been long accustomed to the knowledge of generative facts, I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment had for me. The attraction my father’s person had always had for me was now increased tenfold by the performance I had witnessed (though I had not seen the penis in any of these cases).
“For a considerable time only those lovers were dominant in my imagination whom I had witnessed in the act that had so poignantly affected me. My delight now took the form of imagining myself strapped to the thighs of the person while this function was in progress.
“By this time I must have been 8 years old. The cold and secret relationship of which I have given an account had continued without instructing me in any of the ardent possibilities it might have suggested; no force or cruelty was used upon me, no warmth was lavished. It made little difference that my companion had now discovered the act of masturbation; it had no meaning to me, since it led to no warmth of embrace. His method was to avert himself from me; I had to fawn upon him from the rear and also to invent indecent stories to stimulate his imagination. I felt myself a despised instrument, the mere spectator of an act which, if directed toward me with any warmth, would have aroused the liveliest appetite. At this time, as I have since seen, my companion was gaining knowledge from the ancient classics. For a time some charm was imparted by his instructing me to adopt a superincumbent face-to-face embrace. The beginning of his puberty was enormously attractive to me; had he been less cold-blooded I could have responded passionately to his endearments; but he always insisted on rigorous passivity on my part, and he explained nothing. One day, by a small gratuity, he induced me to offer him my mouth, though I still had no comprehension of the result I was helping to attain. Once the orgasm occurred, and the effect was extremely nauseous; after that he was more careful. My companion was approaching manhood, and his demands became more frequent, his exactions more humiliating.
“At the same time my passion for male love was growing stronger. I was able to construct from the unsatisfactory bondage in which I was held images of bodily embrace which I had not before had sufficient sense of human contact to form, though I seldom imagined any of the acts that in actual experience repulsed me. One day, however, I shirked a particularly repulsive humiliation which my companion had forced upon me. He discovered the deception, rose from the prone position in which he lay, and throwing me across his knees thrashed me violently. I submitted without a struggle, experiencing a curious sensation of pleasure in the midst of my pain. When he repeated his order I found its accomplishment no longer repulsive. One of the few pleasurable memories this intimacy, extending over years, has left for me is that moment of abject abasement to one who, with no warmth of feeling, had yet once had sufficient energy to be brutal to me.
“It must have been from this incident that the calculated effect of flagellation began to have weight with me when I indulged my imagination. A wish to be repulsed, trampled, violated by the object of my passion took hold of my instincts. Even then—and, indeed, up to my 13th year—I had no idea of normal sexual connection. I knew vaguely that children were born from women’s bodies; I did not know—and when told I did not believe—the true facts of the marital relationship. All that I had experienced—both in fact and imagination—was to me so highly individual that I had no notion anything kindred to it could exist outside of my own experience. I had no notion of sex as the basis of life. Even when I came gradually to realize that men and women were formed in a way that argued connection with each other, I still believed it to be a dissolute sort of conduct, not to be indulged in by those who had claims to respectability.
“I had, however, by this time arrived at a strong attraction toward the organs of generation and all aspects of puberty, and my imagination spent Itself in a fantastic worship of every sign of masculinity. My enjoyment now was to imagine myself forced to undergo physical humiliation and submission to the caprice of my male captors, and the central fact became the discharge of urine from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of him, I let it be in my face. This was followed usually by a half-caressing castigation, in which the hand only was instrumental.
“The period of which I am now writing was that of my entry into school life. My imaginary lovers immediately became numerous; all the masters and all the boys above a certain age attracted me; for two I had in addition a feeling of romantic as well as physical attachment. Indeed, from this time onward I was never without some heroes toward whom I indulged a perfectly separate and tenderly ideal passion. The announcement that one was about to leave surprised me into a passionate fit of weeping; yet my reserve was so great and my sense of isolation so crushing that I made no effort at intimacy, and to one for whom I felt inexhaustible devotion I barely spoke for the first three years, though meeting him daily. At this time the subjects of my contemplation had distinctly individualized methods of approach. Thus in one case I imagined we stood face to face in our night-gear; suddenly mine was stripped from me; I was seized and forcibly thrust under his and made to hang with my feet off the ground by my full weight on the erect organ which inserted itself between my thighs; so suspended—my body enveloped in the folds of his linen and my face pressed upon his heart—I underwent a castigation which continued until I was thrown down to receive a discharge of urine over my prostrate body. Such images seemed to come independently of my will.
“It was at this time that I found a large pleasure in imagining contact with people whom I disliked; the prevailing note of these intimacies was always cruelty, to which I submitted with acute relish. I discovered, however, from the ordinary school experiences of corporal punishment, that it had no charm to me when administered for school offenses, even from the hands under which at other times I imagined myself as delighting to receive pain. The necessary link was lacking; had I perceived on the part of my judge any liking for the operation, there would probably have been a response on my side. On one occasion I was flogged unjustly; conscious as I was of its cruel instead of judiciary character, this was the only castigation I received which had in it an element of gratification for my instincts. At the same time I never forgave the hand that administered it; it is the only instance I remember in myself of a grudge nourished for years.
“Meanwhile, amid this chaos of confused love and hatred, of relish for cruelty and loathing for injustice, my first thoroughly romantic and ideal attachment was developing itself. I may say, of those to whom romance as well as physical attachment bound me, that they have remained unchangeable parts of my nature. Today, as it was twenty years ago, when I think of them the blood gushes to my brain, my hands tingle and moisten with an emotion I cannot subdue: I am at their feet worshipping them. Of them my dreams were entirely tender; the idea of cruelty never touched the conception I had of them. But I return to that one who was the chief influence of my youth: older than myself by only three years, he was of fine build and athletic, with adolescence showing in his face; my tremulous beginnings of worship were confirmed by a word of encouragement thrown to me one day as I went to receive my first flogging; no doubt my small, scared face excited his kind pity. I made it my concern afterward to let him know that I had not cried under the ordeal, and I believe he passed the word around that I had taken my punishment pluckily. So little contact had I with him that beyond constant worship on my part I remember nothing till, about three years later, I received from him a kind, half-joking solicitation, spoken in clean and simple language. So terrific was my shyness and secrecy that I had even then no idea that familiarity of the sort was common enough in schools. I was absolutely unable to connect my own sensations with those of the world at large or to believe that others felt as I did. On this occasion I simply felt that some shrewd thrust had been made at me for the detection of my secret. He had drawn me upon his knee; I sat there silent, flushing and dumbfounded. He made no attempt to press me; he had, as he thought, said enough if I chose to be reciprocal; beyond that he would not tempt me. A few years ago I heard of him married and prosperous.
“In following up my emotions in this direction I have far outstripped the period up to which I have given a complete exposition of my development. I must have been more than 12 years old before school life persuaded me to face (as taught by sniggering novices) the actual facts of sexual intercourse. At the same time I learned that I had means of extracting enjoyment from my own body in a definite direction which I had not till then suspected. A growing resistance on my part to his cold desires had led to a break with my former intimate; to the last he had taught me nothing, except distaste for himself. I now found ready teachers right and left of me. One of my schoolfellows invited me to watch; him in the process of masturbation; the spectacle left me quite unmoved; the result appeared to me far less exciting than the discharge of urine which, until then, I had associated with male virility. I was so accustomed to my own lone amorous broodings that the effort and action required for this process, when I attempted to imitate it, disconcerted my thoughts and interfered with concentration on my own inventions. I had never experienced the pleasure accompanying the spasm of emission, and there seemed to be nothing worth trying for along that road. I desisted and returned to my reveries. I was now in a perfect maze of promiscuity; there must have been at least fifty people who attracted me at that time. I developed a liking for imagining myself between two lovers, generally men who were physical contrasts. It was my habit to analyze as minutely as possible those who attracted me. To gain intimacy with what was below the surface I studied with attention their hands, the wrists where they disappeared (showing the hair of the forearm), and the neck; I estimated the comparative size of the generative organs, the formation of the thighs and buttocks, and thus constructed a presentment of the whole man. The more vividly I could do this, the keener was the pleasure I was able to obtain from their contemplated embraces.
“Till now I had been absolutely untouched by any moral scruples. I had the usual acquiescence in the religious beliefs in which I had been trained; it did not enter my head that there was any divine law, one way or the other, concerning the allurements of the imagination. From my thirteenth year slight hints of uneasiness began to creep into my conscience. I began perhaps to understand that the formulas of religion, to which I had listened all my life with as little attention as possible, had some meaning which now and then touched the circumstances of my own life. I had not yet realized that my past foretold my future, and that women would be to me a repulsion instead of an attraction where things sexual were concerned. I had the full conviction that one day I should be married; I had also some fear that as I grew to manhood I might succumb to the temptations of loose women. I had an incipient revulsion from such a fate, and this seemed to me to indicate that moral stirrings were at work within me. One night I was amorously attacked in my bedroom by two of the domestics. I experienced an acute horror which I hid under laughter; my resistance was so desperate that I escaped with a tickling. I had been accustomed to sit on the servants’ knees, a habit I had innocently retained from childhood; I can now recall in detail the approaches these women had been used to make me. At the time I was utterly oblivious that anything was intended.
“I was equally oblivious to things that had a nearer relation to my own feelings. In passing along a side-street one night I was overtaken by a man who began conversation on the weather. He asked me if I were not cold, began passing his hand up and down my back; then came a question about caning at school, whether certain parts of me were not sore, leading to an investigating touch. I put his hand aside shyly, but did not resent the action. Presently he was for exploring my trousers pockets and I began to think him a pickpocket; repulsed in that direction, he returned, to rubbing my back. The sensation was pleasant. I now took him for a pimp who wished to take me to a prostitute, and as at that time I had begun to realize that such pleasures were not to my taste I was glad to find myself at my destination, and said good-bye sharply, leaving him standing full of astonishment at his failure with one who had taken his advances so pleasantly. I could not bring myself to believe that others had the same feelings as myself. Later I realized my escape, not without a certain amount of regret, and constructed for my own pleasure a different termination to the incident.
“I was now so possessed by masculine attraction that I became a lover of all the heroes I read of in books. Some became as vivid to me as those with whom I was living in daily contact. For a time I became an ardent lover of Napoléon (the incident of his anticipation of the nuptials with his second wife attracting me by its impetuous brutality), of Edward I, and of Julius Cæsar. Charles II I remember by a caressing cruelty with which my imagination gifted him. Jugurtha was a great acquisition. Bothwell, Judge Jefferies, and many villains of history and fiction appealed to me by their cruelty.
“I had become an adept in the mental construction necessary for the satisfaction of my desires. And yet up to that date I had never seen the nude body of a full-grown adult. I had no knowledge of the extent to which hair in certain instances develops on the torso; indeed, my efforts at characterization centered, for the most part, around the thighs and generative organs. At this time one of my schoolfellows saw a common workman, known to me by name, bathing in a stream with some companions; all his body was, my informant told me, covered with hair from throat to belly. In face the man was coarse and repulsive, but I now began to regard him as a lovely monstrosity, and for many nights embraced the vision of him passionately, with face buried in the jungle growth of hair that covered his chest. I was, for the first time, conscious of deliberately (and successfully) willing not to see his face, which was distasteful to me. At the same time another schoolfellow told me, concerning a master who bathed with the boys, that hair showed above his bathing-drawers as high as the navel. I now began definitely to construct bodies in detail; the suggestion of extensive hairiness maddened me with delight, but remained in my mind strongly associated with cruelty; my hairy lovers never behaved to me with tenderness; everything at this period, I think, tended to draw me toward force and violence as an expression of amativeness. A schoolfellow, a few years my senior, of a cruel, bullying disposition, took a particular delight in inflicting pain on me: he had particularly pointed shoes, and it was his custom to make me stand with my back to him while he addressed me in petting and caressing tones; just when his words were at their kindliest he would inflict a sharp stroke with the toe of his boot so as to reach the most tender part of my fundament; the pain was exquisite; I was conscious that he experienced sexual pleasure (I had seen definite signs of it beneath his clothing), and, though loathing him, I would, after I had suffered from his kicks, throw myself into his imaginary embraces and indulge in a perfect rage of abject submission. Yet all the time I would gladly have killed him.
“At the age of 14 I went, for a time, to a farm-house, where I was allowed to mingle familiarly with the farm-laborers, a fine set of muscular young men. I became a great favorite, and, having childish, caressing manners a good deal behind my real age, I was allowed to take many liberties with them. They all lived under the farmer’s roof in the old-fashioned way, and in the evening I used to sit on their knees and caress and hug them to my heart’s content. They took it phlegmatically; it apparently gave them no surprise. One of the men used to return my squeezes and caresses and once allowed me to put my hand under his shirt, but there were no further liberties.
“It was not until I was nearly 15 that the event happened which made me, for the first time, restless in my enforced solitude. I was verging on puberty, and perhaps in the hope that I should find my own development met by a corresponding warmth I again came into intimate relations with the companion whose frigid performances had caused me weariness and disgust. He was now a man, having reached majority. He put me into his bed while he undressed himself and came toward me in perfect nudity. In a moment we were in each other’s arms and the deliciousness of that moment intoxicated me. Suddenly, lying on the bed, I felt attacked, as I thought, by an imperative need to make water. I leaped up with a hurried excuse, but already the paroxysm had subsided. No discharge came to my relief, yet the need seemed to have passed. I returned to my companion, but the glamour of the meeting was already over. My companion evidently found more pleasure in my person than when I was a mere child; I felt moved and flattered by the pleasure he took in pressing his face against certain parts of my body. On a second occasion, one day, I seemed involuntarily about to transgress decency, but again, as before, separated myself, and remained ignorant of what it was on which I had verged in my excitement. At another meeting, however, I had been allowed to prolong my embrace and to act, indeed, upon my full instincts. Once more I felt suddenly the coming of something acutely impending; I took my courage in my hands and went boldly forward. In another moment I had hold of the mysterious secret of masculine energy, to which all my years of dilirious imaginings had been but as a waiting at the threshold, the knocking on a closed door.
“It was inevitable that from that day our intimacy should dwindle into dissolution (though other causes anticipated this natural decay), but I no longer found masturbation a dry and wearisome formula. In my novitiate I was disheartened to find how long it took me to dissociate myself from the contemplative and attach myself to the active form of self-gratification. But I presently found myself committed to the repetition of the act three times a day. On almost the last occasion I met my intimate he showed an exceptional ardor. At that meeting he proposed to attempt an act I had not previously considered possible, far less had I heard that it was considered the worst criminal connection that could take place. I had a slight fear of pain, but was willing to gratify him, and for the first time found in my submission a union of the two amative instincts which had before disputed sway in me: the instinct for tenderness and the instinct for cruelty. Pedicatio failed to take place, but I received an embrace which for the first time gave me full satisfaction. My delight was enormous; I was filled with emotions. I have no words to describe the extraordinary charm of the warm, smooth flesh upon mine, and the rougher contact of the hairy parts. Yet I was conscious, even at the time, that this was but the physical side of pleasure, and that he was not and never could be one whom I might truly be said to love.
“I was now in my sixteenth year, and under the influence of these and many other emotions then, for the first time, beginning to seize me, a sense of literary power and a desire to express myself through imaginative channels began to take hold of me. I feared that my indulgence was having an enfeebling power on my faculties (I had begun to experience physical languor and depression), and certain religious scruples, the result of my early training, took hold of me. For the first time I became conscious that the ardors I felt toward my own sex were a diversion of the sex-instinct itself, and to my astonishment and consternation I found by chance the practices I had already indulged in definitely denounced in the Bible as an abomination. From that moment began a struggle which lasted for years. I made a final breach with my former intimate, and thereupon a long dispute took place between the conflicting influences that strove for possession of my body. For a time I broke off the habit of masturbation, but I could not so easily rid myself of the mental indulgence, which was now almost an essential sedative for inducing sleep. At this time a visit to the seaside, where, for the first time, I was able to see men bathing in complete nudity, frankly, in the full light of day, plunged me again for a time headforemost into imaginative amours, and my scruples and resolutions were flung to the winds. But, on the whole, I had now entered a stage which, for want of a better term, I must describe as the emotionally moral. To whatever depth of indulgence I descended I carried a sense of obliquity with me; I believed that I was a rebel from a law, natural and divine, of which yet no instinct had been implanted in me. I still held unquestioned the truth of the religion I had been brought up in, and my whole life, every thought of my brain, every impulse of my body, were in direct antagonism to the will of God. At times physical desire broke down these barriers, but I practised considerable restraint physically, though not mentally, and made great efforts to conquer my aversion from women and extreme devotion for men, without the slightest success. I was 30, however, before I found a companion to love me in the way my nature required. I am quite a healthy person, and capable of working at very high pressure. Under sexual freedom I have become stronger.”
HISTORY XXII.—T. J., aged 50; man of letters. Height 5 feet 7 inches; weight 10 stone, but formerly much less. Belongs to an entirely normal family, all married and with children.
“Owing to the fact that my mother suffered from some malady the whole period of gestation prior to my birth, I came into the world so puny a child, so ill-nourished, that for some time the doctors despaired of my life. Till the age of puberty, though never ill, I suffered greatly from delicate health. I was abnormally sensitive and all my affections and passions extraordinarily developed. Owing to my brothers being much older than myself I was thrown into the society of my sister. Till 8 years old she was my chief playmate. With her I played with dolls and abandoned myself wholly to the delights of an imaginary land which was much more real to me than the world around me. I never remember learning to read, but at 5 the Arabian Nights and Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake were my favorite books. Living in the country the society of other children was difficult to obtain. My whole affections centered in my father, my mother having died when I was a child. This affection for my father was rather a morbid passion which absorbed my life. I dared not leave his side for fear of a final separation from him. I would wake him when asleep to see if he still lived. To this day, though he died twenty-six years ago, his memory haunts me.
“My first abnormal desires were connected with him. I had seen him occasionally micturating in the garden alleys or out in the country. These occasions excited me terribly, and I would, if possible, wait till he had gone, and touch the humid leaves, drawing a terrible pleasure from the contact. Afterward, though he never suspected it, desire for him became a consuming passion, and I remember on one occasion, when on a holiday, I occupied the same bed with him, the excitement of his propinquity brought on such a formidable attack of heart palpitation that my father called in the family physician on our return home. Needless to say my heart was found quite sound. The desire still remains after all these years, and nothing excites me more even now than the memory of my father in his morning bath.
“The whole world for me in my early childhood was peopled with imaginary beings. While still a young child I would invent stories and relate them to any listener I could find, one such story lasting three years. I was an omnivorous reader, but my favorite reading was poetry. At 7 I could repeat the greater part of Longfellow’s poems; Scott followed; then Milton captivated me when I was 14; then came Tennyson, Arnold, Swinburne, and Morris. Later came the Greek and Latin poets. From 7 years on I wrote verses to my father. Till 8 years I was excessively timid of the dark and, indeed, of all loneliness. This passed, however, and developed into an extreme sensitiveness of seeing or meeting people. Even on a country road I would walk miles out of my way to avoid meeting the ordinary yokel. At this period my day-dreams were my favorite occupation. Even to the present day my visions take up the greater part of my life. Though timid I was not wanting in courage. At an early age I would fight boys even older than myself. Later I have risked my life many times in various parts of Europe. As regards sports, I can do a little of everything: swimming, riding, fencing, shooting,—a little of each. Cricket and football I also played passably, but sports never interested me much. Literature became and is the passion of my life and for some years has remained my sole occupation.
“At 8 years the sexual inversion began to manifest itself, though till I had attained 10 years of age I was practically quite innocent. At 8 years of age, my family removed to another country and I made the acquaintance of a little boy who attracted me sexually. We masturbated in company, without any reason except the pleasure of seeing each other exposed. Then I had connection with him in anum. This really at that time was an exception to my ordinary tastes which speedily developed into an intense desire of fellatio and later on of intercrural pleasures. This latter perhaps may be accounted for by the visit to our house of a small boy with whom I slept for about a year. Every night during this period, I had intercrural connection with him twice and sometimes three times. Then came a consuming passion for all young boys and very old men. Boys after 14 or 15 ceased to attract me, more particularly when the hair of the pubes began to develop. From 8 to 14, when first I had sexual emissions, I masturbated at every opportunity. From 14 to 27, always once a day, generally twice and sometimes three times a day. At 27 I took rooms and formed acquaintance with the family occupying the house. The boys, one by one, were allowed to sleep with me and I conceived an extraordinary passion for one of them, an attachment which lasted till I finally left England. The attachment was much more that of a man for his wife and had nothing degrading in it. I was wretched when away from him, and as he was very attached to sport of all kinds I suffered ‘divers kinds of death’ each time that I imagined his life to be endangered. I can honestly say that in each of my attachments, and I have had many, the prevailing sentiment was the delight of protecting a weaker being than myself. Each person whom I have loved has been perfectly normal and all are now fathers of families. Each still regards me with affection and respect in spite of what has passed between us. All my life I have been possessed with the passion for paternity, I could almost say maternity. Willingly would I have suffered the pains of hell could I have borne a son to the person I loved. That I can honestly say has been the dominant instinct of my life. In my passion I have never been brutal, nor save under the influence of wine have I had connection with men over the age of puberty. In Southern Europe my experiences have been the same, a predominant passion for a boy exhibiting itself in every species of protecting care, and though terminating so far as sexual passion was concerned when the boy reached 15 or 16 years, yet still lasting and enduring in an honest and unselfish affection. At the age of 51, I still masturbate once or twice a week, though I long for some person whom I love to share the pleasure with me. I tried vainly at the age of 27 to bring myself into line with others. Prostitutes caused me horror, whether male or female. I attempted the act of coitus four or five times, twice with women of loose lives and at other times with married women. Save in one case the attempts were either abortive or caused me extreme disgust.
“Practically from the time of puberty I have attracted sexually not only women but men. Women, oddly enough, though I care nothing for them sexually, either hate me or adore me, and I have had five offers of marriage. At the same time up till five years ago, I was pursued by men and have had the oddest experiences both in England and abroad. In the early period of this history I suffered tremendously from the feeling that I was isolated and unique in the world. I strove against the habit of masturbation and my perverted tastes with all my might. Scourges, vigils, burnings, all were of no avail. Deeper reading in the Classics showed me how common was the taste of sex for the same sex. At 27 I began to have a settled philosophy. Then as now, I made endless resolutions to avoid masturbation, though I can see nothing wrong in the mutual act of two persons drawn together by love. I am and always have been an extremely religious man, and if I am not altogether an orthodox Catholic, do my duties and have a high sense of the supernatural. I suffered much from melancholy from my earliest years. At 18, though nothing definitely was wrong, a vague but profound malaise induced me to open the veins of my arm. I fainted, however, and was promptly succored. At the age of 35, after a return from abroad, I took an enormous dose of poison. This time again a singular coincidence saved me, and I once more came back to life. After this I purposely went abroad to obtain death and sought it in every possible way. Quite in vain, as you see. One thing I have never had a fear of, but have always longed for—Death. I am sure that if we only knew what joys lay on the other side of death, the whole world would rush madly to suicide. I have, apart from any perversion of taste, an honest and genuine passion for children and animals, and I am never happier than when in their society. Both adore me.
“My life has not dimmed nor deadened my faculties, for I am occupied at the present time with very important work and I write steadily. But my real life is passed in my visions, which take me into another world quite as real as this sensuous one, and where I always retreat on all occasions possible. And yet, a strange paradox—I am a convinced Stoic and almost confine my reading to Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the ‘Imitation.’ I am extremely emotional, fond of the society of women, though I loathe the sexual side of them, and when I love, though passion is certainly inextricably mixed, the prevailing sentiment is spiritual. I shall probably end by being a Carthusian or a fakir.”
HISTORY XXIII.—Englishman, aged 70, of German descent on father’s side. Was first child of his mother, who was 36 at his birth; a younger brother normal; has no other relatives.
He was brought up in England, and went to school at the age of 13. At a very early age, between 6 and 8, was deeply impressed by the handsome face of a young man, a royal trumpeter on horseback, seen in a procession. This, and the sight of the naked body of young men in a rowing-match on the river, caused great commotion, but not of a definitely sexual character. This was increased by the sight of a beautiful male model of a young Turk smoking, with his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the waist. He became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and he read with avidity the Arabian Nights and other Oriental tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc. He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private theatricals; he excelled in female parts, and sang the songs of Madame Vestris, encouraged in this by his father.
The sexual organs have never been fully developed, and the testicles, though large, are of a flabby consistence. He cannot whistle. He thinks he ought to have been a woman.
At school he was shy and reserved, and had no particular intimacy with anyone, although he once desired it. He learned self-abuse from his younger brother, who had learned it from an older boy. He has never had erotic dreams. He never touched anyone but his brother until later when travelling in Italy, and then only his fellow-traveller. When travelling in Asia Minor he had many opportunities, but always put them aside from fear, afterward regretting his fearfulness. He yearned for intimacy with particular friends, but never dared to express it. He went much to theaters, and what he saw there incited him to masturbation. When he was about 30 years of age his reserve, and his fear of treachery and extortion, were at last overcome by an incident which occurred late at night at the Royal Exchange, and again in a dark recess in the gallery of the Olympic Theater when Gustavus Brooke was performing. From that time the Adelphi Theater, the Italian Opera, and the open parks at night became his fields of adventure. He remarks that among people crowding to witness a fire he found many opportunities. His especial intimates were a railway clerk and an Italian model. In more recent years he has chiefly found gratification among footmen and policemen.
He is exclusively passive; also likes mutual fellatio. He used greatly to admire finely developed forms (conscious of his own shortcomings), shapely limbs, and delicate brown hair, and always admired strength and manly vigor. He never took any interest in boys, and has always been indifferent to women.
HISTORY XXIV.—A medical man, English, aged 30. He believes that his father, who was a magistrate, was very sympathetic toward men; on several occasions he has sat with him on the bench when cases of indecent assault were brought up; he discharged three cases, although there could be little doubt as to their guilt, and was very lenient to the others.
From the age of 9 he loved to sleep with his brother, ten years older, who was in the navy; they slept in different beds, and the child went to bed early, but he always kept awake to see his brother undress, as he adored his naked body; and would then get into his bed. He learned the habit of masturbation from his brother at the age of 9; at that time there was no sexual orgasm, but watching it in his brother was a perpetual source of wonder and pleasure. During his brother’s absence at sea the boy longed for his return and would practice self-abuse with the thought of his brother’s naked body before him. This brother’s death was a source of great grief. At the age of 12 he went to boarding-school and was constantly falling in love with good-looking boys. He was always taken into one of the bigger boys’ beds. At this age he was thoroughly able to enjoy the sexual orgasm with boys. His erotic dreams have always been of men and especially of boys; he has never dreamed sexually of women. From the age of 9 to the age of 21, when he left school, he never gave women a thought sexually, though he always liked their society. For two years after leaving school he had connection with women, not because he thought there was sin in loving his own sex, but because he regarded it as a thing that no one did after leaving school. During these two years he still really preferred men and used to admire the figures of soldiers and sailors. He then paid a visit to London, which may be described in his own words: “I went to see an old schoolfellow who was living there. In his room was a young fellow, fair, extremely good looking, with a good figure and charming manners. From that moment all my past recollections came back. I could not get him out of my mind; in fact, I was in love with him. I pictured him naked before me as a lovely statue; my dreams were frequent at night, always of him. For a fortnight afterward I practised masturbation with the picture of his lovely face and form always before me. We became fast friends, and from that day women have never entered my thoughts.”
Although up to the present he has no wish or intention to marry, he believes that he will eventually do so, because it is thought desirable in his profession; but he is quite sure that his love and affection for men and boys will never lessen.
In earlier life he preferred men from 20 to 35; now he likes boys from 16 upward; grooms, for instance, who must be good looking, well developed, cleanly, and of a lovable, unchanging nature; but he would prefer gentlemen. He does not care for mere mutual embracing and reciprocal masturbation; when he really loves a man he desires pedicatio in which he is himself the passive subject.
He has curly hair and moustache, and well-developed sexual organs. His habits are masculine; he has always enjoyed field sports, and can swim, ride, drive, and skate. At the same time, he is devoted to music, can draw and paint, and is an ardent admirer of male statuary. While fond of practical occupations of every sort, he dislikes anything that is theoretical.
He adds: “As a medical man, I fail to see morally any unhealthiness, or anything that nature should be ashamed of, in connection with, and sympathy for, men.”
HISTORY XXV.—A. S. Schoolmaster, aged 46.
“My father was, I should say, below the average in capacity for friendship. He liked young girls, and was never interested in boys. He was a man of strongly Puritanical morality, capable of condemning with gloomy bitterness. He was also a man capable of great sacrifice for principle, and mentally very well endowed. My mother was a clever, practical woman, with wide sympathies. She was capable of warm friendship, especially toward those younger than herself. Her father (whom I never saw) was a teacher. He was devoted to his wife, but also delighted in the company of young men. He had always some young man on his arm, my mother would tell me. My mother’s family is of Welsh descent. I learned to read at 5, and I can scarcely have been more than 6 when I used to read again and again David’s lament for Absalom. Even now I can dimly recall the siren charm for me of that melancholy refrain, ‘O my son Absalom.... O Absalom, my son, my son!’ Of late, when I have thought of the amount of devotion I have shown to lads, and the amount I have sometimes suffered for them, I have felt as if there were something almost weirdly prophetic in that early incident.
“I was always an impressionable creature. My mother was very musical, and her singing ‘got hold’ of me wonderfully. The dramatic and the poetic always strongly appealed to me.
“I felt I should like to act; but I never dared. In the same way I felt that one day I should like to be a schoolmaster, but I dared not say so. A shy, retiring creature was obviously unfitted for such occupations. Well, the teaching came about, and the strange part was that the boys were somehow or other attracted by me, and the ‘worst’ customers were attracted most. And there came a chance of acting too. Owing to some difficulties about the cast in a play at school, I took a part. After that I knew that (within a certain range) I could act. I spent two holidays with a dramatic company. I should undoubtedly have remained on the stage, but for one thing. I don’t wish to be sanctimonious, but dirty and ugly jokes are odious to me. It was this sort of thing that drove me away. I threw myself into the school work instead.
“It was partly the dramatic interest, partly a quite genuine interest in human nature, that led me to do some preaching too. When I had been badly hurt by one or two youngsters whom I loved, I thought of going in for pastoral work, but this too was given up—and very wisely. I should never be able to work comfortably with any organization. For one thing I have a way of taking on new ideas, and organizations do not like that. For another, all social functions are anathema to me.
“Interest in ‘art’ as usually understood began to be marked only after I was 30. It started with architecture and passed on to painting and sculpture. The tendency to do rather a variety (too great a variety) of things characterizes many uranians. We are rather like the labile chemical compounds: our molecules readily rearrange themselves.
“As a boy of 10 I had the ordinary sweethearting with a girl of the same age. The incident is worth perhaps a little further comment for the following reason: When I was 16 years old the girl lived with us for a year. She was a nice, pleasant, bright girl, and she thought a great deal of me. I was strongly attracted by her. I remember especially one little incident. I had been showing her how to do some algebra and she was kneeling at the table by the side of my chair. Her hair was flowing over her shoulders and she looked rather charming. She expressed warm admiration of the way I had worked the problem out. I remember that I deliberately squashed out the feeling of attraction that came over me. I scarcely know why I did this; but I fancy there was a vague sense that I did not want my work disturbed. There was no sexual attraction or, at least, none that was manifest. The girl, there is no doubt, grew to love me. I am sorry to say that in two other cases, later, women loved me, and have both permanently remained unmarried on my account. I sometimes feel that in a wisely free society I should be able to give both of these women children. That I believe I could do, and I think it would be an immense satisfaction to them. A permanent union with a woman would, however, be impossible to me. A permanent union with a man would, I believe, be possible. At least I know that attractions which have been at all homosexual in character have in my case been very lasting.
“I was strongly attracted when not more than 13 to a lad slightly older. It was a love story, there is no doubt, but I do not recollect any outer sexual signs. There were other passing cases, but in no case was there any warm response till I was 15. I then made friends with a lad of entirely different type from myself. I was a reader. I liked long walks and fresh air, but I was too shy to go in for sports. Indeed I was frightfully shy. He was a great sportsman and always at home in society. But he asked me to help him with some work, and we took to working together. I grew passionately fond of him. His caresses always caused some erection. Personally, I believe it would have been wiser to have obtained complete sexual expression. The absence of knowledge led to two distinctly undesirable results. The first was marked congestion and pain at times; the second was a tendency to a sort of modified masochism. There is always, I suppose, some erotic attraction about the buttocks, and of course also, to boys, they afford an irresistibly attractive mark for a good smack. I found that when this lad spanked me it produced some amount of sexual excitement, and the desire for this form of stimulus grew upon me. The result, in my case, was bad. It was sensualism, not love. I can say this with confidence, because in a much later case of deeply passionate love, I shrank from any such method, but the mutual, naked embrace I found was for me an absolutely natural and pure expression of love. I never felt any touch of grossness in it, and it destroyed the earlier and (for me at least) less wholesome desire.
“The school friendship disappeared with the marriage of my friend. I was furiously jealous, and the young man’s mother was opposed to me, but I still think of that early friendship with tenderness. I know that my boy friend was the first who made me capable of self-expression, the first who taught me how to make friends at all. And if he still cared for me, I know that his love would be dear to me still.
“My chief regret, as I look back, is that I did not know about these things early. I cannot but think that all youngsters should be spoken to about the love of comrades and encouraged to seek help in any sort of trouble that this may bring. We homogenic folk may be but a small percentage of mankind, but our numbers are still great, and surely the making or marring of our lives should count for something. At college I fell violently in love with a friend with whom I did work in science. He loved me too, though not with such heat. He also was largely uranian, but this I only realized a year or two back. He remains unmarried, and is still my friend. We did some research work together which is pretty well known. I am quite sure that the love we had for each other gave tremendous zest to our work and greatly increased our powers.
“While I was working at college I was interested in a lad who was working as errand boy for a city firm. I helped him to get better training, and spent money on him. My father was making me some allowance at the time and demurred. I said I would in future support myself, and in this way came to take up schoolmastering. I at once became quite absorbed in my work with the boys. Of course I loved them. And here I feel I must touch upon what seems to me a characteristic of most of us uranians. Our genital organs are with us ordinarily and usually organs of expression. The clean-minded heterogenic man is apt to look upon such a view of the genital organs as monstrous; we, on the other hand, are compelled (at least for ourselves) to regard it as the natural and pure one. For my own part I had many Puritan prejudices—prejudices that I retained for many a long and weary day—but my affection for those of my own sex so often expressed itself by some sexual stirring, and more or less erection, that I was obliged to look upon this as inevitable, and in general I paid no attention to it whatever. It was the older boys’ who sometimes attracted me strongly. My love for them was I know a genuinely spiritual thing, though inevitably having some physical expression. I was capable of great devotion to them and sacrifice for them, and I would certainly rather have died than have injured them. The boys got on well with me. I was never weak with them, and I was able to allow all kinds of familiarities without any loss of respect. The older boys usually, out of class, called me by my Christian name, and I remember one writing to ask me whether he might do so, as it made him feel ‘nearer’ to me. A few of the lads I of course loved with special devotion. They kissed me and loved to have me embrace them. One of these was, I now know, pure uranian, and there was in his case certainly some sexual response, but though I often slept with him, when he was a lad of 17 and 18, there was never any idea in our minds of any sexual act. We are still warm friends, and always kiss when we meet. Looking back upon those days, I feel that I was a little inclined to pass on from one love to another, but each was a genuine devotion, and involved real hard work on the lad’s behalf. And I know that where the lad stuck to me into manhood a real tenderness and love remain still.
“While teaching I made the acquaintance of a non-conformist minister, who, though happily married, had certainly some homogenic tendencies. He was most devoted to boys and helped me with regard to some difficult cases. It was the difficult cases that always attracted me. I had to punish these lads and my friend recommended spanking with the hand on the bare buttocks. I mention that I adopted this method, because it might have been thought specially dangerous to me. It certainly never produced in me the remotest suggestion of any sexual act, though it did sometimes produce a slight amount of sexual excitement. I disregarded this, or put it out of my mind, as I found the method most efficacious. It was capable of great variation of intensity, and the boys were always ready to joke about it. I never came across a case where any sexual excitement was produced by it. The boys whom I had to be most ‘down’ on almost always, however, grew fonder of me. There may be a slight and normal masochistic tendency in most boys, and perhaps the erogenic character of the buttocks has something to do with the development of affection. If so, I am inclined to regard it as normal and useful rather than otherwise, for in my experience no undesirable result was ever produced. But then, of course, there was no playing with the business; that might, I am sure, in some cases be decidedly injurious.
“One experience of my schoolmastering days is, I think, important in its bearing upon general sexual psychology. I always noticed that during the term I was specially free from ‘wet dreams.’ What is noteworthy is this: During term there was never anything more than a very partial sexual expression of any feeling of mine, such expression indeed as was wholly inevitable. There was therefore no actual loss of semen, and it seems clear that the ‘wet dreams’ were not due to mere physical pressure. The psychic satisfaction of love in this case made the complete physical expression less urgent. But it was a love of a distinctly tender kind that was needed to keep the physical from obtruding. Of that further experience has made me sure. I am, moreover, now convinced that a mutual uranian love will reach its best results, both spiritual and physical, where there is complete sexual expression.
“Of the character of the sexual dreams I have had, there is not much to be said. During the period of masochistic tendency, they were masochistic in character; otherwise they have been dreams simply of the naked embrace. Usually there has been a considerable element of ideal love in the dream. I have not more than three times at most dreamed of intercourse with one of the opposite sex. There was only in one case anything that I could call actual emotion in such a dream. The other dreams have often (not always) been dreams of real yearning, and not at all what I should call merely sensual.
“In the course of time I wanted more freedom to do things in my own way than could be obtained in a public school. I started a school of my own. The work was for a good many years very happy. I loved the boys, and they loved me. I was active, ardent, and they made a chum of me. But people got into the way of sending me awkward customers. I poured out my love on these, I used myself up for them. Unfortunately (though I was never ‘orthodox’) my Puritanical morality was still strong within me, my views of human psychology were too limited, and I imposed them on the boys. Some were very devoted; but, as years went by and the proportion of mauvais sujets increased, there tended to be a split in the small camp and one or two boys whom I loved deceived me terribly. To a man of my temperament this was heart-rending and from then the work was doomed. Troubles at school went along with troubles at home, and these things contributed to center my affection upon a lad who was with me, and who had given me much trouble. For some reason or other I went on believing that he would get right. Deceit was his great difficulty. He was certainly partly homosexual himself. Looking back I can see that with a wider and more charitable knowledge I could have dealt more wisely and helpfully with certain homosexual episodes of his. I am convinced now that mere sweeping condemnation of the physical is not the wholesome way of help. However, to cut the story short, all seemed at last to go well, and the lad was growing into a young man. Our love deepened, and we always slept together, but quite ascetically. Later, when quite in his young manhood he had left school, there was, unfortunately, misunderstandings with his parents, who forbad him to sleep with me. What followed is of some importance. Up till then, though certainly his affection seemed ardent, I had observed no sexual signs on his part. I had been quite frank with him as to mine. He was then 19, and I thought old enough to have things explained to him. Sleeping with him I had found peaceful and helpful, and more than once he told me that it greatly helped him. But after we were forbidden to sleep together, I found the passion in me more difficult to control, and it suddenly leaped out in him. We were still, however, rather ascetic, though we used to kiss each other, and we used to embrace naked. This produced emission not infrequently with me, but only once with him, though always powerful erection. I would not allow any friction. Perhaps this was a mistake. A more complete expression might have helped him.
“All my life I had been hungry for a complete response, and at one time the lad thought he could give it. He was then nearing 20. ‘I have never been so happy in my life,’ he said. It was a blow to me when I found he had mistaken his own feelings, but I was quite ready to accept what love he could give. I also never dreamed of any sort of insistence on sexual expression. With such love as he could give I was quite ready to make myself content. ‘The true measure of love,’ wrote a uranian schoolmaster to me once, ‘is self-sacrifice’; not ‘What will you give?’ but ‘What will you give up?’ Not ‘What will you do for him?’ but ‘What will you forego for his sake?’ I quote this gladly, for the conventional English moralists regard an invert as a kind of deformed beast. I can only say that I tried to realize the ideal which these words express. No ‘moralist’ would have helped me one whit. The parents, also, separated us. They have done much harm by their mistake. How difficult it is for parents to allow freedom to their children! Their ideal is successful constraint, not free self-discovery. But in spite of them, and in spite of the separation, I know that my friend and I have helped each other.
“There is one fear parents have which I believe is unwarranted. As far as I have seen, I do not conclude that the early expression of homosexual love prevents heterosexual love from developing later. Where this love is a part of the individual’s inborn nature, it will show itself. I do, however, believe that a noble homogenic love in early life will sometimes help a lad to avoid a low standard of heterogenic attachment. The Greeks did well, at their best time, in cultivating and ennobling the homogenic love. Amongst us, as can be understood by all who know the working of society taboos, it is the baser forms that are unhindered, the noblest forms that are debased.
“We urnings are, I think, dependent upon individual love. Many of us, I know, need to work for an individual to do our best. Is this the outcome of the woman in the uranian temperament? And the tragedy of our fate is that we whose souls vibrate only to the touch of the hand of Eros are faced with the fiercest taboo of all that can give our lives meaning. The other taboos have been given up one by one. Will not this, the last of the taboos, soon vanish? I have known lives darkened by it, weakened by it, crushed out by it. How long are the western moralists to maim and brand and persecute where they do not understand?”
The next case belongs to a totally different class from all the preceding histories. These—all British or American—were obtained privately; they are not the inmates of prisons or of asylums, and in most cases they have never consulted a physician concerning their abnormal instincts. They pass through life as ordinary, sometimes as honored, members of society. The following case, which happens to be that of an American, is acquainted with both the prison and the lunatic asylum. There are several points of interest in his history, and he illustrates the way in which sexual inversion can become a matter of medico-legal importance. I think, however, that I am justified in believing that the proportion of sexually inverted persons who reach the police-court or the lunatic asylum is not much larger in proportion to the number of sexually inverted persons among us than it is among my cases. For the documents on which I have founded the history of Guy Olmstead I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Talbot, of Chicago, well known from his studies of abnormalities of the jaws and face, so often associated with nervous and mental abnormality. He knew the man who addressed to him the letters from which I here quote:—
HISTORY XXVI.—On the twenty-eighth of March, 1894, at noon, in the open street in Chicago, Guy T. Olmstead fired a revolver at a letter-carrier named William L. Clifford. He came up from behind, and deliberately fired four shots, the first entering Clifford’s loins, the other three penetrating the back of his head, so that the man fell and was supposed to be fatally wounded. Olmstead made little attempt to escape, as a crowd rushed up with the usual cry of “Lynch him!” but waved his revolver, exclaiming: “I’ll never be taken alive!” and when a police-officer disarmed him: “Don’t take my gun; let me finish what I have to do.” This was evidently an allusion, as will be seen later on, to an intention to destroy himself. He eagerly entered the prison-van, however, to escape the threatening mob.
Olmstead, who was 30 years of age, was born near Danville, Ill., in which city he lived for many years. Both parents were born in Illinois. His father, some twenty years ago, shot and nearly killed a wealthy coal operator, induced to commit the crime, it is said, by a secret organization of a hundred prominent citizens to whom the victim had made himself obnoxious by bringing suits against them for trivial causes. The victim became insane, but the criminal was never punished, and died a few years later at the age of 44. This man had another son who was considered peculiar.
Guy Olmstead began to show signs of sexual perversity at the age of 12. He was seduced (we are led to believe) by a man who occupied the same bedroom. Olmstead’s early history is not clear from the data to hand. It appears that he began his career as a schoolteacher in Connecticut, and that he there married the daughter of a prosperous farmer; but shortly after he “fell in love” with her male cousin, whom he describes as a very handsome young man. This led to a separation from his wife, and he went West.
He was never considered perfectly sane, and from October, 1886, to May, 1889 he was in the Kankakee Insane Asylum. His illness was reported as of three years’ duration, and caused by general ill-health; heredity doubtful, habits good, occupation that of a schoolteacher. His condition was diagnosed as paranoia. On admission he was irritable, alternately excited and depressed. He returned home in good condition.
At this period, and again when examined later, Olmstead’s physical condition is described as, on the whole, normal and fairly good. Height, 5 feet 8 inches; weight, 159 pounds. Special senses normal; genitals abnormally small, with rudimentary penis. His head is asymmetrical, and is full at the occiput, slightly sunken at the bregma, and the forehead is low. His cephalic index is 78. The hair is sandy, and normal in amount over head, face, and body. His eyes are gray, small, and deeply set; the zygomæ are normal. The nose is large and very thin. There is arrested development of upper jaw. The ears are excessively developed and malformed. The face is very much lined, the nasolabial fissure is deeply cut, and there are well-marked horizontal wrinkles on the forehead, so that he looks at least ten years older than his actual age. The upper jaw is of partial V-shape, the lower well developed. The teeth and their tubercles and the alveolar process are normal. The breasts are full. The body is generally well developed; the hands and feet are large.
Olmstead’s history is defective for some years after he left Kankakee. In October, 1892, we hear of him as a letter-carrier in Chicago. During the following summer he developed a passion for William Clifford, a fellow letter-carrier about his own age, also previously a schoolteacher, and regarded as one of the most reliable and efficient men in the service. For a time Clifford seems to have shared this passion, or to have submitted to it, but he quickly ended the relationship and urged his friend to undergo medical treatment, offering to pay the expenses himself. Olmstead continued to write letters of the most passionate description to Clifford, and followed him about constantly until the latter’s life was made miserable. In December, 1893, Clifford placed the letters in the postmaster’s hands, and Olmstead was requested to resign at once. Olmstead complained to the Civil Service Commission at Washington that he had been dismissed without cause, and also applied for reinstatement, but without success.
In the meanwhile, apparently on the advice of friends, he went into hospital, and in the middle of February, 1894, his testicles were removed. No report from the hospital is to hand. The effect of removing the testicles was far from beneficial, and he began to suffer from hysterical melancholia. A little later he went into hospital again. On March 19th he wrote to Dr. Talbot from the Mercy Hospital, Chicago: “I returned to Chicago last Wednesday night, but felt so miserable I concluded to enter a hospital again, and so came to Mercy, which is very good as hospitals go. But I might as well go to Hades as far as any hope of my getting well is concerned. I am utterly incorrigible, utterly incurable, and utterly impossible. At home I thought for a time that I was cured, but I was mistaken, and after seeing Clifford last Thursday I have grown worse than ever so far as my passion for him is concerned. Heaven, only knows how hard I have tried to make a decent creature out of myself, but my vileness is uncontrollable, and I might as well give up and die. I wonder if the doctors knew that after emasculation it was possible for a man to have erections, commit masturbation, and have the same passion as before. I am ashamed of myself; I hate myself; but I can’t help it. I have friends among nice people, play the piano, love music, books, and everything that is beautiful and elevating; yet they can’t elevate me, because this load of inborn vileness drags me down and prevents my perfect enjoyment of anything. Doctors are the only ones who understand and know my helplessness before this monster. I think and work till my brain whirls, and I can scarce refrain from crying out my troubles.” This letter was written a few days before the crime was committed.
When conveyed to the police station Olmstead completely broke down and wept bitterly, crying: “Oh! Will, Will, come to me! Why don’t you kill me and let me go to him!” (At this time he supposed he had killed Clifford.) A letter was found on him, as follows: “Mercy, March 27th. To Him Who Cares to Read: Fearing that my motives in killing Clifford and myself may be misunderstood, I write this to explain the cause of this homicide and suicide. Last summer Clifford and I began a friendship which developed into love.” He then recited the details of the friendship, and continued: “After playing a Liszt rhapsody for Clifford over and over, he said that when our time to die came he hoped we would die together, listening to such glorious music as that. Our time has now come to die, but death will not be accompanied by music. Clifford’s love has, alas! turned to deadly hatred. For some reason Clifford suddenly ended our relations and friendship.” In his cell he behaved in a wildly excited manner, and made several attempts at suicide; so that he had to be closely watched. A few weeks later he wrote to Dr. Talbot: “Cook County Gaol, April 23. I feel as though I had neglected you in not writing you in all this time, though you may not care to hear from me, as I have never done anything but trespass on your kindness. But please do me the justice of thinking that I never expected all this trouble, as I thought Will and I would be in our graves and at peace long before this. But my plans failed miserably. Poor Will was not dead, and I was grabbed before I could shoot myself. I think Will really shot himself, and I feel certain others will think so, too, when the whole story comes out in court. I can’t understand the surprise and indignation my act seemed to engender, as it was perfectly right and natural that Will and I should die together, and nobody else’s business. Do you know I believe that poor boy will yet kill himself, for last November when I in my grief and anger told his relations about our marriage he was so frightened, hurt, and angry that he wanted us both; to kill ourselves. I acquiesced gladly in this proposal to commit suicide, but he backed out in a day or two. I am glad now that Will is alive, and am glad that I am alive, even with the prospect of years of imprisonment before me, but which I will cheerfully endure for his sake. And yet for the last ten months his influence has so completely controlled me, both body and soul, that if I have done right he should have the credit for my good deeds, and if I have done wrong he should be blamed for the mischief, as I have not been myself at all, but a part of him, and happy to merge my individuality into his.”
Olmstead was tried privately in July. No new points were brought out. He was sentenced to the Criminal Insane Asylum. Shortly afterward, while still in the prison at Chicago, he wrote to Dr. Talbot: “As you have been interested in my case from a scientific point of view, there is a little something more I might tell you about myself, but which I have withheld, because I was ashamed to admit certain facts and features of my deplorable weakness. Among the few sexual perverts I have known I have noticed that all are in the habit of often closing the mouth with the lower lip protruding beyond the upper. [Usually due to arrested development of upper jaw.] I noticed the peculiarity in Mr. Clifford before we became intimate, and I have often caught myself at the trick. Before that operation my testicles would swell and become sore and hurt me, and have seemed to do so since, just as a man will sometimes complain that his amputated leg hurts him. Then, too, my breasts would swell, and about the nipples would become hard and sore and red. Since the operation there has never been a day that I have been free from sharp, shooting pains down the abdomen to the scrotum, being worse at the base of the penis. Now that my fate is decided, I will say that really my passion for Mr. Clifford is on the wane, but I don’t know whether the improvement is permanent or not. I have absolutely no passion for other men, and have begun to hope now that I can yet outlive my desire for Clifford, or at least control it. I have not yet told of this improvement in my condition, because I wished people to still think I was insane, so that I would be sure to escape being sent to the penitentiary. I know I was insane at the time I tried to kill both Clifford and myself, and feel that I don’t deserve such a dreadful punishment as being sent to a State prison. However, I think it was that operation and my subsequent illness that caused my insanity rather than passion for Clifford. I should very much like to know if you really consider sexual perversion an insanity.”
When discharged from the Criminal Insane Asylum, Olmstead returned to Chicago and demanded his testicles from the City Postmaster, whom he accused of being in a systematized conspiracy against him. He asserted that the postmaster was one of the chief agents in a plot against him, dating from before the castration. He was then sent to the Cook Insane Hospital. It seems probable that a condition of paranoia is now firmly established.
The following cases are all bisexual, attraction being felt toward both sexes, usually in predominant degree toward the male:—
HISTORY XXVII.—H. C., American, aged 28, of independent means, unmarried, the elder of two children. His history may best be given in his own words:—
“I am on both sides distantly of English ancestry, the first colonists of my name having come to New England in 1630. Both my mother’s and my father’s families have been prolific in soldiers and statesmen; my mother’s contributed one president to the United States. So far as I am aware, none of my antecedents have betrayed mental vagaries, except a maternal uncle, who, from overstudy, became for a year insane.
“I am a graduate of two universities with degrees in arts and medicine. After a year as physician in a hospital, I relinquished medicine altogether, to follow literature, a predilection since early boyhood.
“I awoke to sexual feeling at the age of 7, when, at a small private school, glimpsing bare thighs above the stockings of girl schoolmates, I dimly exulted. This fetishism, as it grew more definite, centered at last upon the thighs and then the whole person of one girl in particular. My first sexually tinged dream was of her—that while she stood near I impinged my penis upon a red-hot anvil and then, in beatific self-immolation, exhibited the charred stump to her wondering, round eyes. This love, however, abated at the coming of a new girl to the school, who, not more beautiful, but more buxom, made stronger appeal to my nascent sexuality. One afternoon, in the loft of her father’s stable, she induced me to disrobe, herself setting the example. The erection our mutual handlings produced on me was without conscious impulse; I felt only a childish curiosity on beholding our genital difference. But the episode started extravagant whimsies, one of which persistently obsessed me: with these obviously compensatory differences, why might not the girl and I effect some sort of copulation? This fantasy, drawn exclusively from that unique experience, charmed with its grotesqueness only, for at that time my sense of sex was but inchoate and my knowledge of it was nothing. The bizarre conceit, submitted to the equally ignorant girl and approved, was borne to the paternal hay-loft and there, with much bungling, brought to surprising and pleasurable consummation.
“In the four ensuing years I repeated the act not seldom with this girl and with others.
“When I was 11 my sister and I were taken by our parents to Europe, where we remained six years, attending school each winter in a different city and, during the summer, travelling in various countries.
“Abroad my lust was glutted to the full: the amenable girl-playmate was ubiquitous, whom I plied with ardor at Swiss hotels, German watering-places, French pensions,—where not? Toward puberty I first repaired at times to prostitutes.
“Masturbation, excepting a few experiments, I never resorted to. Few of my schoolmates avowedly practised it.
“Of homosexuality my sole hearing was through the classics, where, with no long pondering, I opined it merely our modern comradery, poetically aggrandized, masquerading in antique habiliments and phraseology. It never came home to me; it attuned to no tone in the scale of my sympathies; I possessed no touchstone for transmitting the recitals of those ambiguous amours into fiery messages. The relation to my own sex was, intellectually, an occasional friendship devoid of strong affection; physically, a mild antagonism, the naked body of a man was slightly repellant. Statues of women evoked both carnal and esthetic response; of men, no emotions whatever, save a deepening of that native antipathy. Similarly in paintings, in literature, the drama, the men served but as foils for the delicious maidens, who visited my aërial seraglios and lapped me in roseate dreamings.
“In my eighteenth year we returned to America, where I entered the university.
“The course of my love of women was now a little erratic; normal connection began to lose fascination. As long ago I had formulated untutored the rationale of coitus, so now imagination, groping in the dark, conceived a fresh fillip for the appetite—cunnilinctus. But this, though for a while quite adequate, soon ceased to gratify. At this juncture, Christmas of my first college year, I was appointed editor of a small magazine, an early stricture of whose new conduct was paucity of love stories. Such improvident neglect was in keeping with my altering view of women, a view accorded to me by self-dissipation of the glamour through which they had been wont to appear. I had wandered somehow behind the scenes, and beheld, no footlights of sex intervening, the once so radiant fairies resolved into a raddled humanity, as likable as ever, but desirable no longer.
“Soon after this the Oscar Wilde case was bruiting about. The newspaper accounts of it, while illuminating, flashed upon me no light of self-revelation; they only amended some idle conjectures as to certain mystic vices I had heard whispered of. Here and there a newspaper allusion still too recondite was painstakingly clarified by an effeminate fellow-student, who, I fancy now, would have shown no reluctance had I begged him to adduce practical illustration. I purchased, too, photographs of Oscar Wilde, scrutinizing them under the unctuous auspices of this same emasculate and blandiloquent mentor. If my interest in Oscar Wilde arose from any other emotion than the rather morbid curiosity then almost universal, I was not conscious of it.
“Erotic dreams, precluded hitherto by coition, came now to beset me. The persons of these dreams were (and still are) invariably women, with this one remembered exception: I dreamed that Oscar Wilde, one of my photographs of him incarnate, approached me with a buffoon languishment and perpetrated fellatio, an act verbally expounded shortly before by my oracle. For a month or more, recalling this dream disgusted me.
“The few subsequent endeavors, tentative and half-hearted, to repristinate my venery were foredoomed, partly because I had feared they were, to failure: erection was incomplete, ejaculation without pleasure.
“There seemed a fallacy in this behavior. Why coitus without sensual desire for it? No sense of duty impelled me, nor dread of sexual aberration. The explanation is this: attraction to females was not expunged, simply sublimed; my imagination, no longer importing women from observation, created its own delectable sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, petitioned reality in vain. Substance had receded for good now, and soon even these tormenting shadows of it became ever dimmer and dimmer, until they too at length faded into nothingness.
“The antipodes of the sexual sphere turned more and more toward the light of my tolerance. Inversion, till now stained with a slight repugnance, became esthetically colorless at last, and then delicately retinted, at first solely with pity for its victims, but finally, the color deepening, with half-conscious inclination to attach it to myself as a remote contingency. This revolution, however, was not without external impetus. The prejudiced tone of a book I was reading, Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, by prompting resentment, led me on to sympathy. My championing, purely abstract though it was to begin with, none the less involved my looking at things with eyes hypothetically inverted,—an orientation for the sake of argument. After a while, insensibly and at no one moment, hypothesis merged into reality: I myself was inverted. That occasional and fictitious inversion had never, I believe, superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus strong and prolonged enough, as a man awakens when he is loudly called.
“In presenting myself thus sexually transformed, I do not aver having had at the outset any definitive inclination. The instinct so freshly evolved remained for a while obscure. Its primary expression was a feebly sensuous interest in the physical character of boys—in their feminine resemblances especially. To this interest I opposed no discountenance; for wantonness with women under many and diverse conditions having long ago medicined my sexual conscience to lethargy, no access of reasons came to me now for its refreshment. On the other hand, intellectual delight in the promises of the new world, as well as sensuality, conduced to its deliberate exploration. Still, for a year, the yearning settled with true lust upon no object more concrete than youths whose only habitation was my fancy.
“A young surgeon, having read my copy of Psychopathia Sexualis, fell one evening to discussing inverts with such relish that I inquired ingenuously if he himself was one. He colored, whether confirmatively or otherwise I could not guess, in spite of his vehement no. Presently he very subtly recanted his denial. But to his counter-question I maintained my own no, lest he propose some sexual act, a point the esthetics of my developing inversion would not yet concede, the boys of my imagination being still predominant.
“One evening, soon after this, he convoyed me to several of the café’s where inverts are accustomed to foregather. These trysting places were much alike: a long hall, with sparse orchestra at one end, marble-topped tables lining the walls, leaving the floor free for dancing. Round the tables sat boys and youths, Adonises both by art and nature, ready for a drink or a chat with the chance Samaritan, and shyly importunate for the pleasures for which, upstairs, were small rooms to let. One of the boys, supported by the orchestra, sang the ‘Jewel Song’ out of ‘Faust.’ His voice had the limpid, treble purity of a clarinet, and his face the beauty of an angel. The song concluded, we invited him to our table, where he sat sipping neat brandy, as he mockingly encountered my book-begotten queries. The boy-prostitutes gracing these halls, he apprised us, bore fanciful names, some of well-known actresses, others of heroes in fiction, his own being Dorian Gray. Rivals, he complained, had assumed the same appellation, but he was the original Dorian; the others were jealous impostors. His curly hair was golden; his cheeks were pink; his lips, coral red, parted incessantly to reveal the glistening pearliness of his teeth. Yet, though deeming him the beautifulest youth in the world, I experienced no sexual interest either in him or in the other boys, who indeed were all beautiful—beauty was their chief asset. Dorian, further, dilated on the splendor of his female attire, satin corsets, low-cut evening gowns, etc., donned on gala nights to display his gleaming shoulders and dimpled, plump, white arms. Thus arrayed, he bantered, he would bewitch even me, now so impassive, until I should throw myself, in tears of happiness, into his loving embrace.
“My first venture upon fellatio was a month later, with the young surgeon. I confessed the whim to try it, and he acceded. Though this nauseous and fatiguing act, very imperfectly performed, was prompted mostly by curiosity, there arose soon a passional hankering for repetition. In short, appetence for fellatio grew slowly from the night of that mawkish fiasco and waxed eventually into a sovereign want.
“Perhaps miscarriage of that initiatory experiment was due to precipitance, incubation of my perverse instinct being not yet complete. A hiatus of a month now supervened, in which, while further fellatio was not attempted, my mind came always nearer to a reconcilement with the grossness of the act, and began to discover for its creatures some correlation in pretty boys beheld in the flesh. One evening, in Broadway, I conceived suddenly a full-fledged desire for a youth issuing from an hotel as I passed. Our glances met and dwelled together. At a shop-window he first accosted me. He was an invert. With him, in his room at the hotel whence I had seen him emerge, I passed an apocalyptic night. Thereafter commerce with boys only in the spirit ceased to be an end; the images were carnalized, stepped from their framework into the streets. That boy, that god out of the machine, I see him clearly: his brown, curling hair; his eyes blue as the sea; his chest both arched and so plump, his rounded arms, his taper waist, the graceful swell of his hips and full, snowy thighs; I recall as of yesterday the dimples in his knees, the slenderness of his ankles, the softness of his little feet, with insteps pink like the inside of a shell. How I gloated over his ample roundness, his rich undulations!
“In the last eight years I have performed fellatio (never pedicatio) with more than three hundred men and boys. My preference is for boys between 15 and 20, refined, pretty, girlish, and themselves homosexual.
“Personally, barring this love for males, I am in all ways masculine, given to outdoor sports, and to smoking and drinking moderately. In appearance I am but a boy of 18. My face and figure are generally considered beautiful: I am clean-shaved, with black, curling hair, red cheeks and brown eyes; features delicate and regular; body, of medium height, everywhere practically hairless. By years of training I have attained alike great strength and classic proportions, the muscular contours smoothly rounded with adipose tissue. My hands and feet are small. My penis, though perfectly shaped, is rather enormous—erect, ten and a half inches in length, seven and a quarter inches in circumference.
“Some abetment of my apostasy from orthodox methods was, no doubt, this hypertrophy of the penis, which already in my twentieth year had acquired its present redundance, rendering coitus impracticable with most women I essayed and painful where insertion was effected. Since falling heir to inversion, a unique recurrence of normal desire, six years ago, persuaded me to attempt coitus with eleven or twelve prostitutes, and, strangely enough, with much of the old-time salacity and full erection, but, as it chanced, always with too great disparity of parts for success.”
A certain preciosity in the manner of this communication may be put down partly to the nature of the literary avocations with which the writer is by preference occupied, and partly, no doubt more fundamentally, to the special character of his predominantly esthetic temperament and attraction to the exotic. An attraction for exotic experiences will not, however, suffice to account for the rather late development of homosexual tendencies, a late development which may be held to place this case in the retarded group of inverts. H. C. has himself pointed out to me that his aversion to women, beginning to appear in the eighteenth year, was already well pronounced before he had ever heard definitely of specific homosexual acts, and fully a year before he experienced the slightest sexual interest in men or boys. Moreover, while it is true that the actual tendency to homosexual attraction only appeared after he had read Krafft-Ebing and come in contact with inverts, such influences would not suffice to change the sexual nature of a normally constituted man.
It may be added that H. C. is not attracted to normal males. As regards his moral attitude he remarks: “I have no scruples in the indulgence of my passion. I perceive the moral objections advanced, but how speculative they are, and constructive; while, immediately, inversion is the source of so much good.” He looks upon the whole sexual question as largely a matter of taste.
I regard the foregoing case as of considerable interest. It presents what is commonly supposed to be a very common type of inversion, Oscar Wilde being the supreme exemplar, in which a heterosexual person apparently becomes homosexual by the exercise of intellectual curiosity and esthetic interest. In reality the type is far from common; indeed, an intellectual curiosity and an esthetic interest, strong enough even apparently to direct the sexual impulse in any new channel, are themselves far from common. Moreover, a critical reading of this history suggests that the apparent control over the sexual impulse by reason is merely a superficial phenomenon. Here, as ever, reason is but a tool in the hands of the passions. The apparent causes are really the results; we are witnessing the gradual emergence of a retarded homosexual impulse.
HISTORY XXVIII.—English, aged 40, surgeon. Sexual experiences began early, about the age of 10, when a companion induced him to play at intercourse with their sisters. He experienced no pleasure. A little later a servant-girl began to treat him affectionately and at last called him into her bedroom when she was partially undressed, fondled and kissed his member, and taught him to masturbate her. On subsequent occasions she attempted a simulation of intercourse, which gave her satisfaction, but failed to induce emission in him. On returning to school mutual masturbation was practised with schoolfellows, and the first emission took place at the age of 14.
On leaving school he became a slave to the charms of women, and had frequent coitus about the age of 17, but he preferred masturbating girls and especially in persuading girls of good position, to whom the experience was entirely novel, to allow him to take liberties with them. At 25 he became engaged, and mutual masturbation was practised to excess during the engagement; after marriage connection generally took place twice every twenty-four hours until pregnancy.
“At this time,” he writes, “I stayed at the house of an old school-fellow, due of my lovers of old days. There were so many guests that I shared my friend’s bedroom. The sight of his body gave rise to lustful feelings, and when the light was out I stole across to his bed. He made no objection, and we passed the night in mutual masturbation. We passed the next fortnight together, and I never took the same pleasure in coitus with my wife, though I did my duty. She died five years later, and I devoted myself heart and soul to my friend until his death by accident last year. Since then I have lost all interest in life.”
I am indebted for this case to a well-known English alienist, who remarks that the patient is fairly healthy to look at, but with neurasthenia and tendency to melancholia, and neurotic temperament. The body is masculine and pubic hair abundant. One testicle shows wasting.
HISTORIES XXIX AND XXX.—I give the following narrative in the words of an intimate friend of one of the cases in question: “My attention was first drawn to the study of inversion—though I then regarded all forms of it as depraving and abominable—at a public school, where in our dormitory a boy of 15 initiated his select friends into the secrets of mutual masturbation, which he had learned from his brother, a midshipman. I gave no heed to this at the time, though I remembered it in after-years when immersed in Plato, Lucretius, and the Epicurean writers. But my attention was riveted to it at the age of 20, when I spent a holiday with A., a companion with whom I was, and still am, on terms of great friendship. We enjoyed many things in common, studied together and discussed most unconventional matters, but not this. Previously we had always occupied separate sleeping apartments; on this occasion we were abroad in a country place, and were compelled to put up with what we could get. We not only had to share a room, but a bed. I was not surprised at his throwing his arm over me, as I knew he was extraordinarily attached to me, and I had always felt a brute for not returning his affection so warmly. But I was surprised when later I awoke to find him occupied in fellatio and endeavoring to obtain my response. Had it been anyone else I should have resented strongly such a liberty, and our acquaintance would have ended, but I cared for him too well, though never very demonstrative. This episode led to discussion of the topic. He told me that his sexual strength was great, that he had tested it in many ways, and that it was essential to his well-being that he should have satisfaction in some way. He loathed prostitution and considered it degrading; he felt physically attracted to some women and intellectually to others, but the two elements were never combined, and though he had been intimate with a few he felt that it was not right to them, as he could not marry them because he held too high an ideal of marriage. He had always felt attracted to his own sex, and had kept up a Platonic friendship with a college chum, X (to whom I knew he was passionately attached), for some years. Both considered it perfectly moral, and both, felt better for it. Both abhor pedicatio. X., however, would never discuss the subject, and seemed half-ashamed of it. A., on the other hand, though showing a great self-respect in all things else, feels no shame, though he says he would never discuss it except with close friends or if asked for private advice.
“A. is the elder child of a military officer. His parents were 21 and 19, respectively, at the time of his birth. Both parents are healthy, and the two children (both boys) have good constitutions, though the elder has the better. He is of medium height and slender limbs, proud carriage, handsome and intellectual face (classic Greek type), excellent complexion, charming manners, and good temper. The penis is large, the foreskin very short. He is fond of philosophy, natural science, history, and literature. He is reflective and patient rather than smart, but strong-willed and very active when roused, never resting till he has accomplished what he wants, even if this takes years. He sings excellently, and is fond of cycling, boating, swimming, and mountain-climbing. He enjoys excellent health, and has never had a day’s illness since he was 12 years of age. He says the only time he cannot sleep has been when in bed with some one who could not or would not satisfy him. He requires satisfaction at least once a week, twice or thrice in the hot season. He never smokes, nor drinks beer or spirits. He is still single, but believes that marriage would meet all his needs.
“X. is also an oldest child, of young and healthy parents (between 21 and 24 at his birth) of different class; father a builder. He is of pleasing, but not handsome, appearance; very sensitive, very neat, and methodical in all things; not very strong-willed, and very reserved to women. He is of very studious disposition, especially fond of philosophy, politics, and natural science; a good musician. Takes moderate exercise, but rather easily fatigued. Is generally healthy, but not overstrong. He is a vegetarian, and was brought up as a free-thinker. Until two years ago he was never attracted toward a girl; indeed, he disliked girls; but he is now engaged. For about eighteen months, he has relinquished homosexuality, but has suffered from dreams, bad digestion, and peevishness since. He thinks the only remedy is marriage, which he is pushing on. He regards homosexuality as quite natural and normal, though his desires are not strong, and once a fortnight has always satisfied him. He was led to the practice by the reasoning of A., and because he felt a certain vague need, and this comforted him. He thinks it a matter of temperament and not to be discussed, except by scientists. He says he could never perform it except with his dearest friend, whose request he could not resist. He has a long foreskin, flesh like a woman’s, and is well proportioned.
“Both men are ardent for social reform, the one actively, the other passively engaged in it. Both also regard the law as to homosexuality as absurd and demoralizing. They also think that the law prohibiting polygamy is largely the cause of prostitution, as many women are prevented from living honest lives and being cared for by someone, and many men could marry one woman for physical satisfaction and another for intellectual.
“They were devoted to each other when I first knew them; they are still friends, but separated by distance. Both are exceedingly honorable, and the latter is truthful to a fault.”
According to later information X. had married and his homosexual tendencies were almost completely in abeyance, partly, perhaps, owing to the fact that he now lives quietly in the country. A. has surprised his friends by his ardent attachment to a lady of about his own age to whom he has become engaged. He declares that he loves this woman better than any man, but nevertheless he still feels strong passion for his men friends. It is evident that the homosexual tendency in A. is distinctly more pronounced than in his friend X. As is found more often in bisexual than in homosexual persons, he is of predominantly masculine type, possesses great vitality, and desires to exert all his faculties. He has a sound nervous system and is very free from all “nervousness.” He has written a scientific treatise and can study undisturbed amid violent noises. His voice is manly (in singing deep base). He can whistle. He is not vain, though well formed, and his hands are delicate. His favorite color is green. The demonstrative warmth of his affection for his friends is the chief feminine trait noted in him. He rarely dreams and has never had an erotic dream; this he explains by saying (earlier than Freud) that all dreams not caused by physical conditions are wish-dreams, and as he always satisfies his sexual needs at once, with a friend or by masturbation, his sexual needs have no opportunity of affecting his subconscious life.
There may be some doubt as to the classification of the two foregoing cases: they are not personally known to me. The following case, with which I have been acquainted for many years, I regard as clearly a genuine example of bisexuality:—
HISTORY XXXI.—Englishman, independent means, aged 52, married. His ancestry is of a complicated character. Some of his mother’s forefathers in the last and earlier centuries are supposed to have been inverted. He remembers liking the caresses of his father’s footmen when he was quite a little boy. He dreams indifferently about men and women, and has strong sexual feeling for women. Can copulate, but does not insist on this act; there is a tendency to refined, voluptuous pleasure. He has been married for many years, and there are several children by the marriage.
He is not particular about the class or age of the men he loves. He feels with regard to older men as a women does, and likes to be caressed by them. He is immensely vain of his physical beauty; he shuns pedicatio and does not much care for the sexual act, but likes long hours of voluptuous communion during which his lover admires him. He feels the beauty of boyhood. At the same time he is much attracted by young girls.
He is decidedly feminine in his dress, manner of walking, love of scents, ornaments, and fine things. His body is excessively smooth and white, the hips and buttocks rounded. Genital organs normal. His temperament is feminine, especially in vanity, irritability, and petty preoccupations. He is much preoccupied with his personal appearance and fond of admiration; on one occasion he was photographed naked as Bacchus. He is physically and morally courageous. He has a genius for poetry and speculation, with a tendency to mysticism.
He feels the discord between his love for men and society, also between it and his love for his wife. He regards it as, in part, at least, hereditary and inborn in him.
HISTORY XXXII.—C. R., physician; age 38. Nationality, Irish, with a Portuguese strain. “My mother came of an old Quaker family. I was quite unaware of sexual differences until I was about 14, as I was carefully kept separate from my sisters and, although from time to time strange longings which I did not understand possessed me, I was a virgin in thought and deed until that period of life.
“When I was 14 a cousin some years older than myself came to stay with us and shared my bed. To my surprise he took hold of my penis and rubbed it for a time, when a most pleasant feeling seized me and increased until a discharge came out of my organ; he then asked me to do the same to him. We frequently repeated the process during the following month; I was quite unaware of any harm resulting.
“The same year I went to school, but none of my schoolmates for some time even suggested such actions until a friend staying with us for the holidays one day in the bathroom repeated the process and pressed his penis between my thighs, when a similar discharge took place. I shortly found out that several of my school friends and male cousins had the same desires, and an elder brother of my first introducer into sexuality repeatedly spent the night with me, when we would amuse ourselves in a similar way.
“A little later, my mother being away from home, I shared my father’s bed and he took my penis in his hand and pulled my foreskin back. I in return took hold of his and found that he had an erection. I proceeded to rub him when he stopped me and told me that I should not do so, that when I was a little older I should love a woman to do it and that if I did not rub myself and allow other boys to do so, I would enjoy myself much more. I am quite certain that my father was inverted, as he frequently, if sleeping with me, used to press my naked body against his and he always had a strong erection. On one occasion he rubbed me until I had a discharge and then, turning over on his back, made me take his penis in my hand and rub him for a few minutes. I used to jest frequently with my father, as from my seventeenth year my penis was larger than his. I will return to my father a little later. When I was 17 a college friend shared my bed, and when undressing he said that he envied me my penis being so much larger than his; after getting into bed, he asked me to turn on my side and I found that he was attempting pedicatio. I was astonished at his doing so when he informed me that next to a woman this process gave most pleasure. However, nothing resulted and this is the only experience of pedicatio that I have ever had.
“When I was 18 one evening a college chum introduced me to a woman and she was the first I ever had connection with. We went behind some rocks and she took hold of my penis and pressed it into her body, lying against me.
“My father evidently suspected me when I came home, and a few days afterward told me that it was very dangerous to have anything to do with women, that I should wait until I was older, that when a boy became a man he ought to have a woman occasionally, and that if I ever had a nasty disease I should promptly tell him so that I could be properly cured.
“At college I found several chums who were fond of sharing my bed and indulging in mutual masturbation, pressing our bodies together face to face until there was mutual discharge, but never again anyone who tried anal connection.
“A short time afterward I was in Brussels and I paid my first visit to a brothel, a place close to the Cathedral. I picked a girl of about 18 from eight naked beauties paraded for my choice. She was avaricious and demanded 10 francs, I had paid 20 for my room and had only 2 left. I wanted her to play with me, but she only seized the penis and pulled me to her with such vigorous action that I discharged very rapidly. I was so disgusted with the result that I masturbated when I returned to my boarding house.
“A year later I paid Portugal a visit and my friends there frequently brought me to brothels and also introduced me to ladies of easy virtue. I had connection with them; the Portuguese prostitutes never suggested anything unnatural and in no instance did a male approach me for sexual purposes.
“When I became a medical student, I used to visit a Turkish bath frequently; on one occasion I playfully slapped a friend on the buttocks, when my father, who was present, told me not to do so as it was not proper conduct in public, that if I liked to do so to him or one or two others it was no harm in private. Until I was 21, in the bath my father always covered his penis from my view, but after I attained my majority he always exposed himself and repeatedly showed me pictures of naked women; he also taught me the use of the condom.
“In my twenty-fourth year, a tall, handsome man who used to frequent the baths one day sat down beside me and playfully knocked my toes with his; he then pressed his naked thigh against mine and a little later in the cooling room slipped his hand under my sheet and grasped my penis; he then asked me to meet him a few days later in the baths, saying I would be pleased with what he would do.
“I kept the appointment and he took me into the hottest room, where we lay on the floor; in a few minutes he turned on his side and threw one of his legs across me; I got frightened and jumped up; he had a powerful erection, but I refused to lie down again, although he pulled his foreskin back to excite my desires; I was afraid of being surprised by another bather. Twice on future occasions I met this man and he made advances. I believe that I would have yielded then if we had met at a private house.
“Shortly afterward I met an elderly gentleman at the baths who also made advances to me, but from fear I resisted him. I also disliked him as he had a foul breath and bad teeth; besides I was now able to go to the Continent and enjoy female charms to my heart’s desire.
“After qualification I joined the army in South Africa and to my astonishment found many of my comrades fond of male society; one officer who had been wounded shared my bedroom at a military hospital and when undressing frequently admired my penis; we used to play with each other until we had powerful erections, but we never masturbated or tried any unnatural vice.
“I used to have connection with women as frequently as I could, and I frequently visited the Turkish baths and found that several clients were abnormal, including one of the masseurs; the latter enjoyed playing with my penis, kissing and tickling me.
“I married at 28. My married life has been normal and my wife and I are still in love with one another; we have had several children.
“My last sexual experiences have been in Australia; once in Sydney at the baths a fellow-bather playfully began tickling me, when I had an erection; he grasped my penis, I jumped up, and he asked me to do anything that I liked with him. I refused. Once on board a coasting steamer a fellow-passenger used to expose himself, posing as a statue; we became very familiar and he wanted me to spend a night with him. I also refused his offers.
“I am very healthy and strong, fond of riding, fishing, and shooting. I lead a very active life. I am neither musician nor artist, but fond of hearing music and I admire works of art.
“In person I am 6 feet high, inclined to fat; my body is very strong; my penis is six inches long in repose and eight in erection; I can without fatigue discharge twice in the night and have connection at least twice a week. My scrotum is tense and both testicles large. I am rather slow at discharging. I have never had any desire to have connection with any other woman since marriage, but several times I have met men who attracted me. I have a friend (another doctor) who is very familiar with me and if we spend a night together we will play with each other. I have a great desire for him to circumcize me. We have never indulged in anything beyond feeling or pressing our bodies together like schoolboys.
“My favorite color is green.
“My erotic dreams, when I have any, are of my wife or of a male lover.
“Sexual inversion is more widespread than is popularly supposed and I have never had any twinge of conscience after any of my affairs. I regard the homosexual instinct as quite natural, and, except in regard to my wife, it is stronger in my case than the heterosexual instinct. I have never initiated a youth into the sexual life or had any desire to seduce a girl. Boys under 17, or persons of lower social class, have no attraction for me.”
HISTORY XXXIII.—M. O., 30 years of age, born in the United States, of English father and of mother whose father was Scotch,—the rest of his ancestry being English of long standing in America, with a very little admixture of Dutch blood. He is 5 feet 8 inches in height, and has brown hair and eyes. No hereditary troubles so far as known. In childhood, for some time “threatened with chorea.” Is subject to tonsillitis and a stubborn though not severe form of indigestion, induced by sedentary habits. He is of quick, nervous temperament. Has an aversion from most outdoor sports, but a great esthetic attraction to nature. Highly educated.
As far back as he can remember, he lived in a house from which his parents removed when he was 4 years old. Before this removal, he remembers two distinctly sexual experiences. A cousin five years older was in the bathroom, seated, and M. O. was feeling his sexual organs; his mother called him out. On another occasion he was in a wagonhouse with a girl of his own age. They were lying on a carriage-seat attempting intercourse. The girl’s older sister came in and found them. She said: “I am going to tell mamma; you know she said for you not to do that any more.” With each of these clear memories comes the strong impression that it was but one among many. Five years ago M. O. met a man of his own age who had lived in that neighborhood at the same time. Comparing notes, they found that nearly all the small children in it had been given to such practices. The neighborhood was a thoroughly “respectable” middle-class one.
From it, M. O. removed to another of just about the same character, and lived there until he was 11 years old. Of this period his memories are very fresh and abundant. With a single exception, all the children between 5 and 14 years of age appear to have indulged freely in promiscuous sexual play. In little companies of from four to twelve they went where trees or long grass hid them from observation, and exhibited their persons to one another; sometimes, also, they handled one another, but not in the way of masturbation. Of this last, M. O. was wholly ignorant. Sometimes when but two or three were together, intercourse was attempted. In M. O.’s case there was eager sexual curiosity, and a more or less keen desire, but actual contact brought no great satisfaction. On two or three occasions girls practised fellatio, and he then reciprocated with cunnilinctus, but without pleasure. In all these plays he is sure that girls took the initiative as often as boys did.
During all this period, M. O. had now one girl sweetheart and now another. This was conventional among the children, and was fostered by the banter of older persons. M. O.’s sexual curiosity was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex. At this time, however, his homosexual interests appeared. With a boy two or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where they looked at each other’s organs and handled them. He and another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off all their clothes, the better to examine each other. The other boy then offered to kiss M. O.’s fundament, and did so. It caused a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first sexual shock that he can remember experiencing. He refused to reciprocate, however, when asked.
Toward the end of this period there was a new and increasing development of another sort, not recognized then as at all sexual in character. He began to feel toward certain boys in a way very different and much keener than he had done thus far toward girls, although at the time he made no comparisons. For instance there was a boy whom he considered very pretty. They visited each other often and spent long times playing together. In school they looked and looked at each other until delicious, uncontrollable giggling spells came on. Sexual matters were never discussed or thought of. These experiences were, in their way, very sentimental and ideal. M. O. is sure that with himself the main consideration was always the other boy’s beauty. He began to recall with great fondness a certain much older and very handsome youth who had lived near him in the first neighborhood, and had at the time shown him, various little friendly attentions. He seldom saw him now, and hardly sought to do so, yet was immensely pleased by a casual word or look from him in the schoolyard, and much interested when other people spoke of him.
A cousin about two years younger than M. O. often visited him and slept with him. They were very fond of each other, and handled each other’s organs.
When M. O. was about 11 years of age the family removed to a distant neighborhood, where there were almost no children of his own age, and where any association with those in the one just left was practically impossible. From this time until the changes of puberty were well under way his sexual life contrasted strongly, in its solitude, with the former promiscuity. He remembers liking to wrestle with two or three schoolboys and to get their heads between his legs. He thinks they were not aware of his sexual impulses. He flirted, consciously flirted, with certain school-girls, but never even suggested anything sexual to them. He read a few family medical books.
One day, lying on an old uneven couch, innocently enough at first, he induced a new and delicious sensation, altogether different from any he had ever dreamed of—something far beyond the satisfaction of mere curiosity. He repeated the thing and before long produced emissions. Masturbation soon followed. Certain days he would perform the act two or three times, but again he would avoid it for days. He began at once to fight the tendency, and felt very guilty and very ashamed for indulging it. He prayed for help and at times wept over his failures to break the habit so quickly formed. For a certain period, after two or three years, he seemed to have succeeded, but he observed that he had intense erotic dreams with copious emissions regularly every eight days. Just then certain newspaper advertisements fell under his eye, and these persuaded him that he had produced in himself a diseased condition. He never resorted to the remedies advertised, but he was discouraged in his efforts to overcome the bad habit; and since the evil effects appeared to consist only in the seminal losses, he concluded that he might as well have the greater enjoyment of masturbation.
For a short time, he remembers that he had an intense but revolting interest in the sexual organs of animals, especially horses. The males were much more interesting.
Gradually he began to develop, entirely from within, the ideal of a male comrade,—a beautiful, emotional boy between whom and himself there might exist a powerful romantic passion. He lay for hours dreaming of this, and inventing thrilling situations. Suddenly, at church, he became acquainted with the very youth, Edmund, who seemed to satisfy all his longings. M. O. was then 16½ and Edmund 15. A real wooing ensued, Edmund finally yielding to the physical appeals of M. O. after several fits of misgiving. The yielding was in the end complete, however. The two spent night after night together, enjoying intercrural intercourse and sometimes mutual masturbation. Their parents may have been slightly uneasy at times, but the connection continued uninterruptedly for a year and a half or more. In the meantime M. O. occasionally had relations with other boys, but never wavered in his real preference for Edmund. For girls he had no sexual desire whatever, though he was much associated with them.
Then M. O. and Edmund went to college at different places, but they met in vacations and wrote frequent and ardent love-letters. Both had genuine attacks of love-sickness and of jealousy. As M. O. looks back on this first love passion he can by no means regret it. It doubtless had great formative influence.
After the first year at college, Edmund transferred to another school farther away from M. O. and the opportunities for meeting became rarer, but their affection was maintained and the intercourse resumed whenever it was possible. Gradually, however, Edmund became interested in women and finally married. M. O. also formed relations repeatedly with college friends and occasionally with others.
On the whole M. O. preferred boys a year or two younger than himself, but as he grew older the age difference increased. At 30 he regarded himself as virtually “engaged” to a youth of 17, one unusually mature, however, and much larger than himself.
M. O. is always unhappy unless his affections have fairly free course. Life has been very disappointing to him in other respects. His greatest joys have come to him in this way. If he is able to consummate his present plan of union with the youth just referred to, he will feel that his life has been crowned by what is for him the best possible end; otherwise, he declares, he would not care to live at all.
He admires male beauty passionately. Feminine beauty he perceives objectively, as he would any design of flowing curves and delicate coloring, but it has no sexual charm for him whatever. Women have put themselves in his way repeatedly, but he finds himself more and more irritated by their specifically feminine foibles. With men generally he is much more patient and sympathetic.
The first literature that appealed to him was Plato’s dialogues, first read at 20 years of age. Until then he had not known but what he stood alone in his peculiarity. He read what he could of classic literature. He enjoys Pater, appreciating his attitude toward his own sex. Four or five years, later he came across Raffalovich’s book, and ever since has felt a real debt of gratitude to its author.
M. O. has no wish to injure society at large. As an individual he holds that he has the same right to be himself that anyone else has. He thinks that while boys of from 13 to 15 might possibly be rendered inverts, those who reach 16 without it cannot be bent that way. They may be devoted to an invert enough in other ways to yield him what he wishes sexually, but they will remain essentially normal themselves. His observations are based on about 30 homosexual relationships that have lasted various lengths of time.
M. O. feels strongly the poetic and elevated character of his principal homosexual relationships, but he shrinks from appearing too sentimental.
With regard to the traces of feminism in inverts he writes:—
“Up to the age of 11 I associated much with a cousin five years older (the one referred to above) and took great delight in a game we often played, in which I was a girl,—a never-ending romance, a non-sexual love story.
“Somewhat later and until puberty, I took great delight in acting, but generally took female roles, wearing skirts, shawls, beads, wigs, head-dresses. When I was about 13 my family began to make fun of me for it. I played secretly for a while, and then the desire for it left, never to return.
“There still lingers, however, a minor interest, which began before puberty, in valentines. My feeling for them is much like my feeling for flowers.
“Before I reached puberty I was sometimes called a ‘sissy’ by my father. Such taunts humiliated me more than anything else has ever done. After puberty my father no longer applied the term, and gradually other persons ceased to tease me that way. The sting of it lasted, though, and led me more than once to ask intimate friends, both men and women, if they considered me at all feminine. Every one of them has been very emphatically of the opinion that my rational life is distinctively masculine, being logical, impartial, skeptical. One or two have suggested that I have a finer discrimination than most men, and that I take care of my rooms somewhat as a woman might, though this does not extend to the style of decorations. One man said that I lacked sympathy with certain ‘grosser manifestations of masculine character, such as smoking.’ Some women think me unusually observing of women’s dress. My own is by no means effeminate. In a muscular way I have average strength, but am supple far beyond what is usual. If trained for it early, I believe I would have made a good contortionist.
“I have never had the least inclination to use tobacco, generally take neither tea nor coffee, and seldom any liquor, never malt liquors. The dessert is always the best part of the meal. These tastes I attribute largely to my sedentary life. When out camping I observed a marked change in the direction of heartier food and mild stimulants.
“My physical courage has never been put to the test, but I observe that others appear to count on it. I am very aggressive in matters of religious, political, social opinion. In moral courage I am either reckless or courageous, I do not know which.
“I am, perhaps, a better whistler than most men.
“When I was quite little my grandmother taught me to do certain kinds of fancy-work, and I continued to do a little from time to time until I was 24. Then I became irritated over a piece that troubled me, put it in the fire, and have not wanted to touch any since. As a pet economy I continue to do nearly all of my own mending.
“I have a decided aversion for much jewelry. My estheticism is very pronounced as compared with most of the men with whom I associate, although I have never been able to give it much scope. It makes for cleanliness, order, and general good taste. My dress is economical and by no means fastidious; yet it seems to be generally approved. I have been complimented often on my ability to select appropriate presents, clothing, and to arrange a room.”
M. O. states that he practises the love-bite at times, though very gently. He often wants to pinch one who interests him sexually.
He considers very silly the statement somewhere made, that inverts are always liars. Very few people, he says, are perfectly honest, and the more dangerous society makes it for a man to be so, the less likely he is to be. While he himself has been unable in two or three instances to keep promises made to withhold from sexual intercourse with certain attractive individuals, he has never otherwise been guilty of untruth about his homosexual relations.
The foregoing narrative was received eight years ago. During this interval M. O.’s health has very greatly improved. There has been a marked increase in outdoor activities and interests.
Two years since M. O. consulted a prominent specialist who performed a thorough psychoanalysis. He informed M. O. that he was less strongly homosexual than he himself supposed, and recommended marriage with some young and pretty woman. He attributed the homosexual bent to M. O.’s having had his “nose broken” at the age of 6, by the birth of a younger brother, who from that time on received all the attention and petting. M. O. had continued up to that age very affectionate toward his mother and dependent on her. He can remember friends and neighbors commenting on it. At first M. O. was inclined to reject this suggestion of the specialist, but on long reflection he inclines to believe that it was indeed a very important factor, though not the sole one. From his later observations of children and comparisons of these with memories of his own childhood, M. O. says he is sure he was affectionate and demonstrative much beyond the average. His greatest craving was for affection, and his greatest grief the fancied belief that no one cared for him. At 10 or 11 he attempted suicide for this reason.
Also as a result of the psychoanalysis, but trying to eliminate the influence of suggestion, he recollects and emphasizes more the attraction he felt toward girls before the age of 12. Had his sexual experiences subsequently proved normal, he doubts if those before 12 could be held to give evidence of homosexuality, but only of precocious nervous and sexual irritability, greatly heightened and directed by the secret practices of the children with whom he associated. He does not see why these experiences should have given him a homosexual bent any more than a heterosexual one.
The psychoanalysis recalled to M. O. that during the period of early flirtation he had often kissed and embraced various girls, but likewise he recalled having observed at the same time, with some surprise, that no definitely sexual desire arose, though the way was probably open to gratify it. Such interest as did exist ceased wholly or almost so as the relation with Edmund developed. There was no aversion from the company of girls and women, however; the intellectual friendships were mainly with them, while the emotional ones were with boys.
Very recently M. O. spent several days with Edmund, who has been married for several years. With absolutely no sexual interest in each other, they nevertheless found a great bond of love still subsisting. Neither regrets anything of the past, but feels that the final outcome of their earlier relation has been good. Edmund’s beauty is still pronounced, and is remarked by others.
In spite of his precocious sexuality, M. O. had from the very first an extreme disgust for obscene stories, and for any association of sexual things with filthy words and anecdotes. Owing in part to this and in part to his temperamental skepticism, he disbelieved what associates told him regarding sexual emissions, only becoming convinced when he actually experienced them; and the facts of reproduction he denied indignantly until he read them in a medical work. Until he was well over 25 the physical aversion from any thought of reproduction was intense. He knows other, normal, young men who have felt the same way, but he believes it would be prevented or overcome by sex-education such as is now being introduced in American schools.
Again, as to traces of feminism: Perhaps two years ago, all impulse to give the love-bite disappeared suddenly. There has been lately a marked increase of dramatic interest, arising in perfectly natural ways, and without any of the peculiarities noted before. The childish pleasure in valentines has all gone; M. O. believes that circumstances have lately been more favorable for the development of a more robust estheticism.
For some years he has heard no definite reproach for feminism, though some persons tell his friends that he is “very peculiar.” He forms many intimate, enduring, non-sexual friendships with both men and women, and he doubts if the peculiarity noted by others is due so much to his homosexuality as it is to his estheticism, skepticism, and the unconventional opinions which he expresses quite indiscreetly at times. With the improvement in general health, has come the changes that would be expected in food and other matters of daily life.
Resuming his narrative at the point where the earlier communication left it, M. O. says that about a year after that time, the youth of 17 to whom he had considered himself virtually engaged withdrew from the agreement so far as it bore on his own future, but not from the sentimental relation as it existed. Although separated most of the time by distance, the physical relation was resumed whenever they met. Subsequently, however, the young man fell in love with a young woman and became engaged to her. His physical relation with M. O. then ceased, but the friendship otherwise continues strong.
Shortly after the first break in this relation, M. O. became, through the force of quite unusual circumstances, very friendly and intimate with a young woman of considerable charm. He confided to her his abnormality, and was not repulsed. To others their relation probably appeared that of lovers, and a painful situation was created by the slander of a jealous woman. M. O. felt that in honor he must propose marriage to her. The young woman was non-committal, but invited M. O. to spend several months at her home. Shortly after his arrival a sad occurrence in his own family compelled him to go away, and they did not meet again for four years. They corresponded, but less and less often. His relations with boys continued.
Before his final meeting with her he became acquainted with a woman whom he has since married. The acquaintance began in a wholly non-sentimental community of interests in certain practical affairs, and very gradually widened into an intellectual and sympathetic friendship. M. O. had no secrets from this woman. After a full and prolonged consideration of all sides of the matter they married. Since that event he has had no sexual relations except with his wife. With her they are not passionate, but they are animated by the strong desire for children. Of the parental instinct he had become aware several years before this.
M. O. believes that no moral stigma should be attached to homosexuality until it can be proved to result from the vicious life of a free moral agent,—and of this he has no expectation. He believes that much of its danger and unhappiness would be prevented by a thorough yet discreet sex-education, such as should be given to all children, whether normal or abnormal.
4. Sexual Inversion In Women
Prevalence of Sexual Inversion Among Women—Among Women of Ability—Among the Lower Races—Temporary Homosexuality in Schools, etc.—Histories—Physical and Psychic Characteristics of Inverted Women—The Modern Development of Homosexuality Among Women.
Homosexuality is not less common in women than in men. In the seriocomic theory of sex set forth by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, males and females are placed on a footing of complete equality, and, however fantastic, the theory suffices to indicate that to the Greek mind, so familiar with homosexuality, its manifestations seemed just as likely to occur in women as in men. That is undoubtedly the case. Like other anomalies, indeed, in its more pronounced forms it may be less frequently met with in women; in its less pronounced forms, almost certainly, it is more frequently found. A Catholic confessor, a friend tells me, informed him that for one man who acknowledges homosexual practices there are three women. For the most part feminine homosexuality runs everywhere a parallel course to masculine homosexuality and is found under the same conditions. It is as common in girls as in boys; it has been found, under certain conditions, to abound among women in colleges and convents and prisons, as well as under the ordinary conditions of society. Perhaps the earliest case of homosexuality recorded in detail occurred in a woman,[51] and it was with the investigation of such a case in a woman that Westphal may be said to have inaugurated the scientific study of inversion.
Moreover, inversion is as likely to be accompanied by high intellectual ability in a woman as in a man. The importance of a clear conception of inversion is indeed in some respects, under present social conditions, really even greater in the case of women than of men. For if, as has sometimes been said of our civilization, “this is a man’s world,” the large proportion of able women inverts, whose masculine qualities render it comparatively easy for them to adopt masculine avocations, becomes a highly significant fact.
It has been noted of distinguished women in all ages and in all fields of activity that they have frequently displayed some masculine traits.[52] Even “the first great woman in history,” as she has been called by a historian of Egypt, Queen Hatschepsu, was clearly of markedly virile temperament, and always had herself represented on her monuments in masculine costume, and even with a false beard.[53] Other famous queens have on more or less satisfactory grounds been suspected of a homosexual temperament, such as Catherine II of Russia, who appears to have been bisexual, and Queen Christina of Sweden, whose very marked masculine traits and high intelligence seem to have been combined with a definitely homosexual or bisexual temperament.[54]
Great religious and moral leaders, like Madame Blavatsky and Louise Michel, have been either homosexual or bisexual or, at least, of pronounced masculine temperament. Great actresses from the eighteenth century onward have frequently been more or less correctly identified with homosexuality, as also many women distinguished in other arts.[55] Above all, Sappho, the greatest of women poets, the peer of the greatest poets of the other sex in the supreme power of uniting art and passion, has left a name which is permanently associated with homosexuality.
It can scarcely be said that opinion is unanimous in regard to Sappho, and the reliable information about her, outside the evidence of the fragments of her poems which have reached us, is scanty. Her fame has always been great; in classic times her name was coupled with Homer’s. But even to antiquity she was somewhat of an enigma, and many legends grew up around her name, such as the familiar story that she threw herself into the sea for the love of Phaon. What remains clear is that she was regarded with great respect and admiration by her contemporaries, that she was of aristocratic family, that she was probably married and had a daughter, that at one time she had to take her part in political exile, and that she addressed her girl friends in precisely similar terms to those addressed by Alcaeus to youths. We know that in antiquity feminine homosexuality was regarded as especially common in Sparta, Lesbos, and Miletus. Horace, who was able to read Sappho’s complete poems, states that the objects of her love-plaints were the young girls of Lesbos, while Ovid, who played so considerable a part in weaving fantastic stories round Sappho’s name, never claimed that they had any basis of truth. It was inevitable that the early Christians should eagerly attack so ambiguous a figure, and Tatian (Oratio ad Graecos, cap. 52) reproached the Greeks that they honored statues of the tribade Sappho, a prostitute who had celebrated her own wantonness and infatuation. The result is that in modern times there have been some who placed Sappho’s character in a very bad light and others who have gone to the opposite extreme in an attempt at “rehabilitation.” Thus, W. Mure, in his History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (1854, vol. iii, pp. 272-326, 496-8), dealing very fully with Sappho, is disposed to accept many of the worst stories about her, though he has no pronounced animus, and, as regards female homosexuality, which he considers to be “far more venial” than male homosexuality, he remarks that “in modern times it has numbered among its votaries females distinguished for refinement of manners and elegant accomplishments.” Bascoul, on the other hand, will accept no statements about Sappho which conflict with modern ideals of complete respectability, and even seeks to rewrite her most famous ode in accordance with the colorless literary sense which he supposes that it originally bore (J. M. F. Bascoul, La Chaste Sappho et le Mouvement Feministe à Athènes, 1911). Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Sappho und Simonides, 1913) also represents the antiquated view, formerly championed by Welcker, according to which the attribution of homosexuality is a charge of “vice,” to be repudiated with indignation. Most competent and reliable authorities today, however, while rejecting the accretions of legend around Sappho’s name and not disputing her claim to respect, are not disposed to question the personal and homosexual character of her poems. “All ancient tradition and the character of her extant fragments,” says Prof. J. A. Platt (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th. ed., art. “Sappho”), “show that her morality was what has ever since been known as ‘Lesbian.’” What exactly that “Lesbian morality” involved, we cannot indeed exactly ascertain. “It is altogether idle,” as A. Croiset remarks of Sappho (Histoire de la Littérature Grecque, vol. ii, ch. v), “to discuss the exact quality of this friendship or this love, or to seek to determine with precision the frontiers, which language itself often seems to seek to confuse, of a friendship more or less esthetic and sensual, of a love more or less Platonic.” (See also J. M. Edmonds, Sappho in the Added Light of the New Fragments, 1912). Iwan Bloch similarly concludes (Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, 1911, p. 507) that Sappho probably combined, as modern investigation shows to be easily possible, lofty ideal feelings with passionate sensuality, exactly as happens in normal love.
It must also be said that in literature homosexuality in women has furnished a much more frequent motive to the artist than homosexuality in men. Among the Greeks, indeed, homosexuality in women seldom receives literary consecration, and in the revival of the classical spirit at the Renaissance it was still chiefly in male adolescents, as we see, for instance, in Marino’s Adone, that the homosexual ideal found expression. After that date male inversion was for a long period rarely touched in literature, save briefly and satirically, while inversion in women becomes a subject which might be treated in detail and even with complacence. Many poets and novelists, especially in France, might be cited in evidence.
Ariosto, it has been pointed out, has described the homosexual attractions of women. Diderot’s famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. Diderot’s narrative has been described as a faithful description of the homosexual phenomena liable to occur in convents. Feminine homosexuality, especially in convents, was often touched on less seriously in the eighteenth century. Thus we find a homosexual scene in Les Plaisirs du Cloître, a play written in 1773 (Le Théâtre d’Amour an XVIIIe Siècle, 1910.) Balzac, who treated so many psychological aspects of love in a more or less veiled manner, has touched on this in La Fille aux Yeux d’Or, in a vague and extravagantly romantic fashion. Gautier made the adventures of a woman who was predisposed to homosexuality, and slowly realizes the fact, the central motive of his wonderful romance, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). He approached the subject purely as an artist and poet, but his handling of it shows remarkable insight. Gautier based his romance to some extent on the life of Madame Maupin or, as she preferred to call herself, Mademoiselle Maupin, who was born in 1673 (her father’s name being d’Aubigny), dressed as a man, and became famous as a teacher of fencing, afterward as an opera singer. She was apparently of bisexual temperament, and her devotion to women led her into various adventures. She ultimately entered a convent, and died, at the age of 34, with a reputation for sanctity. (E. C. Clayton, Queens of Song, vol. i, pp, 52-61; F. Karsch, “Mademoiselle Maupin,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, pp. 694-706.) A still greater writer, Flaubert, in Salammbô (1862) made his heroine homosexual. Zola has described sexual inversion in Nona and elsewhere. Some thirty years ago a popular novelist, A. Belot, published a novel called Mademoiselle Giraud, ma Femme, which was much read; the novelist took the attitude of a moralist who is bound to treat frankly, but with all decorous propriety, a subject of increasing social gravity. The story is that of a man whose bride will not allow his approach on account of her own liaison with a female friend continued after marriage. This book appears to have given origin to a large number of novels, some of which touched the question with considerable less affectation of propriety. Among other novelists who have dealt with the matter may be mentioned Guy de Maupassant (La Femme de Paul), Bourget (Crime d’Amour), Catulle Mendès (Méphistophéla), and Willy in the Claudine series.
Among poets who have used the motive of homosexuality in women with more or less boldness may be found Lamartine (Regina), Swinburne (first series of Poems and Ballads), Verlaine (Parallèlement), and Pierre Louys (Chansons de Bilitis). The last-named book, a collection of homosexual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered Oriental Greek poetess; Bilitis (more usually Beltis) is the Syrian name for Aphrodite. Les Chansons de Bilitis are not without charm, but have been severely dealt with by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Sappho und Simonides, 1913, p. 63 et seq.) as “a travesty of Hellenism,” betraying inadequate knowledge of Greek antiquity.
More interesting, as the work of a woman who was not only highly gifted, but herself of homosexual temperament, are the various volumes of poems published by “Renée Vivien.” This lady, whose real name was Pauline Tarn, was born in 1877; her father was of Scotch descent, and her mother an American lady from Honolulu. As a child she was taken to Paris, and was brought up as a French girl. She travelled much and at one time took a house at Mitylene, the chief city of ancient Lesbos. She had a love of solitude, hated publicity, and was devoted to her women friends, especially to one whose early death about 1900 was the great sorrow of Pauline Tarn’s life. She is described as very beautiful, very simple and sweet-natured, and highly accomplished in many directions. She suffered, however, from nervous overtension and incurable melancholy. Toward the close of her life she was converted to Catholicism and died in 1909, at the age of 32. She is buried in the cemetery at Passy. Her best verse is by some considered among the finest in the French language. (Charles Brun, “Pauline Tarn,” Notes and Queries, 22 Aug., 1914; the same writer, who knew her well, has also written a pamphlet, Renée Vivien, Sansot, Paris, 1911.) Her chief volumes of poems are Etudes et Preludes (1901), Cendres et Poussières (1902), Evocations (1903). A novel, Une Femme M’Apparut (1904), is said to be to some extent autobiographical. “Renée Vivien” also wrote a volume on Sappho with translations, and a further volume of poems, Les Kitharèdes, suggested by the fragments which remain of the minor women poets of Greece, followers of Sappho.
It is, moreover, noteworthy that a remarkably large proportion of the cases in which homosexuality has led to crimes of violence, or otherwise come under medico-legal observation, has been among women. It is well know that the part taken by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes of violence, is small as compared with men.[56] In the homosexual field, as we might have anticipated, the conditions are to some extent reversed. Inverted men, in whom a more or less feminine temperament is so often found, are rarely impelled to acts of aggressive violence, though they frequently commit suicide. Inverted women, who may retain their feminine emotionality combined with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy, present a favorable soil for the seeds of passional crime, under those conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter into the invert’s life.
The first conspicuous example of this tendency in recent times is the Memphis case (1892) in the United States. (Arthur Macdonald, “Observation de Sexualité Pathologique Feminine,” Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, May, 1895; see also Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, Eng. trans, of 10th ed., p. 550.) In this case a congenital sexual invert, Alice Mitchell, planned a marriage with Freda Ward, taking a male-name and costume. This scheme was frustrated by Freda’s sister, and Alice Mitchell then cut Freda’s throat. There is no reason to suppose that she was insane at the time of the murder. She was a typical invert of a very pronounced kind. Her mother had been insane and had homicidal impulses. She herself was considered unbalanced, and was masculine in her habits from her earliest years. Her face was obviously unsymmetrical and she had an appearance of youthfulness below her age. She was not vicious, and had little knowledge of sexual matters, but when she kissed Freda she was ashamed of being seen, while Freda could see no reason for being ashamed. She was adjudged insane.
There have been numerous cases in America more recently. One case (for some details concerning which I am indebted to Dr. J. G. Kiernan, of Chicago) is that of the “Tiller Sisters,” two quintroons, who for many years had acted together under that name in cheap theaters. One, who was an invert, with a horror of men dating from early girlhood, was sexually attached to the other, who was without inborn inversion, and was eventually induced by a man to leave the invert. The latter, overcome by jealousy, broke into the apartment of the couple and shot the man dead. She was tried, and sent to prison for life. A defense of insanity was made, but for this there was no evidence. In another case, also occurring in Chicago (reported in Medicine, June, 1899, and Alienist and Neurologist, October, 1899), a trained nurse lived for fourteen years with a young woman who left her on four different occasions, but was each time induced to return; finally, however, she left and married, whereupon the nurse shot the husband, who was not, however, fatally wounded. The culprit in this case had been twice married, but had not lived with either of her husbands; it was stated that her mother had died in an asylum, and that her brother had committed suicide. She was charged with disorderly conduct, and subjected to a fine.
In another later case in Chicago a Russian girl of 22, named Anna Rubinowitch, shot from motives of jealousy another Russian girl to whom she had been devoted from childhood, and then fatally shot herself. The relations between the two girls had been very intimate. “Our love affair is one purely of the soul,” Anna Rubinowitch was accustomed to say; “we love each other on a higher plane than that of earth.” (I am informed that there were in fact physical relationships; the sexual organs were normal.) This continued, with great devotion on each side, until Anna’s “sweetheart” began to show herself susceptible to the advances of a male wooer. This aroused uncontrollable jealousy in Anna, whose father, it may be noted, had committed suicide by shooting some years previously.
Homosexual relationships are also a cause of suicide among women. Such a case was reported in Massachusetts early in 1901. A girl of 21 had been tended during a period of nervous prostration, apparently of hysterical nature, by a friend and neighbor, fourteen years her senior, married and having children. An intimate friendship grew up, equally ardent on both sides. The mother of the younger woman and the husband of the other took measures to put a stop to the intimacy, and the girl was sent away to a distant city; stolen interviews, however, still occurred. Finally, when the obstacles became insurmountable, the younger woman bought a revolver and deliberately shot herself in the temple, in presence of her mother, dying immediately. Though sometimes thought to act rather strangely, she was a great favorite with all, handsome, very athletic, fond of all outdoor sports, an energetic religious worker, possessing a fine voice, and was an active member of many clubs and societies. The older woman belonged to an aristocratic family and was loved and respected by all. In another case in New York in 1905 a retired sailor, “Captain John Weed,” who had commanded transatlantic vessels for many years, was admitted to a Home for old sailors and shortly after became ill and despondent, and cut his throat. It was then found that “Captain Weed” was really a woman. I am informed that the old sailor’s despondency and suicide were due to enforced separation from a female companion.
The infatuation of young girls for actresses and other prominent women may occasionally lead to suicide. Thus in Philadelphia, a few years ago, a girl of 19, belonging to a very wealthy family, beautiful and highly educated, acquired an absorbing infatuation for Miss Mary Garden, the prima donna, with whom she had no personal acquaintance. The young girl would kneel in worship before the singer’s portrait, and studied hairdressing and manicuring in the hope of becoming Miss Garden’s maid. When she realized that her dream was hopeless she shot herself with a revolver. (Cases more or less resembling those here brought forward occur from time to time in all parts of the civilized world. Reports, mostly from current newspapers, of such cases, as well as of simple transvestism, or Eonism, in both women and men, will be found in the publications of the Berlin Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitee: the Monatsberichte up to 1909, then in the Vierteljahrsberichte, and from 1913 onward in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen.)
Yet, until recently, comparatively little has been known of sexual inversion in women. Even so lately as 1901 (after the publication of the first edition of the present Study), Krafft-Ebing wrote that scarcely fifty cases had been recorded. The chief monographs devoted but little space to women.
Krafft-Ebing himself, in the earlier editions of Psychopathia Sexualis, gave little special attention to inversion in women, although he published a few cases. Moll, however, included a valuable chapter on the subject in his Konträre Sexualempfindung, narrating numerous cases, and inversion in women also received special attention in the present Study. Hirschfeld, however, in his Homosexualität (1914) is the first authority who has been able to deal with feminine homosexuality as completely co-ordinate with masculine homosexuality. The two manifestations, masculine and feminine, are placed on the same basis and treated together throughout the work.
It is, no doubt, not difficult to account for this retardation in the investigation of sexual inversion in women. Notwithstanding the severity with which homosexuality in women has been visited in a few cases, for the most part men seem to have been indifferent toward it; when it has been made a crime or a cause for divorce in men, it has usually been considered as no offense at all in women.[57] Another reason is that it is less easy to detect in women; we are accustomed to a much greater familiarity and intimacy between women than between men, and we are less apt to suspect the existence of any abnormal passion. And, allied with this cause, we have also to bear in mind the extreme ignorance and the extreme reticence of women regarding any abnormal or even normal manifestation of their sexual life. A woman may feel a high degree of sexual attraction for another woman without realizing that her affection is sexual, and when she does realize this, she is nearly always very unwilling to reveal the nature of her intimate experience, even with the adoption of precautions, and although the fact may be present to her that, by helping to reveal the nature of her abnormality, she may be helping to lighten the burden of it on other women. Among the numerous confessions voluntarily sent to Krafft-Ebing there is not one by a woman. There is, again, the further reason that well-marked and fully developed cases of inversion are probably rarer in women, though a slighter degree may be more common; in harmony with the greater affectability of the feminine organism to slight stimuli, and its lesser liability to serious variation.
The same aberrations that are found among men are, however, everywhere found among women. Feminine inversion has sometimes been regarded as a vice of modern refined civilization. Yet it was familiar to the Anglo-Saxons, and Theodore’s Penitential in the seventh century assigned a penance of three years (considerably less than that assigned to men, or for bestiality) to “a woman fornicating with a woman.” Among the women of savages in all parts of the world homosexuality is found, though it is less frequently recorded than among men.
In New Zealand it is stated on the authority of Moerenhout (though I have not been able to find the reference) that the women practised Lesbianism. In South America, where inversion is common among men, we find similar phenomena in women. Among Brazilian tribes Gandavo wrote:—
“There are certain women among these Indians who determine to be chaste and know no man. These leave every womanly occupation and imitate the men. They wear their hair the same way as the men; they go to war with them or hunting, bearing their bows; they continue always in the company of men, and each has a woman who serves her and with whom she lives.”
This has some analogy with the phenomena seen among North American men. Dr. Holder, who has carefully studied the boté, tells me that he has met no corresponding phenomena in women.
There is no doubt, however, that homosexuality among women is well known to the American Indians in various regions. Thus the Salish Indians of British Columbia have a myth of an old woman who had intercourse with a young woman by means of a horn used as a penis. In the mythology of the Assiniboine Indians (of Canada and Montana) and the Fox Indians (of Iowa) there are also legends of feminine homosexuality, supposed to have been derived from the Algonkin Cree Indians, who were closely connected with both.
According to the Assiniboine legend, a man’s wife fell in love with his sister and eloped with her, a boneless child being the result of the union; the husband pursued the couple, and killed his wife as well as the child; no one cared to avenge her death. The Fox legend, entitled “Two Maidens who Played the Harlot with Each Other,” runs as follows: “It is said that once on a time long ago there were two young women who were friends together. It is told that there were also two youths who tried to woo the two maidens, but they were not able even so much as to talk with them. After awhile the youths began to suspect something wrong. So once during the summer, when the two maidens started away to peel off bark, the youths followed, staying just far enough behind to keep them in sight. While the girls were peeling the bark, the youths kept themselves hidden. After awhile they no longer heard the sound of the maidens at work. Whereupon they began to creep up to where they were. When they drew nigh, behold, the maidens were in the act of taking off their clothes. The first to disrobe flung herself down on the ground and lay there. ‘Pray, what are these girls going to do?’ was the feeling in the hearts of the youths. And to their amazement the girls began to lie with each other. Thereupon the youths ran to where the girls were. She who was lying on top instantly fell over backward. Her clitoris was standing out and had a queer shape; it was like a turtle’s penis. Thereupon the maidens began to plead with the youths: ‘Oh, don’t tell on us!’ they said. ‘Truly it is not of our own free desire that we have done this thing We have done it under the influence of some unknown being.’ It is said that afterward one of the maidens became big with child. In the course of time, she gave birth, and the child was like a soft-shell turtle.”
In Bali, according to Jacobs (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels), homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is more secretly exercised; the methods of gratification adopted are either digital or lingual, or else by bringing the parts together (tribadism).
Baumann, who noted inversion among the male negro population of Zanzibar, finds that it is also not rare among women. Although Oriental manners render it impossible for such women to wear men’s clothes openly, they do so in private, and are recognized by other women by their man-like bearing, as also by the fact that women’s garments do not suit them. They show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclinations, or else among normal women, who are won over by presents or other means. In addition to tribadism or cunnilinctus, they sometimes use an ebony or ivory phallus, with a kind of glans at one end, or sometimes at both ends; in the latter case it can be used by two women at once, and sometimes it has a hole bored through it by which warm water can be injected; it is regarded as an Arab invention, and is sometimes used by normal women shut up in harems, and practically deprived of sexual satisfaction.
Among the Arab women, according to Kocher, homosexual practices are rare, though very common among Arab men. In Egypt, however, according to Godard, Kocher, and others, it is almost fashionable, and every woman in the harem has a “friend.” In Turkey homosexuality is sometimes said to be rare among women. But it would appear to be found in the harems and women’s baths of Turkey, as well as of Islam generally. Brantôme in the sixteenth century referred to the Lesbianism of Turkish women at the baths, and Leo Africanus in the same century mentioned the tribadism of Moorish women and the formal organization of tribadic prostitution in Fez. There was an Osmanli Sapphic poetess, Mihiri, whose grave is at Amasia, and Vambery and Achestorides agree as to the prevalence of feminine homosexuality in Turkey. Among the negroes and mulattoes of French creole countries, according to Corre, homosexuality is very common. “I know a lady of great beauty,” he remarks, “a stranger in Guadalupe and the mother of a family, who is obliged to stay away from the markets and certain shops because of the excessive admiration of mulatto women and negresses, and the impudent invitations which they dare to address to her.” He refers to several cases of more or less violent sexual attempts by women on young colored girls of 12 or 14, and observes that such attempts by men on children of their own sex are much rarer.
In China (according to Matignon) and in Cochin China (according to Lorion) homosexuality does not appear to be common among women. In India, however, it is probably as prevalent among women as it certainly is among men.
In the first edition of this Study I quoted the opinion of Dr. Buchanan, then Superintendant of the Central Gaol of Bengal at Bhagalpur, who informed me that he had never come across a case and that his head-gaoler had never heard of such a thing in twenty-five years’ experience. Another officer in the Indian Medical Service assures me, however, that there cannot be the least doubt as to the frequency of homosexuality among women in India, either inside or outside gaols. I am indebted to him for the following notes on this point:—
“That homosexual relationships are common enough among Indian women is evidenced by the fact that the Hindustani language has five words to denote the tribade: (1) dúgáná, (2) zanàkhé, (3) sa’tar, (4) chapathái, and (5) chapatbáz. The modus operandi is generally what Martial calls geminos committere cunnos, but sometimes a phallus, called saburah, is employed. The act itself is called chapat or chapti, and the Hindustani poets, Nazir, Rangin, Ján S’áheb, treat of Lesbian love very extensively and sometimes very crudely. Ján S’áheb, a woman poet, sings to the effect that intercourse with a woman by means of a phallus is to be preferred to the satisfaction offered by a male lover. The common euphemism employed when speaking of two tribades who live together is that they ‘live apart.’ So much for the literary evidence as to the prevalence of what, mirable dictu, Dr. Buchanan’s gaoler was ignorant of.
“Now for facts. In the gaol of R. the superintendent discovered a number of phalli in the females’ inclosure; they were made of clay and sun-dried and bore marks of use. In the gaol of S. was a woman who (as is usual with tribades in India) wore male attire, and was well known for her sexual proclivities. An examination revealed the following: Face much lined, mammæ of masculine type, but nipples elongated and readily erectile; gluteal and iliac regions quite of masculine type, as also the thighs; clitoris, with enlarged glands, readily erectile; nymphæ thickened and enlarged; vulvar orifice patent, for she had in early youth been a prostitute; the voice was almost contralto. Her partner was of low type, but eminently feminine in configuration and manner. In this case I heard that ‘the man’ went to a local ascetic and begged his intercession with the deity, so that she might impregnate her partner. (‘The Hindoo medical works mention the possibility of a woman uniting with another woman in sexual embraces and begetting a boneless fetus.’ Short History of Aryan Medical Science, p. 44.)
“In the town of D. there ‘lived apart’ two women, one a Brahmin, the other a grazier; their modus operandi was tribadism, as an eyewitness informed me. In S. I was called in to treat the widow of a wealthy Mohammedan; I had occasion to examine the pudenda, and found what Martineau would have called the indelible stigmata of early masturbation and later sapphism. She admitted the impeachment and confessed that she was on the best of terms with her three remarkably well-formed and good-looking handmaidens. This lady said that she began masturbation at an early age, ‘just like all other women,’ and that sapphism came after the age of puberty. Another Mohammedan woman whom I knew, and who had a very large clitoris, told me that she had been initiated into Lesbian love at 12 by a neighbor and had intermittently practised it ever since. I might also instance two sisters of the gardener caste, both widows, who ‘lived apart’ and indulged in simultaneous sapphism.
“That sometimes the actors in tribadism are most vigorous is shown by the fact that, in the central gaol of ——, swelling of the vulva was admitted to have been caused by the embraces of two female convicts. The subordinate who told me this mentioned it quite incidentally while relating his experiences as hospital assistant at this gaol. When I questioned him he stated that the woman, whom he was called to treat, told him that she could never ‘satisfy herself’ with men, but only with women. He added that tribadism was ‘quite common in the gaol.’”
The foregoing sketch may serve to show that homosexual practices certainly, and probably definite sexual inversion, are very widespread among women in very many and various parts of the world, though it is likely that, as among men, there are variations—geographical, racial, national, or social—in the frequency or intensity of its obvious manifestations. Thus, in the eighteenth century, Casanova remarked that the women of Provence are specially inclined to Lesbianism.
In European prisons homosexual practices flourish among the women fully as much, it may probably be said, as among the men. There is, indeed, some reason for supposing that these phenomena are here sometimes even more decisively marked than among men.[58] This prevalence of homosexuality among women in prison is connected with the close relationship between feminine criminality and prostitution.
The frequency of homosexual practices among prostitutes is a fact of some interest, and calls for special explanation, for, at the first glance, it seems in opposition to all that we know concerning the exciting causes of homosexuality. Regarding the fact there can be no question.[59] It has been noted by all who are acquainted with the lives of prostitutes, though opinion may differ as to its frequency. In Berlin, Moll was told in well-informed quarters, the proportion of prostitutes with Lesbian tendencies is about 25 per cent. This was almost the proportion at Paris many years ago, according to Parent-Duchâtelet; today, according to Chevalier, it is larger; and Bourneville believes that 75 per cent, of the inmates of the Parisian venereal hospitals have practised homosexuality. Hammer in Germany has found among 66 prostitutes that 41 were homosexual.[60] Hirschfeld thinks that inverted women are specially prone to become prostitutes. Eulenburg believes, on the other hand, that the conditions of their life favor homosexuality among prostitutes; “a homosexual union seems to them higher, purer, more innocent, and more ideal.” There is, however, no fundamental contradiction between these two views; they are probably both right.
In London, so far as my inquiries extend, homosexuality among prostitutes is very much less prevalent, and in a well-marked form is confined to a comparatively small section. I am indebted to a friend for the following note: “From my experience of the Parisian prostitute, I gather that Lesbianism in Paris is extremely prevalent; indeed, one might almost say normal. In particular, most of the chahut-dancers of the Moulin-Rouge, Casino de Paris, and the other public balls are notorious for going in couples, and, for the most part, they prefer not to be separated, even in their most professional moments with the other sex. In London the thing is, naturally, much less obvious, and, I think, much less prevalent; but it is certainly not infrequent. A certain number of well-known prostitutes are known for their tendencies in this direction, which do not, however, interfere in any marked way with the ordinary details of their profession. I do not personally know of a single prostitute who is exclusively Lesbian; I have heard vaguely that there are one or two such anomalies. But I have heard a swell cocotte at the Corinthian announce to the whole room that she was going home with a girl; and no one doubted the statement. Her name, indeed, was generally coupled with that of a fifth-rate actress. Another woman of the same kind has a little clientele of women who buy her photographs in Burlington Arcade. In the lower ranks of the profession all this is much less common. One often finds women who have simply never heard of such a thing; they know of it in regard to men, but not in regard to women. And they are, for the most part, quite horrified at the notion, which they consider part and parcel of ‘French beastliness.’ Of course, almost every girl has her friend, and, when not separately occupied, they often sleep together; but, while in separate, rare cases, this undoubtedly means all that it can mean, for the most part, so far as one can judge, it means no more than it would mean among ordinary girls.”
It is evident that there must be some radical causes for the frequency of homosexuality among prostitutes. One such cause doubtless lies in the character of the prostitute’s relations with men; these relations are of a professional character, and, as the business element becomes emphasized, the possibility of sexual satisfaction diminishes; at the best, also; there lacks the sense of social equality, the feeling of possession, and scope for the exercise of feminine affection and devotion. These the prostitute must usually be forced to find either in a “bully” or in another woman.
Apart from this fact it must be borne in mind that, in a very large number of cases, prostitutes show in slight or more marked degree many of the signs of neurotic heredity,[61] and it would not be surprising if they present the germs of homosexuality in an unusually high degree. The life of the prostitute may well develop such latent germs; and so we have an undue tendency to homosexuality, just as we have it among criminals, and, to a much less extent, among persons of genius and intellect.
Homosexuality is specially fostered by those employments which keep women in constant association, not only by day, but often at night also, without the company of men. This is, for instance, the case in convents, and formerly, at all events,—however, it may be today,—homosexuality was held to be very prevalent in convents. This was especially so in the eighteenth century when very many young girls, without any religious vocation, were put into convents.[62] The same again is today the case with the female servants in large hotels, among whom homosexual practices nave been found very common.[63] Laycock, many years ago, noted the prevalence of manifestations of this kind, which he regarded as hysterical, among seamstresses, lace-makers, etc., confined for hours in close contact with one another in heated rooms. The circumstances under which numbers of young women are employed during the day in large shops and factories, and sleep in the establishment, two in a room or even two in a bed, are favorable to the development of homosexual practices.
In England it is seldom that anyone cares to investigate these phenomena, though, they certainly exist. They have been more thoroughly studied elsewhere. Thus, in Rome, Niceforo, who studied various aspects of the lives of the working classes, succeeded in obtaining much precise information concerning the manners and customs of the young girls in dressmaking and tailoring work-rooms. He remarks that few of those who see the “virtuous daughters of the people,” often not more than 12 years old, walking along the streets with the dressmaker’s box under their arm, modestly bent head and virginal air, realize the intense sexual preoccupations often underlying these appearances. In the work-rooms the conversation perpetually revolves around sexual subjects in the absence of the mistress or forewoman, and even in her presence the slang that prevails in the work-rooms leads to dialogues with a double meaning. A state of sexual excitement is thus aroused which sometimes relieves itself mentally by psychic onanism, sometimes by some form of masturbation; one girl admitted to Niceforo that by allowing her thoughts to dwell on the subject while at work she sometimes produced physical sexual excitement as often as four times a day. (See also vol. i of these Studies, “Auto-erotism.”) Sometimes, however, a vague kind of homosexuality is produced, the girls, excited by their own thoughts and their conversation, being still further excited by contact with each other. “In summer, in one work-room, some of the girls wear no drawers, and they unbutton their bodices, and work with crossed legs, more or less uncovered. In this position, the girls draw near and inspect one another; some boast of their white legs, and, then the petticoats are raised altogether for more careful comparison. Many enjoy this inspection of nudity, and experience real sexual pleasure. From midday till 2 P.M., during the hours of greatest heat, when all are in this condition, and the mistress, in her chemise (and sometimes, with no shame at the workers’ presence, even without it), falls asleep on the sofa, all the girls, without one exception, masturbate themselves. The heat seems to sharpen their desires and morbidly arouse all their senses. The voluptuous emotions, restrained during the rest of the day, break out with irresistible force; stimulated by the spectacle of each other’s nakedness, some place their legs together and thus heighten the spasm by the illusion of contact with a man.” In this way they reach mutual masturbation. “It is noteworthy, however,” Niceforo points out, “that these couples for mutual masturbation are never Lesbian couples. Tribadism is altogether absent from the factories and work-rooms.” He even believes that it does not exist among girls of the working class. He further describes how, in another work-room, during the hot hours of the day in summer, when no work is done, some of the girls retire into the fitting-room, and, having fastened their chemises round their legs and thighs with pins, so as to imitate trousers, play at being men and pretend to have intercourse with the others. (Niceforo, Il Gergo, cap. vi, 1897, Turin.) I have reproduced these details from Niceforo’s careful study because, although they may seem to be trivial at some points, they clearly bring out the very important distinction between a merely temporary homosexuality and true inversion. The amusements of these young girls may not be considered eminently innocent or wholesome, but, on the other hand, they are not radically morbid or vicious. They are strictly, and even consciously, play; they are dominated by the thought that the true sexual ideal is normal relationship with a man, and they would certainly disappear in the presence of a man.
It must be remembered that Niceforo’s observations were made among girls who were mostly young. In the large factories, where many adult women are employed, the phenomena tend to be rarer, but of much less trivial and playful character. At Wolverhampton, some forty years ago, the case was reported of a woman in a galvanizing “store” who, after dinner, indecently assaulted a girl who was a new hand. Two young women held the victim down, and this seems to show that homosexual vice was here common and recognized. No doubt, this case is exceptional in its brutality. It throws, however, a significant light on the conditions prevailing in factories. In Spain, in the large factories where many adult women are employed, especially in the great tobacco factory at Seville, Lesbian relationships seem to be not uncommon. Here the women work in an atmosphere which in summer is so hot that they throw off the greater part of their clothing, to such an extent that a bell is rung whenever a visitor is introduced into a work-room, in order to warn the workers. Such an environment predisposes to the formation of homosexual relationships. When I was in Spain some years ago an incident occurred at the Seville Fábrica de Tabacos which attracted much attention in the newspapers, and, though it was regarded as unusual, it throws light on the life of the workers. One morning as the women were entering the work-room and amid the usual scene of animation changing their Manila shawls for the light costume worn during work, one drew out a small clasp-knife and, attacking another, rapidly inflicted six or seven wounds on her face and neck, threatening to kill anyone who approached. Both these cigarreras were superior workers, engaged in the most skilled kind of work, and had been at the factory for many years. In appearance they were described as presenting a striking contrast: the aggressor, who was 48 years of age, was of masculine air, tall and thin, with an expression of firm determination on her wrinkled face; the victim, on the other hand, whose age was 30, was plump and good-looking and of pleasing disposition. The reason at first assigned for the attack on the younger woman was that her mother had insulted the elder woman’s son. It appeared, however, that a close friendship had existed between the two women, that latterly the younger woman had formed a friendship with the forewoman of her work-room, and that the elder woman, animated by jealousy, then resolved to murder both; this design was frustrated by the accidental absence of the forewoman that day.
In theaters the abnormal sexuality stimulated by such association in work is complicated by the general tendency for homosexuality to be connected with dramatic aptitude, a point to which I shall have to refer later on. I am indebted to a friend for the following note: “Passionate friendships among girls, from the most innocent to the most elaborate excursions in the direction of Lesbos, are extremely common in theaters, both among actresses and, even more, among chorus-and ballet-girls. Here the pell-mell of the dressing-rooms, the wait of perhaps two hours between the performances, during which all the girls are cooped up, in a state of inaction and of excitement, in a few crowded dressing-rooms, afford every opportunity for the growth of this particular kind of sentiment. In most of the theaters there is a little circle of girls, somewhat avoided by the others, or themselves careless of further acquaintanceship, who profess the most unbounded devotion to one another. Most of these girls are equally ready to flirt with the opposite sex, but I know certain ones among them who will scarcely speak to a man, and who are never seen without their particular ‘pal’ or ‘chum,’ who, if she gets moved to another theater, will come around and wait for her friend at the stage-door. But here, again, it is but seldom that the experience is carried very far. The fact is that the English girl, especially of the lower and middle classes, whether she has lost her virtue or not, is extremely fettered by conventional notions. Ignorance and habit are two restraining influences from the carrying out of this particular kind of perversion to its logical conclusions. It is, therefore, among the upper ranks, alike of society and of prostitution, that Lesbianism is most definitely to be met with, for here we have much greater liberty of action, and much greater freedom from prejudices.”
With girls, as with boys, it is in the school, at the evolution of puberty, that homosexuality usually first shows itself. It may originate in a way mainly peripheral or mainly central. In the first case, two children, perhaps when close to each other in bed, more or less unintentionally generate in each other a certain amount of sexual irritation, which they foster by mutual touching and kissing. This is a spurious kind of homosexuality, the often precocious play of the normal instinct. In the girl who is congenitally predisposed to homosexuality it will continue and develop; in the majority it will be forgotten as quickly as possible, not without shame, in the presence of the normal object of sexual love.
I may quote as fairly typical the following observation supplied by a lady who cannot be called inverted: “Like so many other children and girls, I was first taught self-indulgence by a girl at school, and I passed on my knowledge to one or two others, with one of whom I remember once, when we were just 16, spending the night sensually. We were horribly ashamed after, and that was the only time. When I was only 8 there was a girl of 13 who liked to play with my body, and taught me to play with hers, though I rather disliked doing so. We slept together, and this went on at intervals for six months. These things, for the sake of getting enjoyment, and not with any passion, are not uncommon with children, but less common, I think, than people sometimes imagine. I believe I could recall without much difficulty, the number of times such things happened with me. In the case I mentioned when I did for one night feel—or try to excite in myself and my girl-companion of 16—sensual passion, we had as little children slept together a few times and done these things, and meeting after an absence, just at that age, recalled our childish memories, and were carried away by sexual impulse. But I never felt any peculiar affection or passion for her even at the time, nor she for me. We only felt that our sensual nature was strong at the time, and had betrayed us into something we were ashamed of, and, therefore, we avoided letting ourselves sleep too close after that day. I think we disliked each other, and were revolted whenever we thought of that night, feeling that each had degraded the other and herself.”
The cases in which the source is mainly central, rather than peripheral, nevertheless merge into the foregoing, with no clear line of demarcation. In such cases a girl forms an ardent attachment for another girl, probably somewhat older than herself, often a schoolfellow, sometimes her schoolmistress, upon whom she will lavish an astonishing amount of affection and devotion. There may or not be any return; usually the return consists of a gracious acceptance of the affectionate services. The girl who expends this wealth of devotion is surcharged with emotion, but she is often unconscious or ignorant of the sexual impulse, and she seeks for no form of sexual satisfaction. Kissing and the privilege of sleeping with the friend are, however, sought, and at such times it often happens that even the comparatively unresponsive friend feels more or less definite sexual emotion (pudendal turgescence, with secretion of mucus and involuntary twitching of the neighboring muscles), though little or no attention may be paid to this phenomenon, and in the common ignorance of girls concerning sex matters it may not be understood. In some cases there is an attempt, either instinctive or intentional, to develop the sexual feeling by close embraces and kissing. This rudimentary kind of homosexual relationship is, I believe, more common among girls than among boys, and for this there are several reasons: (1) a boy more often has some acquaintance with sexual phenomena, and would frequently regard such a relationship as unmanly; (2) the girl has a stronger need of affection and self-devotion to another person than a boy has; (3) she has not, under our existing social conditions which compel young women to hold the opposite sex at arm’s length, the same opportunities of finding an outlet for her sexual emotions; while (4) conventional propriety recognizes a considerable degree of physical intimacy between girls, thus at once encouraging and cloaking the manifestations of homosexuality.
The ardent attachments which girls in schools and colleges form to each other and to their teachers constitute a subject which is of considerable psychological interest and of no little practical importance. These girlish devotions, on the borderland between friendship and sexual passion, are found in all countries where girls are segregated for educational purposes, and their symptoms are, on the whole, singularly uniform, though they vary in intensity and character to some extent, from time to time and from place to place, sometimes assuming an epidemic form. They have been most carefully studied in Italy, where Obici and Marchesini—an alienist and a psychologist working in conjunction—have analyzed the phenomena with remarkable insight and delicacy and much wealth of illustrative material. But exactly the same phenomena are everywhere found in English girls’ schools, even of the most modern type, and in some of the large American women’s colleges they have sometimes become so acute as to cause much anxiety. On the whole, however, it is probable that such manifestations are regarded more indulgently in girls’ than in boys’ schools, and in view of the fact that the manifestations of affection are normally more pronounced between girls than between boys, this seems reasonable. The head mistress of an English training college writes:—
“My own assumption on such, matters has been that affection does naturally belong to the body as well as the mind, and between two women is naturally and innocently expressed by, caresses. I have never therefore felt that I ought to warn any girl against the physical element in friendship, as such. The test I should probably suggest to them would be the same as one would use for any other relation—was the friendship helping life as a whole, making them keener, kinder, more industrious, etc., or was it hindering it?”
Passionate friendships, of a more or less unconsciously sexual character, are common even outside and beyond school-life. It frequently happens that a period during which a young woman falls in love at a distance with some young man of her acquaintance alternates with periods of intimate attachment to a friend of her own sex. No congenital inversion is usually involved. It generally happens, in the end, either that relationship with a man brings the normal impulse into permanent play, or the steadying of the emotions in the stress of practical life leads to a knowledge of the real nature of such feelings and a consequent distaste for them. In some cases, on the other hand, such relationships, especially when formed after school-life, are fairly permanent. An energetic emotional woman, not usually beautiful, will perhaps be devoted to another who may have found some rather specialized lifework, but who may be very unpractical, and who has probably a very feeble sexual instinct; she is grateful for her friends’s devotion, but may not actively reciprocate it. The actual specific sexual phenomena generated in such cases vary very greatly. The emotion may be latent or unconscious; it may be all on one side; it is often more or less recognized and shared. Such cases are on the borderland of true sexual inversion, but they cannot be included within its region. Sex in these relationships is scarcely the essential and fundamental element; it is more or less subordinate and parasitic. There is often a semblance of a sex-relationship from the marked divergence of the friends in physical and psychic qualities, and the nervous development of one or both the friends is sometimes slightly abnormal. We have to regard such relationships as hypertrophied friendships, the hypertrophy being due to unemployed sexual instinct.
The following narrative is written by a lady who holds a responsible educational position: “A friend of mine, two or three years older than myself (I am 31), and living in the same house with me, has been passing through a very unhappy time. Long nervous strain connected with this has made her sleep badly, and apt to wake in terrible depression about 3 o’clock in the morning. In the early days of our friendship, about eight months ago, she occasionally at these times took refuge with me. After a while I insisted on her consulting a doctor, who advised her, amongst other things, not to sleep alone. Thenceforth for two or three months I induced her to share my room. After a week or two she generally shared my bed for a time at the beginning of the night, as it seemed to help her to sleep.
“Before this, about the second or third time that she came to me in the early morning, I had been surprised and a little frightened to find how pleasant it was to me to have her, and how reluctant I was that she should go away. When we began regularly to sleep in the same room, the physical part of our affection grew rapidly very strong. It is natural for me generally to caress my friends, but I soon could not be alone in a room with this one without wanting to have my arms round her. It would have been intolerable to me to live with her without being able to touch her. We did not discuss it, but it was evident that the desire was even stronger in her than in me.
“For some time it satisfied us fully to be in bed together. One night, however, when she had had a cruelly trying day and I wanted to find all ways of comforting her, I bared by breast for her to lie on. Afterward it was clear that neither of us could be satisfied without this. She groped for it like a child, and it excited me much more to feel that than to uncover my breast and arms altogether at once.
“Much of this excitement was sexually localized, and I was haunted in the daytime by images of holding this woman in my arms. I noticed also that my inclination to caress my other women friends was not diminished, but increased. All this disturbed me a good deal. The homosexual practices of which I had read lately struck me as merely nasty; I could not imagines myself tempted to them;—at the same time the whole matter was new to me, for I had never wanted anyone even to share my bed before; I had read that sex instinct was mysterious and unexpected, and I felt that I did not know what might come next.
“I knew only one elder person whom (for wide-mindedness, gentleness, and saintliness) I could bear to consult; and to this person, a middle-aged man, I wrote for advice. He replied by a long letter of the most tender warning. I had better not weaken my influence with my friend, he wrote, by going back suddenly or without her consent, but I was to be very wary of going further; there was fire about. I tried to put this into practice by restraining myself constantly in our intercourse, by refraining from caressing her, for instance, when I wanted to caress her and knew that she wanted it. The only result seemed to be that the desire was more tormenting and constant than ever.
“If at this point my friend had happened to die or go away, and the incident had come to an end, I should probably have been left nervous in these matters for years to come. I should have faltered in the opinion I had always held, that bodily expressions of love between women were as innocent as they were natural; and I might have come nearer than I ever expected to the doctrine of those convent teachers who forbid their girls to embrace one another for fear an incalculable instinct should carry them to the edge of an abyss.
“As it was, after a while I said a little on the subject to my friend herself. I had been inclined to think that she might share my anxiety, but she did not share it at all. She said to me that she did not like these thoughts, that she cared for me more than She had ever done for any person except one (now causing most of her unhappiness), and wanted me in all possible ways, and that it would make her sad to feel that I was trying not to want her in one way because I thought it was wrong.
“On my part, I knew very well how much she did need and want me. I knew that in relations with others she was spending the greatest effort in following a course that I urged on her, and was doing what I thought right in spite of the most painful pressure on her to do wrong; and that she needed all the support and comfort I could give her. It seemed to me, after our conversation, that the right path for me lay not in giving way to fears and scruples, but in giving my friend straightforwardly all the love I could and all the kinds of love I could. I decided to keep my eyes open for danger, but meanwhile to go on.
“We were living alone together at the time, and thenceforward we did as we liked doing. As soon as we could, we moved to a bed where we could sleep together all night. In the day when no one was there we sat as close together as we wished, which was very close. We kissed each other as often as we wanted to kiss each other, which was very many times a day.
“The results of this, so far as I can see, have been wholly good. We love each other warmly, but no temptation to nastiness has ever come, and I cannot see now that it is at all likely to come. With custom, the localized physical excitement has practically disappeared, and I am no longer obsessed by imagined embraces. The spiritual side of our affection seems to have grown steadily stronger and more profitable since the physical side has, been allowed to take its natural place.”
A class in which homosexuality, while fairly distinct, is only slightly marked, is formed by the women to whom the actively inverted woman is most attracted. These women differ, in the first place, from the normal, or average, woman in that they are not repelled or disgusted by lover-like advances from persons of their own sex. They are not usually attractive to the average man, though to this rule there are many exceptions. Their faces may be plain or ill-made, but not seldom they possess good figures: a point which is apt to carry more weight with the inverted woman than beauty of face. Their sexual impulses are seldom well marked, but they are of strongly affectionate nature. On the whole, they are women who are not very robust and well developed, physically or nervously, and who are not well adapted for child-bearing, but who still possess many excellent qualities, and they are always womanly. One may, perhaps, say that they are the pick of the women whom the average man would pass by. No doubt, this is often the reason why they are open to homosexual advances, but I do not think it is the sole reason. So far as they may be said to constitute a class, they seem to possess a genuine, though not precisely sexual, preference for women over men, and it is this coldness, rather than lack of charm, which often renders men rather indifferent to them.
The actively inverted woman usually differs from the woman of the class just mentioned in one fairly essential character: a more or less distinct trace of masculinity. She may not be, and frequently is not, what would be called a “mannish” woman, for the latter may imitate men on grounds of taste and habit unconnected with sexual perversion, while in the inverted woman the masculine traits are part of an organic instinct which she by no means always wishes to accentuate. The inverted woman’s masculine element may, in the least degree, consist only in the fact that she makes advances to the woman to whom she is attracted and treats all men in a cool, direct manner, which may not exclude comradeship, but which excludes every sexual relationship, whether of passion or merely of coquetry. Usually the inverted woman feels absolute indifference toward men, and not seldom repulsion. And this feeling, as a rule, is instinctively reciprocated by men. At the same time bisexual women are at least as common as bisexual men.
HISTORY XXXIV.—Miss S., aged 38, living in a city of the United States, a business woman of fine intelligence, prominent in professional and literary circles. Her general health is good, but she belongs to a family in which there is a marked neuropathic element. She is of rather phlegmatic temperament, well poised, always perfectly calm and self-possessed, rather retiring in disposition, with gentle, dignified bearing.
She says she cannot care for men, but that all her life has been “glorified and made beautiful by friendship with women,” whom she loves as a man loves women. Her character is, however, well disciplined, and her friends are not aware of the nature of her affections. She tries not to give all her love to one person, and endeavors (as she herself expresses it) to use this “gift of loving” as a stepping-stone to high mental and spiritual attainments. She is described by one who has known her for several years as “having a high nature, and instincts unerringly toward high things.”
HISTORY XXXV.—Miss B., artist, of German ancestry on the paternal side. Among her brothers and sisters, one is of neurotic temperament and another is inverted. She is herself healthy. She has no repugnance to men, and would even like to try marriage, if the union were not permanent, but she has seldom felt any sexual attraction to a man. In one exceptional instance, early in life, realizing that she was not adapted for heterosexual relationships, she broke off the engagement she had formed. Much later in life, she formed a more permanent relationship with a man of congenial tastes.
She is attracted to women of various kinds, though she recognizes that there are some women to whom only men are attracted. Many years since she had a friend to whom she was very strongly attached, but the physical manifestations do not appear to have become pronounced. After that her thoughts were much occupied by several women to whom she made advances, which were not encouraged to pass beyond ordinary friendship. In one case, however, she formed an intimate relationship with a girl somewhat younger than herself, and a very feminine personality, who accepted Miss B.’s ardent love with pleasure, but in a passive manner, and did not consider that the relationship would stand in the way of her marrying, though she would on no account tell her husband. The relationship for the first time aroused Miss B.’s latent sexual emotions. She found sexual satisfaction in kissing and embracing her friend’s body, but there appeared to be no orgasm. The relationship made a considerable change in her, and rendered her radiant and happy.
In her behavior toward men Miss B. reveals no sexual shyness. Men are not usually attracted to her. There is nothing striking in her appearance; her person and manners, though careless, are not conspicuously man-like. She is fond of exercise and smokes a good deal.
HISTORY XXXVI.—Miss H., aged 30. Among her paternal relatives there is a tendency to eccentricity and to nervous disease. Her grandfather drank; her father was eccentric and hypochondriacal, and suffered from obsessions. Her mother and mother’s relatives are entirely healthy, and normal in disposition.
At the age of 4 she liked to see the nates of a little girl who lived near. When she was about 6, the nurse-maid, sitting in the fields, used to play with her own parts, and told her to do likewise, saying it would make a baby come; she occasionally touched herself in consequence, but without producing any effect of any kind. When she was about 8 she used to see various nurse-maids uncover their children’s sexual parts and show them to each other. She used to think about this when alone, and also about whipping. She never cared to play with dolls, and in her games always took the part of a man. Her first rudimentary sex-feelings appeared at the age of 8 or 9, and were associated with dreams of whipping and being whipped, which were most vivid between the ages of 11 and 14, when they died away on the appearance of affection for girls. She menstruated at 12.
Her earliest affection, at the age of 13, was for a schoolfellow, a graceful, coquettish girl with long golden hair and blue eyes. Her affection displayed itself in performing all sorts of small services for this girl, in constantly thinking about her, and in feeling deliciously grateful for the smallest return. At the age of 14 she had a similar passion for a girl cousin; she used to look forward with ecstasy to her visits, and especially to the rare occasions when the cousin slept with her; her excitement was then so great that she could not sleep, but there was no conscious sexual excitement. At the age of 15 or 16 she fell in love with another cousin; her experiences with this girl were full of delicious sensations; if the cousin only touched her neck, a thrill went through her body which she now regards as sexual. Again, at 17, she had an overwhelming, passionate fascination for a schoolfellow, a pretty, commonplace girl, whom she idealized and etherealized to an extravagant extent. This passion was so violent that her health was, to some extent, impaired; but it was purely unselfish, and there was nothing sexual in it. On leaving school at the age of 19 she met a girl of about the same age as herself, very womanly, but not much attracted to men. This girl became very much attached to her, and sought to gain her love. After some time Miss H. was attracted by this love, partly from the sense of power it gave her, and an intimate relation grew up. This relation became vaguely physical, Miss H. taking the initiative, but her friend desiring such relations and taking extreme pleasure in them; they used to touch and kiss each other tenderly (especially on the mons veneris), with equal ardor. They each experienced a strong pleasurable feeling in doing this, and sexual erethism, but no orgasm, and it does not appear that this ever occurred. Their general behavior to each other was that of lovers, but they endeavored, as far as possible, to hide this fact from the world. This relation lasted for several years, and would have continued, had not Miss H.’s friend, from religious and moral scruples, put an end to the physical relationship. Miss H. had been very well and happy during this relationship; the interference with it seems to have exerted a disturbing influence, and also to have aroused her sexual desires, though she was still scarcely conscious of their real nature.
Soon afterward another girl of exceedingly voluptuous type made love to Miss H., to which the latter yielded, giving way to her feelings as well as to her love of domination. She was afterward ashamed of this episode, though the physical element in it had remained vague and indefinite. Her remorse was so great that when her friend, repenting her scruples, implored her to let their relationship be on the same footing as of old, Miss H., in her return, resisted every effort to restore the physical relation. She kept to this resolution for some years, and sought to divert her thoughts into intellectual channels. When she again formed an intimate relationship it was with a congenial friend, and lasted for several years.
She has never masturbated. Occasionally, but very rarely, she has had dreams of riding accompanied by pleasurable sexual emotions (she cannot recall any actual experience to suggest this, though fond of riding). She has never had any kind of sexual dreams about a man; of late years she has occasionally had erotic dreams about women.
Her feeling toward men is friendly, but she has never had sexual attraction toward a man. She likes them as good comrades, as men like each other. She enjoys the society of men on account of their intellectual attraction. She is herself very active in social and intellectual work. Her feeling toward marriage has always been one of repugnance. She can, however, imagine a man whom she could love or marry.
She is attracted to womanly women, sincere, reserved, pure, but courageous in character. She is not attracted to intellectual women, but at the same time cannot endure silly women. The physical qualities that attract her most are not so much beauty of face as a graceful, but not too slender, body with beautiful curves. The women she is drawn to are usually somewhat younger than herself. Women are much attracted to her, and without any effort on her part. She likes to take the active part and protecting rôle with them. She is herself energetic in character, and with a somewhat neurotic temperament.
She finds sexual satisfaction in tenderly touching, caressing, and kissing the loved one’s body. (There is no cunnilinctus, which she regards with abhorrence.) She feels more tenderness than passion. There is a high degree of sexual erethism when kissing, but orgasm is rare and is produced by lying on the friend or by the friend lying on her, without any special contact. She likes being herself kissed, but not so much as taking the active part.
She believes that homosexual love is morally right when it is really part of a person’s nature, and provided that the nature of homosexual love is always made plain to the object of such affection. She does not approve of it as a mere makeshift, or expression of sensuality, in normal women. She has sometimes resisted the sexual expression of her feelings, once for years at a time, but always in vain. The effect on her of loving women is distinctly good, she asserts, both spiritually and physically, while repression leads to morbidity and hysteria. She has suffered much from neurasthenia at various periods, but under appropriate treatment it has slowly diminished. The inverted instinct is too deeply rooted to eradicate, but it is well under control.
HISTORY XXXVII.—Miss M., the daughter of English parents (both musicians), who were both of what is described as “intense” temperament, and there is a neurotic element in the family, though no history of insanity or alcoholism, and she is herself free from nervous disease. At birth she was very small. In a portrait taken at the age of 4 the nose, mouth, and ears are abnormally large, and she wears a little boy’s hat. As a child she did not care for dolls or for pretty clothes, and often wondered why other children found so much pleasure in them. “As far back as my memory goes,” she writes, “I cannot recall a time when I was not different from other children. I felt bored when other little girls came to play with me, though I was never rough or boisterous in my sports.” Sewing was distasteful to her. Still she cared little more for the pastimes of boys, and found her favorite amusement in reading, especially adventures and fairy-tales. She was always quiet, timid, and self-conscious. The instinct first made its appearance in the latter part of her eighth or the first part of her ninth year. She was strongly attracted by the face of a teacher who used to appear at a side-window on the second floor of the school-building and ring a bell to summon the children to their classes. The teacher’s face seemed very beautiful, but sad, and she thought about her continually, though not coming in personal contact with, her. A year later this teacher was married and left the school, and the impression gradually faded away. “There was no consciousness of sex at this time,” she wrote; “no knowledge of sexual matters or practices, and the feelings evoked were feelings of pity and compassion and tenderness for a person who seemed to be very sad and very much depressed. It is this quality or combination of qualities which has always made the appeal in my own case. I may go on for years in comparative peace, when something may happen, in spite of my busy practical life, to call it all out.” The next feelings were experienced when, she was about 11 years of age. A young lady came to visit a next-door neighbor, and made so profound an impression on the child that she was ridiculed by her playmates for preferring to sit in a dark corner on the lawn—where she might watch this young lady—rather than to play games. Being a sensitive child, after this experience she was careful not to reveal her feelings to anyone. She felt instinctively that in this she was different from others. Her sense of beauty developed early, but there was always an indefinable feeling of melancholy associated with it. The twilight, a dark night when the stars shone brightly; these had a very depressing effect upon her, but possessed a strong attraction nevertheless, and pictures appealed to her. At the age of 12 she fell in love with a schoolmate, two years older than herself, who was absorbed in the boys and never suspected this affection; she wept bitterly because they could not be confirmed at the same time, but feared to appear undignified and sentimental by revealing her feelings. The face of this friend reminded her of one of Dolce’s Madonnas which she loved. Later on, at the age of 16, she loved another friend very dearly and devoted herself to her care. There was a tinge of masculinity among the women of this friend’s family, but it is not clear if she can be termed inverted. This was the happiest period of Miss M.’s life. Upon the death of this friend, who had long been in ill health, eight years afterward, she resolved never to let her heart go out to anyone again.
Specific physical gratification plays no part in these relationships. The physical sexual feelings began to assert themselves at puberty, but not in association with her ideal emotions. “In that connection,” she writes, “I would have considered such things a sacrilege. I fought them and in a measure successfully. The practice of self-indulgence which might have become a daily habit was only occasional. Her image evoked at such times drove away such feelings, for which I felt a repugnance, much preferring the romantic ideal feelings. In this way, quite unconscious of the fact that I was at all different from, any other person, I contrived to train myself to suppress or at least to dominate my physical sensations when they arose. That is the reason why friendship and love have always seemed such holy and beautiful things to me. I have never connected the two sets of feelings. I think I am as strongly sexed as anyone, but I am able to hold a friend in my arms and experience deep comfort and peace without having even a hint of physical sexual feeling. Sexual expression may be quite necessary at certain times and right under certain conditions, but I am convinced that free expression of affection along sentimental channels will do much to minimize the necessity for it along specifically sexual channels. I have gone three months without the physical outlet. The only time I was ever on the verge of nervous prostration was after having suppressed the instinct for ten months. The other feelings, which I do not consider as sexual feelings at all, so fill my life in every department—love, literature, poetry, music, professional and philanthropic activities—that I am able to let the physical take care of itself. When the physical sensations come, it is usually when I am not thinking of a loved one at all. I could dissipate them by raising my thought to that spiritual friendship. I do not know if this was right and wise. I know it is what occurred. It seems a good thing to practise some sort of inhibition of the centers and acquire this kind of domination. One bad result, however, was that I suffered much at times from the physical sensations, and felt horribly depressed and wretched whenever they seemed to get the better of me.”
“I have been able,” she writes, “successfully to master the desire for a more perfect and complete expression of my feelings, and I have done so without serious detriment to my health.” “I love few people,” she writes again, “but in these instances when I have permitted my heart to go out to a friend I have always experienced most exalted feelings, and have been made better by them morally, mentally, and spiritually. Love is with me a religion.”
With regard to her attitude toward the other sex, she writes: “I have never felt a dislike for men, but have good comrades among them. During my childhood I associated with both girls and boys, enjoying them all, but wondering why the girls cared to flirt with boys. Later in life I have had other friendships with men, some of whom cared for me, much to my regret, for, naturally, I do not care to marry.”
She is a musician, and herself attributes her nature in part to artistic temperament. She is of good intelligence, and shows remarkable talent for various branches of physical science. She is about 5 feet 4 inches in height, and her features are rather large. The pelvic measurements are normal, and the external sexual organs are fairly normal in most respects, though somewhat small. At a period ten years subsequent to the date of this history, further examination, under anesthetics, by a gynecologist, showed no traces of ovary on one side. The general conformation of the body is feminine. But with arms, palms up, extended in front of her with inner sides of hands touching, she cannot bring the inner sides of forearms together, as nearly every woman can, showing that the feminine angle of arm is lost.
She is left-handed and shows a better development throughout on the left side. She is quiet and dignified, but has many boyish tricks of manner and speech which seem to be instinctive; she tries to watch herself continually, however, in order to avoid them, affecting feminine ways and feminine interests, but always being conscious of an effort in so doing.
Miss M. can see nothing wrong in her feelings; and, until, at the age of 28, she came across the translation of Krafft-Ebing’s book, she had no idea “that feelings like mine were ‘under the ban of society’ as he puts it, or were considered unnatural and depraved.” She would like to help to bring light on the subject and to lift the shadow from other lives. “I emphatically protest,” she says, “against the uselessness and the inhumanity of attempts to ‘cure’ inverts. I am quite sure they have perfect right to live in freedom and happiness as long as they live unselfish lives. One must bear in mind that it is the soul that needs to be satisfied, and not merely the senses.”
HISTORY XXXVIII.—Miss V., aged 35. Throughout early life up to adult age she was a mystery to herself, and morbidly conscious of some fundamental difference between herself and other people. There was no one she could speak to about this peculiarity. In the effort to conquer it, or to ignore it, she became a hard student and has attained success in the profession she adopted. A few years ago she came across a book on sexual inversion which proved to be a complete revelation to her of her own nature, and, by showing her that she was not an anomaly to be regarded with repulsion, brought her comfort and peace. She is willing that her experiences should be published for the sake of other women who may be suffering as in the past she has suffered.
“I am a teacher in a college for women. I am 34 years old and of medium size. Up to the age of 30 I looked much younger, and since older, than my age. Until 21 I had a strikingly child-like appearance. My physique has nothing masculine in it that I am aware of; but I am conscious that my walk is mannish, and I have very frequently been told that I do things—such as sewing,—’just like a man.’ My voice is quite low but not coarse. I dislike household work, but am fond of sports, gardening, etc. When so young that I cannot remember it, I learned to whistle, a practice at which I am still expert. When a young girl, I learned to smoke, and should still enjoy it.
“Several men have been good friends of mine, but very few suitors. I scarcely ever feel at ease with a man; but women I understand and can nearly always make my friends.
“I am of Scotch-Irish descent. My father’s family were respectable, prosperous, religious people; my mother’s family only semi-respectable, hard livers, shrewd, but not intelligent, industrious and money-getting, but fond of drinking and carousing. There were many illegitimates among them. Both grandmothers, though of little education, were unusual women. Of my four maternal uncles, three drank heavily.
“When 43, my mother gave birth to me, the youngest of 8 children. Of those who grew to adult years, 2 seem quite normal sexually; 1 is exceedingly erratic, entirely unprincipled, has been a thief and a forger, is a probable bigamist, and has betrayed several respectable women. Aside from his having inordinate desire, I know of no sexual abnormality. Another brother, married and a father, as a boy was much given to infatuations for men. I fancy this never went beyond infatuation and of late years has not been noticeable. A third brother, single, though much courted by women on account of his good looks and personal charm, is wholly unresponsive, has no gallantry, nor was ever, to my knowledge, a suitor. He is, however, fond of the society of women, especially those older than he. He has a somewhat effeminate voice and walk. Though he has begun of late years to smoke and drink a little, these habits sit rather oddly upon him. When a child, one of his favorite make-believe games was to pretend that he was a famous woman singer. At school he was always found hanging around the older girls.
“As a child I loved to stay in the fields, refused to wear a sunbonnet, used to pretend I was a boy, climbed trees, and played ball. I liked to play with dolls, but I did not fondle them, or even make them dresses. When my hair was clipped, I was delighted and made everyone call me ‘John.’ I used to like to wear a man’s broad-brimmed hat and make corn-cob pipes. I was very fond of my father and tried to imitate him as much as possible. Where animals were concerned, I was entirely fearless.
“I think I was not a sexually precocious child, though I seem to have always known in a dim way that there were two sexes. Very early I had a sense of shame at having my body exposed; I remember on one occasion I could not be persuaded to undress before a young girl visitor. At that time I must have been about 3. When I was 4 a neighbor who had often petted me took me on his lap and clasped my hand around his penis. Though he was interrupted in a moment, this made a lasting impression on me. I had no physical sensation nor did I have any conception of the significance of the act. Yet I had a slight feeling of repulsion, and I must have dimly felt that it was wrong, for I did not tell my mother. I was not accustomed to confide in her, for, though truthful, I was secretive.
“At the age of 5 I commenced to attend a district school. I remember that on my first day I was Greatly attracted by a little girl who wore a bright-red dress.
“My first definite knowledge of sex came in this way: I was attending Sabbath school and had become ambitious to read the Bible through. I had gotten as far as the account of the birth of Esau and Jacob, which aroused my curiosity. So I asked my mother the meaning of some word in the passage. She seemed embarrassed and evaded my question. This attitude stimulated my curiosity further, and I re-read the chapter until I understood it pretty well. Later I was further enlightened by girl playmates. I fancy I enjoyed listening to their talk and repeating what I knew on account of the mystery and secrecy with which sex subjects are surrounded rather than any sensual delight.
“I cannot recall any act of mine growing directly from sexual feeling until I was 10 years old. Several other little girls and myself two or three times exposed private parts of our bodies to each other. In one instance, at least, I was the instigator. This act gave me some pleasure, though no distinct physical sensation. One incident I recall that happened when I was about 10. A girl cousin and myself had been playing ‘house’ together. I do not recall what immediately led to it, but we began to address each other as boys and tried to urinate through long tubes of some sort. I also recall feeling a vague interest in this process in animals, and observing them closely in the act.
“From this time until I was about 14 I grew ruder, more boisterous and uncontrollable. Prior to this I had been a quite tractable child. When 12 I became interested in a boy in my grade at school, and tried to attract him, but failed. Once at a children’s party where we were playing kissing games I tried to get him to kiss me, but he was unresponsive. I do not recall bothering myself about him after that. A year later I had a boy chum about whom my schoolmaster teased me. I thought this ridiculous. At the age of 13 I menstruated, a fact that caused me shame and anger. Gradually I grew to feel myself peculiar, why, I cannot explain. I did not seem to myself to be like other girls of my acquaintance. I adopted, as a defense, a brusque and defiant air. I spent a good deal of time playing alone in our backyard, where I made a pair of stilts, practised rope-walking, and such things. At school I felt I was not liked by the nicer girls and began to associate with girls whom I now believe were immoral, but whom I then supposed did nothing worse than talk in an obscene manner. I copied their conversation and grew more reckless and uncontrollable. The principal of the high school I was attending, I learned afterward, said I was the hardest pupil to control she had ever had. About this time I read a book where a girl was represented as saying she had a ‘boy’s soul in a girl’s body.’ The applicability of this to myself struck me at once, and I read the sentence to my mother who disgusted me by appearing shocked.
“During this period I began to fall in love,—a practice which clung to me until I was nearly 30 years old. I recall various older women with whom I became much enamored, and one man. Of these there was only one with whom I became acquainted well enough to show any affection; another was a teacher, and another was a young married woman at whom I used to gaze ardently during an entire church service. Toward all my women teachers I had a somewhat sentimental attitude. They stimulated me, while the men gave me a wholly impersonal feeling. This abnormal sentimentality may have been caused, or at least was increased, by the reading of novels, some of a highly voluptuous nature. I began to read novels at 7, and from 11 to 14 I absorbed a great many undesirable ones. This lead to my picturing my future with a lover, fancying myself in romantic scenes and being caressed and embraced. I had always supposed I should marry. When about 5 I decided that when I grew up I would marry a certain young man who used to come to our house. Several years later he married, to my real disappointment. I had no affection for him, but merely thought he would make a desirable husband.
“During my unhappy adolescence I heard that a former playmate was going to visit at my home. I began to look forward to the visit with much eagerness and at her arrival was much excited. I wished to stay alone with her and to caress her, and when we slept together I pressed my body against her in a sensual manner, which act she permitted, but without passion. I was greatly excited and could scarcely sleep. This was the first time I had acted in such a way, and after she left I felt shame and dislike for her. At future meetings there was never the least sensuality; we never referred to the first visit and are still friends, though not intimate.
“A diary which I kept during my fourteenth and fifteenth years is filled with romantic sentiments and endearing terms applied successively to three girls of my own age. I had but a speaking acquaintance with them, but I was strongly infatuated with all. One boy was also the object of adoration.
“During my thirteenth year I became for a time very religious and devoted to religious exercises. This passed and by my fourteenth year I had become heretical, but was still keenly sensitive to religious influences.
“When barely 16 I slept one night with a woman of low morals. She acted toward me in a sensual manner and aroused my sexual feelings. I felt at the time that this was a sin, but I was carried away by passion. Afterward I hated this woman and despised myself.
“I then went away to a co-educational boarding school. Here for the first time I became happy. A girl of my own age, of fine character and noticeable refinement, fell in love with me and caused me to reciprocate. On retrospection I believe this to have been a genuine and beautiful love on both sides. After a few months, however, our relation, at my initiative and against my friend’s will, became a physical one. We expressed our affection by mutual caresses, close embraces and lying on each other’s bodies. I sometimes touched her sexual organs sensually. All this contact gave me exquisite thrills. After three years we had a misunderstanding and separated. I was greatly grieved and troubled for many years, and came to regret greatly the physical relationship that had existed between us. My friend at length fell in love and married. I had several other slighter infatuations for women, was courted by several men to whom I remained cold and bored except in one instance, where I was somewhat touched, and finally found a lasting friendship with a woman who had fallen deeply in love with me in her school days and had never been able to care for any one else. She is a woman of considerable literary talent and of good general ability and high ideals. She is usually much liked by men. Her love for me is the most real thing in the world for me, and seems the most permanent. At first my feeling for her was almost purely physical, although there were no sexual relations. I hated this feeling and have succeeded in overcoming it pretty largely. At times after long separations we have embraced with great passion, at least on my part. This has always had a bad physical effect on me. At present, however, it very rarely occurs. We both consider sexual feelings degrading and deleterious to real love. Whether at any time we have had complete physical satisfaction or gratification, I hardly know. I have experienced very keen physical pleasure, mingled with what I took to be great mental exaltation and quickening of the emotions. This condition was brought about by close contact with the body of my friend, usually by lying upon it. But if by ‘gratification’ it is meant that desire, having been completely satisfied, ceases temporarily, I think I have never had that experience. If I did, it was when I was about 18 when I lived with a girl friend in intimate relations. Of late years, at any rate, it has never happened to me, and an embrace, however close, always leaves me with a desire for a closer union, both physical and spiritual. So a few years since, I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to obtain physical satisfaction through the woman I loved. I came to this conclusion because of the bad physical effects of contact. My sexual organs became highly sensitive and inflamed and I suffered pain from the inflammation and resulting leucorrhea. Should I allow myself to indulge in caresses this condition would return. My friend, fortunately, though very affectionate and demonstrative toward me, has very little sexual passion. The idea that our relationship is based upon it is very repugnant to her. I was at one time, a few years since, much discouraged and almost hopeless of being able to overcome my appetite, and I decided that we could not associate unless I succeeded. At present, with help, I have very largely succeeded in living with my friend on a basis of normal, though affectionate and tender, companionship. I have been helped more, and have learned more, through this companionship, than through anything else. The keen pleasure that I have felt when in responsive contact I never experienced in masturbation. So far as I remember it never took place till I was well along in my ‘teens and was never an habitual practice, except the first summer I was separated from a school friend whom I loved. Thoughts of her aroused feelings which I attempted to satisfy in this way, but the entire sensuality of the act soon led me to refrain and to see that that was not what I wanted.
“A peculiar incident that might have some significance occurred to me about five years ago. I was sitting in a small room where a seminar was being conducted. The leader of the discussion was a man about 50, whom I looked up to on account of his attainments and respected as a man, though I knew him socially very slightly. I had lost a night’s sleep from toothache and was feeling nervous. I was giving my entire attention to the subject in hand, when suddenly I felt a very strong physical compulsion toward that man. I did not know what I was going to do, but I felt on the point of losing all control of myself. I was afraid to leave, for fear the slightest movement would throw me into a panic. The attraction was entirely physical and like nothing I had felt before. And I had a strange feeling that its cause was in the man himself; that he was willing it; I was like a spectator. It was some moments before the assemblage broke up, when my ‘possession’ completely disappeared and never recurred.
“Regarding dreams, I will say that not until the past year or two have I been conscious of having clear-cut dreams with definite happenings. They seemed usually to leave only vague impressions, such as a feeling that I had been riding horseback, or trying to perform some hard task. Sexual dreams I do not recall having had for several years, except that occasionally I am awakened by a feeling of uncomfortable sexual desire, which seems usually caused by a need to urinate. Between the ages of 17 and 22, approximately, I frequently, perhaps several times a month, would have vague sexual dreams. These always, I think, occurred when I happened to be sleeping with someone whom, in my dream, I would mistake for my intimate friend, and would awaken myself by embracing my bedfellow with sometimes a slight, sometimes considerable degree of passion. I have finally arrived at some understanding of my own temperament, and am no longer miserable and melancholy. I regret that I am not a man, because I could then have a home and children.”
HISTORY XXXIX.—Miss D., actively engaged in the practice of her profession, aged 40. Heredity good, nervous system sound, general health on the whole satisfactory. Development feminine but manner and movements somewhat boyish. Menstruation scanty and painless. Hips normal, nates small, sexual organs showing some approximation toward infantile type with large labia minora and probably small vagina. Tendency to development of hair on body and especially lower limbs. The narrative is given in her own words:—
“Ever since I can remember anything at all I could never think of myself as a girl and I was in perpetual trouble, with this as the real reason. When I was 5 or 6 years old I began to say to myself that, whatever anyone said, if I was not a boy at any rate I was not a girl. This has been my unchanged conviction all through my life.
“When I was little, nothing ever made me doubt it, in spite of external appearance. I regarded the conformation of my body as a mysterious accident. I could not see why it should have anything to do with the matter. The things that really affected the question were my own likes and dislikes, and the fact that I was not allowed to follow them. I was to like the things which belonged to me as a girl,—frocks and toys and games which I did not like at all. I fancy I was more strongly ‘boyish’ than the ordinary little boy. When I could only crawl my absorbing interest was hammers and carpet-nails. Before I could walk I begged to be put on horses’ backs, so that I seem to have been born with the love of tools and animals which has never left me.
“I did not play with dolls, though my little sister did. I was often reproached for not playing her games. I always chose boys’ toys,—tops and guns and horses; I hated being kept indoors and was always longing to go out. By the time I was 7 it seemed to me that everything I liked was called wrong for a girl. I left off telling my elders what I did like. They confused and wearied me by their talk of boys and girls. I did not believe them and could hardly imagine that they believed themselves. By the time I was 8 or 9 I used to wonder whether they were dupes, or liars, or hypocrites, or all three. I never believed or trusted a grown person in consequence. I led my younger brothers in everything. I was not at all a happy little child and often cried and was made irritable; I was so confused by the talk, about boys and girls. I was held up as an evil example to other little girls who virtuously despised me.
“When I was about 9 years old I went to a day school and began to have a better time. From 9 to 13 I practically shaped my own life. I learned very little at school, and openly hated it, but I read a great deal at home and got plenty of ideas. I lived, however, mainly out of doors whenever I could get out. I spent all my pocket money on tools, rabbits, pigeons and many other animals. I became an ardent pigeon-catcher, not to say thief, though I did not knowingly steal.
“My brothers were as devoted to the animals as I was. The men were supposed to look after them, but we alone did so. We observed, mated, separated, and bred them with considerable skill. We had no language to express ourselves, but one of our own. We were absolutely innocent, and sweetly sympathetic with every beast. I don’t think we ever connected their affairs with those of human beings, but as I do not remember the time when I did not know all about the actual facts of sex and reproduction, I presume I learned it all in that way, and life never had any surprises for me in that direction. Though I saw many sights that a child should not have seen, while running about wild, I never gave them a thought; all animals great and small from rabbits to men had the same customs, all natural and right. My initiation here was, in my eyes, as nearly perfect as a child’s should be. I never asked grown people questions. I thought all those in charge of me coarse and untruthful and I disliked all ugly things and suggestions.
“Every half-holiday I went out with the boys from my brothers’ school. They always liked me to play with them, and, though not pleasant-tongued boys, were always civil and polite to me. I organized games and fortifications that they would never have imagined for themselves, led storming parties, and instituted some rather dangerous games of a fighting kind. I taught my brothers; to throw stones. Sometimes I led adventures such as breaking into empty houses. I liked being out after dark.
“In the winter I made and rigged boats and went sailing them, and I went rafting and pole-leaping. I became a very good jumper and climber, could go up a rope, bowl overhand, throw like a boy, and whistle three different ways. I collected beetles and butterflies and went shrimping and learned to fish. I had very little money to spend, but I picked things up and I made all traps, nets, cages, etc., myself. I learned from every working-man, I could get hold of the use of all ordinary carpenters’ tools, and how to weld hot iron, pave, lay bricks and turf, and so on.
“When I was about 11 my parents got more mortified at my behavior and perpetually threatened me with a boarding-school. I was told for months how it would take the nonsense out of me—’shape me,’ ‘turn me into a young lady.’ My going was finally announced to me as a punishment to me for being what I was.
“Certainly, the horror of going to this school and the cruel and unsympathetic way that I was sent there gave me a shock that I never got over. The only thing that reconciled me to going was my intense indignation with those who sent me. I appealed to be allowed to learn Latin and boys’ subjects, but was laughed at.
“I was so helpless that I knew I could not run away without being caught, or I would have run away anywhere from home and school. I never cried or fretted, but burnt with anger and went like a trapped rabbit.
“In no words can I describe the severity of the nervous shock, or the suffering of my first year at school. The school was noted for its severity and I heard that at one period the elder girls ran away so often that they wore a uniform dress. I knew two who had run away. The teachers in my time were ignorant, self-indulgent women who cared nothing for the girls or their education and made much money out of them. There was a suspicious reformatory atmosphere, and my money was taken from me and my letters read.
“I was intensely shy. I hated the other girls. There were no refinements anywhere; I had no privacy in my room, which was always overcrowded; we had no hot water, no baths, improper food, and no education. We were not allowed to wear enough clean linen, and for five years I never felt clean.
“I never had one moment to myself, was not allowed to read anything, had even not enough lesson books, was taught nothing to speak of except a little inferior music and drawing. I never got enough exercise, and was always tired and dull, and could not keep my digestion in order. My pride and self-respect were degraded in innumerable ways, I suffered agonies of disgust, and the whole thing was a dreary penal servitude.
“I did not complain. I made friends with a few of the girls. Some of the older girls were attracted to me. Some talked of men and love affairs to me, but I was not greatly interested. No one ever spoke of any other matters of sex to me or in my hearing, but most of the girls were shy with me and I with them.
“In about two years’ time the teachers got to like me and thought me one of their nicest girls. I certainly influenced them and got them to allow the girls more privileges.
“I lay great stress upon the physical privations and disgust that I felt during these years. The mental starvation was not quite so great because it was impossible for them to crush my mind as they did my body. That it all materially aided to arrest the development of my body I am certain.
“It is difficult to estimate sexual influences of which as a child I was practically unaware. I certainly admired the liveliest and cleverest girls and made friends with them and disliked the common, lumpy, uneducated type that made two-thirds of my companions. The lively girls liked me, and I made several nice friends whom I have kept ever since. One girl of about 15 took a violent liking for me and figuratively speaking licked the dust from my shoes. I would never take any notice of her. When I was nearly 16 one of my teachers began to notice me and be very kind to me. She was twenty years older than I was. She seemed to pity my loneliness and took me out for walks and sketching, and encouraged me to talk and think. It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever sympathized with me or tried to understand me and it was a most beautiful thing to me. I felt like an orphan child who had suddenly acquired a mother, and through her I began to feel less antagonistic to grown people and to feel the first respect I had ever felt for what they said. She petted me into a state of comparative docility and made the other teachers like and trust me. My love for her was perfectly pure, and I thought of her’s as simply maternal. She never roused the least feeling in me that I can think of as sexual. I liked her to touch me and she sometimes held me in her arms or let me sit on her lap. At bedtime she used to come and say good-night and kiss me upon the mouth. I think now that what she did was injudicious to a degree, and I wish I could believe it was as purely unselfish and kind as it seemed to me then. After I had left school I wrote to her and visited her during a few years. Once she wrote to me that if I could give her employment she would come and live with me. Once when she was ill with neurasthenia her friends asked me to go to the seaside with her, which I did. Here she behaved in an extraordinary way, becoming violently jealous over me with another elderly friend of mine who was there. I could hardly believe my senses and was so astonished and disgusted that I never went near her again. She also accused me of not being ‘loyal’ to her; to this day I have no idea what she meant. She then wrote and asked me what was wrong between us, and I replied that after the words she had had with me my confidence in her was at an end. It gave me no particular pang as I had by this time outgrown the simple gratitude of my childish days and not replaced it by any stronger feeling. All my life I have had the profoundest repugnance to having any ‘words’ with other women.
“I was much less interested in sex matters than other children of my age. I was altogether less precocious, though I knew more, I imagine, than other girls. Nevertheless, by the time I was 15 social matters had begun to interest me greatly. It is difficult to say how this happened, as I was forbidden all books and newspapers (except in my holidays when I had generally a reading orgy, though not the books I needed or wanted). I had abundant opportunities for speculation, but no materials for any profitable thinking.
“Dreaming was forced upon me. I dreamed fairy-tales by night and social dreams by day. In the nightdreams, sometimes in the day-dreams, I was always the prince or the pirate, rescuing beauty in distress, or killing the unworthy. I had one dream which I dreamed over and over again and enjoyed and still sometimes dream. In this I was always hunting and fighting, often in the dark; there was usually a woman or a princess, whom I admired, somewhere in the background, but I have never really seen her. Sometimes I was a stowaway on board ship or an Indian hunter or a backwoodsman making a log-cabin for my wife or rather some companion. My daythoughts were not about the women round about me, or even about the one who was so kind to me; they were almost impersonal. I went on, at any rate, from myself to what I thought the really ideal and built up a very beautiful vision of solid human friendship in which there was everything that was strong and wholesome on either side, but very little of sex. To imagine this in its fullness I had to imagine all social, family, and educational conditions vastly different from anything I had come across. From this my thoughts ran largely on social matters. In whatever direction my thoughts ran I always surveyed them from the point of view of a boy. I was trying to wait patiently till I could escape from slavery and starvation, and trying to keep the open mind I have spoken of, though I never opened a book of poetry, or a novel, or a history, but I slipped naturally back into my non-girl’s attitude and read it through my own eyes. All my surface-life was a sham, and only through books, which were few, did I ever see the world naturally. A consideration of social matters led me to feel very sorry for women, whom I regarded as made by a deliberate process of manufacture into the fools I thought they were, and by the same process that I myself was being made one. I felt more and more that men were to be envied and women pitied. I lay stress on this for it started in me a deliberate interest in women as women. I began to feel protective and kindly toward women and children and to excuse women from their responsibility for calamities such as my school-career. I never imagined that men required, or would have thanked me for, any sort of sympathy. But it came about in these ways, and without the least help that I can trace, that by the time I was 19 years of age I was keenly interested in all kinds of questions: pity for downtrodden women, suffrage questions, marriage laws, questions of liberty, freedom of thought, care of the poor, views of Nature and Man and God. All these things filled my mind to the exclusion of individual men and women. As soon as I left school I made a headlong plunge into books where these things were treated; I had the answers to everything to find after a long period of enforced starvation. I had to work for my knowledge. No books or ideas came near me but what I went in search of. Another thing that helped me to take an expansive view of life at this time was my intense love of Nature. All birds and animals affected me by their beauty and grace, and I have always kept a profound sympathy with them as well as some subtle understanding which enables me to tame them, at times remarkably. I not only loved all other creatures, but I believed that men and women were the most beautiful things in the universe and I would rather look at them (unclothed) than on any other thing, as my greatest pleasure. I was prepared to like them because they were beautiful. When the time came for me to leave school I rather dreaded it, chiefly because I dreaded my life at home. I had a great longing at this time to run away and try my fortune anywhere; possibly if I had been stronger I might have done so. But I was in very poor health through the physical crushing I had had, and in very poor spirits through this and my mental repression. I still knew myself a prisoner and I was bitterly disappointed and ashamed at having no education. I afterward had myself taught arithmetic and other things.
“The next period of my life which covered about six years was not less important to my development, and was a time of extreme misery to me. It found me, on leaving school, almost a child. This time between 18 and 24 should, I think, count as my proper period of puberty, which probably in most children occupies the end years of their school-life.
“It was at this time that I began to make a good many friends of my own and to become aware of psychical and sexual attractions. I had never come across any theories on the subject, but I decided that I must belong to a third sex of some kind. I used to wonder if I was like the neuter bees! I knew physical and psychical sex feeling and yet I seemed to know it quite otherwise from other men and women. I asked myself if I could endure living a woman’s life, bearing children and doing my duty by them. I asked myself what hiatus there could be between my bodily structure and my feelings, and also what was the meaning of the strong physical feelings which had me in their grip without choice of my own. [Experience of physical sex sensations first began about 16 in sleep; masturbation was accidentally discovered at the age of 19, abandoned at 28, and then at 34 deliberately resumed as a method of purely physical relief.] These three things simply would not be reconciled and I said to myself that I must find a way of living in which there was as little sex of any kind as possible. There was something that I simply lacked; that I never doubted. Curiously enough, I thought that the ultimate explanation might be that there were men’s minds in women’s bodies, but I was more concerned in finding a way of life than in asking riddles without answers.
“I thought that one day when I had money and opportunity I would dress in men’s clothes and go to another country, in order that I might be unhampered by sex considerations and conventions. I determined to live an honorable, upright, but simple life.
“I had no idea at first that homosexual attractions in women existed; afterward observations on the lower animals put the idea into my head. I made no preparation in my mind for any sexual life, though I thought it would be a dreary business repressing my body all my days.
“My relations with other women were entirely pure. My attitude toward my sexual physical feelings was one of reserve and repression, and I think the growing conviction of my radical deficiency somewhere, would have made intimate affection for anyone, with any demonstration in it, a kind of impropriety for which I had no taste.
“However, between 21 and 24 other things happened to me.
“During these few years I saw plenty of men and plenty of women. As regards the men I liked them very well, but I never thought the man would turn up with whom I should care to live. Several men were very friendly with me and three in particular used to write me letters and give me much of their confidence. I invited two of them to visit at my house. All these men talked to me with freedom and even told me about their sexual ideas and doings. One asked me to believe that he was leading a good life; the other two owned that they were not. One discussed the question of homosexuality with me; he has never married. I liked one of them a good deal, being attracted by his softness and gentleness and almost feminine voice. It was hoped that I would take to him and he very cautiously made love to me. I allowed him to kiss me a few times and wrote him a few responsive letters, wondering what I liked in him. Someone then commented on the acquaintance and said ‘marriage,’ and I woke up to the fact that I did not really want him at all. I think he found the friendship too insipid and was glad to be out of it. All these men were a trifle feminine in characteristics, and two played no games. I thought it odd that they should all express admiration for the very boyish qualities in me that other people disliked. A fourth man, something of the same type, told another friend that he always felt surprised at how freely he was able to talk to me, but that he never could feel that I was a woman. Two of these were brilliantly clever men; two were artists.
“At the same period, or earlier, I made a number of women friends, and of course saw more of them. I chose out some and some chose me; I think I attracted them as much as, or even more than, they attracted me. I do not quite remember if this was so, though I can say for certain that it was so at school. There were three or four bright, clever, young women whom I got to know then with whom I was great friends. We were interested in books, social theories, politics, art. Sometimes I visited them or we went on exploring expeditions to many country places or towns. They all in the end either had love affairs or married. I know that in spite of all our free conversations they never talked to me as they did to each other; we were always a little shy with each other. But I got very fond of at least four of them. I admired them and when I was tired and worried I often thought how easily, if I had been a man, I could have married and settled down with one or the other. I used to think it would be delightful to have a woman to work for and take care of. My attraction to these women was very strong, but I don’t think they knew it. I seldom even kissed them, but I should often have cheerfully given them a good hugging and kissing if I had thought it a right or proper thing to do. I never wanted them to kiss me half so much as I wanted to kiss them. In these years I felt this with every woman I admired.
“Occasionally, I experienced slight erections when close to other women. I am sure that no deliberate thought of mine caused them, and as I had them at other times too, when I was not expecting them, I think it may have been accidental. What I felt with my mind and what I felt with my body always at this time seemed apart. I cannot accurately describe the interest and attraction that women then were to me. I only know I never felt anything like it for men. All my feelings of 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.
“Looking at my instincts in my first childhood and my mental confusion over myself, I do not believe the most sympathetic and scientific treatment would have turned me into an average girl, but I see no reason why proper physical conditions should not have induced a better physical development and that in its turn have led to tastes more approximate to those of the normal woman. That I do not even now desire to be a normal woman is not to the point.
“Instead of any such help, I suffered during the time that should have been puberty from a profound mental and physical shock which was extended over several years, and in addition I suffered from the outrage of every fine and wholesome feeling I had. These things by checking my physical development gave, I am perfectly convinced, a traumatic impetus to my general abnormality, and this was further kept up by demanding of me (at the dawn of my real sexual activity, and when still practically a child) an interest in men and marriage which I was no more capable of feeling than any ordinary boy or girl of 15. If you had taken a boy of 13 and given him all my conditions, bound him hand and foot, when you became afraid of him petted him into docility, and then placed him in the world and, while urging normal sexuality upon him on the one hand, made him disgusted with it on the other, what would have been the probable result?
“Looking back, I can only say I think, the results in my own case were marvellously good, and that I was saved from worse by my own innocence and by the physical backwardness which nature, probably in mercy, bestowed upon me.
“I find it difficult to sum up the way in which I affect other women and they me. I can only record my conviction that I do affect a large number, whether abnormally or not I don’t know, but I attract them and it would be easy for some of them to become very fond of me if I gave them a chance. They are also, I am certain, more shy with me than they are with other women.
“I find it difficult also to sum up their effect on me. I only know that some women attract me and some tempt me physically, and have done ever since I was about 22 or 23. I know that psychically I have always been more interested in women than in men, but have not considered them the best companions or confidants. I feel protective towards them, never feel jealous of them, and hate having differences with them. And I feel always that I am not one of them. If there had been any period in my life when health, and temptation and money and opportunity had made homosexual relations easy I cannot say how I should have resisted. I think that I have never had any such relations simply because I have in a way been safeguarded from them. For a long time I thought I must do without all actual sexual relations and acted up to that. If I had thought any relations right and possible I think I should have striven for heterosexual experiences because of the respect that I had cultivated, indeed I think always had, for the normal and natural. If I had thought it right to indulge any sort of gratification which was within my reach I think I might probably have chosen the homosexual as being perhaps more satisfying and more convenient. I always wanted love and friendship first; later I should have been glad of something to satisfy my sex hunger too, but by that time I could have done without it, or I thought so.”
At a period rather later than that dealt with in this narrative, the subject of it became strongly attracted to a man who was of somewhat feminine and abnormal disposition. But on consideration she decided that it would not be wise to marry him.
The commonest characteristic of the sexually inverted woman is a certain degree of masculinity or boyishness. As I have already pointed out, transvestism in either women or men by no means necessarily involves inversion. In the volume of Women Adventurers, edited by Mrs. Norman for the Adventure Series, there is no trace of inversion; in most of these cases, indeed, love for a man was precisely the motive for adopting male garments and manners. Again, Colley Cibber’s daughter, Charlotte Charke, a boyish and vivacious woman, who spent much of her life in men’s clothes, and ultimately wrote a lively volume of memoirs, appears never to have been attracted to women, though women were often attracted to her, believing her to be a man; it is, indeed, noteworthy that women seem, with special frequency, to fall in love with disguised persons of their own sex.[64] There is, however, a very pronounced tendency among sexually inverted women to adopt male attire when practicable. In such cases male garments are not usually regarded as desirable chiefly on account of practical convenience, nor even in order to make an impression on other women, but because the wearer feels more at home in them. Thus, Moll mentions the case of a young governess of 16 who, while still unconscious of her sexual perversion, used to find pleasure, when everyone was out of the house, in putting on the clothes of a youth belonging to the family.
Cases have been recorded of inverted women who spent the greater part of their lives in men’s clothing and been generally regarded as men. I may cite the case of Lucy Ann Slater, alias the Rev. Joseph Lobdell, recorded by Wise (Alienist and Neurologist, 1883). She was masculine in character, features, and attire. In early life she married and had a child, but had no affection for her husband, who eventually left her. As usual in such cases, her masculine habits appeared in early childhood. She was expert with the rifle, lived the life of a trapper and hunter among the Indians, and was known as the “Female Hunter of Long Eddy.” She published a book regarding those experiences. I have not been able to see it, but it is said to be quaint and well written. She regarded herself as practically a man, and became attached to a young woman of good education, who had also been deserted by her husband. The affection was strong and emotional, and, of course, without deception. It was interrupted by her recognition and imprisonment as a vagabond, but on the petition of her “wife” she was released. “I may be a woman in one sense,” she said, “but I have peculiar organs which make me more a man than a woman.” She alluded to an enlarged clitoris which she could erect, she said, as a turtle protrudes its head, but there was no question of its use in coitus. She was ultimately brought to the asylum with paroxysmal attacks of exaltation and erotomania (without self-abuse apparently) and corresponding periods of depression, and she died with progressive dementia. I may also mention the case (briefly recorded in the Lancet, February 22, 1884) of a person called John Coulter, who was employed for twelve years as a laborer by the Belfast Harbor Commissioners. When death resulted from injuries caused in falling down stairs, it was found that this person was a woman. She was fifty years of age, and had apparently spent the greater part of her life as a man. When employed in early life as a manservant on a farm, she had married her mistress’s daughter. The pair were married for twenty-nine years, but during the last six years lived apart, owing to the “husband’s” dissipated habits. No one ever suspected her sex. She was of masculine appearance and good muscular development. The “wife” took charge of the body and buried it.
A more recent case of the same kind is that of “Murray Hall,” who died in New York in 1901. Her real name was Mary Anderson, and she was born at Govan, in Scotland. Early left an orphan, on the death of her only brother she put on his clothes and went to Edinburgh, working as a man. Her secret was discovered during an illness, and she finally went to America, where she lived as a man for thirty years, making money, and becoming somewhat notorious as a Tammany politician, a rather riotous “man about town.” The secret was not discovered till her death, when it was a complete revelation, even to her adopted daughter. She married twice; the first marriage ended in separation, but the second marriage seemed to have been happy, for it lasted twenty years, when the “wife” died. She associated much with pretty girls, and was very jealous of them. She seems to have been slight and not very masculine in general build, with a squeaky voice, but her ways, attitude, and habits were all essentially masculine. She associated with politicians, drank somewhat to excess, though not heavily, swore a great deal, smoked and chewed tobacco, sang ribald songs; could run, dance, and fight like a man, and had divested herself of every trace of feminine daintiness. She wore clothes that were always rather too large in order to hide her form, baggy trousers, and an overcoat even in summer. She is said to have died of cancer of the breast. (I quote from an account, which appears to be reliable, contained in the Weekly Scotsman, February 9, 1901.)
Another case, described in the London papers, is that of Catharine Coome, who for forty years successfully personated a man and adopted masculine habits generally. She married a lady’s maid, with whom she lived for fourteen years. Having latterly adopted a life of fraud, her case gained publicity as that of the “man-woman.”
In 1901 the death on board ship was recorded of Miss Caroline Hall, of Boston, a water-color painter who had long resided in Milan. Three years previously she discarded female dress and lived as “husband” to a young Italian lady, also an artist, whom she had already known for seven years. She called herself “Mr. Hall” and appeared to be a thoroughly normal young man, able to shoot with a rifle and fond of manly sports. The officers of the ship stated that she smoked and drank heartily, joked with the other male passengers, and was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone. Death was due to advanced tuberculosis of the lungs, hastened by excessive drinking and smoking.
Ellen Glenn, alias Ellis Glenn, a notorious swindler, who came prominently before the public in Chicago during 1905, was another “man-woman,” of large and masculine type. She preferred to dress as a man and had many love escapades with women. “She can fiddle as well as anyone in the State,” said a man who knew her, “can box like a pugilist, and can dance and play cards.”
In Seville, a few years ago, an elderly policeman, who had been in attendance on successive governors of that city for thirty years, was badly injured in a street accident. He was taken to the hospital and the doctor there discovered that the “policeman” was a woman. She went by the name of Fernando Mackenzie and during the whole of her long service no suspicion whatever was aroused as to her sex. She was French by birth, born in Paris in 1836, but her father was English and her mother Spanish. She assumed her male disguise when she was a girl and served her time in the French army, then emigrated to Spain, at the age of 35, and contrived to enter the Madrid police force disguised as a man. She married there and pretended that her wife’s child was her own son. She removed to Seville, still serving as a policeman, and was engaged there as cook and orderly at the governor’s palace. She served seven successive governors. In consequence of the discovery of her sex she has been discharged from the police without the pension due to her; her wife had died two years previously, and “Fernando” spent all she possessed on the woman’s funeral. Mackenzie had a soft voice, a refined face with delicate features, and was neatly dressed in male attire. When asked how she escaped detection so long, she replied that she always lived quietly in her own house with her wife and did her duty by her employers so that no one meddled with her.
In Chicago in 1906 much attention was attracted to the case of “Nicholai de Raylan,” confidential secretary to the Russian Consul, who at death (of tuberculosis) at the age of 33 was found to be a woman. She was born in Russia and was in many respects very feminine, small and slight in build, but was regarded as a man, and even as very “manly,” by both men and women who knew her intimately. She was always very neat in dress, fastidious in regard to shirts and ties, and wore a long-waisted coat to disguise the lines of her figure. She was married twice in America, being divorced by the first wife, after a union lasting ten years, on the ground of cruelty and misconduct with chorus girls. The second wife, a chorus girl who had been previously married and had a child, was devoted to her “husband.” Both wives were firmly convinced that their husband was a man and ridiculed the idea that “he” could be a woman. I am informed that De Raylan wore a very elaborately constructed artificial penis. In her will she made careful arrangements to prevent detection of sex after death, but these were frustrated, as she died in a hospital.
In St. Louis, in 1909, the case was brought forward of a young woman of 22, who had posed as a man for nine years. Her masculine career began at the age of 13 after the Galveston flood which swept away all her family. She was saved and left Texas dressed as a boy. She worked in livery stables, in a plough factory, and as a bill-poster. At one time she was the adopted son of the family in which she lived and had no difficulty in deceiving her sisters by adoption as to her sex. On coming to St. Louis in 1902 she made chairs and baskets at the American Rattan Works, associating with fellow-workmen on a footing of masculine equality. One day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and dexterity of her hands. “Gee, Bill, you should have been a girl.” “How do you know I’m not?” she retorted. In such ways her ready wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. She shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are told, and never avoided the severest tests. “She drank, she swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard as her fellows, she fished and camped; she told stories with the best of them, and she did not flinch when the talk grew strong. She even chewed tobacco.” Girls began to fall in love with the good-looking boy at an early period, and she frequently boasted of her feminine conquests; with one girl who worshipped her there was a question of marriage. On account of lack of education she was restricted to manual labor, and she often chose hard work. At one time she became a boiler-maker’s apprentice, wielding a hammer and driving in hot rivets. Here she was very popular and became local secretary of the International Brotherhood of Boiler-makers. In physical development she was now somewhat of an athlete. “She could outrun any of her friends on a sprint; she could kick higher, play baseball, and throw the ball overhand like a man, and she was fond of football. As a wrestler she could throw most of the club members.” The physician who examined her for an insurance policy remarked: “You are a fine specimen of physical manhood, young fellow. Take good care of yourself.” Finally, in a moment of weakness, she admitted her sex and returned to the garments of womanhood.
In London, in 1912, a servant-girl of 23 was charged in the Acton Police Court with being “disorderly and masquerading,” having assumed man’s clothes and living with another girl, taller and more handsome than herself, as husband and wife. She had had slight brain trouble as a child, and was very intelligent, with a too active brain; in her spare time she had written stories for magazines. The two girls became attached through doing Christian social work together in their spare time, and resolved to live as husband and wife to prevent any young man from coming forward. The “husband” became a plumber’s mate, and displayed some skill at fisticuffs when at length discovered by the “wife’s” brother. Hence her appearance in the Police Court. Both girls were sent back to their friends, and situations found for them as day-servants. But as they remained devoted to each other arrangements were made for them to live together.
Another case that may be mentioned is that of Cora Anderson, “the man-woman of Milwaukee,” who posed for thirteen years as a man, and during that period lived with two women as her wives without her disguise being penetrated. (Her “Confessions” were published in the Day Book of Chicago during May, 1914.)
It would be easy to bring forward other cases. A few instances of marriage between women will be found in the Alienist and Neurologist, Nov., 1902, p. 497. In all such cases more or less fraud has been exercised. I know of one case, probably unique, in which the ceremony was gone through without any deception on any side: a congenitally inverted Englishwoman of distinguished intellectual ability, now dead, was attached to the wife of a clergyman, who, in full cognizance of all the facts of the case, privately married the two ladies in his own church.
When they still retain female garments, these usually show some traits of masculine simplicity, and there is nearly always a disdain for the petty feminine artifices of the toilet. Even when this is not obvious, there are all sorts of instinctive gestures and habits which may suggest to female acquaintances the remark that such a person “ought to have been a man.” The brusque, energetic movements, the attitude of the arms, the direct speech, the inflexions of the voice, the masculine straightforwardness and sense of honor, and especially the attitude toward men, free from any suggestion either of shyness or audacity, will often suggest the underlying psychic abnormality to a keen observer.
In the habits not only is there frequently a pronounced taste for smoking cigarettes, often found in quite feminine women, but also a decided taste and toleration for cigars. There is also a dislike and sometimes incapacity for needlework and other domestic occupations, while there is often some capacity for athletics.
As regards the general bearing of the inverted woman, in its most marked and undisguised form, I may quote an admirable description by Prof. Zuccarelli, of Naples, of an unmarried middle-class woman of 35: “While retaining feminine garments, her bearing is as nearly as possible a man’s. She wears her thin hair thrown carelessly back alla Umberto, and fastened in a simple knot at the back of her head. The breasts are little developed, and compressed beneath a high corset; her gown is narrow without the expansion demanded by fashion. Her straw hat with broad plaits is perhaps adorned by a feather, or she wears a small hat like a boy’s. She does not carry an umbrella or sunshade, and walks out alone, refusing the company of men; or she is accompanied by a woman, as she prefers, offering her arm and carrying the other hand at her waist, with the air of a fine gentleman. In a carriage her bearing is peculiar and unlike that habitual with women. Seated in the middle of the double seat, her knees being crossed or else the legs well separated, with a virile air and careless easy movements she turns her head in every direction, finding an acquaintance here and there with her eye, saluting men and women with a large gesture of the hand as a business man would. In conversation her pose is similar; she gesticulates much, is vivacious in speech, with much power of mimicry, and while talking she arches the inner angles of her eyebrow, making vertical wrinkles at the center of her forehead. Her laugh is open and explosive and uncovers her white rows of teeth. With men she is on terms of careless equality.” (“Inversione congenita dell’istinto sessuale in una donna,” L’Anomalo, February, 1889.)
“The inverted woman,” Hirschfeld truly remarks (Die Homosexualität, p. 158), “is more full of life, of enterprise, of practical energy, more aggressive, more heroic, more apt for adventure, than either the heterosexual woman or the homosexual man.” Sometimes, he adds, her mannishness may approach reckless brutality, and her courage becomes rashness. This author observes, however, in another place (p. 272) that, in addition to this group of inverted women with masculine traits there is another group, “not less large,” of equally inverted women who are outwardly as thoroughly feminine as are normal women. This is not an observation which I am able to confirm. It appears to me that the great majority of inverted women possess some masculine or boyish traits, even though only as slight as those which may occasionally be revealed by normal women. Extreme femininity, in my observation, is much more likely to be found in bisexual than in homosexual women, just as extreme masculinity is much more likely to be found in bisexual than in homosexual men.
While inverted women frequently, though not always, convey an impression of mannishness or boyishness, there are no invariable anatomical characteristics associated with this impression. There is, for instance, no uniform tendency to a masculine distribution of hair. Nor must it be supposed that the presence of a beard in a woman indicates a homosexual tendency. “Bearded women,” as Hirschfeld remarks, are scarcely ever inverted, and it would seem that the strongest reversals of secondary sexual characters less often accompany homosexuality than slighter modifications of these characters. A faint moustache and other slight manifestations of hypertrichosis also by no means necessarily indicate homosexuality. To some extent it is a matter of race; thus in the Pera district of Constantinople, Weissenberg, among nearly seven hundred women between about 18 and 50 years of age, noted that 10 per cent, showed hair on the upper lip; they were most often Armenians, the Greeks coming next.
There has been some dispute as to whether, apart from homosexuality, hypertrichosis in a woman can be regarded as an indication of a general masculinity. This is denied by Max Bartels (in his elaborate study, “Ueber abnorme Behaarung beim Menschen,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1876, p. 127; 1881, p. 219) and, as regards insanity, by L. Harris-Liston (“Cases of Bearded Women,” British Medical Journal, June 2, 1894). On the other hand, J. H. Claiborne (“Hypertrichosis in Women,” New York Medical Journal, June 13, 1914) believes that hair on the face and body in a woman is a sign of masculinity; “women with hypertrichosis possess masculine traits.”
There seems to be very little doubt that fully developed “bearded women” are in most, possibly not all, cases decidedly feminine in all other respects. A typical instance is furnished by Annie Jones, the “Esau Lady” of Virginia. She belonged to a large and entirely normal family, but herself possessed a full beard with thick whiskers and moustache of an entirely masculine type; she also showed short, dark hair on arms and hands resembling a man. Apart from this heterogeny, she was entirely normal and feminine. At the age of 26, when examined in Berlin, the hair of the head was very long, the expression of the face entirely feminine, the voice also feminine, the figure elegant, the hands and feet entirely of feminine type, the external and internal genitalia altogether feminine. Annie Jones was married. Max Bartels, who studied Annie Jones and published her portrait (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1891, Heft 3, p. 243), remarks that in these respects Annie Jones resembles other “bearded women”; they marry, have children, and are able to suckle them. A beard in women seems, as Dupré and Duflos believe (Revue Neurologique, Aug. 30, 1901), to be more closely correlated with neuropathy than with masculinity; comparing a thousand sane women with a thousand insane women in Paris, they found unusual degree of hair or down on the face in 23 per cent. of the former and 50 per cent. of the latter; but even the sane bearded women frequently belonged to neuropathic families.
A tendency to slight widely diffused hypertrichosis of the body generally, not localized or highly developed on the face, seems much more likely than a beard to be associated with masculinity, even when it occurs in little girls. Thus Virchow once presented to the Berlin Anthropological Society a little girl of 5 of this type who also possessed a deep and rough voice (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1891, Heft 4, p. 469). A typical example of slight hypertrichosis in a woman associated with general masculine traits is furnished by a description and figure of the body of a woman of 56 in an anatomical institute, furnished by C. Strauch (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1901, Heft 6, p. 534). In this case there was a growth of hair around both nipples and a line of hair extended from the pubes to the navel; both these two dispositions of hair are very rare in women. (In Vienna among nearly 700 women Coe only found a tendency to hair distribution toward the navel in about 1 per cent.). While the hair in this subject was otherwise fairly normal, there were many approximations to the masculine type in other respects: the muscles were strongly developed, the bones massive, the limbs long, the joints powerful, the hands and feet large, the thorax well developed, the lower jaw massive; there was an absence of feminine curves on the body and the breasts were scarcely perceptible. At the same time the genital organs were normal and there had been childbirth. It was further notable that this woman had committed suicide by self-strangulation, a rare method which requires great resolution and strength of will, as at any moment of the process the pressure can be removed.
There seems little doubt that inverted women frequently tend to show minor anomalies of the piliferous system, and especially slight hypertrichosis and a masculine distribution of hair. Thus in a very typical case of inversion in an Italian girl of 19 who dressed as a man and ran away from home, the down on the arms and legs was marked to an unusual extent, and there was very abundant hair in the armpits and on the pubes, with a tendency to the masculine distribution. Of the three cases described in this chapter which I am best acquainted with, one possesses an unusually small amount of hair on the pubes and in the axillæ (oligotrichosis terminalis), approximating to the infantile type, while another presents a complex and very rare piliferous heterogeny. There is marked dark down on the upper lip; the pubic hair is thick, and there is hair on toes and feet and legs to umbilicus; there are also a few hairs around the nipples. A woman physician in the United States who knows many female inverts similarly tells me that she has observed the tendency to growth of hair on the legs. If, as is not improbable, inversion is associated with some abnormal balance in the internal secretions, it is not difficult to understand this tendency to piliferous anomalies; and we know that the thyroid secretion, for instance, and much more the testicular and ovarian secretions, have a powerful influence on the hair.
Ballantyne, some years ago, in discussing congenital hypertrichosis (Manual of Antenatal Pathology, 1902, pp. 321-6) concluded that the theory of arrested development is best supported by the facts; persistence of lanugo is such an arrest, and hypertrichosis may largely be considered a persistence of lanugo. Such a conclusion is still tenable,—though it encounters some difficulties and inconsistencies,—and it largely agrees with what we know of the condition as associated with inversion in women. But we are now beginning to see that this arrested development may be definitely associated with anomalies in the internal secretions, and even with special chemical defects in these secretions. Virile strength has always been associated with hair, as the story of Samson bears witness. Ammon found among Baden conscripts (L’Anthropologie, 1896, p. 285) that when the men were divided into classes according to the amount of hair on body, the first class, with least hair, have the smallest circumference of testicle, the fewest number of men with glans penis uncovered, the largest number of infantile voices, the largest proportion of blue eyes and fair hair, the smallest average height, weight, and chest circumference, while in all these respects the men with hairy bodies were at the other extreme. It has been known from antiquity that in men early castration affects the growth of hair. It is now known that in women the presence or absence of the ovary and, other glands affects the hair, as well as sexual development. Thus Hegar (Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie, vol. i, p. 111, 1898) described a girl with pelvis of infantile type and uterine malformation who had been unusually hairy on face and body from infancy, with masculine arrangement of hair on pubes and abdomen; menstruation was scanty, breasts atrophic; the hair was of lanugo type; we see here how in women infantile and masculine characteristics are associated with, and both probably dependent on, defects in the sexual glands. Plant (Centralblatt für Gynäkologie, No. 9, 1896) described another girl with very small ovaries, rudimentary uterus, small vagina, and prominent nymphæ, in whom menstruation was absent, hair on head long and strong, but hair absent in armpits and scanty on mons veneris. These two cases seem inconsistent as regards hair, and we should now wish to know the condition of the other internal glands. The thyroid, for instance, it is now known, controls the hair, as well as do the sexual glands; and the thyroid, as Gautier has shown (Académie de Médecine, July 24, 1900) elaborates arsenic and iodine, which nourish the skin and hair; he found that the administration of sodium cacodylate to young women produced abundant growth of hair on head. Again, the kidneys, and especially the adrenal glands, influence the hair. It has long been known that in girls with congenital renal tumors there is an abnormally early growth of axillary and pubic hair; Goldschwend (Präger medizinische Wochenschrift, Nos. 37 and 38, 1910) has described the case of a woman of 39, with small ovaries and adrenal tumor, in whom hair began to grow on chin and cheeks. (See also C. T. Ewart, Lancet, May 19, 1915.) Once more, the glans hypophysis also affects hair growth and it has been found by Lévi (quoted in Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, August-September, 1912, p. 711) that the administration of hypophysis extract to an infantile, hairless woman of 27, without sexual feeling, produced a general tendency to growth of hair. Such facts not only help to explain the anomalies of hair development, but also indicate the direction in which we may find an explanation of the anomalies of the sexual impulse.
Apart from the complicated problem presented by the hair, there are genuine approximations to the masculine type. The muscles tend to be everywhere firm, with a comparative absence of soft connective tissue; so that an inverted woman may give an unfeminine impression to the sense of touch. A certain tonicity of the muscles has indeed often been observed in homosexual women. Hirschfeld found that two-thirds of inverted women are more muscular than normal women, while, on the other hand, he found that among inverted men the musculature was often weak.
Not only is the tone of the voice often different, but there is reason to suppose that this rests on a basis, of anatomical modification. At Moll’s suggestion, Flatau examined the larynx in a large number of inverted women, and found in several a very decidedly masculine type of larynx, or an approach to it, especially in cases of distinctly congenital origin. Hirschfeld has confirmed Flatau’s observations on this point. It may be added that inverted women are very often good whistlers; Hirschfeld even knows two who are public performers in whistling. It is scarcely necessary to remark that while the old proverb associates whistling in a woman with crowing in a hen, whistling in a woman is no evidence of any general physical or psychic inversion.
As regards the sexual organs it seems possible, so far as my observations go, to speak more definitely of inverted women than of inverted men. In all three of the cases concerning whom I have precise information, among those whose histories are recorded in the present chapter, there is more or less arrested development and infantilism. In one a somewhat small vagina and prominent nymphæ, with local sensitiveness, are associated with oligotrichosis. In another the sexual parts are in some respects rather small, while there is no trace of ovary on one side. In the third case, together with hypertrichosis, the nates are small, the nymphæ large, the clitoris deeply hooded, the hymen thick, and the vagina probably small. These observations, though few, are significant, and they accord with those of other observers.[65] Krafft-Ebing well described a case which I should be inclined to regard as typical of many: sexual organs feminine in character, but remaining at the infantile stage of a girl of 10; small clitoris, prominent cockscomb-like nymphæ, small vagina scarcely permitting normal intercourse and very sensitive. Hirschfeld agrees in finding common an approach to the type described by Krafft-Ebing; atrophic anomalies he regards as more common than hypertrophic, and he refers to thickness of hymen and a tendency to notably small uterus and ovaries. The clitoris is more usually small than large; women with a large clitoris (as Parent-Duchâtelet long since remarked) seem rarely to be of masculine type.
Notwithstanding these tendencies, however, sexual inversion in a woman is, as a rule, not more obvious than in a man. At the same time, the inverted woman is not usually attractive to men. She herself generally feels the greatest indifference to men, and often, cannot understand why a woman should love a man, though she easily understands why a man should love a woman. She shows, therefore, nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men. The man who is passionately attracted to an inverted woman is usually of rather a feminine type. For instance, in one case present to my mind he was of somewhat neurotic heredity, of slight physical development, not sexually attractive to women, and very domesticated in his manner of living; in short, a man who might easily have been passionately attracted to his own sex.
While the inverted woman is cold, or, at most, comradely in her bearing toward men, she may become shy and confused in the presence of attractive persons of her own sex, even unable to undress in their presence, and full of tender ardor for the woman whom she loves.[66]
Homosexual passion in women finds more or less complete expression in kissing, sleeping together, and close embraces, as in what is sometimes called “lying spoons,” when one woman lies on her side with her back turned to her friend and embraces her from behind, fitting her thighs into the bend of her companion’s legs, so that her mons veneris is in dose contact with the other’s buttocks, and slight movement then produces mild erethism. One may also lie on the other’s body, or there may be mutual masturbation. Mutual contact and friction of the sexual parts seem to be comparatively rare, but it seems to have been common in antiquity, for we owe to it the term “tribadism” which is sometimes used as a synonym of feminine homosexuality, and this method is said to be practised today by the southern Slav women of the Balkans. The extreme gratification is cunnilinctus, or oral stimulation of the feminine sexual organs, not usually mutual, but practised by the more active and masculine partner; this act is sometimes termed, by no means satisfactorily, “Sapphism,” and “Lesbianism.”[67]
An enlarged clitoris is but rarely found in inversion and plays a very small part in the gratification of feminine homosexuality. Kiernan refers; to a case, occurring in America, in which an inverted woman, married and a mother, possessed a clitoris which measured 2½ inches when erect. Casanova described an inverted Swiss, woman, otherwise feminine in development, whose clitoris in excitement was longer than his little finger, and capable of penetration. The older literature contains many similar cases. In most such cases, however, we are probably concerned with some form of pseudohermaphroditism, and the “clitoris” may more properly be regarded as a penis; there is thus no inversion involved.
While the use of the clitoris is rare in homosexuality, the use of an artificial penis is by no means uncommon and very widespread. In several of the modern cases in which inverted women have married women (such as those of Sarolta Vay and De Raylan) the belief of the wife in the masculinity of the “husband” has been due to an appliance of this kind used in intercourse. The artificial penis (the olisbos, or baubon) was well known to the Greeks and is described by Herondas. Its invention was ascribed by Suidas to the Milesian women, and Miletus, according to Aristophanes in the Lysistrata, was the chief place of its manufacture. It was still known in medieval times, and in the twelfth century Bishop Burchard, of Worms, speaks of its use as a thing “which some women are accustomed to do.” In the early eighteenth century, Margaretha Lincken, again in Germany, married another woman with the aid of an artificial male organ.[68] The artificial penis is also used by homosexual women in various parts of the world. Thus we find it mentioned in legends of the North American Indians and it is employed in Zanzibar and Madagascar.[69]
The various phenomena of sadism, masochism, and fetichism which are liable to arise, spontaneously or by suggestion, in the relationships of normal lovers, as well as of male inverts, may also arise in the same way among inverted women, though, probably, not often in a very pronounced form. Moll, however, narrates a case (Konträre Sexualempfindung, 1899, pp. 565-70) in which various minor but very definite perversions were combined with inversion. A young lady of 26, of good heredity, from the age of 6 had only been attracted to her own sex, and even in childhood had practised mutual cunnilinctus. She was extremely intelligent, and of generous and good-natured disposition, with various masculine tastes, but, on the whole, of feminine build and with completely feminine larynx. During seven years she lived exclusively with one woman. She found complete satisfaction in active cunnilinctus. During the course of this relationship various other methods of excitement and gratification arose—it seems, for the most part, spontaneously. She found much pleasure in urolagnic and coprolagnic practices. In addition to these and similar perversions, the subject liked being bitten, especially in the lobule of the ear, and she was highly excited when whipped by her friend, who should, if possible, be naked at the time; only the nates must be whipped and only a birch rod be used, or the effect would not be obtained. These practices would not be possible to her in the absence of extreme intimacy and mutual understanding, and they only took place with the one friend. In this case the perverse phenomena were masochistic rather than sadistic. Many homosexual women, however, display sadistic tendencies in a more or less degree. Thus Dr. Kiernan tells me of an American case, with which he was professionally concerned with Dr. Moyer (see also paper by Kiernan and Moyer in Alienist and Neurologist, May, 1907), of a sadistic inverted woman in a small Illinois city, married and with two young children. She was of undoubted neuropathic stock and there was a history of pre-marital masturbation and bestiality with a dog. She was a prominent club woman in her city and a leader in religious and social matters; as is often the case with sadists she was pruriently prudish, and there was strong testimony to her chaste and modest character by clergymen, club women, and local magnates. The victim of her sadistic passion was a girl she had adopted from a Home, but whom she half starved. On this girl she inflicted over three hundred wounds. Many of these wounds were stabs with forks and scissors which merely penetrated the skin. This was especially the case with those inflicted on the breasts, labia, and clitoris. During the infliction of these she experienced intense excitement, but this excitement was under control, and when she heard anyone approaching she instantly desisted. She was found sane and responsible at the time of these actions, but the jury also found that she had since become insane and she was sent to an Insane Hospital, after recovery to serve a sentence of two years in prison. The alleged insanity, Dr. Kiernan adds, was of the dubious manic and depressive variety, and perhaps chiefly due to wounded pride.
The inverted woman is an enthusiastic admirer of feminine beauty, especially of the statuesque beauty of the body, unlike, in this, the normal woman, whose sexual emotion is but faintly tinged by esthetic feeling. In her sexual habits we perhaps less often find the degree of promiscuity which is not uncommon among inverted men, and we may perhaps agree with Moll that homosexual women are more often apt to love faithfully and lastingly than homosexual men. Hirschfeld remarks that inverted women are not usually attracted in girlhood by the autoerotic and homosexual vices of school-life, and nearly all the women whose histories I have recorded in this chapter felt a pronounced repugnance to such manifestations and cherished lofty ideals of love.
Inverted women are not rarely married. Moll, from various confidences which he has received, believes that inverted women have not the same horror of normal coitus as inverted, men; this is probably due to the fact that the woman under such circumstances can retain a certain passivity. In other cases there is some degree of bisexuality, although, as among inverted men, the homosexual instinct seems usually to give the greater relief and gratification.
It has been stated by many observers—in America, in France, in Germany, and in England—that homosexuality is increasing among women.[70] There are many influences in our civilization today which encourage such manifestations.[71] The modern movement of emancipation—the movement to obtain the same rights and duties as men, the same freedom and responsibility, the same education and the same work—must be regarded as, on the whole, a wholesome and inevitable movement. But it carries with it certain disadvantages.[72] Women are, very justly, coming to look upon knowledge and experience generally as their right as much as their brothers’ right. But when this doctrine is applied to the sexual sphere it finds certain limitations. Intimacies of any kind between young men and young women are as much discouraged socially now as ever they were; as regards higher education, the mere association of the sexes in the lecture-room or the laboratory or the hospital is discouraged in England and in America. While men are allowed freedom, the sexual field of women is becoming restricted to trivial flirtation with the opposite sex, and to intimacy with their own sex; having been taught independence of men and disdain for the old theory which placed women in the moated grange of the home to sigh for a man who never comes, a tendency develops for women to carry this independence still farther and to find love where they find work. These unquestionable influences of modern movements cannot directly cause sexual inversion, but they develop the germs of it, and they probably cause a spurious imitation. This spurious imitation is due to the fact that the congenital anomaly occurs with special frequency in women of high intelligence who, voluntarily or involuntarily, influence others.
Kurella, Bloch, and others believe that the woman movement has helped to develop homosexuality (see, e.g., I. Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, 1902, vol. i, p. 248). Various “feminine Strindbergs of the woman movement,” as they have been termed, displayed marked hostility to men. Anna Rüling claims that many leaders of the movement, from the outset until today, have been inverted. Hirschfeld, however (Die Homosexualität, p. 500), after giving special attention to the matter, concludes that, alike among English suffragettes and in the German Verein für Frauenstimmrecht, the percentage of inverts is less than 10 per cent.
5. The Nature Of Sexual Inversion
Analysis of Histories—Race—Heredity—General Health—First Appearance of Homosexual Impulse—Sexual Precocity and Hyperesthesia—Suggestion and Other Exciting Causes of Inversion—Masturbation—Attitude Toward Women—Erotic Dreams—Methods of Sexual Relationship—Pseudo-sexual Attraction—Physical Sexual Abnormalities—Artistic and Other Aptitudes—Moral Attitude of the Invert.
Before stating briefly my own conclusions as to the nature of sexual inversion, I propose to analyze the facts brought out in the histories which I have been able to study.[73]
RACE.—All my cases, 80 in number, are British and American, 20 living in the United States and the rest being British. Ancestry, from the point of view of race, was not made a matter of special investigation. It appears, however, that at least 44 are English or mainly English; at least 10 are Scotch or of Scotch extraction; 2 are Irish and 4 others largely Irish; 4 have German fathers or mothers; another is of German descent on both sides, while 2 others are of remote German extraction; 2 are partly, and 1 entirely, French; 2 have a Portuguese strain, and at least 2 are more or less Jewish. Except the apparently frequent presence of the German element, there is nothing remarkable in this ancestry.
HEREDITY.—It is always difficult to deal securely with the significance of heredity, or even to establish a definite basis of facts. I have by no means escaped this difficulty, for in some cases I have not even had an opportunity of cross-examining the subjects whose histories I have obtained. Still, the facts, so far as they emerge, have some interest. I possess some record of heredity in 62 of my cases. Of these, not less than 24, or in the proportion of nearly 39 per cent., assert that they have reason to believe that other cases of inversion have occurred in their families, and, while in some it is only a strong suspicion, in others there is no doubt whatever. In one case there is reason to suspect inversion on both sides. Usually the inverted relatives have been brothers, sisters, cousins, or uncles. In one case a bisexual son seems to have had a bisexual father.
This hereditary character of inversion (which was denied by Näcke) is a fact of great significance, and, as it occurs in cases with which I am well acquainted, I can have no doubt concerning the existence of the tendency. The influence of suggestion may often be entirely excluded, especially when the persons are of different sex. Both Krafft-Ebing and Moll noted a similar tendency. Von Römer states that in one-third of his cases there was inversion in other members of the family. Hirschfeld also found that there is a relatively high proportion of cases of family inversion.
Twenty-six, so far as can be ascertained, belong to reasonably healthy families; minute investigation would probably reduce the number of these, and it is noteworthy that even in some of the healthy families there was only one child born of the parents’ marriage. In 28 cases there is more or less frequency of morbidity or abnormality—eccentricity, alcoholism, neurasthenia, insanity, or nervous disease—on one or both sides, in addition to inversion or apart from it. In some of these cases the inverted offspring is the outcome of the union, of a very healthy with a thoroughly morbid stock; in some others there is a minor degree of abnormality on both sides.
GENERAL HEALTH.—It is possible to speak with more certainty of the health of the individual than of that of his family. Of the 80 cases, 53—or about two-thirds—may be said to enjoy good, and sometimes even very good, health, though occasionally there is some slight qualification to be made. In 22 cases the health is delicate, or at best only fair; in these cases there is sometimes a tendency to consumption, and often marked neurasthenia and a more or less unbalanced temperament. Four cases are morbid to a considerable degree; the remaining case has had insane delusions which required treatment in an asylum. A considerable proportion, included among those as having either good or fair health, may be described as of extremely nervous temperament, and in most cases they so describe themselves; a certain proportion of these combine great physical and, especially, mental energy with this nervousness; all these are doubtless of neurotic temperament.[74] Very few can be said to be conspicuously lacking in energy. On the whole, therefore, a large proportion of these inverted individuals are passing through life in an unimpaired state of health, which enables them to do at least their fair share of work in the world; in a considerable proportion of my cases that work is of high intellectual value. Only in 5 cases, it will be seen, or at most 6, can the general health be said to be distinctly bad.
This result may, perhaps, seem surprising. It must, however, be remembered that my cases do not, on the whole, represent the class which alone the physician is usually able to bring forward: i.e., the sexual inverts who are suffering from a more or less severe degree of complete nervous breakdown.
There is no frequent relationship between homosexuality and insanity, and such homosexuality as is found in asylums is mostly of a spurious character. This point was specially emphasized by Näcke (e.g., “Homosexualität und Psychose,” Zeitschrift für Psichiatrie, vol. lxviii, No. 3, 1911). He quoted the opinions of various distinguished alienists as to the rarity with which they had met genuine inverts, and recorded his own experiences. He had never met a genuine invert in the asylum throughout his extensive experience, although he was quite willing to admit that there may be unrecognized inverts in asylums, and one patient informed him, after leaving, that he was inverted, and had attracted the attention of the police both before and afterward, though nothing happened in the asylum. Among 1500 patients in the asylum during one year, active pedicatio occurred in about 1 per cent. of cases, these patients being frequently idiots or imbeciles and at the same time masturbators, solitary or mutual. Hirschfeld informed Näcke that, among homosexual persons, hysterical conditions (not usually on hereditary basis) are fairly common, and neurasthenia of high degree decidedly frequent, but though stages of depression are common he had never seen pure melancholia and very seldom mania, but paranoiac delusional ideas frequently, and he agreed with Bryan of Broadmoor that religious delusions are not uncommon. General paralysis occurs, but is comparatively rare, and the same may be said of dementia præcox. On the whole, although Hirschfeld was unable to give precise figures, there was no reason whatever to suppose an abnormal prevalence of insanity. This was Näcke’s own view. It is quite true, Näcke concluded, that homosexual actions occur in every form of psychosis, especially in congenital and secondary dements, and at periods of excitement, but we are here more concerned with “pseudo-homosexuality” than with true inversion. Hirschfeld finds that 75 per cent. inverts are of sound heredity; this seems too large a proportion; in any case allowance must be made for differences in method and minuteness of investigation.
I am fairly certain that thorough investigation would very considerably enlarge the proportion of cases with morbid heredity. At the same time this enlargement would be chiefly obtained by bringing minor abnormalities to the front, and it would then have to be shown how far the families of average or normal persons are free from such abnormalities. The question is sometimes asked: What family is free from neuropathic taint? At present it is difficult to answer this question precisely. There is good ground to believe that a fairly large proportion of families are free from such taint. In any case it seems probable that the families to which the inverted belong do not usually present such profound signs of nervous degeneration as we were formerly led to suppose. What we vaguely call “eccentricity” is common among them; insanity is much rarer.
FIRST APPEARANCE OF HOMOSEXUAL INSTINCT.—Out of 72 cases, in 8 the instinct veered round to the same sex in adult age or at all events after puberty; in 3 of these there had been a love-disappointment with a woman; no other cause than this can be assigned for the transition; but it is noteworthy that in at least 2 of these cases the sexual instinct is undeveloped or morbidly weak, while a third individual is of somewhat weak physique, and another has long been in delicate health. In a further case, also somewhat morbid, the development was rather more complicated.
In 64 cases, or in a proportion of 88 per cent., the abnormal instinct began in early life, without previous attraction to the opposite sex.[75] In 27 of these it dates from about puberty, usually beginning at school. In 39 cases the tendency began before puberty, between the ages of 5 and 11, usually between 7 and 9, sometimes as early as the subject can remember. It must not be supposed that, in these numerous cases of the early appearance of homosexuality, the manifestations were of a specifically physical character, although erections are noted in a few cases. For the most part sexual manifestations at this early age, whether homosexual or heterosexual, are purely psychic.[76]
SEXUAL PRECOCITY AND HYPERESTHESIA.—It is a fact of considerable interest and significance that in so large a number of my cases there was distinct precocity of the sexual emotions, both on the physical and psychic sides. There can be little doubt that, as many previous observers have found, inversion tends strongly to be associated with sexual precocity. I think it may further be said that sexual precocity tends to encourage the inverted habit where it exists. Why this should be so is obvious, if we believe—as there is some reason for believing—that at an early age the sexual instinct is comparatively undifferentiated in its manifestations. The precocious accentuation of the sexual impulse leads to definite crystallization of the emotions at a premature stage. It must be added that precocious sexual energy is likely to remain feeble, and that a feeble sexual energy adapts itself more easily to homosexual relationships, in which there is no definite act to be accomplished, than to normal relationships. It is difficult to say how many of my cases exhibit sexual weakness. In 6 or 7 it is evident, and it may be suspected in many others, especially in those who are, and often describe themselves as, “sensitive” or “nervous,” as well as in those whose sexual development was very late. In many cases there is marked hyperesthesia, or irritable weakness. Hyperesthesia simulates strength, and, while there can be little doubt that some sexual inverts (and more especially bisexuals) do possess unusual sexual energy, in others it is but apparent; the frequent repetition of seminal emissions, for example, may be the result of weakness as well as of strength. It must be added that this irritability of the sexual centers is, in a considerable proportion of inverts, associated with marked emotional tendencies to affection and self-sacrifice. In the extravagance of his affection and devotion, it has been frequently observed, the male invert resembles many normal women.
SUGGESTION AND OTHER EXCITING CAUSES OF INVERSION.—In 18 of my cases it is possible that some event, or special environment, in early life had more or less influence in turning the sexual instinct into homosexual channels, or in calling out a latent inversion. In 3 cases a disappointment in normal love seems to have produced a profound nervous and emotional shock, acting, as we seem bound to admit, on a predisposed organism, and developing a fairly permanent tendency to inversion. In 8 cases there was seduction by an older person, but in at least 4 or 5 of these there was already a well-marked predisposition. In at least 8 other cases, example, usually at school, may probably be regarded as having exerted some influence. It is noteworthy that in very few of my cases can we trace the influence of any definite “suggestion,” as asserted by Schrenck-Notzing, who believes that, in the causation of sexual inversion (as undoubtedly in the causation of erotic fetichism), we must give the first place to “accidental factors of education and external influence.” He records the case of a little boy who innocently gazed in curiosity at the penis of his father who was urinating, and had his ears boxed, whence arose a train of thought and feeling which resulted in complete sexual inversion. In two of the cases I have reported we have parallel incidents, and here we see clearly that the homosexual tendency already existed. I do not question the occurrence of such incidents, but I refuse to accept them as supplying the causation of inversion, and in so doing I am supported by all the evidence I am able to obtain. I am in agreement with a correspondent who wrote:—
“Considering that all boys are exposed to the same order of suggestions (sight of a man’s naked organs, sleeping with a man, being handled by a man), and that only a few of them become sexually perverted, I think it reasonable to conclude that those few were previously constituted to receive the suggestion. In fact, suggestion seems to play exactly the same part in the normal and abnormal awakening of sex.”
I would go so far as to assert that for normal boys and girls the developed sexual organs of the adult man or woman—from their size, hairiness, and the mystery which envelops them—nearly always exert a certain fascination, whether of attraction or horror.[77] But this has no connection with homosexuality, and scarcely with sexuality at all. Thus, in one case known to me, a boy of 6 or 7 took pleasure in caressing the organs of another boy, twice his own age, who remained passive and indifferent; yet this child grew up without ever manifesting any homosexual instinct. The seed of suggestion can only develop when it falls on a suitable soil. If it is to act on a fairly normal nature the perverted suggestion must be very powerful or iterated, and even then its influence will probably only be temporary, disappearing in the presence of the normal stimulus.[78]
Not only is “suggestion” unnecessary to develop a sexual impulse already rooted in the organism, but when exerted in an opposite direction it is powerless to divert that impulse. We see this illustrated in several of the cases whose histories I have presented. Thus in one case a boy was seduced by the housemaid at the age of 14 and even derived pleasure from the girl, yet none the less the native homosexual instinct asserted itself a year later. In another case heterosexual suggestions were offered and accepted in early life, yet, notwithstanding, the homosexual attraction was slowly evolved from within.
I have, therefore, but little to say of the influence of suggestion, which was formerly exalted to a position of the first importance in books on sexual inversion. This is not because I underestimate the great part played by suggestion in many fields of normal and abnormal life. It is because I have been able to find but few decided traces of it in sexual inversion. In many cases, doubtless, there may be some slight elements of suggestion in developing the inversion, though they cannot be traced.[79] Their importance seems usually questionable even when they are discovered. Take Schrenck-Notzing’s case of the little boy whose ears were boxed for what his father considered improper curiosity. I find it difficult to realize that a mighty suggestion can thereby be generated unless a strong emotion exists for it to unite with; in that case the seed falls on prepared soil. Is the wide prevalence of normal sexuality due to the fact that so many little boys have had their ears boxed for taking naughty liberties with women? If so, I am quite prepared to accept Schrenck-Notzing’s explanation as a complete account of the matter. I know of one case, indeed, in which an element of what may fairly be called suggestion can be detected. It is that of a physician who had always been on very friendly terms with men, but had sexual relations exclusively with women, finding fair satisfaction, until the confessions of an inverted patient one day came to him as a revelation; thereafter he adopted inverted practices and ceased to find any attraction in women. But even in this case, as I understand the matter, suggestion merely served to reveal his own nature to the man. For a physician to adopt the perverted habits which the visit of a chance patient suggests to him can scarcely be a phenomenon of pure suggestion. We have no reason to suppose that this physician practised every perversion he heard of from patients; he adopted that which fitted his own nature.[80] In another case homosexual advances were made to a youth and accepted, but he had already been attracted to men in childhood. Again, in another case, there were homosexual influences in the boyhood of a subject who became bisexual, but as the subject’s father was of similar bisexual temperament we can attach no potency to the mere suggestions. In another case we find homosexual influence in childhood, but the child was already delicate, shy, nervous, and feminine, clearly possessing a temperament predestined to develop in a homosexual direction.
The irresistible potency of the inner impulse is well illustrated in a case presented by Hirschfeld and Burchard: “My daughter Erna,” said the subject’s mother, “showed boyish inclinations at the age of 3, and they increased from year to year. She never played with dolls, only with tin soldiers, guns, and castles. She would climb trees and jump ditches; she made friends with the drivers of all the carts that came to our house and they would place her on the horse’s back. The annual circus was a joy to her for all the year. Even as a child of 4 she was so fearless on horseback that lookers-on shouted Bravo! and all declared she was a born horsewoman. It was her greatest wish to be a boy. She would wear her elder brother’s clothes all day, notwithstanding her grandmother’s indignation. Cycling, gymnastics, boating, swimming, were her passion, and she showed skill in them. As she grew older she hated prettily adorned hats and clothes. I had much trouble with her for she would not wear pretty things. The older she grew the more her masculine and decided ways developed. This excited much outcry and offence. People found my daughter unfeminine and disagreeable, but all my trouble and exhortations availed nothing to change her.” Now this young woman whom all the influences of a normal feminine environment failed to render feminine was not physiologically a woman at all; the case proved to be the unique instance of an individual possessing all the external characteristics of a woman combined with internal testicular tissue capable of emitting true masculine semen through the feminine urethra. No suggestions of the environment could suffice to overcome this fundamental fact of internal constitution. (Hirschfeld and Burchard, “Spermasekretion aus einer weiblichen Harnröhre,” Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, No. 52, 1911.)
I may here quote three American cases (not previously published), for which I am indebted to Prof. G. Frank Lydston, of Chicago. They seem to me to illustrate the only kind of suggestions which play much part in the evolution of inversion. I give them in Dr. Lydston’s words:—
CASE I.—A man, 45 years of age, attracted by the allusion to my essay on “Social Perversion” contained in the English translation of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, consulted me regarding the possible cure of his condition. This individual was a finely educated, very intelligent man, who was an excellent linguist, had considerable musical ability, and was in the employ of a firm whose business was such as to demand on the part of its employés considerable legal acumen, clerical ability, and knowledge of real-estate transactions. This man stated that at the age of puberty, without any knowledge of perversity of sexual feeling, he was thrown intimately in contact with males of more advanced years, who took various means to excite his sexual passions, the result being that perverted sexual practices were developed, which were continued for a number of years. He thereafter noticed an aversion to women. At the solicitations of his family he finally married, without any very intelligent idea as to what, if anything, might be expected of him in the marital relation. Absolute impotence—indeed, repugnance for association with his wife—was the lamentable sequence. A divorce was in contemplation when, fortunately for all parties concerned, the wife suddenly died. Being a man of more than ordinary intelligence, this individual, prior to seeking my aid, had sought vainly for some remedy for his unfortunate condition. He stated that he believed there was an element of heredity in his case, his father having been a dipsomaniac and one brother having died insane. He nevertheless stated it to be his opinion that, notwithstanding the hereditary taint, he would have been perfectly normal from a sexual standpoint had it not been for acquired impressions at or about the period of puberty. This man presented a typically neurotic type of physique, complained of being intensely nervous, was prematurely gray, of only fair stature, and had an uncontrollable nystagmus, which, he said, had existed for some fifteen years. As might be expected, treatment in this case was of no avail. I began the use of hypnotic suggestion at the hands of an expert professional hypnotist. The patient, being called out of the State, finally gave up treatment, and I have no means of knowing what his present condition is.
CASE II.—A lady patient of mine who happened to be an actress, and consequently a woman of the world, brought to me for an opinion some correspondence which had passed between her younger brother and a man living in another State, with whom he was on quite intimate terms. In one of these letters various flying trips to Chicago for the purpose of meeting the lad, who, by the way, was only 17 years of age, were alluded to. It transpired also, as evidenced by the letters, that on several occasions the young lad had been taken on trips in Pullman cars by his friend, who was a prominent railroad official. The character of the correspondence was such as the average healthy man would address to a woman with whom he was enamored. It seemed that the author of the correspondence had applied to his boy affinity the name Cinderella, and the protestations of passionate affection that were made toward Cinderella certainly would have satisfied the most exacting woman. The young lad subsequently made a confession to me, and I put myself in correspondence with his male friend, with the result that he called upon me and I obtained a full history of the case. The method of indulgence in this case was the usual one of oral masturbation, in which the lad was the passive party. I was unable to obtain any definite data regarding the family history of the elder individual in this case, but understand that there was a taint of insanity in his family. He himself was a robust, fine-looking man, above middle age, who was well educated and very intelligent, as he necessarily must have been, because of the prominent position he held with an important railway company. I will state, as a matter of interest, that the lad in this case, who is now 23 years of age, has recently consulted me for impotentia coëundi, manifesting a frigidity for women, and, from the young man’s statements, I am convinced that he is well on the road to confirmed sexual perversion.
An interesting point in this connection is that the young man’s sister, the actress already alluded to, has recently had an attack of acute mania.
I have had other unpublished cases that might be of interest, but these two are somewhat classical, and typify to a greater or less degree the majority of other cases. I will, however, mention one other case, occurring in a woman.
CASE III.—A married woman 40 years of age. Has been deserted by her husband because of her perverted sexuality. Neurotic history on both sides of the family, and several cases of insanity on mother’s side. In this case affinity for the same sex and perverted desire for the opposite sex existed, a combination by no means infrequent. Hypnotic suggestion tried, but without success. Cause was evidently suggestion and example on the part of another female pervert with whom she associated before her marriage. Marriage was late, at age of 35. In all these cases there was an element of what may be called suggestion, but it was really much more than this; it was probably in each case active seduction by an elder person of a predisposed younger person. It will be observed that in each case there was, at the least, an organic neurotic basis for suggestion and seduction to work on. I cannot regard these cases as entitled to modify our attitude toward suggestion.
MASTURBATION.—Moreau believed that masturbation was a cause of sexual inversion, and Krafft-Ebing looked upon it as leading to all sorts of sexual perversions; the same opinion was currently repeated by many writers. It is not now accepted. Moll emphatically rejected the idea that masturbation can be the cause of inversion; Näcke repeatedly denies that masturbation, any more than seduction, can ever produce true inversion; Hirschfeld attaches to it no etiological significance. Many years ago I gave special attention to this point and reached a similar conclusion. That masturbation, especially at an early age, may sometimes enfeeble the sexual activities, and aid the manifestations of inversion, I certainly believe. But beyond this there is little in the history of my male cases to indicate masturbation as a cause of inversion. It is true that 44 out of 51 admit that they have practised masturbation,—at all events, occasionally, or at some period in their lives,—and it is possible that this proportion is larger than that found among normal people. Even if so, however, it is not difficult to account for, bearing in mind the fact that the homosexual person has not the same opportunities as has the heterosexual person to gratify his instincts, and that masturbation may sometimes legitimately appear to him as the lesser of two evils.[81] Not only has masturbation been practised at no period in at least 7 of the cases (for concerning several I have no information), but in several others it was never practised until long after the homosexual instinct had appeared, in 1 case not till the age of 40, and then only occasionally. In at least 8 it was only practised at puberty; in at least 8, however, it began before the age of puberty; at least 9 left off before about the age of 20. Unfortunately, as yet, we have little definite evidence as to the prevalence and extent of masturbation among normal individuals.
Among the women masturbation is found in at least 5 cases out of 7. In 1 case there was no masturbation until comparatively late in life, and then only at rare intervals and under exceptional circumstances. In another case, some years after the homosexual attraction had been experienced, it was practised, though not in excess, from the age of puberty for about four years, and then abandoned; during these years the physical sexual feelings were more imperative than they were afterward felt to be. In 2 cases masturbation was learned spontaneously soon after puberty, and in 1 of these practised in excess before the manifestations of inversion became definite. In all cases the subjects are emphatic in asserting that this practice neither led to, nor was caused by, the homosexual attraction, which they regard as a much higher feeling, and it must be added that the occasional practice of masturbation is very far from rare among fairly normal women.[82]
While this is so, I am certainly inclined to believe that an early and excessive indulgence in masturbation, though not an adequate cause, is a favoring condition for the development of inversion, and that this is especially so in women. The sexual precocity indicated by early and excessive masturbation doubtless sometimes reveals an organism already predisposed to homosexuality. But, apart from this, when masturbation arises spontaneously at an early age on a purely physical basis it seems to tend to produce a divorce between the physical and the psychic aspects of sexual love. The sexual manifestations are all diverted into this physical direction, and the child is ignorant that such phenomena are normally allied to love; then, when a more spiritual attraction appears with adolescent development, this divorce is perpetuated. Instead of the physical and psychic feelings appearing together when the age for sexual attraction comes, the physical feelings are prematurely twisted from their natural end, and it becomes abnormally easy for a person of the same sex to step in and take the place rightfully belonging to a person of the opposite sex. This has certainly seemed to me the course of events in some cases I have observed.
ATTITUDE TOWARD THE OPPOSITE SEX.—In 17 cases (of whom 5 are married and others purposing to marry) there is sexual attraction to both sexes, a condition formerly called psycho-sexual hermaphroditism, but now more usually bisexuality. In such cases, although there is pleasure and satisfaction in relationships with both sexes, there is usually a greater degree of satisfaction in connection with one sex. Most of the bisexual prefer their own sex. It is curiously rare to find a person, whether man or woman, who by choice exercises relationships with both sexes and prefers the opposite sex. This would seem to indicate that the bisexual may really be inverts.
In any case bisexuality merges imperceptibly into simple inversion. In at least 16 of 52 cases of simple inversion in men there has been connection with women, in some instances only once or twice, in others during several years, but it was always with an effort, or from a sense of duty and anxiety to be normal; they never experienced any real pleasure in the act, or sense of satisfaction after it. Four of these cases are married, but martial relationships usually ceased after a few years. At least four others were attracted to women when younger, but are not now; another once felt sexually attracted to a boyish woman, but never made any attempt to obtain any relationships with her; 3 or 4 others, again, have tried to have connection with women, but failed. The largest proportion of my cases have never had any sexual intimacy with the opposite sex,[83] and some of these experience what, in the case of the male invert, is sometimes called horror feminæ. But, while woman as an object of sexual desire is in such cases disgusting to them, and it is usually difficult for a genuine invert to have connection with a woman except by setting up images of his own sex, for the most part inverts are capable of genuine friendships, irrespective of sex.
It is, perhaps, not difficult to account for the horror—much stronger than that normally felt toward a person of the same sex—with which the invert often regards the sexual organs of persons of the opposite sex. It cannot be said that the sexual organs of either sex under the influence of sexual excitement are esthetically pleasing; they only become emotionally desirable through the parallel excitement of the beholder. When the absence of parallel excitement is accompanied in the beholder by the sense of unfamiliarity as in childhood, or by a neurotic hypersensitiveness, the conditions are present for the production of intense horror feminæ or horror masculis, as the case may be. It is possible that, as Otto Rank argues in his interesting study, “Die Naktheit im Sage und Dichtung,” this horror of the sexual organs of the opposite sex, to some extent felt even by normal people, is embodied in the Melusine type of legend.
EROTIC DREAMS.—Our dreams follow, as a general rule, the impulses that stir our waking psychic life. The normal man or woman in sexual vigor dreams of loving a person of the opposite sex; the inverted man dreams of loving a man, the inverted woman of loving a woman.[84] Dreams thus have a certain value in diagnosis, more especially since there is less unwillingness to confess to a perverted dream than to a perverted action.
Ulrichs first referred to the significance of the dreams of inverts. At a later period Moll pointed out that they have some value in diagnosis when we are not sure how far the inverted tendency is radical. Then Näcke repeatedly emphasized the importance of dreams as constituting, he believed, the most delicate test we possess in the diagnosis of homosexuality; this was an exaggerated view which failed to take into account the various influences which may deflect dreams. Hirschfeld has made the most extensive investigation on this point, and found that among 100 inverts 87 had exclusively homosexual dreams, while most of the rest had no dreams at all.[85] Among my cases, only 4 definitely state that there are no erotic dreams, while 31 acknowledge that the dreams are concerned more or less with persons of the same sex. Of these, at least 16 assert or imply that their dreams are exclusively of the same sex. Two, though apparently inverted congenitally, have had erotic dreams of women, in one case more frequently than of men; these two exceptions have no apparent explanation. Another appears to have sexual dreams of a nightmare character in which women appear. In another case there were always at first dreams of women, but this subject had sometimes had connection with prostitutes, and is not absolutely indifferent to women, while another, whose dreams remain heterosexual, had in early life some attraction to girls. In the cases of distinct bisexuality there is no unanimity; 2 dream of their own sex, 2 dream of both sexes, 1 usually dreams of the opposite sex, and 1 man, while dreaming of both, dislikes those dreams in which women figure. In at least 3 cases dreams of a sexual character began at the age of 8 or earlier.
The phenomena presented by erotic dreams, alike in normal and abnormal persons, are somewhat complex, and dreams are by no means a sure guide to the dreamer’s real sexual attitude. The fluctuations of dream imagery may be illustrated by the experiences of one of my subjects who thus indirectly summarises his own experiences: “When he was quite a child, he used to be haunted by gross and grotesque dreams of naked adult men, which must have been erotic. At the age of puberty he dreamed in two ways, but always about males. One species of vision was highly idealistic; a radiant and lovely young man’s face with floating hair appeared to him on a background of dim shadows. The other was obscene, being generally the sight of a groom’s or carter’s genitals in a state of violent erection. He never dreamed erotically or sentimentally about women; but when the dream was frightful, the terror-making personage was invariably female. In ordinary dreams, women of his family or acquaintance played a trivial part. At the age of 24, having determined to conquer his homosexual passions, he married, found no difficulty in cohabiting with his wife, and begat several children, although he took but little passionate delight in the sexual act. He still continued to dream exclusively of men, for several years; and the obscene visions became more frequent than the idealistic. Gradually, coarse and uninteresting erotic dreams of women began to haunt his mind in sleep. A curious particular regarding the new type of vision was that he never dreamed of whole females, only of their sexual parts, seen in a blur; and the seminal emissions which attended the mental pictures left a feeling of fatigue and disgust. In course of time, his wife and he agreed to live separately so far as sexual relations are concerned. He then indulged his passion for males, and wholly lost those rudimentary female dreams which had been developed during the period of nuptial cohabitation.”
Not only is it possible for the genuine invert to be trained into heterosexual erotic dreams, but homosexual dreams may occasionally be experienced by persons who are, and always have been, exclusively heterosexual. I could bring forward much evidence on this point. (Cf. ”Auto-erotism” in vol. i of these Studies.) Both men and women who have always been of pronounced heterosexual tendency, without a trace of inversion, are liable to rare homosexual dreams, not necessarily involving orgasm or even definite sexual excitement, and sometimes accompanied by a feeling of repugnance. As an example I may present a dream (which had no known origin) of an exclusively heterosexual lady aged 42; she dreamed she was in bed with another woman, unknown to her, and lying on her own stomach, while with her right hand stretched out she was feeling the other’s sexual parts. She could distinctly perceive the clitoris, vagina, etc.; she felt a sort of disgust with herself for what she was doing, but continued until she awoke; she then found herself lying on her stomach as in the dream and at first thought she must have been touching herself, but realized that this could not have been the case. (Niceforo, who believes that inversion may develop out of masturbation, considers that dreams of masturbation by association of ideas may take on an inverted character [Le Psicopatie Sessuale, 1897, pp. 35, 69]; this, however, must be rare, and will not account for most of the dreams in question.)
Näcke and Colin Scott, some years ago, independently referred to cases in which normal persons were liable to homosexual dreams, and Féré (Revue de Médecine, Dec., 1898) referred to a man who had a horror of women, but appeared only to manifest homosexuality in his dreams. Näcke (Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1907, Heft I, 2) calls dreams which represent a reaction of opposition to the dreamer’s ordinary life “contrast dreams.” Hirschfeld, who accepts Näcke’s “contrast dreams” in relation to homosexuality, considers that they indicate a latent bisexuality. We may admit this is so, in the same sense in which a complementary color image called up by another color indicates the possibility of perceiving that color. In most cases, however, it seems to me that homosexual dreams in normal persons may be simply explained as due to the ordinary confusion and transition of dream imagery. (See Ellis, The World of Dreams, especially ch. ii.)
Methods of Sexual Relationship.—The exact mode in which an inverted instinct finds satisfaction is frequently of importance from the medico-legal standpoint; from a psychological standpoint it is of minor significance, being chiefly of interest as showing the degree to which the individual has departed from the instinctive feelings of his normal fellow-beings.
Taking 57 inverted men of whom I have definite knowledge, I find that 12, restrained by moral or other considerations, have never had any physical relationship with their own sex. In some 22 cases the sexual relationship rarely goes beyond close physical contact and fondling, or at most mutual masturbation and intercrural intercourse. In 10 or 11 cases fellatio (oral excitation)—frequently in addition to some form of mutual masturbation, and usually, though not always, as the active agency—is the form preferred. In 14 cases, actual pedicatio[86]—usually active, not passive—has been exercised. In these cases, however, pedicatio is by no means always the habitual or even the preferred method of gratification. It seems to be the preferred method in about 7 cases. Several who have never experienced it, including some who have never practised any form of physical relationship, state that they feel no objection to pedicatio; some have this feeling in regard to active, others in regard to passive, pedicatio. The proportion of inverts who practise or have at some time experienced pedicatio thus revealed (nearly 25 per cent.) is large; in Germany Hirschfeld finds it to be only 8 per cent., and Merzbach only 6. I believe, however, that a wider induction from a larger number of English and American cases would yield a proportion much nearer to that found in Germany.[87]
PSEUDOSEXUAL ATTRACTION.—It is sometimes supposed that in homosexual relationships one person is always active, physically and emotionally, the other passive. Between men, at all events, this is very frequently not the case, and the invert cannot tell if he feels like a man or like a woman. Thus, one writes:—
“In bed with my friend I feel as he feels, and he feels as I feel. The result is masturbation, and nothing more or desire for more on my part. I get it over, too, as soon as possible, in order to come to the best—sleeping arms round each other, or talking so.”
It remains true, however, that there may usually be traced what it is possible to call pseudosexual attraction, by which I mean a tendency for the invert to be attracted toward persons unlike himself, so that in his sexual relationships there is a certain semblance of sexual opposition. Numa Praetorius considers that in homosexuality the attraction of opposites—the attraction for soldiers and other primitive vigorous types—plays a greater part than among normal lovers. This pseudosexual attraction is, however, as Hirschfeld points out, and as we see by the Histories here presented, by no means invariable.
M. N. writes: “To me it appears that the female element must, of necessity, exist in the body that desires the male, and that nature keeps her law in the spirit, though she breaks it in the form. The rest is all a matter of individual temperament and environment. The female nature of the invert, hampered though it is by its disguise of flesh, is still able to exert an extraordinary influence, and calls insistently upon the male. This influence seems called into action most violently in the presence of males possessed of strong sexual magnetism of their own. Such men are generally more or less conscious of the influence, and the result is either a vague appreciation, which will make the male wonder why he gets on so well with the invert, or else the influence will be realized to be something incongruous and unnatural, and will be resented accordingly. Sometimes, indeed, the reciprocated feeling (circumstance and opportunity permitting) will prove strong enough to induce sexual relations. Reason will then generally overpower instinct, and the feeling, aroused unaware, will probably be changed into repulsion. Further, the influence reacts in the same way on women, who, particularly if they are strongly sexual, experience involuntary sensations of dislike or antagonism on association with inverts. There is, however, one terrible reality for the invert to face, no matter how much he may wish to avoid it and seek to deceive himself. There exists for him an almost absolute lack of any genuine satisfaction either in the way of the affections or desires. His whole life is passed in vainly seeking and desiring the male, the antithesis of his nature, and in consorting with inverts he must perforce be content with the male in form only, the shadow without the substance. Indeed, one invert necessarily regards another as being of the same undesired female sex as himself, and for this reason it will be found that, while friendships between inverts frequently exist (and these are characteristically feminine, unstable, and liable to betrayal), love-attachments are less common, and when they occur must naturally be based upon considerable self-deception. Venal gratifications are always, of course, as possible as they are unsatisfactory, and here perhaps some of the peculiarities of taste accompanying inversion may admit of elucidation. In considering the peculiar predilection shown by inverts for youths of inferior social position, for the wearers of uniforms, and for extreme physical development and virility not necessarily accompanied by intellectuality, regard must be had to the probable conduct of women placed in a position of complete irresponsibility combined with absolute freedom of action and every opportunity for promiscuity. It seems to me that the importance of recognizing the underlying female element in inversion cannot be too strongly insisted upon.”
“The majority” [of inverts], writes “Z,” “differ in no detail of their outward appearance, their physique, or their dress from normal men. They are athletic, masculine in habit, frank in manner, passing through society year after year without arousing a suspicion of their inner temperament; were it not so, society would long ago have had its eyes opened to the amount of perverted sexuality it harbors.” These lines were written, not in opposition to the more subtle distinctions pointed out above, but in refutation of the vulgar error which confuses the typical invert with the painted and petticoated creatures who appear in police-courts from time to time, and whose portraits are presented by Lombroso, Legludic, etc. On another occasion the same writer remarked, while expressing general agreement with the idea of a pseudosexual attraction: “The liaison is by no means always sought and begun by the person who is abnormally constituted. I mean that I can cite cases of decided males who have made up to inverts, and have found their happiness in the reciprocated passion. One pronounced male of this sort, again, once said to me, ‘men are so much more affectionate than women.’ [Precisely the same words were used by one of my subjects.] Also, the liaison springs up now and then quite accidentally through juxtaposition, when it is difficult to say whether either at the outset had an inverted tendency of any marked quality. In these cases the sexual relation seems to come on as a heightening of comradely affection, and is found to be pleasurable—sometimes, I think, discovered to be safe as well as satisfying. On the other hand, so far as I know, it is extremely rare to observe a permanent liaison between two pronounced inverts.”
The tendency to pseudosexual attraction in the homosexual would thus seem to involve a preference for normal persons. How far this is the case it seems difficult to state positively. Usually, one may say, an invert falls in love (exactly as in the case of a normal person) without any intellectual calculation as to the temperamental ability to return the affection which the object of his love may possess. Naturally, however, there cannot be any adequate return of the affection in the absence of an actual or latent homosexual disposition. On this point an American correspondent (H. C.), with a wide knowledge of inversion in many lands, writes: “One of your correspondents declares that inverts long for sexual relations with normal men rather than with one another. If this be true, I have never once found it exemplified in all my wide experience of inverts; and I have submitted his assertion to more than 50. These have replied invariably that unless a man is himself homosexual, nearly all the pleasure of fellatio is absent. The fact is, the majority of inverts flock together not from exigency, but from choice. The mere sexual act is, if anything, far less the sole object between inverts than it is between normal men and women. Why should the invert sigh for intercourse with normal men, where mutual confidences and sympathies and love would be out of the question? Personally, I decline to commit fellatio with a man who is given to women; the thought of it is repugnant to me. And this is the attitude with every invert I have questioned. The nearest approach to confirmation of your correspondent’s theory has been when an extremely feminine invert here and there has admitted the wish that a certain normal man were inverted. Indeed, the temperamental gamut of inversion is itself broad enough to embrace the most widely divergent ideals. As my furthest-reaching demands attain fruition in the gentle and pretty boy, so his own robuster affinity resides in me. If inverts were actually women, then indeed the normal male would be their ideal. But inverts are not women. Inverts are males capable of passionate friendship, and their ideal is the male who will give them passionate friendship in return.”
In at least 24, probably many more, of my male cases there is a marked contrast, and in a still larger number a less-marked contrast, between the subject and the individuals he is attracted to; either he is of somewhat feminine and sensitive nature, and admires more simple and virile natures, or he is fairly vigorous and admires boys who are often of lower social class. Inverted women also are attracted to more clinging feminine persons.[88] A sexual attraction for boys is, no doubt, as Moll points out, that form of inversion which comes nearest to normal sexuality, for the subject of it usually approaches nearer to the average man in physical and mental disposition. The reason of this is obvious: boys resemble women, and therefore it requires a less profound organic twist to become sexually attracted to them. Anyone who has watched private theatricals in boys’ schools will have observed how easy it is for boys to personate women successfully, and it is well known that until the middle of the seventeenth century women’s parts on the stage were always taken by boys, whether or not with injury to their own or other people’s morals.[89] It is also worthy of note that in Greece, where homosexuality flourished so extensively, and apparently with so little accompaniment of neurotic degeneration, it was often held that only boys under 18 should be loved; so that the love of boys merged into love of women. About 18 of my cases are most strongly attracted to youths,—preferably of about the age of 18 to 20,—and they are, for the most part, among the more normal and healthy of the cases. A preference for older men, or else a considerable degree of indifference to age alone, is more common, and perhaps indicates a deeper degree of perversion.
Putting aside the age of the object desired, it must be said that there is a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to approach the feminine type, either in psychic disposition or physical constitution, or both.[90] I cannot say how far this is explained by the irritable nervous system and delicate health which are so often associated with inversion, though this is certainly an important factor. Although the invert himself may stoutly affirm his masculinity, and although this femininity may not be very obvious, its wide prevalence may be asserted with considerable assurance, and by no means only among the small minority of inverts who take an exclusively passive rôle, though in these it is usually most marked. In this I am confirmed by Q., who writes: “In all, or certainly almost all, the cases of congenital male inverts (excluding psycho-sexual hermaphrodites) that I know there has been a remarkable sensitiveness and delicacy of sentiment, sympathy, and an intuitive habit of mind, such as we generally associate with the feminine sex, even though the body might be quite masculine in its form and habit.”[91] When, however, a distinguished invert said to Moll: “We are all women; that we do not deny,” he put the matter in too extreme a form. The feminine traits of the homosexual are not usually of a conspicuous character. “I believe that inverts of plainly feminine nature are rare exceptions,” wrote Näcke: and that statement may be accepted even by those who emphasize the prevalence of feminine traits among inverts.
In inverted women some degree of masculinity or boyishness is equally prevalent, and it is not usually found in the women to whom they are attracted. Even in inversion the need for a certain sexual opposition—the longing for something which the lover himself does not possess—still prevails. It expresses itself sometimes in an attraction between persons of different race and color. I am told that in American prisons for women Lesbian relationships are specially frequent between white and black women.[92] A similar affinity is found among the Arabs, says Kocher; and if an Arab woman has a Lesbian friend the latter is usually European. In Cochin China, too, according to Lorion, while the Chinese are chiefly active pederasts, the Annamites are chiefly passive.
It must, however, be remembered that, in normal love, homogamy, the attraction of the like, prevails over heterogamy, the attraction of the unlike, which is chiefly confined to those features which belong to the sphere of the secondary sexual characters; the same appears to be true in inversion, and the homosexual are probably, on the whole, more attracted by the traits which they seem to themselves to possess than by those which are foreign to themselves.[93]
PHYSICAL ABNORMALITIES.—The circumstances under which many of my cases were investigated often made information under this head difficult to obtain, or to verify. In at least 4 cases the penis is very large, while in at least 3 it is small and undeveloped, with small and flabby testes. It seems probable that variations in these two directions are both common, but it is doubtful whether they possess as much significance as the tendency to infantilism of the sexual organs in inverted women seems to possess. Hirschfeld considers that the genital organs of inverts resemble those of normal people. He finds, however, that phimosis is rather common.
More significant, perhaps, than specifically genital peculiarities are the deviations found in the general conformation of the body.[94] In at least 2 cases there are well-developed breasts, in 1 the breasts swelling and becoming red.[95] In 1 case there are “menstrual” phenomena, physical and psychic, recurring every four weeks. In several cases the hips are broad and the arms rounded, while some are skillful in throwing a ball. One was born with a double squint. At least 2 were 7 months’ children. In the previous chapter I have referred to the tendency to hypertrichosis and occasionally oligotrichosis among inverted women; among the men it is the latter condition which seems more common, and in several cases the bodies are hairless, or with but scanty hair. A few are left-handed, though not perhaps an abnormal proportion.[96] The sexual characters of the handwriting are in some cases clearly inverted, the men writing a feminine hand and the women a masculine hand. A high feminine voice is sometimes found.[97]
A marked characteristic of many inverts, though one not easy of precise definition, is their youthfulness of appearance, and frequently child-like faces, equally in both sexes. This has often been remarked, and is pronounced among many of my subjects.
The frequent inability of male inverts to whistle was first pointed out by Ulrichs, and Hirschfeld has found it in 23 per cent. Many of my cases confess to this inability, while some of the women inverts can whistle admirably. Although this inability of male inverts is only found among a minority, I am quite satisfied that it is well marked among a considerable minority. One of my correspondents, M. N., writes to me: “With regard to the general inability of inverts to whistle (I am not able to do so myself), their fondness for green (my favorite color), their feminine caligraphy, skill at female occupations, etc., these all seem to me but indications of the one principle. To go still farther and include trivial things, few inverts even smoke in the same manner and with the same enjoyment as a man; they have seldom the male facility at games, cannot throw at a mark with precision, or even spit!”
Nearly all these peculiarities indicate a minor degree of nervous disturbance and lead to modification, as my correspondent points out, in a feminine direction. It is scarcely necessary to add that they by no means necessarily imply inversion. Shelley, for instance, was unable to whistle, though he never gave an indication of inversion; but he was a person of somewhat abnormal and feminine organization, and he illustrates the tendency of these apparently very insignificant functional anomalies to be correlated with other and more important psychic anomalies.
The greater part of these various anatomical peculiarities and functional anomalies point, more or less clearly, to the prevalence among inverts of a tendency to infantilism, combined with feminism in men and masculinism in women. This tendency is denied by Hirschfeld, but it is often well indicated among the subjects whose histories I have been able to present, and is indeed suggested by Hirschfeld’s own elaborate results; so that it can scarcely be passed over. I regard it as highly significant, and it is in harmony with all that we are learning to know regarding the important part played by the internal secretions, alike in inversion and the general bodily modifications in an infantile, feminine, and masculine direction.
If we are justified in believing that there is a tendency for inverted persons to be somewhat arrested in development, approaching the child type, we may connect this fact with the sexual precocity sometimes marked in inverts, for precocity is commonly accompanied by rapid arrest of development.
A correspondent, who is himself inverted, furnishes the following notes of cases he is well acquainted with; I quote them here, as they illustrate the anomalies commonly found:—
1. A., male, eldest child of typically neurotic family. Three children in all: 2 male and 1 female. The other 2 are somewhat eccentric, unsocial, and sexually frigid, 1 in a marked degree. The curious point about this case is that A., the only one of the family possessed of mental ability and social qualifications, should be inverted. Parents’ marriage was very ill-assorted and inharmonious, the father being of great stature and the mother abnormally small and of highly nervous temperament, both of feeble health. Ancestry unfortunate, especially on mother’s side.
2. B., male, invert, younger of 2 sons, no other children, has extremely feminine disposition and appearance, of considerable personal attraction, and has great musical talent. Penis very small and marked breast-development.
3. C., male, invert, younger of 2 sons, no other children. Interval of six years between first and second son. Parents’ marriage one of great affection, but degenerate ancestry on mother’s side. Cancer and scrofula in family.
4. D., male, invert, second child of 6; remainder girls. Of humble social position. Considerable depravity evinced by all the members of this family, with the exception of D., who alone proved steady, honest, and industrious.
5. E., male, invert, second son of family of 3, the youngest child being a girl, stillborn. Of extreme neurotic temperament fostered by upbringing. Effeminate in build and disposition; musically gifted.
6. F., male, invert, second child of family of 5. Eldest child a girl, died in youth. After F. a boy G., a girl H., and another girl stillborn. Parents badly matched; mother of considerable mental and physical strength; father last representative of moribund stock, the result of intermarriage. Children all resembling father in appearance and mother in disposition. Drink-tendency in both boys, to which F.’s death at the age of 30 was mainly due. G. committed suicide some years later. The girl H. married into a family with worse ancestry than her own. Has two children:—
7. I. and J., boy and girl, both inverted as far as I am able to judge. The boy was born with some deformity of the feet and ankles; is of effeminate tastes and appearance. Boy resembles mother, and girl, who is of great physical development, resembles father.
The same correspondent adds:—
“I have noticed little abnormal with regard to the genital formation of inverts. There are, however, frequent abnormalities of proportion in their figures, the hands and feet being noticeably smaller and more shapely, the waist more marked, the body softer and less muscular. Almost invariably there is either cranial malformation or the head approaches the feminine in type and shape.”
ARTISTIC AND OTHER APTITUDES.—All avocations are represented among inverts. Among the subjects here dealt with are found, at one end of the scale, numerous manual workers, and at the other end an equal number, sometimes of aristocratic family, who exercise no profession at all. There are 12 physicians, 9 men of letters, at least 7 are engaged in commercial life, 6 are artists, architects, or composers, 4 are or have been actors. These figures cannot give any clue to the relative extent of inversion in various occupations, but they indicate that no class of occupation furnishes a safeguard against inversion.
There are, however, certain avocations to which inverts seem especially called. One of the chief of these is literature. The apparent predominance of physicians is easily explicable. The frequency with which literature is represented is probably more genuine. Here, indeed, inverts seem to find the highest degree of success and reputation. At least half a dozen of my subjects are successful men of letters, and I could easily add others by going outside the group of Histories included in this study. They especially cultivate those regions of belles-lettres which lie on the borderland between prose and verse. Though they do not usually attain much eminence in poetry, they are often very accomplished writers of verse. They may be attracted to history, but rarely attempt tasks of great magnitude, involving much patient labor, though to this rule there are exceptions. Pure science seems to have relatively little attraction for the homosexual.[98]
An examination of my Histories reveals the interesting fact that 45 of the subjects, or in the proportion of 56 per cent., possess artistic aptitudes of varying degree. Galton found, from the investigation of nearly 1000 persons, that the average showing artistic tastes in England was only about 30 per cent. It must also be said that my figures are probably below the truth, as no special point was made of investigating the matter, and also that in some cases the artistic ability is of high order.
It is suggested that Adler’s theory of Minderwertigkeit—according to which we react strenuously against our congenital organic defects and fortify them into virtues—may be applied to the invert’s acquirement of artistic abilities (G. Rosenstein, “Die Theorien der Organminderwertigkeit und die Bisexualität,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, vol. ii, 1910, p. 398). This theory is in some cases of valuable application, but it seems doubtful to me whether it is very profitable in the present connection. The artistic aptitudes of inverts may better be regarded as part of their organic tendencies than as a reaction against those tendencies. In this connection I may quote the remarks of an American correspondent, himself homosexual: “Regarding the connection between inversion and artistic capacity, so far as I can see, the temperament of every invert seems to strive to find artistic expression—crudely or otherwise. Inverts, as a rule, seek the paths of life that lie in pleasant places; their resistance to opposing obstacles is elastic, their work is never strenuous (if they can help it), and their accomplishments hardly ever of practical use. This is all true of the born artist, as well. Both inverts and artists are inordinately fond of praise; both yearn for a life where admiration is the reward for little energy. In a word, they seem to be ‘born tired,’ begotten by parents who were tired, too.”
Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 66) gives a list of pictures and sculptures which specially appeal to the homosexual. Prominent among them are representations of St. Sebastian, Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, Vandyck’s youthful men, the Hermes of Praxiteles, Michelangelo’s Slave, Rodin’s and Meunier’s working-men types.
As regards music, my cases reveal the aptitude which has been remarked by others as peculiarly common among inverts. It has been extravagantly said that all musicians are inverts; it is certain that various famous musicians, among the dead and the living, have been homosexual. Ingegnieros speaks of a “genito-musical synæsthesia,” analogous to color-hearing, in this connection. Calesia states (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1900, p. 209) that 60 per cent, inverts are musicians. Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 500) regards this estimate as excessive, but he himself elsewhere states (p. 175) that 98 per cent, of male inverts are greatly attracted to music, the women being decidedly less attracted. Oppenheim (in a paper summarized in the Neurologische Centralblatt for June 1, 1910, and the Alienist and Neurologist for Nov., 1910) well remarks that the musical disposition is marked by a great emotional instability, and this instability is a disposition to nervousness. It is thus that neurasthenia is so common among musicians. The musician has not been rendered nervous by the music, but he owes his nervousness (as also, it may be added, his disposition to homosexuality) to the same disposition to which he owes his musical aptitude. Moreover, the musician is frequently one-sided in his gifts, and the possession of a single hypertrophied aptitude is itself closely related to the neuropathic and psychopathic diathesis.
The tendency to dramatic aptitude—found among a large proportion of my subjects who have never been professional actors—has attracted the attention of previous investigators in this field.[99] Thus, Moll refers to the frequency of artistic, and especially dramatic, talent among inverts, and remarks that the cause is doubtful. After pointing out that the lie which they have to be perpetually living renders inverts always actors, he goes on to say:—
Apart from this, it seems to me that the capacity and the inclination to conceive situations and to represent them in a masterly manner corresponds to an abnormal predisposition of the nervous system, just as does sexual inversion; so that both phenomena are due to the same source.
I am in agreement with this statement; the congenitally inverted may, I believe, be looked upon as a class of individuals exhibiting nervous characters which, to some extent, approximate them to persons of artistic genius. The dramatic and artistic aptitudes of inverts are, therefore, partly due to the circumstances of the invert’s life, which render him necessarily an actor,—and in some few cases lead him into a love of deception comparable with that of a hysterical woman,—and partly, it is probable, to a congenital nervous predisposition allied to the predisposition to dramatic aptitude.
One of my correspondents has long been interested in the frequency of inversion among actors and actresses. He knew an inverted actor who told him he adopted the profession because it would enable him to indulge his proclivity; but, on the whole, he regards this tendency as due to “hitherto unconsidered imaginative flexibilities and curiosities in the individual. The actor, ex hypothesi, is one who works himself by sympathy (intellectual and emotional) into states of psychological being that are not his own. He learns to comprehend—nay, to live himself into—relations which were originally alien to his nature. The capacity for doing this—what makes a born actor—implies a faculty for extending his artistically acquired experience into life. In the process of his trade, therefore, he becomes at all points sensitive to human emotions, and, sexuality being the most intellectually undetermined of the appetites after hunger, the actor might discover in himself a sort of sexual indifference, out of which a sexual aberration could easily arise. A man devoid of this imaginative flexibility could not be a successful actor. The man who possesses it would be exposed to divagations of the sexual instinct under esthetical or merely wanton influences. Something of the same kind is applicable to musicians and artists, in whom sexual inversion prevails beyond the average. They are conditioned by their esthetical faculty, and encouraged by the circumstances of their life to feel and express the whole gamut of emotional experience. Thus they get an environment which (unless they are sharply otherwise differentiated) leads easily to experiments in passion. All this joins on to what you call the ‘variational diathesis’ of men of genius. But I should seek the explanation of the phenomenon less in the original sexual constitution than in the exercise of sympathetic, assimilative emotional qualities, powerfully stimulated and acted on by the conditions of the individual’s life. The artist, the singer, the actor, the painter, are more exposed to the influences out of which sexual differentiation in an abnormal direction may arise. Some persons are certainly made abnormal by nature, others, of this sympathetic artistic temperament, may become so through their sympathies plus their conditions of life.” It is possible there may be some element of truth in this view, which my correspondent regarded as purely hypothetical.
In this connection I may, perhaps, mention a moral quality which is very often associated with dramatic aptitude, and also with minor degrees of nervous degeneration, and that is vanity and the love of applause. While among a considerable section of inverts it is not more marked than among the non-inverted, if not, indeed, less marked, among another section it is found in an exaggerated degree. In at least one of my cases vanity and delight in admiration, both as regards personal qualities and artistic productions, reach an almost morbid extent. And the quotations from letters written by various others of my subjects show a curious complacency in the description of their personal physical characters, markedly absent in other cases. It is suggested by Alexander Schmid, on the basis of Adler’s views, that this vanity, which sometimes in the inverted artist becomes an exalted pride, as of a guardian of sacred mysteries, may be regarded as an effort to secure a compensation for the consciousness of feminine defect.
The extreme type of this preoccupation with personal beauty is represented by the history of himself sent by a young Italian of good family to Zola in the hope—itself a sign of vanity—that the distinguished novelist would make it the subject of one of his works. The history is reproduced in the Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle (1894) and in L’Homosexualité et les Types Homosexuels (1910) by “Dr. Laupts” (G. Saint-Paul). I quote the following passage: “At the age of 18 I was, with few differences, what I am now (at 23). I am rather below the medium height (1.65 metres), well proportioned, slender, but not lean. My torso is superb; a sculptor could find nothing against it, and would not find it very different from that of Antinotis. My back is very arched, perhaps too much so; and my hips are very developed; my pelvis is broad, like a woman’s; my knees slightly approximate; my feet are small; my hands superb; the fingers curved back and with glistening nails, rosy and polished, cut squarely like those of ancient statues. My neck is long and round, the nape charmingly adorned with downy hairs. My head is charming, and at 18 was more so. The oval of it is perfect and strikes all by its infantine form. At 23 I am to be taken for 17 at most. My complexion is white and rosy, deepening at the faintest emotion. The forehead is not beautiful; it recedes slightly and is hollow at the temples, but, fortunately, it is half-covered by long hair, of a dark blonde, which curls naturally. The head is perfect in form, because of the curly hair, but on examination there is an enormous protuberance at the occiput. My eyes are oval, of a gray blue, with dark chestnut eyelashes and thick, arched eyebrows. My eyes are very liquid, but with dark circles, and bistered; and they are subject to slight temporary inflammation. My mouth is fairly large, with thick red lips, the lower pendent; they tell me I have the Austrian mouth. My teeth are dazzling, though three are decayed and stopped; fortunately, they cannot be seen. My ears are small and with very colored lobes. My chin is very fat, and at 18 it was smooth and velvety as a woman’s; at present there is a slight beard, always shaved. Two beauty spots, black and velvety, on my left cheek, contrast with my blue eyes. My nose is thin and straight, with delicate nostrils and a slight, almost insensible curve. My voice is gentle, and people always regret that I have not learned to sing.” This description is noteworthy as a detailed portrait of a sexual invert of a certain type; the whole history is interesting and instructive.
Certain peculiarities in taste as regards costume have rightly or wrongly been attributed to inverts,—apart from the tendency of a certain group to adopt feminine habits,—and may here be mentioned. Tardieu many years ago referred to the taste for keeping the neck uncovered. This peculiarity may occasionally be observed among inverts, especially the more artistic among them. The cause does not appear to be precisely vanity so much as that physical consciousness which is so curiously marked in inverts, and induces the more feminine among them to cultivate feminine grace of form, and the more masculine to emphasize the masculine athletic habit.
It has also been remarked that inverts exhibit a preference for green garments. In Rome cinædi were for this reason called galbanati. Chevalier remarks that some years ago a band of pederasts at Paris wore green cravats as a badge. This decided preference for green is well marked in several of my cases of both sexes, and in some at least the preference certainly arose spontaneously. Green (as Jastrow and others have shown) is very rarely the favorite color of adults of the Anglo-Saxon race, though some inquirers have found it to be more commonly a preferred color among children, especially girls, and it is more often preferred by women than by men. The favorite color among normal women, and indeed very often among normal men, though here not so often as blue, is red, and it is notable that of recent years there has been a fashion for a red tie to be adopted by inverts as their badge. This is especially marked among the “fairies” (as a fellator is there termed) in New York. “It is red,” writes an American correspondent, himself inverted, “that has become almost a synonym for sexual inversion, not only in the minds of inverts themselves, but in the popular mind. To wear a red necktie on the street is to invite remarks from newsboys and others—remarks that have the practices of inverts for their theme. A friend told me once that when a group of street-boys caught sight of the red necktie he was wearing they sucked their fingers in imitation of fellatio. Male prostitutes who walk the streets of Philadelphia and New York almost invariably wear red neckties. It is the badge of all their tribe. The rooms of many of my inverted friends have red as the prevailing color in decorations. Among my classmates, at the medical school, few ever had the courage to wear a red tie; those who did never repeated the experiment.”
MORAL ATTITUDE OF THE INVERT.—There is some interest in tracing the invert’s own attitude toward his anomaly, and his estimate of its morality. As my cases are not patients seeking to be cured of their perversion, this attitude cannot be taken for granted. I have noted the moral attitude in 57 cases. In 8 the subjects loathe themselves, and have fought in vain against their perversion, which they often regard as a sin. Nine or ten are doubtful, and have little to say in justification of their condition, which they regard as perhaps morbid, a “moral disease.” One, while thinking it right to gratify his natural instincts, admits that they may be vices. The remainder, a large majority (including all the women) are, on the other hand, emphatic in their assertion that their moral position is precisely the same as that of the normally constituted individual, on the lowest ground a matter of taste, and at least two state that a homosexual relationship should be regarded as sacramental, a holy matrimony; two or three even regard inverted love as nobler than ordinary sexual love; several add the proviso that there should be consent and understanding on both sides, and no attempt at seduction. The chief regret of 2 or 3 is the double life they are obliged to lead.
When inverts have clearly faced and realized their own nature it is not so much, it seems, their conscience that worries them, or even the fear of the police, as the attitude of the world. An American correspondent writes: “It is the fear of public opinion that hangs above them like the sword of Damocles. This fear is the heritage of all of us. It is not the fear of conscience and is not engendered by a feeling of wrongdoing. Rather, it is a silent submission to prejudices that meet us on every side. The true normal attitude of the sexual invert (and I have known hundreds) with regard to his particular passion is not essentially different from that of the normal man with regard to his.”
It is noteworthy that even when the condition is regarded as morbid, and even when a life of chastity has, on this account, been deliberately chosen, it is very rare to find an invert expressing any wish to change his sexual ideals. The male invert cannot find, and has no desire to find, any sexual charm in a woman, for he finds all possible charms united in a man. And a woman invert writes: “I cannot conceive a sadder fate than to be a woman—an average woman reduced to the necessity of loving a man!”
It will be seen that my conclusions under this head are in striking contrast to those of Westphal, who believed that every invert regarded himself as morbid, and probably show a much higher proportion of self-approving inverts than any previous series.[100] This is largely due to the fact that the cases were not obtained from the consulting-room, and that they represent in some degree the intellectual aristocracy of inversion, including individuals who, often not without severe struggles, have found consolation in the example of the Greeks, or elsewhere, and have succeeded in attaining a modus vivendi with the moral world, as they have come to conceive it.
6. The Theory Of Sexual Inversion
What is Sexual Inversion?—Causes of Diverging Views—The Theory of Suggestion Unworkable—Importance of the Congenital Element in Inversion—The Freudian Theory—Embryonic Hermaphroditism as a Key to Inversion—Inversion as a Variation or “Sport”—Comparison with Color-blindness, Color-hearing, and Similar Abnormalities—What is an Abnormality?—Not Necessarily a Disease—Relation of Inversion to Degeneration—Exciting Causes of Inversion—Not Operative in the Absence of Predisposition.
The analysis of these cases leads directly up to a question of the first importance: What is sexual inversion? Is it, as many would have us believe, an abominably acquired vice, to be stamped out by the prison? or is it, as a few assert, a beneficial variety of human emotion which should be tolerated or even fostered? Is it a diseased condition which qualifies its subject for the lunatic asylum? or is it a natural monstrosity, a human “sport,” the manifestations of which must be regulated when they become antisocial? There is probably an element of truth in more than one of these views. Very widely divergent views of sexual inversion are largely justified by the position and attitude of the investigator. It is natural that the police-official should find that his cases are largely mere examples of disgusting vice and crime. It is natural that the asylum superintendent should find that we are chiefly dealing with a form of insanity. It is equally natural that the sexual invert himself should find that he and his inverted friends are not so very unlike ordinary persons. We have to recognize the influence of professional and personal bias and the influence of environment.
There have been two main streams of tendency in the views regarding sexual inversion: one seeking to enlarge the sphere of the acquired (represented by Binet,—who, however, recognized predisposition,—Schrenck-Notzing, and recently the Freudians), the other seeking to enlarge the sphere of the congenital (represented by Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Féré, and today by the majority of authorities). There is, as usually happens, truth in both these views. But, inasmuch as those who represent the acquired view often deny any congenital element, we are called upon to discuss the question. The view that sexual inversion is entirely explained by the influence of early association, or of “suggestion,” is an attractive one and at first sight it seems to be supported by what we know of erotic fetichism, by which a woman’s hair, or foot, or even clothing, becomes the focus of a man’s sexual aspirations. But it must be remembered that what we see in erotic fetichism is merely the exaggeration of a normal impulse; every lover is to some extent excited by his mistress’s hair, or foot, or clothing. Even here, therefore, there is really what may fairly be regarded as a congenital element; and, moreover, there is reason to believe that the erotic fetichist usually displays the further congenital element of hereditary neurosis. Therefore, the analogy with erotic fetichism does not bring much help to those who argue that inversion is purely acquired. It must also be pointed out that the argument for acquired or suggested inversion logically involves the assertion that normal sexuality is also acquired or suggested. If a man becomes attracted to his own sex simply because the fact or the image of such attraction is brought before him, then we are bound to believe that a man becomes attracted to the opposite sex only because the fact or the image of such attraction is brought before him. Such a theory is unworkable. In nearly every country of the world men associate with men, and women with women; if association and suggestion were the only influential causes, then inversion, instead of being the exception, ought to be the rule throughout the human species, if not, indeed, throughout the whole zoölogical series. We should, moreover, have to admit that the most fundamental human instinct is so constituted as to be equally well adapted for sterility as for that propagation of the race which, as a matter of fact, we find dominant throughout the whole of life. We must, therefore, put aside entirely the notion that the direction of the sexual impulse is merely a suggested phenomenon; such a notion is entirely opposed to observation and experience, and will with difficulty fit into a rational biological scheme.
The Freudians—alike of the orthodox and the heterodox schools—have sometimes contributed, unintentionally or not, to revive the now antiquated conception of homosexuality as an acquired phenomenon, and that by insisting that its mechanism is a purely psychic though unconscious process which may be readjusted to the normal order by psychoanalytic methods. Freud first put forth a comprehensive statement of his view of homosexuality in the original and pregnant little book, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (1905), and has elsewhere frequently touched on the subject, as have many other psychoanalysts, including Alfred Adler and Stekel, who no longer belong to the orthodox Freudian school. When inverts are psycho-analytically studied, Freud believes, it is found that in early childhood they go through a phase of intense but brief fixation on a woman, usually the mother, or perhaps sister. Then, an internal censure inhibiting this incestuous impulse, they overcome it by identifying themselves with women and taking refuge in Narcissism, the self becoming the sexual object. Finally they look for youthful males resembling themselves, whom they love as their mothers loved them. Their pursuit of men is thus determined by their flight from women. This view has been set forth not only by Freud but by Sadger, Stekel, and many others. Freud himself, however, is careful to state that this process only represents one type of stunted sexual activity, and that the problem of inversion is complex and diversified.
This view may be said to assume a bisexual constitution as normal, and homosexuality arises by the suppression, owing to some accident, of the heterosexual component, and the path through an autoerotic process of Narcissism to homosexuality. On this general Freudian conception of homosexuality numerous variations have been based, and separate features specially emphasized, by individual psychoanalysts. Thus Sadger considers that, beneath the male individual loved by the invert, a female is concealed, and that this fact may be revealed by psychoanalysis which removes the upper layer of the psychic palimpsest; he believes that this disposition of the invert is favored by a frequent mixture of male and female traits in his near relatives; originally, “it is not man whom the homosexual man loves and desires but man and woman together in one form”; the heterosexual element is later suppressed, and then pure inversion is left. Further, developing Freud’s view of the importance of anal eroticism (Freud, Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, vol. ii), Sadger thinks that it is even the rule for a passive invert to have experienced anal eroticism in childhood and been frequently subjected to enemas, which have led to the desire for the anal intromission of the penis. (Medizinische Klinik, 1909, No. 2.) Jekels pushes this doctrine further and declares that all inverts are really passive; the invert is, in his love, he states, both subject and object; he identifies himself with his mother and sees in the object of his love his own youthful person. And what, Jekels asks, is the aim of this mental arrangement? It can scarcely by other, he replies, than in the part of the mother to stimulate the anal region of the object which has now become himself, and to procure the same pleasure which in childhood he experienced when his mother satisfied his anal eroticism. Jekels regards this view as the continuation and concretization of Freud’s interpretation; and the main point in homosexuality, even when apparently passive, becomes the craving for anal-erotic satisfaction (L. Jekels, “Einige Bemerkungen zur Trieblehre,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, Sept., 1913). Most psychoanalysts are cautious in denying a constitutional or congenital basis to inversion, though they leave it in the background. Ferenczi, in an interesting attempt to classify the homosexual (Internationale Zeitschrift für Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, March, 1914), remarks: “Psychoanalytic investigation shows that under the name of homosexuality the most various psychic states are thrown together, on the one hand true constitutional anomalies (inversion, or subject homoeroticism), on the other hand psychoneurotic obsessional conditions (object homoeroticism, or obsessional homoeroticism). The individual of the first kind essentially feels himself a woman who wishes to be loved by a man, while the other represents a neurotic flight from women rather than sympathy to men.” The constitutional basis is very definitely accepted by Rudolf Ortvay who points out (Internationale Zeitschrift für Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, Jan., 1914) that the biological doctrine of recessives and dominants in heredity helps to make clear the emergence or suppression of homosexuality on a bisexual disposition. “Infantile events,” he adds, “which, according to Freud, decide the sexual relations of adults, can only exert their operation on the foundation of an organic predisposition, infantile impressions being determined by hereditary predisposition.” Isador Coriat, on the other hand, while recognizing two forms of inversion, incomplete and complete, boldly asserts that it is never congenital and never transmitted through heredity; it is always “originated through a definite unconscious mechanism” (Coriat, “Homosexuality,” New York Medical Journal, March 22, 1913). Adler’s view of homosexuality, as of other allied conditions, differs from that of most psychoanalysts by insisting on the presence of an original organic defect which the subject seeks to fortify into a point of strength; he accepts two chief components of inversion: a vagueness as to sexual differences and a process of self-assurance in the form of rebellion and defiance, and even the feminism of the invert may become a method of gaining power (A. Adler, Ueber den Neurösen Charakter, 1912, p. 21).
The mechanism of the genesis of homosexuality put forward by Freud need not be dismissed offhand. Freud has often manifested the insight of genius, and he refrains from molding his conceptions in those inflexible shapes which have sometimes been adopted by the more dogmatic psychoanalysts who have followed him. Nor need we be unduly shocked by the “incestuous” air of the “Œdipus Complex,” as it is commonly called, which figures as a component of the process. The word “incest,” though it has been used by Freud himself, seems scarcely a proper word to apply to the vague and elementary feelings of children, especially when those feelings scarcely pass beyond a stage of non-localized and therefore really presexual feelings (in the ordinary use of the term “sexual”) which may be regarded as natural and normal. The Freudian conception is misrepresented and prejudiced by the statement that it involves “incest.”[101] When a child loves its mother with an entire love, that love necessarily involves the germs which in later life become separated and developed into sexual love, but it is inaccurate to term this love of the child “incestuous.” It is quite easily conceivable that the psychic mechanism of the establishment of homosexuality has in some cases corresponded to the course described by Freud. It may also be admitted that, as psychoanalysts claim, the pronounced horror feminæ occasionally found in male inverts may plausibly be regarded as the reversal of an early and disappointed feminine attraction. But it is impossible to regard this mechanism as invariable or even frequent. It is quite true, and I have found ample evidence of the fact, that inverts are often very closely attached to their mothers, even to a greater degree, indeed, than is the rule among normal children, and often like to be in constant association with their mothers. But this attraction is quite misunderstood if it is regarded as a peculiarly sexual attraction. Indeed, the whole point of the attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated in his mother. So far from such association being evidence of sexual attraction it might more reasonably be regarded as evidence of its absence; just as the association of boys among themselves, and of girls among themselves, even in co-educational schools, is proof of the prevalence of heterosexual rather than of homosexual feeling. Confirmation of this point of view may be found in the fact—overlooked and sometimes even denied by psychoanalysts—that frequently, even in early childhood and simultaneously with this community of feeling with his mother, the homosexual boy is already experiencing the predominant fascination of the male. He feels it long before the age at which Narcissism is apt to occur, or at which self-consciousness has become sufficiently developed to allow the internal censure on unpermitted emotions to operate, or any flight from them to take place. Moreover, while most authorities have rarely been able to find any clear evidence of the sexual attraction of male inverts in childhood to mother or sister,[102] an attraction of this kind to father or brother seems less difficult to find, and if found it is incompatible with the typical Freudian process. In my own observation, among the Histories here recorded, there are at least two clear examples of such an attraction in childhood. It must further be said that any theory of the etiology of homosexuality which leaves out of account the hereditary factor in inversion cannot be admitted. The evidence for the frequency of homosexuality among the near relatives of the inverted is now indisputable. I have traced it in a considerable proportion of cases, and in many of these the evidence is unquestionable and altogether independent of the statement of the subject himself, whose opinion may be held to be possibly biased or unreliable.[103] This hereditary factor seems indeed to be called for by the Freudian theory itself. On that theory we need to know how it is that the subject passes through psychic phases, and reaches an emotional disposition, so unlike that of normal persona. The existence of a definite hereditary tendency in a homosexual direction removes that difficulty. Freud himself recognizes this and clearly asserts congenital psycho-sexual constitution, which must involve predisposition. On a general survey, therefore, it would appear that, on the psychic side, we may accept the reality of unconscious dynamic processes which in particular cases may be of the Freudian or similar type. But while the study of such mechanisms may illuminate the psychology of homosexuality, they leave untouched the fundamental organic factors now accepted by most authorities.
The rational way of regarding the normal sexual instinct is as an inborn organic impulse, reaching full development about the time of puberty.[104] During the period of development suggestion and association may come in to play a part in defining the object of the emotion; the soil is now ready, but the variety of seeds likely to thrive in it is limited. That there is a greater indefiniteness in the aim of the sexual impulse at this period we may well believe. This is shown not only by occasional tentative signs of sexual emotion directed toward the same sex in childhood, but by the frequently ideal and unlocalized character of the normal passion even at puberty. But the channel of sexual emotion is not thereby turned into an abnormal path. Whenever this happens we are bound to believe—and we have many grounds for believing—that we are dealing with an organism which from the beginning is abnormal. The same seed of suggestion is sown in various soils; in the many it dies out; in the few it flourishes. The cause can only be a difference in the soil.
If, then, we must postulate a congenital abnormality in order to account satisfactorily for at least a large proportion of sexual inverts, wherein does that abnormality consist? Ulrichs explained the matter by saying that in sexual inverts a male body coexists with a female soul: anima muliebris in corpore virile inclusa. Even writers of scientific eminence, like Magnan and Gley, have adopted this phrase in a modified form, considering that in inversion a female brain is combined with a male body or male glands. This is, however, not an explanation. It merely crystallizes into an epigram the superficial impression of the matter.[105]
We can probably grasp the nature of the abnormality better if we reflect on the development of the sexes and on the latent organic bisexuality in each sex. At an early stage of development the sexes are indistinguishable, and throughout life the traces of this early community of sex remain. The hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. Among mammals the male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis, and may also develop. The sexually inverted person does not usually possess any gross exaggeration of these signs of community with the opposite sex. But, as we have seen, there are a considerable number of more subtle approximations to the opposite sex in inverted persons, both on the physical and the psychic side. Putting the matter in a purely speculative shape, it may be said that at conception the organism is provided with about 50 per cent. of male germs and about 50 per cent. of female germs, and that, as development proceeds, either the male or the female germs assume the upper hand, until in the maturely developed individual only a few aborted germs of the opposite sex are left. In the homosexual, however, and in the bisexual, we may imagine that the process has not proceeded normally, on account of some peculiarity in the number or character of either the original male germs or female germs, or both, the result being that we have a person who is organically twisted into a shape that is more fitted for the exercise of the inverted than of the normal sexual impulse, or else equally fitted for both.[106]
The conception of the latent bisexuality of all males and females cannot fail to be fairly obvious to intelligent observers of the human body. It emerges at an early period in the history of philosophic thought, and from the first was occasionally used for the explanation of homosexuality. Plato’s myth in the Banquet and the hermaphroditic statues of antiquity show how acute minds, working ahead of science, exercised themselves with these problems. (For a fully illustrated study of the ancient conception of hermaphroditism in sculpture see L. S. A. M. von Römer, “Ueber die Androgynische Idee des Lebens,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, pp. 711-939.) Parmenides, following Alcmaeon, the philosophic physician who discovered that the brain is the central organ of intellect, remarks Gomperz (Greek Thinkers, Eng. tr., vol. i, p. 183), used the idea of variation in the proportion of male and female generative elements to account for idiosyncrasies of sexual character. After an immense interval Hössli, the inverted Swiss man-milliner, in his Eros (1838) put forth the Greek view anew. Schopenhauer, again from the philosophical side, recognized the bisexuality of the human individual (see Juliusburger, Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1912, p. 630), and Ulrichs, from 1862 onward, adopted a similar doctrine, on a Platonic basis, to explain the “Uranian” constitution. After this the idea began to be more precisely developed from the scientific side, though not at first with reference to homosexuality, and more especially by the great pioneers of the doctrine of Evolution. Darwin emphasized the significance of the facts on this point, as later Weismann, while Haeckel, who was one of the earliest Darwinians, has in recent years clearly recognized the bearing on the interpretation of homosexuality of the fact that the ancestors of the vertebrates were hermaphrodites, as vertebrates themselves still are in their embryonic disposition (Haeckel, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, April, 1913, pp. 262-3, 287). This view had, however, been set forth at an earlier date by individual physicians, notably in America by Kiernan (American Lancet, 1884, and Medical Standard, November and December, 1888), and Lydston (Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, September, 1889, and Addresses and Essays, 1892).
In 1893, in his L’Inversion Sexuelle, Chevalier, a pupil of Lacassagne—who had already applied the term “hermaphrodisme moral” to this anomaly—explained congenital homosexuality by the idea of latent bisexuality. Dr. G. de Letamendi, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid, in a paper read before the International Medical Congress at Rome in 1894, set forth a principle of panhermaphroditism—a hermaphroditic bipolarity—which involved the existence of latent female germs in the male, latent male germs in the female, which latent germs may strive for, and sometimes obtain, the mastery. In February, 1896, the first version of the present chapter, setting forth the conception of inversion as a psychic and somatic development on the basis of a latent bisexuality, was published in the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie. Kurella (ib., May, 1890) adopted a somewhat similar view, even arguing that the invert is a transitional form between the complete man or woman and the hermaphrodite. In Germany a patient of Krafft-Ebing had worked out the same idea, connecting inversion with fetal bisexuality (eighth edition Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 227). Krafft-Ebing himself at first simply asserted that, whether congenital or acquired, there must be Belastung; inversion is a “degenerate phenomenon,” a functional sign of degeneration (Krafft-Ebing, “Zur Erklärung der conträren Sexualempfindung,” Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie, 1894). In the later editions of Psychopathia Sexualis, however (1896 and onward and notably in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901), he went farther, adopting the explanation on the lines of original bisexuality (English translation of tenth edition, pp. 336-7). In much the same language as I have used he argued that there has been a struggle in the centers, homosexuality resulting when the center antagonistic to that represented by the sexual gland conquers, and psycho-sexual hermaphroditism resulting when both centers are too weak to obtain victory, in either case such disturbance not being a psychic degeneration or disease, but simply an anomaly comparable to a malformation and quite consonant with psychic health. This is the view now widely accepted by investigators of sexual inversion. (Much material bearing on the history of this conception has been brought together by Hirschfeld, in Die Homosexualität, ch. xix, and previously in “Vom Wesen der Liebe,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, pp. 111-133.)
A similar or allied view is now constantly met with in writers of scientific authority who are only incidentally concerned with the study of sexual inversion. Thus Halban (“Die Entstehung des Geschlechtscharaktere,” Archiv für Gynäkologie, 1903) regards hermaphroditism, which he would extend to the psychic sphere, as a state in which a double sexual impulse determines the course of fetal and later development. Shattock and Seligmann (“True Hermaphroditism in the Domestic Fowl, with Remarks on Allopterotism,” Transactions of Pathological Society of London, vol. lvii, part i, 1906), pointing out that mere atrophy of the ovary cannot account for the appearance in the hen bird of male characters which are not retrogressive but progressive, argues that such birds are really bisexual or hermaphrodite, either by the single “ovary” being really bisexual, as was the case with a fowl they examined, or that the sexual glands are paired, one being male and the other female, or else that there is misplaced male tissue in a neighboring viscus like the adrenal or kidney, the male elements asserting themselves when the female elements degenerate. “Hermaphroditism,” they conclude, “far from being a phenomenon altogether abnormal amongst the higher vertebrates, should be viewed rather as a reversion to the primitive ancestral phase in which bisexualism was the normal disposition.... True hermaphroditism in man being established, the question arises whether lesser grades do not occur.... Remote evidence of bisexuality in the human subject may, perhaps, be afforded by the psychical phenomenon of sexual perversion and inversion.” Similarly in a case of unilateral secondary male character in an otherwise female pheasant, C. J. Bond has more recently shown (Section of Zoölogy, Birmingham Meeting of British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, Sept. 20, 1913) that an ovi-testis was present, with degenerating ovarian tissue and developing testicular tissue, and such islands of actively growing male tissue can frequently be found, he states, in the degenerating ovaries of female birds which have put forth male plumage. Sir John Bland-Sutton, referring to the fact that the external conformation of the body affords no positive certainty as to the nature of the internal sexual glands, adds (British Medical Journal, Oct. 30, 1909): “It is a fair presumption that some examples of sexual frigidity and sex perversion may be explained by the possibility that the individuals concerned may possess sexual glands opposite in character to those indicated by the external configuration of their bodies.” Looking at the matter more broadly and fundamentally in its normal aspects, Heape declares (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. xiv, part ii, 1907) that “there is no such thing as a pure male or female animal, but that all contain a dominant and recessive sex, except those hermaphrodites in which both sexes are equally represented.... There seems to me ample evidence for the conclusion that there is no such thing as a pure male or female.” F. H. A. Marshall, again, in his standard manual, The Physiology of Reproduction (1910, p. 655 et seq.), is inclined to accept the same view. “If it be true,” he remarks, “that all individuals are potentially bisexual and that changed circumstances, leading to a changed metabolism, may, in exceptional circumstances, even in adult life, cause the development of the recessive characters, it would seem extremely probable that the dominance of one set of sexual characters over the other may be determined in some cases at an early stage of development in response to a stimulus which may be either internal or external.” So also Berry Hart (“Atypical Male and Female Sex-Ensemble,” a paper read before Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, British Medical Journal, June 20, 1914, p. 1355) regards the normal male or female as embodying a maximum of the potent organs of his or her own sex with a minimum of non-potent organs of the other sex, with secondary sex traits congruent. Any increase in the minimum gives a diminished maximum and non-congruence of the secondary characters.
We thus see that the ancient medico-philosophic conception of organic bisexuality put forth by the Greeks as the key to the explanation of sexual inversion, after sinking out of sight for two thousand years, was revived early in the nineteenth century by two amateur philosophers who were themselves inverted (Hössli, Ulrichs), as well as by a genuine philosopher who was not inverted (Schopenhauer). Then the conception of latent bisexuality, independently of homosexuality, was developed from the purely scientific side (by Darwin and evolutionists generally). In the next stage this conception was adopted by the psychiatric and other scientific authorities on homosexuality (Krafft-Ebing and the majority of other students). Finally, embryologists, physiologists of sex and biologists generally, not only accept the conception of bisexuality, but admit that it probably helps to account for homosexuality. In this way the idea may be said to have passed into current thought. We cannot assert that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies in the same group. The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: (1) physical hermaphroditism in its various stages; (2) gynandromorphism, or eunuchoidism, in which men possess characters resembling those of males who have been early castrated and women possess similarly masculine characters; (3) sexo-esthetic inversion, or Eonism (Hirschfeld’s transvestism or cross-dressing), in which, outside the specifically sexual emotions, men possess the tastes of women and women those of men.
Hirschfeld has discussed these intermediate sexual stages in various works, especially in Geschlechtsübergänge (1905), Die Transvestiten (1910), and ch. xi of Die Homosexualität. Hermaphroditism (the reality of which has only of late been recognized and is still disputed) and pseudohermaphroditism; in their physical variations are fully dealt with in the great work, richly illustrated, Hermaphroditismus beim Menschen, by F. L. von Neugebauer, of Warsaw. Neugebauer published an earlier and briefer study of the subject in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen vol. iv, 1902, pp. 1-176, with a bibliography in vol. viii (1906) of the same Jahrbuch, pp. 685-700. Hirschfeld emphasizes the fact that neither hermaphroditism nor eunuchoidism is commonly associated with homosexuality, and that a large proportion of the cases of transvestism, as defined by him, are heterosexual. True inversion seems, however, to be not infrequently found among pseudohermaphrodites; Neugebauer records numerous cases; Magnan has published a case in a girl brought up as a youth (Gazette médical de Paris, March 31, 1911) and Lapointe a case in a man brought up as a girl (Revue de psychiatrie, 1911, p. 219). Such cases may be accounted for by the training and associations involved by the early error in recognition of sex, and perhaps still more by a really organic predisposition to homosexuality, although the sexual psychic characters are not necessarily bound up with the coexistence of corresponding sexual glands. Halban (Archiv für Gynäkologie 1903) goes so far as to class the homosexual as “real pseudohermaphrodites,” exactly comparable to a man with a female breast or a woman with a beard, and proposes to term homosexuality “pseudohermaphroditus masculinus psychicus.” This, however, is an unnecessary and scarcely satisfactory confusion.
To place the group of homosexual phenomena among other intermediate groups on the organic bisexual basis is a convenient classification. It can scarcely be regarded as a complete explanation. It is probable that we may ultimately find a more fundamental source of these various phenomena in the stimulating and inhibiting play of the internal secretions.[107] Our knowledge of the intimate association between the hormones and sexual phenomena is already sufficient to make such an explanation intelligible; the complex interaction of the glandular internal secretions and their liability to varying disturbance in balance may well suffice to account for the complexity of the phenomena. It would harmonize with what we know of the occasional delayed manifestations of homosexuality, and would not clash with their congenital nature, for we know that a disordered state of the thymus, for instance, may be hereditary, and it is held that status lymphaticus may be either inborn or acquired. Normal sexual characters seem to depend largely upon the due co-ordination of the internal secretions, and it is reasonable to suppose that sexual deviations depend upon their inco-ordination. If a man is a man, and a woman a woman, because (in Blair Bell’s phrase) of the totality of their internal secretions, the intermediate stages between the man and the woman must be due to redistribution of those internal secretions.
We know that various internal secretions possess an influential sexual effect. Thus the atrophy of the thymus seems to be connected with sexual development at puberty; the thyroid reinforces the genital glands; adrenal overdevelopment can produce in a female the secondary characteristics of the male, as well as cause precocious development of maleness; etc. “An alteration in the metabolism,” as F. H. A. Marshall suggests, “even in comparatively late life, may initiate changes in the direction of the opposite sex.” Metabolic chemical processes may thus be found to furnish a key to complex and subtle sexual variations, alike somatic and psychic, although we must still regard such processes as arising on an inborn predisposition.
Whatever its ultimate explanation, sexual inversion may thus fairly be considered a “sport,” or variation, one of those organic aberrations which we see throughout living nature, in plants and in animals.
It is not here asserted, as I would carefully point out, that an inverted sexual instinct, or organ for such instinct, is developed in early embryonic life; such a notion is rightly rejected as absurd. What we may reasonably regard as formed at an early stage of development is strictly a predisposition; that is to say, such a modification of the organism that it becomes more adapted than the normal or average organism to experience sexual attraction to the same sex. The sexual invert may thus be roughly compared to the congenital idiot, to the instinctive criminal, to the man of genius, who are all not strictly concordant with the usual biological variation (because this is of a less subtle character), but who become somewhat more intelligible to us if we bear in mind their affinity to variations. Symonds compared inversion to color-blindness; and such a comparison is reasonable. Just as the ordinary color-blind person is congenitally insensitive to those red-green rays which are precisely the most impressive to the normal eye, and gives an extended value to the other colors,—finding that blood is the same color as grass, and a florid complexion blue as the sky,—so the invert fails to see emotional values patent to normal persons, transferring those values to emotional associations which, for the rest of the world, are utterly distinct. Or we may compare inversion to such a phenomenon as color-hearing, in which there is not so much defect as an abnormality of nervous tracks producing new and involuntary combinations. Just as the color-hearer instinctively associates colors with sounds, like the young Japanese lady who remarked when listening to singing, “That boy’s voice is red!” so the invert has his sexual sensations brought into relationship with objects that are normally without sexual appeal. And inversion, like color-hearing is found more commonly in young subjects, tending to become less marked, or to die out, after puberty. Color-hearing, while an abnormal phenomenon, it must be added, cannot be called a diseased condition, and it is probably much less frequently associated with other abnormal or degenerative stigmata than is inversion; there is often a congenital element, shown by the tendency to hereditary transmission, while the associations are developed in very early life, and are too regular to be the simple result of suggestion.
All such organic variations are abnormalities. It is important that we should have a clear idea as to what an abnormality is. Many people imagine that what is abnormal is necessarily diseased. That is not the case, unless we give the word disease an inconveniently and illegitimately wide extension. It is both inconvenient and inexact to speak of color-blindness, criminality, and genius as diseases in the same sense as we speak of scarlet fever or tuberculosis or general paralysis as diseases. Every congenital abnormality is doubtless due to a peculiarity in the sperm or oval elements or in their mingling, or to some disturbance in their early development. But the same may doubtless be said of the normal dissimilarities between brothers and sisters. It is quite true that any of these aberrations may be due to antenatal disease, but to call them abnormal does not beg that question. If it is thought that any authority is needed to support this view, we can scarcely find a weightier than that of Virchow, who repeatedly insisted on the right use of the word “anomaly,” and who taught that, though an anomaly may constitute a predisposition to disease, the study of anomalies—pathology, as he called it, teratology as we may perhaps prefer to call it—is not the study of disease, which he termed nosology; the study of the abnormal is perfectly distinct from the study of the morbid. Virchow considers that the region of the abnormal is the region of pathology, and that the study of disease must be regarded distinctly as nosology. Whether we adopt this terminology, or whether we consider the study of the abnormal as part of teratology, is a secondary matter, not affecting the right understanding of the term “anomaly” and its due differentiation from the term “disease.”
At the Innsbruck meeting of the German Anthropological Society, in 1894, Virchow thus expressed himself: “In old days an anomaly was called πάθος, and in this sense every departure from the norm is for me a pathological event. If we have ascertained such a pathological event, we are further led to investigate what pathos was the special cause of it.... This cause may be, for example, an external force, or a chemical substance, or a physical agent, producing in the normal condition of the body a change, an anomaly (πάθος). This can become hereditary under some circumstances, and then become the foundation for certain small hereditary characters which are propagated in a family; in themselves they belong to pathology, even although they produce no injury. For I must remark that pathological does not mean harmful; it does not indicate disease; disease in Greek is νὁσος, and it is nosology that is concerned with disease. The pathological under some circumstances can be advantageous” (Correspondenz-blatt Deutsch Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, 1894). These remarks are of interest when we are attempting to find the wider bearings of such an anomaly as sexual inversion.
This same distinction has more recently been emphasized by Professor Aschoff (Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, February 3, 1910; of. British Medical Journal, April 9, 1910, p. 892), as against Ribbert and others who would unduly narrow the conception of πάθος. Aschoff points out that, not merely for the sake of precision and uniformity of terminology but of clear thinking, it is desirable that we should retain a distinction in regard to which Galen and the ancient physicians were very definite. They used πάθος as the wider term involving affection (affectio) in general, not necessarily impairment of vital tissue; when that was involved there was νὁσος, disease. We have to recognize the distinction even if we reject the terminology.
A word may be said as to the connection between sexual inversion and degeneration. In France especially, since the days of Morel, the stigmata of degeneration are much spoken of. Sexual inversion is frequently regarded as one of them: i.e., as an episodic syndrome of a hereditary disease, taking its place beside other psychic stigmata, such as kleptomania and pyromania. Krafft-Ebing long so regarded inversion; it is the view of Magnan, one of the earliest investigators of homosexuality; and it was adopted by Möbius. Strictly speaking, the invert is degenerate; he has fallen away from the genus. So is a color-blind person. But Morel’s conception of degenerescence has unfortunately been coarsened and vulgarized.[108] As it now stands, we gain little or no information by being told that a person is a “degenerate.” It is only, as Näcke constantly argued, when we find a complexus of well-marked abnormalities that we are fairly justified in asserting that we have to deal with a condition of degeneration. Inversion is sometimes found in such a condition. I have, indeed, already tried to suggest that a condition of diffused minor abnormality may be regarded as a basis of congenital inversion. In other words, inversion is bound up with a modification of the secondary sexual characters. But these anomalies and modifications are not invariable,[109] and are not usually of a serious character; inversion is rare in the profoundly degenerate. It is undesirable to call these modifications ”stigmata of degeneration,” a term which threatens to disappear from scientific terminology, to become a mere term of literary and journalistic abuse. So much may be said concerning a conception or a phrase of which far too much has been made in popular literature. At the best it remains vague and unfitted for scientific use. It is now widely recognized that we gain little by describing inversion as a degeneration. Näcke, who attached significance to the stigmata of degeneration when numerous, was especially active in pointing out that inverts are not degenerate, and frequently returned to this point. Löwenfeld, Freud, Hirschfeld, Bloch, Rohleder all reject the conception of sexual inversion as a degeneracy.
Moll is still unable to abandon altogether the position that since inversion involves a disharmony between psychic disposition and physical conformation we must regard it as morbid, but he recognizes (like Krafft-Ebing) that it is properly viewed as being on the level of a deformity, that is, an abnormality, comparable to physical hermaphroditism. (A. Moll, “Sexuelle Zwischenstufen,” Zeitschrift für aerztliche Fortbildung, No. 24, 1904.) Näcke repeatedly emphasized the view that inversion is a congenital non-morbid abnormality; thus in the last year of his life he wrote (Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, vol. xv, Heft 5, 1913): “We must not conceive of homosexuality as a degeneration or a disease, but at most as an abnormality, due to a disturbance of development.” Löwenfeld, always a cautious and sagacious clinical observer, agreeing with Näcke and Hirschfeld, regards inversion as certainly an abnormality, but not therefore morbid; it may be associated with disease and degeneration, but is usually simply a variation from the norm, not to be regarded as morbid or degenerate, and not diminishing the value of the individual as a member of society (Löwenfeld, Ueber die sexuelle Konstitution, 1911, p. 166; also Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Feb., 1908, and Sexual-Probleme, April, 1908). Aletrino of Amsterdam pushes the view that inversion is a non-morbid abnormality to an undue extreme by asserting that “the uranist is a normal variety of the species Homo sapiens” (“Uranisme et Dégénérescence,” Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, Aug.-Sept., 1908); inversion may be regarded as (in the correct sense of the word here adopted) a pathological abnormality, but not as an anthropological human variety comparable to the Negro or the Mongolian man. (For further opinions in favor of inversion as an anomaly, see Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 388 et seq.)
Sexual inversion, therefore, remains a congenital anomaly, to be classed with other congenital abnormalities which have psychic concomitants. At the very least such congenital abnormality usually exists as a predisposition to inversion. It is probable that many persons go through the world with a congenital predisposition to inversion which always remains latent and unroused; in others the instinct is so strong that it forces its own way in spite of all obstacles; in others, again, the predisposition is weaker, and a powerful exciting cause plays the predominant part.
We are thus led to the consideration of the causes that excite the latent predisposition. A great variety of causes has been held to excite to sexual inversion. It is only necessary to mention those which I have found influential. The first to come before us is our school-system, with its segregation of boys and girls apart from each other during the periods of puberty and adolescence. Many inverts have not been to school at all, and many who have been pass through school-life without forming any passionate or sexual relationship; but there remain a large number who date the development of homosexuality from the influences and examples of school-life. The impressions received at the time are not less potent because they are often purely sentimental and without any obvious sensual admixture. Whether they are sufficiently potent to generate permanent inversion alone may be doubtful, but, if it is true that in early life the sexual instincts are less definitely determined than when adolescence is complete, it is conceivable, though unproved, that a very strong impression, acting even on a normal organism, may cause arrest of sexual development on the psychic side.
Another exciting cause of inversion is seduction. By this I mean the initiation of the young boy or girl by some older and more experienced person in whom inversion is already developed, and who is seeking the gratification of the abnormal instinct. This appears to be a not uncommon incident in the early history of sexual inverts. That such seduction—sometimes an abrupt and inconsiderate act of mere sexual gratification—could by itself produce a taste for homosexuality is highly improbable; in individuals not already predisposed it is far more likely to produce disgust, as it did in the case of the youthful Rousseau. “He only can be seduced,” as Moll puts it, “who is capable of being seduced.” No doubt it frequently happens in these, as so often in more normal “seductions,” that the victim has offered a voluntary or involuntary invitation.
Another exciting cause of inversion, to which little importance is usually attached, but which I find to have some weight, is disappointment in normal love. It happens that a man in whom the homosexual instinct is yet only latent, or at all events held in a state of repression, tries to form a relationship with a woman. This relationship may be ardent on one or both sides, but—often, doubtless, from the latent homosexuality of the lover—it comes to nothing. Such love-disappointments, in a more or less acute form, occur at some time or another to nearly everyone. But in these persons the disappointment with one woman constitutes motive strong enough to disgust the lover with the whole sex and to turn his attention toward his own sex. It is evident that the instinct which can thus be turned round can scarcely be strong, and it seems probable that in some of these cases the episode of normal love simply serves to bring home to the invert the fact that he is not made for normal love. In other cases, it seems,—especially those that are somewhat feeble-minded and unbalanced,—a love-disappointment really does poison the normal instinct, and a more or less impotent love for women becomes an equally impotent love for men. The prevalence of homosexuality among prostitutes may be, to a large extent, explained by a similar and better-founded disgust with normal sexuality.[110]
These three influences, therefore,—example at school, seduction, disappointment in normal love,—all of them drawing the subject away from the opposite sex and concentrating him on his own sex, are exciting causes of inversion; but they require a favorable organic predisposition to act on, while there are a large number of cases in which no exciting cause at all can be found, but in which, from earliest childhood, the subject’s interest seems to be turned on his own sex, and continues to be so turned throughout life.
At this point I conclude the analysis of the psychology of sexual inversion as it presents itself to me. I have sought only to bring out the more salient points, neglecting minor points, neglecting also those groups of inverts who may be regarded as of secondary importance. The average invert, moving in ordinary society, is a person of average general health, though very frequently with hereditary relationships that are markedly neurotic. He is usually the subject of a congenital predisposing abnormality, or complexus of minor abnormalities, making it difficult or impossible for him to feel sexual attraction to the opposite sex, and easy to feel sexual attraction to his own sex. This abnormality either appears spontaneously from the first, by development or arrest of development, or it is called into activity by some accidental circumstance.
7. Conclusions
The Prevention of Homosexuality—The Influence of the School—Coeducation—The Treatment of Sexual Inversion—Castration—Hypnotism—Associational Therapy—Psycho-analysis—Mental and Physical Hygiene—Marriage—The Children of Inverts—The Attitude of Society—The Horror Aroused by Homosexuality—Justinian—The Code Napoléon—The State of the Law in Europe Today—Germany—England—What Should be our Attitude toward Homosexuality?
Having now completed the psychological analysis of the sexual invert, so far as I have been able to study him, it only remains to speak briefly of the attitude of society and the law. First, however, a few words as to the medical and hygienic aspects of inversion. The preliminary question of the prevention of homosexuality is in too vague a position at present to be profitably discussed. So far as the really congenital invert is concerned, prevention can have but small influence; but sound social hygiene should render difficult the acquisition of homosexual perversity, or what has been termed pseudo-homosexuality. It is the school which is naturally the chief theater of immature and temporary homosexual manifestations, partly because school life largely coincides with the period during which the sexual impulse frequently tends to be undifferentiated, and partly because in the traditions of large and old schools an artificial homosexuality is often deeply rooted.
Homosexuality in English schools has already been briefly referred to in chapter iii. As a precise and interesting picture of the phenomena in French schools, I may mention a story by Albert Nortal, Les Adolescents Passionnés (1913), written immediately after the author left college, though not published until more than twenty-five years later, and clearly based on personal observation and experience. As regards German schools, see, e.g., Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, p. 449 et seq., and for sexual manifestations in early life generally, the same author’s Sexual Life of the Child; also Hirschfeld, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, p. 47 et seq., and, for references, Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 46 et seq.
While much may be done by physical hygiene and other means to prevent the extension of homosexuality in schools, it is impossible, and even undesirable, to repress absolutely the emotional manifestations of sex in either boys or girls who have reached the age of puberty. It must always be remembered that profoundly rooted organic impulses cannot be effectually combated by direct methods. Writing of a period two centuries ago, Casanova, in relating his early life as a seminarist trained to the priesthood, describes the precautions taken to prevent the youths entering each other’s beds, and points out the folly of such precautions. As that master of the human heart remarks, such prohibitions intensify the very evil they are intended to prevent by invoking in its aid the impulse to disobedience natural to every child of Adam and Eve, and the observation has often been repeated by teachers since. We probably have to recognize that a way to render such manifestations wholesome, as well as to prepare for the relationships of later life, is the adoption, so far as possible, of the method of coeducation of the sexes,—not, of course, necessarily involving identity of education for both sexes,—since a certain amount of association between the sexes helps to preserve the healthiness of the sexual emotional attitude. Association between the sexes will not, of course, prevent the development of congenital inversion. In this connection it is pointed out by Bethe that it was precisely in Sparta and Lesbos, where homosexuality was most ideally cultivated, that the sexes, so far as we know, associated more freely than in any other Greek State.
The question of the treatment of homosexuality must be approached with discrimination, caution, and skepticism. Nowadays we can have but little sympathy with those who, at all costs, are prepared to “cure” the invert. There is no sound method of cure in radical cases.
At one time the seemingly very radical method of castration was advocated and occasionally carried out, as in a case I have recorded in a previous chapter (History XXVI). Like all methods of treatment, it is sometimes believed to have been successful by those who carried it out. Usually, after a short period, it is found to be unsuccessful, and in some cases the condition, especially the mental condition, is rendered worse. It is not difficult to understand why this should be. Sexual inversion, is not a localized genital condition. It is a diffused condition, and firmly imprinted on the whole psychic state. There may be reasons for castration, or the slighter operation of vasectomy, but, although sexual tension may be thereby diminished, no authority now believes that any such operation will affect the actual inversion. Castration of the body in adult age cannot be expected to produce castration of the mind. Moll, Féré, Näcke, Bloch, Rohleder, Hirschfeld, are all either opposed to castration for inversion, or very doubtful as to any beneficial results.
In a case communicated to me by Dr. Shufeldt, an invert had himself castrated at the age of 26 to diminish sexual desire, make himself more like a woman, and to stop growth of beard. “But the only apparent physical effect,” he wrote, “was to increase my weight 10 per cent., and render me a semi-invalid for the rest of my life. After two years my sexuality decreased, but that may have been due to satiety or to advancing years. I was also rendered more easily irritated over trifles and more revengeful. Terrible criminal auto-suggestions came into my head, never experienced before.” Féré (Revue de Chirurgie, March 10, 1905) published the case of an invert of English origin who had been castrated. The inverted impulse remained unchanged, as well as sexual desire and the aptitude for erection; but neurasthenic symptoms, which had existed before, were aggravated; he felt less capable to resist his impulses, became migratory in his habits of life, and addicted to the use of laudanum. In a case recorded by C. H. Hughes (Alienist and Neurologist, Aug., 1914) the results were less unsatisfactory; in this case the dorsal nerve of the penis was first excised, without any result (see also Alienist and Neurologist, Feb., 1904, p. 70, as regards worse than useless results of cutting the pudic nerve), and a year or so later the testes were removed and the patient gained tranquillity and satisfaction; his homosexual inclinations appeared to go, and he began to show inclination for asexualized women, being specially anxious to meet with a woman whose ovaries had been removed on account of inversion. (Reference may also be made to Näcke, “Die Ersten Kastrationen aus sozialen Grunden auf europäischen Boden,” Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1909, No. 5, and E. Wilhelm in Juristisch-psychiatrische Grenzfragen, vol. viii, Heft 6 and 7, 1911.)
More trust has usually been placed in the psychotherapeutical than the surgical treatment of homosexuality. At one time hypnotic suggestion was carried out very energetically on homosexual subjects. Krafft-Ebing seems to have been the first distinguished advocate of hypnotism for application to the homosexual. Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing displayed special zeal and persistency in this treatment. He undertook to treat even the most pronounced cases of inversion by courses lasting more than a year, and involving, in at least one case, nearly one hundred and fifty hypnotic sittings; he prescribed frequent visits to the brothel, previous to which the patient took large doses of alcohol; by prolonged manipulations a prostitute endeavored to excite erection, a process attended with varying results. It appears that in some cases this course of treatment was attended by a certain sort of success, to which an unlimited good will on the part of the patient, it is needless to say, largely contributed. The treatment was, however, usually interrupted by continual backsliding to homosexual practices, and sometimes, naturally, the cure involved a venereal disorder. The patient was enabled to marry and to beget children. It is a method of treatment which seems to have found few imitators. This we need not regret. The histories I have recorded in previous chapters show that it is not uncommon for even a pronounced invert to be able sometimes to effect coitus. It often becomes easy if at the time he fixes his thoughts on images connected with his own sex. But the perversion remains unaffected; the subject is merely (as one of Moll’s inverts expressed it) practising masturbation per vaginam. Such treatment is a training in vice, and, as Raffalovich points out, the invert is simply perverted and brought down to the vicious level which necessarily accompanies perversity.
There can be no doubt that in slight and superficial cases of homosexuality, suggestion may really exert an influence. We can scarcely expect it to exert such influence when the homosexual tendency is deeply rooted in an organic inborn temperament. In such cases indeed the subject may resist suggestion even when in the hypnotic state. This is pointed out by Moll, a great authority on hypnotism, and with much experience of its application to homosexuality, but never inclined to encourage an exaggerated notion of its efficacy in this field. Forel, who was also an authority on hypnotism, was equally doubtful as to its value in relation to inversion, especially in clearly inborn cases. Krafft-Ebing at the end said little about it, and Näcke (who was himself without faith in this method of treating inversion) stated that he had been informed by the last homosexual case treated by Krafft-Ebing by hypnotism that, in spite of all good-will on the patient’s side, the treatment had been quite useless. Féré, also, had no belief in the efficacy of suggestive treatment, nor has Merzbach, nor Rohleder. Numa Praetorius states that the homosexual subjects he is acquainted with, who had been so treated, were not cured, and Hirschfeld remarks that the inverts “cured” by hypnotism were either not cured or not inverted.
Moll has shown his doubt as to the wide applicability of suggestive therapeutics in homosexuality by developing in recent years what he terms association-therapy. In nearly all perverse individuals, he points out, there is a bridge,—more or less weak, no doubt,—which leads to the normal sexual life. By developing such links of association with normality, Moll believes, it may be possible to exert a healing influence on the homosexual. Thus a man who is attracted to boys may be brought to love a boyish woman. Indications of this kind have long been observed and utilized, though not developed into a systematic method of treatment. In the case of bisexual individuals, or of youthful subjects whose homosexuality is not fully developed, it is probable that this method is beneficial. It is difficult to believe, however, that it possesses any marked influence on pronounced and developed cases of inversion.
Somewhat the same aim as Moll’s association-therapy, though on the basis of a more elaborate theory, is sought by Freud’s psychoanalytic method of treating homosexuality. For the psychoanalytic theory (to which reference was made in the previous chapter) the congenital element of inversion is a rare and usually unimportant factor; the chief part is played by perverse psychic mechanisms. It is the business of psychoanalysis to straighten these out, and from the bisexual constitution, which is regarded as common to every one, to bring into the foreground the heterosexual elements, and so to reconstruct a normal personality, developing new sexual ideals from the patient’s own latent and subconscious nature. Sadger has especially occupied himself with the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality and claims many successes. Sadger admits that there are many limits to the success of this treatment, and that it cannot affect the inborn factors of homosexuality when present. Other psychoanalysts are less sanguine as to the cure of inversion. Stekel appears to have stated that he has never seen a complete cure by psychoanalysis, and Ferenezi is not able to give a good account of the results; especially as regards what he terms obsessional homosexuality, he states that he has never succeeded in effecting a complete cure, although obsessions in general are especially amenable to psychoanalysis.
I have met with at least two homosexual persons who had undergone psychoanalytic treatment and found it beneficial. One, however, was bisexual, so that the difficulties in the way of the success—granting it to be real—were not serious. In the other case, the inversion persisted after treatment, exactly the same as before. The benefit he received was due to the fact that he was enabled to understand himself better and to overcome some of his mental difficulties. The treatment, therefore, in his case, was not a method of cure, but of psychic hygiene, of what Hirschfeld would call “adaptation-therapy.” There can be no doubt that—even if we put aside all effort at cure and regard an invert’s condition as inborn and permanent—a large and important field of treatment here still remains.
As we have seen in the two previous chapters, sexual inversion cannot be regarded as essentially an insane or psychopathic state.[111] But it is frequently associated with nervous conditions which may be greatly benefited by hygiene and treatment, without any attempt at all to overcome a homosexual attitude which may be too deeply rooted to be changed. The invert is specially liable to suffer from a high degree of neurasthenia, often involving much nervous weakness and irritability, loss of self-control, and genital hyperesthesia.[112] Hirschfeld finds that over 67 per cent. inverts suffer from nervous troubles, and among the cases dealt with in the present Study (as shown in chapter v) slight nervous functional disturbances are very common. These are conditions which may be ameliorated, and they may be treated in much the same way as if no inversion existed, by physical and mental tonics; or, if necessary, sedatives; by regulated gymnastics and out-of-door exercises; and by occupations which employ, without overexerting, the mind. Very great and permanent benefit may be obtained by a prolonged course of such mental and physical hygiene; the associated neurasthenic conditions may be largely removed, with the morbid fears, suspicions, and irritabilities that are usually part of neurasthenia, and the invert may be brought into a fairly wholesome and tonic condition of self-control.
The inversion is not thus removed. But if the patient is still young, and if the perversion does not appear to be deeply rooted in the organism, it is probable that—provided his own good-will is aiding—general hygienic measures, together with removal to a favorable environment, may gradually lead to the development of the normal sexual impulse. If it fails to do so, it becomes necessary to exercise great caution in recommending stronger methods. Purely “Platonic association with the other sex,” Moll points out, “leads to better results than any prescribed attempt at coitus.” For even when such attempt is successful, it is not usually possible to regard the results with much satisfaction. Not only is the acquisition of the normal instinct by an invert very much on a level with the acquisition of a vice, but probably it seldom succeeds in eradicating the original inverted instinct.[113] What usually happens is that the person becomes capable of experiencing both impulses,—not a specially satisfactory state of things. It may be disastrous, especially if it leads to marriage, as it may do in an inverted man or still more easily in an inverted woman. The apparent change does not turn out to be deep, and the invert’s position is more unfortunate than his original position, both for himself and for his wife.[114]
It may be observed in the Histories brought forward in chapter iii that the position of married inverts (we must, of course, put aside the bisexual) is usually more distressing than that of the unmarried. Among my cases 14 per cent. are married. Hirschfeld finds that 16 per cent. of inverts are married and 50 per cent. are impotent; he is unable to find a single cure of homosexuality, and seldom any improvement, due to marriage; nearly always the impulse remains unaffected. The invert’s happiness is, however, often affected for the worse, and not least by the feeling that he is depriving his wife of happiness. An invert, who had left his country through fear of arrest and married a rich woman who was in love with him, said to Hirschfeld: “Five years’ imprisonment would not have been worse than one year of marriage.” Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. xxi. It might seem on theoretical grounds that the marriage of a homosexual man with a homosexual woman might turn out well. Hirschfeld, however, states that he knows of 14 such marriages, and the theoretical expectation has not been justified; 3 of the cases speedily terminated in divorce, 4 of the couples lived separately, and all but 2 of the remaining couples regretted the step they had taken. I may add that in such a case even the expectation of happiness scarcely seems reasonable, since neither of the parties can feel a true mating impulse toward the other. In a marriage of this kind the homosexual partner and the normal partner—however ignorant of sexual matters—are both conscious, often with equal pain, that, even in the presence of affection and esteem and the best will in the world, there is something lacking. The instinctive and emotional element, which is the essence of sexual love and springs from the central core of organic personality, cannot voluntarily be created or even assumed.[115]
For the sake of the possible offspring, also, marriage is to be avoided. It is sometimes entirely for the sake of children that the invert desires to marry. But it must be pointed out that homosexuality is undoubtedly in many cases inherited. Often, it is true, the children turn out fairly well, but, in many cases, they bear witness that they belong to a neurotic and failing stock;[116] Hirschfeld goes so far as to say that it is always so, and concludes that from the eugenic standpoint the marriage of a homosexual person is always very risky. In a large number of cases such marriages prove sterile. The tendency to sexual inversion in eccentric and neurotic families seems merely to be nature’s merciful method of winding up a concern which, from her point of view, has ceased to be profitable.
As a rule, inverts have no desire to be different from what they are, and, if they have any desire for marriage, it is usually only momentary. Very pathetic appeals for help are, however, sometimes made. I may quote from a letter addressed to me by a gentleman who desired advice on this matter: “In part, I write to you as a moralist and, in part, as to a physician. Dr. Q. has published a book in which, without discussion, hypnotic treatment of such cases was reported as successful. I am eager to know if your opinion remains what it was. This new assurance comes from a man whose moral firmness and delicacy are unquestionable, but you will easily imagine how one might shrink from the implantation of new impulses in the unconscious self, since newly created inclinations might disturb the conditions of life. At any rate, in my ignorance of hypnotism I fear that the effort to give the normal instinct might lead to marriage without the assurance that the normal instinct would be stable. I write, therefore, to explain my present condition and crave your counsel. It is with the greatest reluctance that I reveal the closely guarded secret of my life. I have no other abnormality, and have not hitherto betrayed my abnormal instinct. I have never made any person the victim of passion: moral and religious feelings were too powerful. I have found my reverence for other souls a perfect safeguard against any approach to impurity. I have never had sexual interest in women. Once I had a great friendship with a beautiful and noble woman, without any mixture of sexual feeling on my part. I was ignorant of my condition, and I have the bitter regret of having caused in her a hopeless love—proudly and tragically concealed to her death. My friendships with men, younger men, have been colored by passion, against which I have fought continually. The shame of this has made life a hell, and the horror of this abnormality, since I came to know it as such, has been an enemy to my religious faith. Here there could be no case of a divinely given instinct which I was to learn to use in a rational and chaste fashion, under the control of spiritual loyalty. The power which gave me life seemed to insist on my doing that for which the same power would sting me with remorse. If there is no remedy I must either cry out against the injustice of this life of torment between nature and conscience, or submit to the blind trust of baffled ignorance. If there is a remedy life will not seem to be such an intolerable ordeal. I am not pleading that I must succumb to impulse. I do not doubt that a pure celibate life is possible so far as action is concerned. But I cannot discover that friendship with younger men can go on uncolored by a sensuous admixture which fills me with shame and loathing. The gratification of passion—normal or abnormal—is repulsive to esthetic feeling. I am nearly 42 and I have always diverted myself from personal interests that threatened to become dangerous to me. More than a year ago, however, a new fate seemed to open to my unhappy and lonely life. I became intimate with a young man of 20, of the rarest beauty of form and character. I am confident that he is and always has been pure. He lives an exalted moral and religious life dominated by the idea that he and all men are partners of the divine nature, and able in the strength of that nature to be free from evil. I believe him to be normal. He shows pleasure in the society of attractive young women and in an innocent, light-hearted way refers to the time when he may be able to marry. He is a general favorite, but turned to me as to a friend and teacher. He is poor, and it was possible for me to guarantee him a good education. I began to help him from the longings of a lonely life. I wanted a son and a friend in my inward desolation. I craved the companionship of this pure and happy nature. I felt such a reverence for him that I hoped to find the sensuous element in me purged away by his purity. I am, indeed, utterly incapable of doing him harm; I am not morally weak; nevertheless the sensuous element is there, and it poisons my happiness. He is ardently affectionate and demonstrative. He spends the summers with me in Europe, and the tenderness he feels for me has prompted him at times to embrace and kiss me as he always has done to his father. Of late I have begun to fear that without will or desire I may injure the springs of feeling in him, especially if it is true that the homosexual tendency is latent in most men. The love he shows me is my joy, but a poisoned joy. It is the bread and wine of life to me; but I dare not think what his ardent affection might ripen into. I can go on fighting the battle of good and evil in my attachment to him, but I cannot define my duty to him. To shun him would be cruelty and would belie his trust in human fidelity. Without my friendship he will not take my money—the condition of a large career. I might, indeed, explain to him what I explain to you, but the ordeal and shame are too great, and I cannot see what good it would do. If he has the capacity of homosexual feeling he might be violently stimulated; if he is incapable of it, he would feel repulsion.
“Suppose, then, that I should seek hypnotic treatment, I still do not know what tricks an abnormal nature might play me when diverted by suggestion. I might lose the joy of this friendship without any compensation. I am afraid; I am afraid! Might I not be influenced to shun the only persons who inspire unselfish feeling?
“Bear with this account of my story. Many virtues are easy for me, and my life is spent in pursuits of culture. Alas, that all the culture with which I am credited, all the prayers and aspirations, all the strong will and heroic resolves have not rid my nature of this evil bent! What I long for is the right to love, not for the mere physical gratification, for the right to take another into the arms of my heart and profess all the tenderness I feel, to find my joy in planning his career with him, as one who is rightfully and naturally entitled to do so. I crave this since I cannot have a son. I leave the matter here.
“When I read what I have written I see how pointless it is. It is possible, indeed, that brooding over my personal calamity magnifies in my mind the sense of danger to this friend through me, and that I only need to find the right relation of friendliness coupled with aloofness which will secure him against any too ardent attachment. Certainly I have no fear that I shall forget myself. Yet two things array themselves on the other side: I rebel inwardly against the necessity of isolating myself as if I were a pestilence, and I rebel against the taint of sensuous feeling. The normal man can feel that his instinct is no shame when the spirit is in control. I know that to the consciousness of others my instinct itself would be a shame and a baseness, and I have no tendency to construct a moral system for myself. I have, to be sure, moments when I declare to myself that I will have my sensuous gratification as well as other men, but, the moment I think of the wickedness of it, the rebellion is soon over. The disesteem of self, the sense of taint, the necessity of withdrawing from happiness lest I communicate my taint, that is a spiritual malady which makes the ground-tone of my existence one of pain and melancholy. Should you have only some moral consolation without the promise of medical assistance I should feel grateful.”
In such a case as this, one can do little more than advise the sufferer that, however painful his lot may be, it is not without its consolations, and that he would be best advised to pursue, as cheerfully as may be, the path that he has already long since marked out for himself. The invert sometimes fails to realize that for no man with high moral ideals, however normal he may be, is the conduct of life easy, and that if the invert has to be satisfied with affection without passion, and to live a life of chastity, he is doing no more than thousands of normal men have done, voluntarily and contentedly. As to hypnotism in such a case as this, it is altogether unreasonable to expect that suggestion will supplant the deeply rooted organic impulses that have grown up during a lifetime.
We may thus conclude that in the treatment of inversion the most satisfactory result is usually obtained when it is possible by direct and indirect methods to reduce the sexual hyperesthesia which frequently exists, and by psychic methods to refine and spiritualize the inverted impulse, so that the invert’s natural perversion may not become a cause of acquired perversity in others. The invert is not only the victim of his own abnormal obsession, he is the victim of social hostility. We must seek to distinguish the part in his sufferings due to these two causes. When I review the cases I have brought forward and the mental history of inverts I have known, I am inclined to say that if we can enable an invert to be healthy, selfrestrained and selfrespecting, we have often done better than to convert him into the mere feeble simulacrum of a normal man. An appeal to the paiderastia of the best Greek days, and the dignity, temperance, even chastity, which it involved, will sometimes find a ready response in the emotional, enthusiastic nature of the congenital invert. Plato’s Dialogues have frequently been found a source of great help and consolation by inverts. The “manly love” celebrated by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, although it may be of more doubtful value for general use, furnishes a wholesome and robust ideal to the invert who is insensitive to normal ideals.[117]
Among recent books, Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship, edited by Edward Carpenter, may be recommended. A similar book in German, of a more extended character, is Lieblingminne und Freudesliebe in der Weltliteratur, edited by Elisár von Kupffer. Mention may also be made of the Freundschaft (1912) of Baron von Gleichen-Russwurm, a sort of literary history of friendship, without specific reference to homosexuality, although many writers of inverted tendency are introduced. Platen’s Tagebücher are notable as the diary of an invert of high character and ideals. The volumes of the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen contain many studies bearing on the ideal and esthetic aspects of homosexuality.
Various modern poets of high ability have given expression to emotions of exalted or passionate friendship toward individuals of the same sex, whether or not such friendship can properly be termed homosexual. It is scarcely necessary to refer to In Memoriam, in which Tennyson enshrined his affection for his early friend, Arthur Hallam, and developed a picture of the universe on the basis of that affection. The poems of Edward Cracroft Lefroy are notable, and Mr. John Gambril Nicholson has privately issued several volumes of verse (A Chaplet of Southernwood, A Garland of Ladslove, etc.) showing delicate charm combined with high technical skill. Some books mainly or entirely written in prose may fairly be included in the same group. Such are In the Key of Blue, by John Addington Symonds, and the Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton (published anonymously by a well-known author, A. C. Benson), in which on somewhat Platonic lines the idea is worked out that the individual sufferer must pass “from the love of one fair form to the love of abstract beauty” and “from the contemplation of his own suffering to the consideration of the root of all human suffering.”
As regards the modern poetic literature of feminine homosexuality there is probably nothing to put beside the various volumes—pathetic in their brave simplicity and sincerity—of “Renée Vivien” (see ante, p. 200). Most other feminine singers of homosexuality have cautiously thrown a veil of heterosexuality over their songs.
Novels of a more or less definitely homosexual tone are now very numerous in English, French, German, and other languages. In English the homosexuality is for the most part veiled and the narrative deals largely with school-life and boys in order that the emotional and romantic character of the relations described may appear more natural. Thus Tim, an anonymously published book by H. O. Sturgis (1891), described the devotion of a boy to an older boy at Eton and his death at an early age. Jaspar Tristram, by A. W. Clarke (1899), again, is a well-written story of a schoolboy friendship of homosexual tone; a boy is represented as feeling attraction to boys who are like girls, and a girl became attractive to the hero because she is like a boy and recalls her brother whom he had formerly loved. The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys, by Forrest Reid (1905), is another rather similar book, in its way a charming and delicately written idyll. Imre: A Memorandum, (1906), by “Xavier Mayne” (the pseudonym of an American author, who has also written The Intersexes), privately issued at Naples, is a book of a different class; representing the frankly homosexual passion of two mutually attracted men, an Englishman who is supposed to write the story and a Hungarian officer; it embodies a notable narrative of homosexual development which is probably more or less real.
In French there are a number of novels dealing with homosexuality, sometimes sympathetically, sometimes with artistic indifference, sometimes satirically. André Gide (in L’Immoraliste and other books), Rachilde (Madame Vallette), Willy (in the well-known Claudine series) may be mentioned, among other writers of more or less distinction, who have once or oftener dealt with homosexuality. Special reference should be made to the Belgian author George Eekhoud, whose Escal-Vigor (prosecuted at Bruges on its publication) is a book of special power. The homosexual stories of Essebac, of which L’Elu (1902) is considered the best, are of a romantic and sentimental character. Lucien (1910), by Binet-Valmer, is a penetrating and scarcely sympathetic study of inversion. Nortal’s Les Adolescents Passionnés (already mentioned, p. 325) is a notably intimate and precise study of homosexuality in French schools. It would be easy to mention many others.
In Germany during recent years many novels of homosexual character have been published. They are not usually, it would seem, of high literary character, but are sometimes notable as being more or less disguised narratives of real fact. Body’s Aus Eines Mannes Mädchenjahren is said to be a faithful autobiography. Der Neue Werther: eine Hellenische Passions-geschichte by Narkissos (1902) is also said to be authentic. Another book that may be mentioned is Konradin’s Ein Junger Platos: Aus dem Leben eines Entgbeistes (1914). The German belletristic literature of homosexuality, as well as that of other countries, will be found adequately summarized and criticised by Numa Praetorius in the volumes of the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen. See also Hirschfeld’s Die Homosexualität, pp. 47 and 1018 et seq.
It is by some such method of self-treatment as this that most of the more highly intelligent men and women whose histories I have already briefly recorded have at last slowly and instinctively reached a condition of relative health and peace, both physical and moral. The method of self-restraint and self-culture, without self-repression, seems to be the most rational method of dealing with sexual inversion when that condition is really organic and deeply rooted. It is better that a man should be enabled to make the best of his own strong natural instincts, with all their disadvantages, than that he should be unsexed and perverted, crushed into a position which he has no natural aptitude to occupy. As both Raffalovich and Féré have insisted, it is the ideal of chastity, rather than of normal sexuality, which the congenital invert should hold before his eyes. He may not have in him the making of l’homme moyen sensuel; he may have in him the making of a saint.[118] What good work in the world the inverted may do is shown by the historical examples of distinguished inverts; and, while it is certainly true that these considerations apply chiefly to the finer-grained natures, the histories I have brought together suffice to show that such natures constitute a considerable proportion of inverts. The helplessly gross sexual appetite cannot thus be influenced; but that remains true whether the appetite is homosexual or heterosexual, and nothing is gained by enabling it to feed on women as well as on men.
A strictly ascetic life, it needs scarcely be said, is with difficulty possible for all persons, either homosexual or heterosexual. It is, however, outside the province of the physician to recommend his inverted patients to live according to their homosexual impulses, even when those impulses seem to be natural to the person displaying them. The most that the physician is entitled to do, it seems to me, is to present the situation clearly, and leave to the patient a decision for which he must himself accept the responsibility. Forel goes so far as to say that he sees no reason why inverts should not build cities of their own and marry each other if they so please, since they can do no harm to normal adults, while children can be protected from them.[119] Such notions are, however, too far removed from our existing social conventions to be worth serious consideration.
The standpoint here taken up, it may be remarked, by no means denies to the invert a right to the fulfillment of his impulses. Numa Praetorius remarks, it would seem justly, that while the invert must properly be warned against unnatural sexual license, and while those who are capable of continence do well to preserve it, to deny all right to sexual activity to the invert merely causes those inverts who are incapable of self-control to throw recklessly aside all restraints (Zeitschrift für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, p. 726). The invert has the right to sexual indulgence, it may be, but he has also the duty to accept the full responsibility for his own actions, and the necessity to recognize the present attitude of the society he lives in. He cannot be advised to set himself in violent opposition to that society.
The world will not be a tolerable place for pronounced inverts until they are better understood, and that will involve a radical change in general and even medical opinion. An inverted physician, of high character and successful in his profession, writes to me on this point: “The first, and easiest, thing to do, it seems to me, is to convince the medical profession that we unfortunate people are not only as sane, but as moral, as our normal brothers; and that we are even more alive to the supreme necessity of self-control (necessary from every point of view) than they. It is not license we want, but justice; it is the cruelty and prejudice of convention which we wish to abolish—not the proper and just indignation of society with crimes against the social order. We want to make it possible for us to satisfy our inborn instincts (which are not concerned essentially with sexual acts, so called, alone) without thereby becoming criminals. One of us who would, under any circumstances, seduce a person of his own sex of immature age, and particularly one whose sexual complexion was unknown, deserves the severe punishment which would be meted out to a normal person who did the same to a young girl—but no more; while, so long as no public offense is given, there should be no penalty or obloquy whatever attached to sexual acts committed with full consent between mature persons. These acts may or may not be wrong and immoral, just as sexual acts between mature persons of different sexes may or may not be wrong or immoral. But in neither case has the law any concern; and public opinion should make no distinction between the two. It is in the highest degree important that it should be clearly understood that we want no relaxation of moral obligations. At present we suffer an inconceivably cruel wrong.”
We have always to remember, and there is, indeed, no possibility of forgetting, that the question of homosexuality is a social question. Within certain limits, the gratification of the normal sexual impulse, even outside marriage, arouses no general or profound indignation; and is regarded as a private matter; rightly or wrongly, the gratification of the homosexual impulse is regarded as a public matter. This attitude is more or less exactly reflected in the law. Thus it happens that whenever a man is openly detected in a homosexual act, however exemplary his life may previously have been, however admirable it may still be in all other relations, every ordinary normal citizen, however licentious and pleasure-loving his own life may be, feels it a moral duty to regard the offender as hopelessly damned and to help in hounding him out of society. At very brief intervals cases occur, and without reaching the newspapers are more or less widely known, in which distinguished men in various fields, not seldom clergymen, suddenly disappear from the country or commit suicide in consequence of some such exposure or the threat of it. It is probable that many obscure tragedies could find their explanation in a homosexual cause.
Some of the various tragic ways in which homosexual passions are revealed to society may be illustrated by the following communication from a correspondent, not himself inverted, who here narrates cases that came under his observation in various parts of the United States. The cases referred to will be known to many, but I have disguised the names of persons and places:—
“At the age of 14 I was a chorister at —— church, whose choirmaster, an Englishman named M. W. M., was an accomplished man, seemingly a perfect gentleman, and a devout churchman. He never seemed to care for the society of ladies, never mingled much with the men, but sought companionship with the choristers of my age. He frequently visited at the homes of his favorites, to tea, and when he asked the parents’ consent for George’s or Frank’s company on an excursion or to the theater, and then to spend the night with him, such request was invariably granted. I shall ever remember my first night with him; he began by fondling and caressing me, quieting my alarm by assurances of not hurting me, and after invoking me to secrecy and with promises of many future pleasures, I consented to his desire or passion, which he seemed to satisfy by an attempt at fellatio. Was this depravity? I would say ‘No!’ after reading his subsequent confession, found in his room after his death by suicide. This was brought about by his too intimate relations with the rector’s son who contracted St. Vitus’s dance and in the delirium of a fever that followed from nervous exhaustion told of him and his doings. A thorough investigation took place and M. fled, a broken-hearted and disgraced man, who, as the result of remorse, relentless persecution, and exposure through several years, ended his life by drowning himself. In his confession he spoke of having been raised under a very strong moral restraint and having lived an exemplary life, with the exception of this strange desire that his will-power could not control.
“The next case is that of C. H. He came of an old family of brainy men who have, and do yet, occupy prominent places in the pulpit and the bar, and was himself a gifted young attorney. I knew him intimately, as for six years he was a close neighbor and we were associated in lodge-work. He was an effeminate little fellow: height, 5 feet 2 inches; weight, 105 pounds; very near-sighted; and he had a light voice, not a treble or falsetto, but still a voice that detracted materially from the beautiful rhetoric that flowed from his lips. He had served his country as its representative in the Legislature and had received the nomination for senator, over a hard-fought political battle. The last canvass and speeches were made at a town which was, in consequence, crowded. That night H. had to occupy a room with a stranger, named E., a travelling salesman. There were two beds in this room. Mr. E., on the following day told several people that during the night he was awakened by H., who had come over to his bed and had his mouth on his ‘person,’ and that he had threatened to kick him out of the room, but that H. pleaded with him and fell on his knees and swore that he had been overcome by a passion that he had heretofore controlled, and begged of him not to expose him. These facts coming to the notice of his opponents, within twenty-four hours, they hastened to take advantage of it by placarding H. as a second Oscar Wilde, and stating the facts as far as decency and the law allowed. H.’s friends came to him and gave him one of two alternatives: if guilty, either to kill himself or leave that section forever; if not guilty, to slay his traducer, E. H. affirmed his innocence, and in company with two friends, C. and J., took the train for ——. Learning there that E. was at a town twelve miles east, they hired a fast livery and drove overland. They found E. at the station, awaiting the arrival of a train. H., with a pistol, strode forward and in his excitement said: ‘You exposed me, did you?’ Being near-sighted, his aim proved wide of the mark. E. sprang forward and grappled with H. for possession of the pistol, and was fired upon by C. and J., who shot him in the back. He expired in a few minutes, his last statement being to the effect that H. was guilty as accused. H., C., and J. were sentenced to the penitentiary for life. During my six years’ acquaintance with H. I knew of nothing derogatory to his character, nor has anyone ever come forward to say that on any other occasion he ever displayed this weakness. I know his early life had a pure atmosphere, as he was an only child and the idol of both his parents, who builded high their hopes of his future success, and who survive this disgrace, but are broken-hearted.
“The next case is that of the Rev. T. W., professor at the University of ——. Mr. W. is a scholarly gentleman, affable in his address, eloquent in his oratory, and a fine classical scholar. He was exposed by some of his students, who, to use a slang phrase, accused him of being a ‘head-worker.’ At his examination by the faculty he confessed his weakness, and said he could not control his unholy passion. His resignation was accepted both by the church and the college, and he left.
“I know of a few other cases that have their peculiar traits, and am confident that these persons did not become possessed of this habit through the so-called ‘indiscretions of youth,’ as in every case their early life was freer from contamination than that of 90 per cent. of the boys who, on reaching man’s estate, have, like myself, no desire to deviate from the old-fashioned way formulated by our ancient sire, Adam.”
It can scarcely be said that the consciousness of this attitude of society is favorable to the invert’s attainment of a fairly sane and well-balanced state of mind. This is, indeed, one of the great difficulties in his way, and often causes him to waver between extremes of melancholia and egotistic exaltation. We regard all homosexuality with absolute and unmitigated disgust. We have been taught to venerate Alexander the Great, Epaminondas, Socrates, and other antique heroes; but they are safely buried in the remote past, and do not affect our scorn of homosexuality in the present.
It was in the fourth century, at Rome, that the strong modern opposition to homosexuality was first clearly formulated in law.[120] The Roman race had long been decaying; sexual perversions of all kinds flourished; the population was dwindling. At the same time, Christianity, with its Judaic-Pauline antagonism to homosexuality, was rapidly spreading. The statesmen of the day, anxious to quicken the failing pulses of national life, utilized this powerful Christian feeling. Constantine, Theodosius, and Valentinian all passed laws against homosexuality, the last, at all events, ordaining as penalty the vindices flammæ; but their enactments do not seem to have been strictly carried out. In the year 538, Justinian, professing terror of certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences in which he saw the mysterious “recompense which was meet” prophesied by St. Paul,[121] issued his edict condemning unnatural offenders to the sword, “lest as the result of these impious acts” (as the preamble to his Novella 77 has it) “whole cities should perish, together with their inhabitants; for we are taught by Holy Scripture that through these acts cities have perished with the men in them.”[122] This edict (which Justinian followed up by a fresh ordinance to the same effect) constituted the foundation of legal enactment and social opinion concerning the matter in Europe for thirteen hundred years.[123] In France the vindices flammæ survived to the last; St. Louis had handed over these sacrilegious offenders to the Church to be burned; in 1750 two pederasts were burned in the Place de Grève, and only a few years before the Revolution a Capuchin monk named Pascal was also burned.
After the Revolution, however, began a new movement, which has continued slowly and steadily ever since, though it still divides European nations into two groups. Justinian, Charlemagne, and St. Louis had insisted on the sin and sacrilege of sodomy as the ground for its punishment.[124] It was doubtless largely as a religious offense that the Code Napoléon omitted to punish it. The French law makes a clear and logical distinction between crime on the one hand, vice and irreligion on the other, only concerning itself with the former. Homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely unpunished by the Code Napoléon and by French law of today. Only under three conditions does the homosexual act come under the cognizance of the law as a crime: (1) when there is outrage public à la pudeur,—i.e., when the act is performed in public or with a possibility of witnesses; (2) when there is violence or absence of consent, in whatever degree the act may have been consummated; (3) when one of the parties is under age, or unable to give valid consent; in some cases it appears possible to apply Article 334 of the penal code, directed against habitual excitation to debauch of young persons of either sex under the age of 21.
This method of dealing with unnatural offenses has spread widely, at first because of the political influence of France, and more recently because such an attitude has commended itself on its merits. In Belgium the law is similar to that of the Code Napoléon, as it is also in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, Japan, and numerous South American lands. In Switzerland the law is a little vague and varies slightly in the different cantons, but it is not severe; in Geneva and some other cantons there is no penalty; the general tendency is to inflict brief imprisonment when serious complaints have been lodged, and cases can sometimes be settled privately by the magistrate.
The only large European countries in which homosexuality per se remains a penal offense appear to be Germany, Austria, Russia, and England. In several of the German States, such as Bavaria and Hanover, simple homosexuality formerly went unpunished, but when the laws of Prussia were in 1871 applied to the new German Empire this ceased to be the case, and unnatural carnality between males became an offense against the law. This article of the German Code (Section 175) has caused great discussion and much practical difficulty, because, although the terms of the law make it necessary to understand by widernatürliche Unzucht other practices besides pædicatio, not every homosexual practice is included; it must be some practice resembling normal coitus. There is a widespread opinion that this article of the code should be abolished; it appears that at one time an authoritative committee pronounced in favor of this step, and their proposition came near adoption. The Austrian law is somewhat similar to the German, but it applies to women as well as to men; this is logical, for there is no reason why homosexuality should be punished in men and left unpunished in women. In Russia the law against homosexual practices appears to be very severe, involving, in some cases, banishment to Siberia and deprivation of civil rights; but it can scarcely be rigorously executed.
The existing law in England is severe, but simple. Carnal knowledge per anum of either a man or a woman or an animal is punishable by a sentence of penal servitude with not less than three years, or of imprisonment with not more than two years. Even “gross indecency” between males, however privately committed, has been since 1885 a penal offense.[125] The clause is open to criticism. With the omission of the words “or private,” it would be sound and in harmony with the most enlightened European legislation; but it must be pointed out that an act only becomes indecent when those who perform it or witness it regard it as indecent. The act which brought each of us into the world is not indecent; it would become so if carried on in public. If two male persons, who have reached years of discretion, consent together to perform some act of sexual intimacy in private, no indecency has been committed. If one of the consenting parties subsequently proclaims the act, indecency may doubtless be created, as may happen also in the case of normal sexual intercourse, but it seems contrary to good policy that such proclamation should convert the act itself into a penal offense. Moreover, “gross indecency” between males usually means some form of mutual masturbation; no penal code regards masturbation as an offense, and there seems to be no sufficient reason why mutual masturbation should be so regarded. The main point to be insured is that no boy or girl who has not reached years of discretion should be seduced or abused by an older person, and this point is equally well guaranteed on the basis introduced by the Code Napoléon. However shameful, disgusting, personally immoral, and indirectly antisocial it may be for two adult persons of the same sex, men or women, to consent together to perform an act of sexual intimacy in private, there is no sound or adequate ground for constituting such act a penal offense by law.
One of the most serious objections to the legal recognition of private “gross indecency” is the obvious fact that only in the rarest cases can such indecency become known to the police, and we thus perpetrate what is very much like a legal farce. “The breaking of few laws,” as Moll truly observes, regarding the German law, “so often goes unpunished as of this.” It is the same in England, as is amply evidenced by the fact that, of the English sexual inverts, whose histories I have obtained, not one, so far as I am aware, has ever appeared in a police-court on this charge.
It may further be pointed out that legislation against homosexuality has no clear effect either in diminishing or increasing its prevalence. This must necessarily be so as regards the kernel of the homosexual group, if we are to regard a considerable proportion of cases as congenital. In France homosexuality per se has been untouched by the law for a century; yet it abounds, chiefly, it seems, among the lowest in the community; although the law is silent, social feeling is strong, and when—as has been the case in one instance—a man of undoubted genius has his name associated with this perversion it becomes difficult or impossible for the admirers of his work to associate with him personally; very few cases of homosexuality have been recorded in France among the more intelligent classes; the literature of homosexuality is there little more than the literature of male prostitution, as described by police-officials, and as carried on largely for the benefit of foreigners. In Germany and Austria, where the law against homosexuality is severe, it abounds also, perhaps to a much greater extent than in France;[126] it certainly asserts itself more vigorously; a far greater number of cases have been recorded than in any other country, and the German literature of homosexuality is very extensive, often issued in popular form, and sometimes enthusiastically eulogistic. In England the law is exceptionally severe; yet, according to the evidence of those who have an international acquaintance with these matters, homosexuality is fully as prevalent as on the Continent; some would say that it is more so. Much the same is true of the United States, though there is less to be seen on the surface. It cannot, therefore, be said that legislative enactments have very much influence on the prevalence of homosexuality. The chief effect seems to be that the attempt at suppression arouses the finer minds among sexual inverts to undertake the enthusiastic defense of homosexuality, while coarser minds are stimulated to cynical bravado.[127]
As regards the prevalence of homosexuality in the United States, I may quote from a well-informed American correspondent:—
“The great prevalence of sexual inversion in American cities is shown by the wide knowledge of its existence. Ninety-nine normal men out of a hundred have been accosted on the streets by inverts, or have among their acquaintances men whom they know to be sexually inverted. Everyone has seen inverts and knows what they are. The public attitude toward them is generally a negative one—indifference, amusement, contempt.
“The world of sexual inverts is, indeed, a large one in any American city, and it is a community distinctly organized—words, customs, traditions of its own; and every city has its numerous meeting-places: certain churches where inverts congregate; certain cafés well known for the inverted character of their patrons; certain streets where, at night, every fifth man is an invert. The inverts have their own ‘clubs,’ with nightly meetings. These ‘clubs’ are, really, dance-halls, attached to saloons, and presided over by the proprietor of the saloon, himself almost invariably an invert, as are all the waiters and musicians. The frequenters of these places are male sexual inverts (usually ranging from 17 to 30 years of age); sightseers find no difficulty in gaining entrance; truly, they are welcomed for the drinks they buy for the company—and other reasons. Singing and dancing turns by certain favorite performers are the features of these gatherings, with much gossip and drinking at the small tables ranged along the four walls of the room. The habitués of these places are, generally, inverts of the most pronounced type, i.e., the completely feminine in voice and manners, with the characteristic hip motion in their walk; though I have never seen any approach to feminine dress there, doubtless the desire for it is not wanting and only police regulations relegate it to other occasions and places. You will rightly infer that the police know of these places and endure their existence for a consideration; it is not unusual for the inquiring stranger to be directed there by a policeman.”
The Oscar Wilde trial (see ante, p. 48), with its wide publicity, and the fundamental nature of the questions it suggested, appears to have generally contributed to give definiteness and self-consciousness to the manifestations of homosexuality, and to have aroused inverts to take up a definite attitude. I have been assured in several quarters that this is so and that since that case the manifestations of homosexuality have become more pronounced. One correspondent writes:—
“Up to the time of the Oscar Wilde trial I had not known what the condition of the law was. The moral question in itself—its relation to my own life and that of my friends—I reckoned I had solved; but I now had to ask myself how far I was justified in not only breaking the law, but in being the cause of a like breach in others, and others younger than myself. I have never allowed the dictum of the law to interfere with what I deemed to be a moral development in any youth for whom I am responsible. I cannot say that the trial made me alter my course of life, of the rightness of which I was too convincingly persuaded, but it made me much more careful, and it probably sharpened my sense of responsibility for the young. Reviewing the results of the trial as a whole, it doubtless did incalculable harm, and it intensified our national vice of hypocrisy. But I think it also may have done some good in that it made those who, like myself, have thought and experienced deeply in the matter—and these must be no small few—ready to strike a blow, when the time comes, for what we deem to be right, honorable, and clean.”
From America a lady writes with reference to the moral position of inverts, though without allusion to the Wilde trial:—
“Inverts should have the courage and independence to be themselves, and to demand an investigation. If one strives to live honorably, and considers the greatest good to the greatest number, it is not a crime nor a disgrace to be an invert. I do not need the law to defend me, neither do I desire to have any concessions made for me, nor do I ask my friends to sacrifice their ideals for me. I too have ideals which I shall always hold. All that I desire—and I claim it as my right—is the freedom to exercise this divine gift of loving, which is not a menace to society nor a disgrace to me. Let it once be understood that the average invert is not a moral degenerate nor a mental degenerate, but simply a man or a woman who is less highly specialized, less completely differentiated, than other men and women, and I believe the prejudice against them will disappear, and if they live uprightly they will surely win the esteem and consideration of all thoughtful people. I know what it means to an invert—who feels himself set apart from the rest of mankind—to find one human heart who trusts him and understands him, and I know how almost impossible this is, and will be, until the world is made aware of these facts.”
But, while the law has had no more influence in repressing abnormal sexuality than, wherever it has tried to do so, it has had in repressing the normal sexual instinct, it has served to foster another offense. What is called blackmailing in England, chantage in France, and Erpressung in Germany—in other words, the extortion of money by threats of exposing some real or fictitious offense—finds its chief field of activity in connection with homosexuality.[128] No doubt the removal of the penalty against simple homosexuality does not abolish blackmailing, as the existence of this kind of chantage in France shows, but it renders its success less probable.
On all these grounds, and taking into consideration the fact that the tendency of modern legislation generally, and the consensus of authoritative opinion in all countries, are in this direction, it seems reasonable to conclude that neither “sodomy” (i.e., immissio membri in anum hominis vel mulieris) nor “gross indecency” ought to be penal offenses, except under certain special circumstances. That is to say, that if two persons of either or both sexes, having reached years of discretion,[129] privately consent to practise some perverted mode of sexual relationship, the law cannot be called upon to interfere. It should be the function of the law in this matter to prevent violence, to protect the young, and to preserve public order and decency. Whatever laws are laid down beyond this must be left to the individuals themselves, to the moralists, and to social opinion.
At the same time, and while such a modification in the law seems to be reasonable, the change effected would be less considerable than may appear at first sight. In a very large proportion, indeed, of cases boys are involved. It is instructive to observe that in Legludic’s 246 cases (including victims and aggressors together) in France, 127, or more than half, were between the ages of 10 and 20, and 82, or exactly one-third, were between the ages of 10 and 14. A very considerable field of operation is thus still left for the law, whatever proportion of cases may meet with no other penalty than social opinion.
That, however, social opinion—law or no law—will speak with no uncertain voice is very evident. Once homosexuality was primarily a question of population or of religion. Now we hear little either of its economic aspects or of its sacrilegiousness; it is for us primarily a disgusting abomination, i.e., a matter of taste, of esthetics; and, while unspeakably ugly to the majority, it is proclaimed as beautiful by a small minority. I do not know that we need find fault with this esthetic method of judging homosexuality. But it scarcely lends itself to legal purposes. To indulge in violent denunciation of the disgusting nature of homosexuality, and to measure the sentence by the disgust aroused, or to regret, as one English judge is reported to have regretted when giving sentence, that “gross indecency” is not punishable by death, is to import utterly foreign considerations into the matter. The judges who yield to this temptation would certainly never allow themselves to be consciously influenced on the bench by their political opinions. Yet esthetic opinions are quite as foreign to law as political opinions. An act does not become criminal because it is disgusting. To eat excrement, as Moll remarks, is extremely disgusting, but it is not criminal. The confusion which thus exists, even in the legal mind, between the disgusting and the criminal is additional evidence of the undesirability of the legal penalty for simple homosexuality. At the same time it shows that social opinion is amply adequate to deal with the manifestations of inverted sexuality. So much for the legal aspects of sexual inversion.
But while there can be no doubt about the amply adequate character of the existing social reaction to all manifestations of perverted sexuality, the question still remains how far not merely the law, but also the state of public opinion, should be modified in the light of such a psychological study as we have here undertaken. It is clear that this public opinion, molded chiefly or entirely with reference to gross vice, tends to be unduly violent in its reaction. What, then, is the reasonable attitude of society toward the congenital sexual invert? It seems to lie in the avoidance of two extremes. On the one hand, it cannot be expected to tolerate the invert who flouts his perversion in its face, and assumes that, because he would rather take his pleasure with a soldier or a policeman than with their sisters, he is of finer clay than the vulgar herd. On the other, it might well refrain from crushing with undiscerning ignorance beneath a burden of shame the subject of an abnormality which, as we have seen, has not been found incapable of fine uses. Inversion is an aberration from the usual course of nature. But the clash of contending elements which must often mark the history of such a deviation results now and again—by no means infrequently—in nobler activities than those yielded by the vast majority who are born to consume the fruits of the earth. It bears, for the most part, its penalty in the structure of its own organism. We are bound to protect the helpless members of society against the invert. If we go farther, and seek to destroy the invert himself before he has sinned against society, we exceed the warrant of reason, and in so doing we may, perhaps, destroy also those children of the spirit which possess sometimes a greater worth than the children of the flesh.
Here we may leave this question of sexual inversion. In dealing with it I have sought to avoid that attitude of moral superiority which is so common in the literature of this subject, and have refrained from pointing out how loathsome this phenomenon is, or how hideous that. Such an attitude is as much out of place in scientific investigation as it is in judicial investigation, and may well be left to the amateur. The physician who feels nothing but disgust at the sight of disease is unlikely to bring either succor to his patients or instruction to his pupils.
That the investigation we have here pursued is not only profitable to us in succoring the social organism and its members, but also in bringing light into the region of sexual psychology, is now, I hope, clear to every reader who has followed me to this point. There are a multitude of social questions which we cannot face squarely and honestly unless we possess such precise knowledge as has been here brought together concerning the part played by the homosexual tendency in human life. Moreover, the study of this perverted tendency stretches beyond itself;
“O’er that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes.”
Pathology is but physiology working under new conditions. The stream of nature still flows into the bent channel of sexual inversion, and still runs according to law. We have not wasted our time in this toilsome excursion. With the knowledge here gained we are the better equipped to enter upon the study of the wider questions of sex.
Appendix A. Homosexuality Among Tramps
BY “JOSIAH FLYNT.”
I have made a rather minute study of the tramp class in the United States, England, and Germany, but I know it best in the States. I have lived with the tramps there for eight consecutive months, besides passing numerous shorter periods in their company, and my acquaintance with them is nearly of ten years’ standing. My purpose in going among them has been to learn about their life in particular and outcast life in general. This can only be done by becoming part and parcel of its manifestations.
There are two kinds of tramps in the United States: out-of-works and “hoboes.” The out-of-works are not genuine vagabonds; they really want work and have no sympathy with the hoboes. The latter are the real tramps. They make a business of begging—a very good business too—and keep at it, as a rule, to the end of their days. Whisky and Wanderlust, or the love of wandering, are probably the main causes of their existence; but many of them are discouraged criminals, men who have tried their hand at crime and find that they lack criminal wit. They become tramps because they find that life “on the road” comes the nearest to the life they hoped to lead. They have enough talent to do very well as beggars, better, generally speaking, then the men who have reached the road simply as drunkards; they know more about the tricks of the trade and are cleverer in thinking out schemes and stories. All genuine tramps in America are, however, pretty much the same, as far as manners and philosophy are concerned, and all are equally welcome at the “hang-out.”[130] The class of society from which they are drawn is generally the very lowest of all, but there are some hoboes who have come from the very highest, and these latter are frequently as vicious and depraved as their less well-born brethren.
Concerning sexual inversion among tramps, there is a great deal to be said, and I cannot attempt to tell all I have heard about it, but merely to give a general account of the matter. Every hobo in the United States knows what “unnatural intercourse” means, talking about it freely, and, according to my finding, every tenth man practises it, and defends his conduct. Boys are the victims of this passion. The tramps gain possession of these boys in various ways. A common method is to stop for awhile in some town, and gain acquaintance with the slum children. They tell these children all sorts of stories about life “on the road,” how they can ride on the railways for nothing, shoot Indians, and be “perfeshunnels” (professionals), and they choose some boy who specially pleases them. By smiles and flattering caresses they let him know that the stories are meant for him alone, and before long, if the boy is a suitable subject, he smiles back just as slyly. In time he learns to think that he is the favorite of the tramp, who will take him on his travels, and he begins to plan secret meetings with the man. The tramp, of course, continues to excite his imagination with stories and caresses, and some fine night there is one boy less in the town. On the road the lad is called a “prushun,” and his protector a “jocker.” The majority of prushuns are between 10 and 15 years of age, but I have known some under 10 and a few over 15. Each is compelled by hobo law to let his jocker do with him as he will, and many, I fear, learn to enjoy his treatment of them. They are also expected to beg in every town they come to, any laziness on their part receiving very severe punishment.
How the act of unnatural intercourse takes place is not entirely clear; the hoboes are not agreed. From what I have personally observed I should say that it is usually what they call “leg-work” (intercrural), but sometimes immissio penis in anum, the boy, in either case, lying on his stomach. I have heard terrible stories of the physical results to the boy of anal intercourse.
One evening, near Cumberland, Pennsylvania, I was an unwilling witness of one of the worst scenes that can be imagined. In company with eight hoboes, I was in a freight-car attached to a slowly moving train. A colored boy succeeded in scrambling into the car, and when the train was well under way again he was tripped up and “seduced” (to use the hobo euphemism) by each of the tramps. He made almost no resistance, and joked and laughed about the business as if he had expected it. This, indeed, I find to be the general feeling among the boys when they have been thoroughly initiated. At first they do not submit, and are inclined to run away or fight, but the men fondle and pet them, and after awhile they do not seem to care. Some of them have told me that they get as much pleasure out of the affair as the jocker does. Even little fellows under 10 have told me this, and I have known them to willfully tempt their jockers to intercourse. What the pleasure consists in I cannot say. The youngsters themselves describe it as a delightful tickling sensation in the parts involved, and this is possibly all that it amounts to among the smallest lads. Those who have passed the age of puberty seem to be satisfied in pretty much the same way that the men are. Among the men the practice is decidedly one of passion. The majority of them prefer a prushun to a woman, and nothing is more severely judged than rape. One often reads in the newspapers that a woman has been assaulted by a tramp, but the perverted tramp is never the guilty party.
I believe, however, that there are a few hoboes who have taken to boys because women are so scarce “on the road.” For every woman in hoboland there are a hundred men. That this disproportion has something to do with the popularity of boys is made clear by the following case: In a gaol, where I was confined for a month during my life in vagabondage, I got acquainted with a tramp who had the reputation of being a “sod” (sodomist). One day a woman came to the gaol to see her husband, who was awaiting trial. One of the prisoners said he had known her before she was married and had lived with her. The tramp was soon to be discharged, and he inquired where the woman lived. On learning that she was still approachable, he looked her up immediately after his release, and succeeded in staying with her for nearly a month. He told me later that he enjoyed his life with her much more than his intercourse with boys. I asked him why he went with boys at all, and he replied: “‘Cause there ain’t women enough. If I can’t get them I’ve got to have the other.”
It is in gaols that one sees the worst side of this perversion. In the daytime the prisoners are let out into a long hall, and can do much as they please; at night they are shut up, two and even four in a cell. If there are any boys in the crowd, they are made use of by all who care to have them. If they refuse to submit, they are gagged and held down. The sheriff seldom knows what goes on, and for the boys to say anything to him would be suicidal. There is a criminal ignorance all over the States concerning the life of these gaols, and things go on that would be impossible in any well-regulated prison. In one of these places I once witnessed the fiercest fight I have ever seen among hoboes; a boy was the cause of it. Two men said they loved him, and he seemed to return the affection of both with equal desire. A fight with razors was suggested to settle who should have him.[131] The men prepared for action, while the crowd gathered round to watch. They slashed away for over half an hour, cutting each other terribly, and then their backers stopped them for fear of fatal results. The boy was given to the one who was hurt the least.
Jealousy is one of the first things one notices in connection with this passion. I have known them to withdraw entirely from the “hang-out” life simply to be sure that their prushuns were not touched by other tramps. Such attachments frequently last for years, and some boys remain with their first jockers until they are “emancipated.”
Emancipation means freedom to “snare” some other boy, and make him submit as the other had been obliged to submit when younger. As a rule, the prushun is freed when he is able to protect himself. If he can defend his “honor” from all who come, he is accepted into the class of “old stagers,” and may do as he likes. This is the one reward held out to prushuns during their apprenticeship. They are told that some day they can have a boy and use him as they have been used. Thus hoboland is always sure of recruits.
It is difficult to say how many tramps are sexually inverted. It is not even certainly known how many vagabonds there are in the country. I have stated in one of my papers on tramps that, counting the boys, there are between fifty and sixty thousand genuine hoboes in the United States. A vagabond in Texas who saw this statement wrote me that he considered my estimate too low. The newspapers have criticised it as too high, but they are unable to judge. If my figures are, as I believe, at least approximately correct, the sexually perverted tramps may be estimated at between five and six thousand; this includes men and boys.
I have been told lately by tramps that the boys are less numerous than they were a few years ago. They say that it is now a risky business to be seen with a boy, and that it is more profitable, as far as begging is concerned, to go without them. Whether this means that the passion is less fierce than it used to be, or that the men find sexual satisfaction among themselves, I cannot say definitely. But from what I know of their disinclination to adopt the latter alternative, I am inclined to think that the passion may be dying out somewhat. I am sure that women are not more numerous “on the road” than formerly, and that the change, if real, has not been caused by them. So much for my finding in the United States.
In England, where I have also lived with tramps for some time, I have found very little contrary sexual feeling. In Germany, also, excepting in prisons and work-houses, it seems very little known among vagabonds. There are a few Jewish wanderers (sometimes peddlers) who are said to have boys in their company, and I am told that they use them as the hoboes in the United States use their boys, but I cannot prove this from personal observation. In England I have met a number of male tramps who had no hesitation in declaring their preference for their own sex, and particularly for boys, but I am bound to say that I have seldom seen them with boys; as a rule, they were quite alone, and they seem to live chiefly by themselves.
It is a noteworthy fact that both in England and Germany there are a great many women “on the road,” or, at all events, so near it that intercourse with them is easy and cheap. In Germany almost every town has its quarter of “Stadt-Schieze”[132]: women who sell their bodies for a very small sum. They seldom ask over thirty or forty pfennigs for a night, which is usually spent in the open air. In England it is practically the same thing. In all the large cities there are women who are glad to do business for three or four pence, and those “on the road” for even less.
The general impression made on me by the sexually perverted men I have met in vagabondage is that they are abnormally masculine. In their intercourse with boys they always take the active part. The boys have, in some cases, seemed to me uncommonly feminine, but not as a rule. In the main, they are very much like other lads, and I am unable to say whether their liking for the inverted relationship is inborn or acquired. That it is, however, a genuine liking, in altogether too many instances, I do not, in the least, doubt. As such, and all the more because it is such, it deserves to be more thoroughly investigated and more reasonably treated.
“Josiah Flynt” who wrote the foregoing account of tramp-life for the second edition of this volume, was well known as author, sociologist, and tramp. He was especially, and it would seem by innate temperament, the tramp, which part he looked to perfection (he himself referred to his “weasoned face and diminutive form”) and felt completely at home in. He was thus able to throw much light on the psychology of the tramp, and his books (such as Tramping with Tramps) are valuable from this point of view. His real name was F. Willard and he was a nephew of Miss Frances Willard. He died in Chicago, in 1907, at the age of 38, shortly after writing a frank and remarkable Autobiography. I am able to supplement his observations on tramps, so far as England is concerned, by the following passages from a detailed record sent to me by an English correspondent:—
“I am a male invert with complete feminine, sexual inclinations. Different meetings with ‘tramps’ led me to seek intimacy with them and for about twenty years I have gone on the ‘tramp’ myself so that I might come in the closest contact with them, in England, Scotland, and Wales.
“As in the United States, there are two classes of tramps those who would work, such as harvesters, road-makers, etc., and those who will not work, but make tramping a profession. Among both these classes my experience is that 90 per cent, or I even would be bold enough to say 100 per cent, indulge in homosexuality when the opportunity occurs, and I do not make any distinction between the two classes.
“There are numerous reasons for this and I will state a few. A certain number may prefer normal connection with a female, but except for those who tramp in vans and a limited number who have ‘donnas’ with them, women are not available, as prostitutes very seldom allow intimacy for ‘love’ except when drunk. Tramps are also afraid of any venereal disease as it means the misery of the Lock Hospital. Most of them are sociable and prefer to tramp with a ‘make.’ With this mate, with whom he sleeps and rests and ‘boozes’ when they are in funds, sexual intimacy naturally takes place, as my experience has been that one of the two is male and the other female in their sexual desires, but I have known instances where they have acted both roles. Then male prostitution is to be had for nothing, and even occasionally when a tramp meets a ‘toff’ it is a means of earning money, either fairly or otherwise. I have never known a male tramp to refuse satisfaction if I offered a drink or two, or a small sum of money. One told me that he envied ‘no lords or toffs’ as long as he got plenty of ‘booze and buggery.’
“Another one, who told me that he had been twenty-five years on the road, said that he could not endure to sleep alone. (He was a pedlar, openly of cheap religious books and secretly of the vilest pamphlets and photographs). He had ‘done time’ and he said the greatest punishment to him was not being able to have a ‘make’ who would submit to penetration, though he was not particular what form the sexual act took. Another fine young man, whom I chanced to meet the very day he had been released from a long sentence in prison for burglary and with whom I passed a night of incessant and almost brutal intimacy, said his punishment was seeing men always about him and being unable to have connection with them. Another and very powerful influence in ‘tramps’ toward homosexuality is that, in the low lodging houses they are obliged to frequent, a single bed is perhaps double to one with a bedmate whom perhaps he has never seen before, and especially in hot weather, when the rule is nakedness.
“My sexual desires being for the male invert I have come most in contact with them and have found that they form much the larger class. Among harvesters and seafaring tramps it is seldom you find a ‘dandy’ such as I was considered, and as such I was eagerly courted, and any suggestion of intimacy on my part quickly responded to. As regards the use of young boys for homosexual indulgence, it is not common as it is too dangerous, though I have known boys, especially those belonging to vans or gypsies, to prostitute themselves, always for money.
“On one occasion I saw a boy who created quite an outburst of lust of homosexual nature. The incident took place in a small seafaring town in Scotland one evening before a Fair was to be held. It occurred in a low public house where a number of very rough and mostly drunken men were assembled. A blind man came in led by an extremely pretty but effeminate-looking youth of about 17, wearing a ragged kilt and with bare legs and feet. He had long, curling, fair hair which reached to his shoulders and on it an old bonnet was perched. He also wore an old velveteen shooting jacket. All eyes were turned on the pair and they were quickly offered drinks. A remark was made by one man that he believed the youth was a lassie. The boy said, ‘I will show you I am a laddie,’ and pulled up his kilt, exposing his genitals and then his posterior. Boisterous laughter greeted this indecent exposure and suggestion, and more drinks were provided. The blind man then played his fiddle and the boy danced with frequent recurrences of the same indecencies. He was seized, kissed, and caressed by quite a number of men, some of whom endeavored to masturbate him, which he resisted, but performed it for them. After the closing time came, I and about ten or twelve men all occupied the same room; the old man continued to play, and the youth, stark naked, continued to dance and suggested we others should do so, and an erotic scene took place which was only closed to view by the ‘boss’ who was present putting out the lamp.
“Two classes of tramps I have met openly declare their preference for homosexuality. They are men who have been in the army and sailors and seafaring men in general. It is said that ‘Jack has a wife in every port,’ but I believe from my experience that the wife in many cases is of the male sex, and this among those of all nationalities, as is the case with soldiers. Among these also jealousy is more common than amongst ordinary tramps, and if you are ‘dandy’ to a soldier, if you make advances or receive them from a senior, trouble is likely to occur between them.
“I could give many instances of my own personal experiences to show that ‘tramps’ are looked upon by men in the country districts as legitimate, complacent, and purchaseable objects for homosexual lust.”
Appendix B. The School-Friendships Of Girls
I.
A school-friendship is termed by Italian girls a “flame” (flamma). This term, as explained by Obici and Marchesini, indicates, in school-slang, both the beloved person and the friendship in the abstract; but it is a friendship which has the note of passion as felt and understood in this environment. In every college the “flame” is regarded as a necessary institution. The relationship is usually of a markedly Platonic character, and generally exists between a boarder on one side and a day-pupil on the other. Notwithstanding, however, its apparently non-sexual nature, all the sexual manifestations of college youth circle around it, and in its varying aspects of differing intensity all the gradations of sexual sentiment may be expressed.
Obici and Marchesini carried on their investigation chiefly among the pupils of Normal schools, the age of the girls being between 12 and 19 or 20. There are both boarders and day-pupils at these colleges; the boarders are most inflammable, but it is the day-pupils who furnish the sparks.
Obici and Marchesini received much assistance in their studies from former pupils who are now themselves teachers. One of these, a day-pupil who had never herself been either the object or the agent in one of these passions, but had had ample opportunity of making personal observations, writes as follows: “The ‘flame’ proceeds exactly like a love-relationship; it often happens that one of the girls shows man-like characteristics, either in physical type or in energy and decision of character; the other lets herself be loved, acting with all the obstinacy—and one might almost say the shyness—of a girl with her lover. The beginning of these relationships is quite different from the usual beginnings of friendship. It is not by being always together, talking and studying together, that two become ‘flames’; no, generally they do not even know each other; one sees the other on the stairs, in the garden, in the corridors, and the emotion that arises is nearly always called forth by beauty and physical grace. Then the one who is first struck begins a regular courtship: frequent walks in the garden when the other is likely to be at the window of her class-room, pauses on the stairs to see her pass; in short, a mute adoration made up of glances and sighs. Later come presents of beautiful flowers, and little messages conveyed by complacent companions. Finally, if the ‘flame’ shows signs of appreciating all these proofs of affection, comes the letter of declaration. Letters of declaration are long and ardent, to such a degree that they equal or surpass real love-declarations. The courted one nearly always accepts, sometimes with enthusiasm, oftenest with many objections and doubts as to the affection declared. It is only after many entreaties that she yields and the relationship begins.”
Another collaborator who has herself always aroused very numerous “flames” gives a very similar description, together with other particulars. Thus she states: “It may be said that 60 per cent. of the girls in a college have ‘flame’ relationships, and that of the remaining 40 only half refuse from deliberate repulsion to such affections; the other 20 are excluded either because they are not sufficiently pleasing in appearance or because their characters do not inspire sympathy.” And, regarding the method of beginning the relationship, she writes: “Sometimes ‘flames’ arise before the two future friends have even seen each other, merely because one of them is considered as beautiful, sympathetic, nice, or elegant. Elegance exerts an immense fascination, especially on the boarders, who are bound down by monotonous and simple habits. As soon as a boarder hears of a day-pupil that she is charming and elegant she begins to feel a lively sympathy toward her, rapidly reaching anxiety to see her. The longed-for morning at length arrives. The beloved, unconscious of the tumult of passions she has aroused, goes into school, not knowing that her walk, her movements, her garments are being observed from stairs or dormitory corridor.... For the boarders these events constitute an important part of college-life, and often assume, for some, the aspect of a tragedy, which, fortunately, may be gradually resolved into a comedy or a farce.”
Many letters are written in the course of these relationships; Obici and Marchesini have been able to read over 300 such letters which had been carefully preserved by the receivers and which, indeed, formed the chief material for their study. These letters clearly show that the “flame” most usually arises from a physical sympathy, an admiration of beauty and elegance. The letters written in this “flame” relationship are full of passion; they appear to be often written during periods of physical excitement and psychic erethism, and may be considered, Obici and Marchesini remark, a form of intellectual onanism, of which the writers afterward feel remorse and shame as of a physically dishonorable act. In reference to the underlying connection of these feelings with the sexual impulse, one of the lady collaborators writes: “I can say that a girl who is in love with a man never experiences ‘flame’ emotions for a companion.”
Obici and Marchesini thus summarize the differential character of “flames” as distinguished from ordinary friendships: “(1) the extraordinary frequency with which, even by means of subterfuges, the lovers exchange letters; (2) the anxiety to see and talk to each other, to press each other’s hands, to embrace and kiss; (3) the long conversations and the very long reveries; (4) persistent jealousy, with its manifold arts and usual results; (5) exaltation of the beloved’s qualities; (6) the habit of writing the beloved’s name everywhere; (7) absence of envy for the loved one’s qualities; (8) the lover’s abnegation in conquering all obstacles to the manifestations of her love; (9) the vanity with which some respond to ‘flame’ declarations; (10) the consciousness of doing a prohibited thing; (11) the pleasure of conquest, of which the trophies (letters, etc.) are preserved.”
The difference between a “flame” and a friendship is very well marked in the absolute exclusiveness of the former, whence arises the possibility of jealousy. At the same time friendship and love are here woven together. The letters are chaste (a few exceptions among so many letters not affecting this general rule), and the purity of the flame relationship is also shown by the fact that it is usually between boarders and day-pupils, girls in different classes and different rooms, and seldom between those who are living in close proximity to each other. “Certainly,” writes one of the lady collaborators, “the first sensual manifestations develop in girls with physical excitement pure and simple, but (at all events, I would wish to believe it) the majority of college-girls find sufficient satisfaction in being as near as possible to the beloved person (of whichever sex), in mutual admiration and in kissing, or, very frequently, in conversation that is by no means moral, though usually very metaphorical. The object of such conversation is to discover the most important mysteries of human nature, the why and the wherefore; it deals with natural necessities, which the girl feels and has an intuition of, but as yet knows nothing definite about. Such conversations are the order of the day in schools and in colleges and specially revolve around procreation, the most difficult mystery of all. They are a heap of stupidities.” This lady had only known of one definitely homosexual relationship during the whole of her college-life; the couple in question were little liked and had no other “flames.” The chief general sexual manifestations, this lady concludes, which she had noted among her companions was a constant preoccupation with sexual mysteries and the necessity of talking about them perpetually.
Another lady collaborator who had lived in a Normal school had had somewhat wider experiences. She entered at the age of 14 and experienced the usual loneliness and unhappiness of a new pupil. One day as she was standing pensive and alone in a corner of the room, a companion—one who on her arrival had been charged to show her over the college—ran up to her, “embracing me, closing by mouth with a kiss, and softly caressing my hair. I gazed at her in astonishment, but experienced a delicious sensation of supreme comfort. Here began the idyll! I was subjected to a furious tempest of kisses and caresses which quite stunned me and made me ask myself the reason of such a new and unforeseen affection. I ingenuously inquired the reason, and the reply was: ‘I love you; you struck me immediately I saw you, because you are so beautiful and so white, and because it makes me happy and soothes me when I can pass my hands through your hair and kiss your plump, white face. I need a soul and a body.’ This seemed to me the language of a superior person, for I could not grasp all its importance. As on the occasion when she first embraced me, I looked at her in astonishment and could not for the moment respond to a new fury of caresses and kisses. I felt that they were not like the kisses of my mamma, my papa, my brother, and other companions; they gave me unknown sensations; the contact of those moist and fleshy lips disturbed me. Then came the exchange of letters and the usual rights and duties of ‘flames.’ When we met in the presence of others we were only to greet each other simply, for ‘flames’ were strictly prohibited. I obeyed because I liked her, but also because I was afraid of her Othello-like jealousy. She would suffocate me, even bite me, when I played, joyously and thoughtlessly, with others, and woe to me if I failed to call her when I was combing my hair. She liked to see me with my hair down and would rest her head on my shoulder, especially if I were partially undressed. I let her do as she liked, and she would scold me severely because I was never first in longing for her, running to meet her, and kissing her. But at the same time the thought of losing her, the thought that perhaps one day she would shower her caresses on others, secretly wounded my heart. But I never told her this! One day, however, when with the head-mistress gazing at a beautiful landscape, I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness and burst out crying. The head-mistress inquired what was the matter, and throwing myself in her arms I sobbed: ‘I love her, and I shall die if she leaves off loving me!’ She smiled, and the smile went through my heart. I saw at once how silly I was, and what a wrong road my companion was on. From that day I could no longer endure my ‘flame.’ The separation was absolute; I courageously bore bites and insults, even scratches on my face, followed by long complaints and complete prostration. I thought it would be mean to accuse her, but I invented a pretext for having the number of my bed changed. This was because she would dress quietly and come to pass hours by my bed, resting her head on the pillow. She said she wished to smell the perfume of my health and freshness. This continual turbulent desire had now nauseated me, and I wished to avoid it altogether. Later I heard that she had formed a relationship which was not blessed by any sacred rite.”
Notwithstanding the Platonic character of the correspondences, Obici and Marchesini remark, there is really a substratum of emotional sexuality beneath it, and it is this which finds its expression in the indecorous conversations already referred to. The “flame” is a love-fiction, a play of sexual love. This characteristic comes out in the frequently romantic names, of men and women, invented to sign the letters.
Even in the letters themselves, however, the element of sexual impressionability may be traced. “On Friday we went to a service at San B.,” writes one who was in an institution directed by nuns, “but unfortunately I saw M. L. at a window when I thought she was at A. and I was in a nervous state the whole time. Imagine that that dear woman was at the window with bare arms, and, as it seemed to me, in her chemise.” No doubt a similar impression might have been made on a girl living in her own family. But it is certain that the imaginative coloring tends to be more lively in those living in colleges and shut off from that varied and innocent observation which renders those outside colleges freer and more unprejudiced. On a boy who is free to see as many women as he chooses a woman’s face cannot make such an impression as on a boy who lives in a college and who is liable to be, as it were, electrified if he sees any object belonging to a woman, especially if he sees it by stealth or during a mood of erotism. Such an object calls out a whole series of wanton imaginations, which it could not do in one who, by his environment, was already armed against any tendencies to erotic fetichism. The attraction exerted by that which we see but seldom, and around which fancy assiduously plays, the attraction of forbidden fruit, produces tendencies and habits which could scarcely develop in freedom. Curiosity is acute, and is augmented by the obstacles which stand in the way of its satisfaction. “Flame” attraction is the beginning of such a morbid fetichism. A sentiment which under other conditions would never have gone beyond ordinary friendship may thus become a “flame,” and even a “flame” of markedly sexual character. Under these influences boys and girls feel the purest and simplest sentiments in a hyperesthetic manner. The girls here studied have lost an exact conception of the simple manifestations of friendship, and think they are giving evidence of exquisite sensibility and true friendship by loving a companion to madness; friendship in them has become a passion. That this intense desire to love a companion passionately is the result of the college environments may be seen by the following extract from a letter: “You know, dear, much better than I do how acutely girls living away from their own homes, and far from all those who are dearest to them on earth, feel the need of loving and being loved. You can understand how hard it is to be obliged to live without anyone to surround you with affection;” and the writer goes on to say how all her love turns to her correspondent.
While there is an unquestionable sexual element in the “flame” relationship, this cannot be regarded as an absolute expression of real congenital perversion of the sex-instinct. The frequency of the phenomena, as well as the fact that, on leaving college to enter social life, the girl usually ceases to feel these emotions, are sufficient to show the absence of congenital abnormality. The estimate of the frequency of “flames” in Normal schools, given to Obici and Marchesini by several lady collaborators, was about 60 per cent., but there is no reason to suppose that women teachers furnish a larger contingent of perverted individuals than other women. The root is organic, but the manifestations are ideal and Platonic, in contrast with some other manifestations found in college-life. No inquiry was made as to the details of solitary sexual manifestations in the colleges, the fact that they exist to more or less extent being sufficiently recognized. The conversations already referred to are a measure of the excitations of sexuality existing in these college inmates and multiplied in energy by communication. Such discourse was, wrote one collaborator, the order of the day, and it took place chiefly at the time when letter-writing also was easiest. It may well be that sensual excitations, transformed into ethereal sentiments, serve to increase the intensity of the “flames.”
Taken altogether, Obici and Marchesini conclude, the flame may be regarded as a provisional synthesis. We find here, in solution together, the physiological element of incipient sexuality, the psychical element of the tenderness natural to this age and sex, the element of occasion offered by the environment, and the social element with its nascent altruism.
II.
That the phenomena described in minute detail by Obici and Marchesini closely resemble the phenomena as they exist in English girls’ schools is indicated by the following communication, for which I am indebted to a lady who is familiar with an English girls’ college of very modern type:—
“From inquiries made in various quarters and through personal observation and experience I have come to the conclusion that the romantic and emotional attachments formed by girls for their female friends and companions, attachments which take a great hold of their minds for the time being, are far commoner than is generally supposed among English girls, more especially at school or college, or wherever a number of girls or young women live together in one institution, and are much secluded.
“As far as I have been able to find out, these attachments—which have their own local names, e.g., ‘raves,’ ‘spoons,’ etc.—are comparatively rare in the smaller private schools, and totally absent among girls of the poorer class attending Board and National schools, perhaps because they mix more freely with the opposite sex.
“I can say from personal experience that in one of the largest and best English colleges, where I spent some years, ‘raving’ is especially common in spite of arrangements which one would have thought would have abolished most unhealthy feelings. The arrangements there are very similar to a large boys’ college. There are numerous boarding-houses, which have, on an average, forty to fifty students. Each house is under the management of a well-educated house-mistress assisted by house-governesses (quite separate from college-teachers). Each house has a large garden with tennis-courts, etc.; and cricket, hockey, and other games are carried on to a large extent, games being not only much encouraged, but much enjoyed. Each girl has a separate cubicle, or bedroom, and no junior (under 17 years of age) is allowed to enter the cubicle, or bedroom, of another without asking permission, or to go to the bedrooms during the day. In fact, everything is done to discourage any morbid feelings. But all the same, as far as my experience goes, the friendships there seem more violent and more emotional than in most places, and sex subjects form one of the chief topics of conversation.
“In such large schools and colleges these ‘raves’ are not only numerous, but seem to be perennial among the girls of all ages, from 13 years upward. Girls under that age may be fond of some other student or teacher, but in quite a different way. These ‘raves’ are not mere friendships in the ordinary sense of the word, nor are they incompatible with ordinary friendships. A girl with a ‘rave’ often has several intimate friends for whom affection is felt without the emotional feelings and pleasurable excitement which characterize a ‘rave.’
“From what I have been told by those who have experienced these ‘raves’ and have since been in love with men, the emotions called forth in both cases were similar, although in the case of the ‘rave’ this fact was not recognized at the time. This appears to point to a sexual basis, but, on the other hand, there are many cases where the feeling seems to be more spiritual, a sort of uplifting of the whole soul with an intense desire to lead a very good life—the feeling being one of reverence more than anything else for the loved one, with no desire to become too intimate and no desire for physical contact.
“‘Raves,’ as a rule, begin quite suddenly. They may be mutual or all on one side. In the case of school-girls the mutual ‘rave’ is generally found between two companions, or the girls may have a ‘rave’ for one of their teachers or some grown-up acquaintance, who does not necessarily enter into the school-life. In this case there may or may not be a feeling of affection for the girl by her ‘rave,’ though minus all the emotional feelings.
“Occasionally a senior student will have a ‘rave’ on a little girl, but these cases are rare and not very active in their symptoms, girls over 18 having fewer ‘raves’ and generally condemning them.
“In the large school already referred to, of which I have personal knowledge, ‘raving’ was very general, hardly anyone being free from it. Any fresh student would soon fall a victim to the fashion, which rather points to the fact that it is infectious. Sometimes there might be a lull in the general raving, only to reappear after an interval in more or less of an epidemic form. Sometimes nearly all the ‘raves’ were felt by students for their teachers; at other times it was more apparent between the girls themselves.
“Sometimes one teacher was raved on by several girls. In many cases, the girls raving on a teacher would have a very great friendship with one of their companions—talking with each other constantly of their respective ‘raves,’ describing their feelings and generally letting off steam to one another, indulging sometimes in the active demonstrations of affection which they were debarred from showing the teacher herself, and in some cases having no desire to do so even if they could.
“As far as I have been able to judge, there is not necessarily any attraction for physical characteristics, as beauty, elegance, etc.; the two participants are probably both of strong character or a weak character raves on a stronger, but rarely vice versâ.
“I have often noticed that the same person may be raved on at different times by several people of different characters and of all ages: say, up to 30 years of age. It is hard to say why some persons more than others should inspire this feeling. Often they are reserved, without any particular physical attraction, and often despising raving and emotional friendships, and give no encouragement to them. That the majority of ‘raves’ have a sexual basis may be true, but I am sure that in the majority of cases where young girls are concerned this is not in the least recognized, and no impurity is indulged in or wished for. The majority of the girls are entirely ignorant of all sexual matters, and understand nothing whatever about them. But they do wonder about them and talk about them constantly, more especially when they have a ‘rave,’ which seems to point to some subtle connection between the two. That this ignorance exists is largely to be deplored. The subject, if once thought of, is always thought of and talked of, and information is at length generally gained in a regrettable manner. From personal experience I know the evil results that this ignorance and constant endeavoring to find out everything has on the mind and bodies of school-girls. If children had the natural and simple laws of creation carefully explained to them by their parents, much harm would be prevented, and the conversation would not always turn on sexual matters. The Bible is often consulted for the discovery of hidden mysteries.
“‘Raves’ on teachers are far commoner than between two girls. In this case the girl makes no secret of her attachment, constantly talking of it and describing her feelings to any who care to listen and writing long letters to her friends about the same. In the case of two girls there is more likely to be a sexual element, great pleasure being taken in close contact with one another and frequent kissing and hugging. When parted, long letters are written, often daily; they are full of affectionate expressions of love, etc., but there is also a frequent reference to the happiness and desire to do well that their love has inspired them with, while often very deeply religious feelings appear to be generated and many good resolutions are made. Their various emotional feelings are described in every minute detail to each other.
“The duration of ‘raves’ varies. I have known them to last three or four years, more often only a few months. Occasionally what began as a ‘rave’ will turn, into a sensible firm friendship. I imagine that there is seldom any actual inversion, and on growing up the ‘raves’ generally cease. That the ‘ravers’ feel and act like a pair of lovers there is no doubt, and the majority put down these romantic friendships for their own sex as due, in a great extent, in the case of girls at schools, to being without the society of the opposite sex. This may be true in some cases, but personally I think the question open to discussion. These friendships are often found among girls who have left school and have every liberty, even among girls who have had numerous flirtations with the opposite sex, who cannot be accused of inversion, and who have all the feminine and domestic characteristics.
“In illustration of these points I may bring forward the following case: A. and B. were two girls at the same college. They belonged to different cliques, or sets; occupied different bedrooms; never met in their school-work, and were practically only known to one another by name. One day they chanced to sit next to one another at some meal. They both already had ‘raves,’ A. on an actor she had lately seen, B. on a married woman at her home. The conversation happened to turn on ‘raves,’ and mutual attraction was suddenly felt. From that moment a new interest came into their lives. They lived for one another. At the time A. was 14, B. a year older. Both were somewhat precocious for their age, were practical, with plenty of common sense, very keen on games, interested in their lessons, and very independent, but at the same time with marked feminine characteristics and popular with the opposite sex. After the first feeling of interest there was a subtle excitement and desire to meet again. All their thoughts were occupied with the subject. Each day they managed as many private meetings as possible. They met in the passages in order to say good-night with many embraces. As far as possible they hid their feelings from the rest of their world. They became inseparable, and a very lasting and real, but somewhat emotional, affection, in which the sexual element was certainly marked, sprang up between them. Although at the time they were both quite ignorant of sexual matters, yet they indulged their sexual instincts to some extent. They felt surcharged with hitherto unexperienced feelings and emotions, instinct urged them to let these have play, but instinctively they also had a feeling that to do so would be wrong. This feeling they endeavored to argue out and find reasons for. When parted for any length of time they felt very miserable and wrote pages to one another every day, pouring forth in writing their feelings for one another. In this time of active attraction they both became deeply religious for a time. The active part of the affection continued for three or four years, and now, after an interval of ten years, they are both exceedingly fond of one another, although their paths in life are divided and each has since experienced love for a man. Both look back upon the sexual element in their friendship with some interest. It may be remarked in passing that A. and B. are both attractive girls to men and women, and B. especially appears always to have roused ‘rave’ feelings in her own sex, without the slightest encouragement on her part. The duration of this ‘rave’ was exceptionally long, the majority only lasting a few months, while some girls have one ‘rave’ after another or two or three together.
“I may mention one other case, where I believe that if it a sexual basis this was not recognized by the parties concerned or their friends. Two girls, over 20 years of age, passed in a corridor. A few words were exchanged: the beginning of a very warm and fast friendship. They said it was not a ‘rave.’ They were absolutely devoted to one another, but from what I know of them and what they have since told me, their feelings were quite free from any sexual desires, though their love for one another was great. When parted they exchanged letters daily, but were always endeavoring to urge one another on in all the virtues, and as far as I can gather they never gave way to any feeling they thought was not for the good of their souls.
“Letters and presents are exchanged, vows of eternal love are made, quarrels are engaged in for the mere pleasure of reconciliation, and jealousy is easily manifested. Although ‘raves’ are chiefly found among school-girls, they are by no means confined to them, but are common among any community of women of any age, say, under 30, and are not unknown among married women when there is no inversion. In these oases there is usually, of course, no ignorance of sexual matters.
“Whether there is any direct harm in these friendships I have not been able to make up my mind. In the case of school-girls, if there is not too much emotion generated and if the sexual feelings are not indulged in, I think they may do more good than harm. Later on in life, when all one’s desires and feelings are at their strongest, it is more doubtful.”
III.
That the phenomena as found in the girls’ colleges of America are exactly similar to those in Italy and England is shown, among other evidence, by some communications sent to Mr. E. G. Lancaster, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., a few years ago.
Mr. E. G. Lancaster sent out a questionnaire to over 800 teachers and older pupils dealing with various points connected with adolescence, and received answers from 91 persons containing information which bore on the present question. Of this number, 28 male and 41 female had been in love before the age of 25, while 11 of each sex had had no love experiences, this indicating, since the women were in a majority, that the absence of love experience is more common in men than in women. These answers were from young people between 16 and 25 years of age. Two males and 7 females have loved imaginary characters, while 3 males and not less than 46 females speak of passionate love for the same sex. Love of the same sex, Lancaster remarks, though not generally known, is very common; it is not mere friendship; the love is strong, real, and passionate. It may be remarked that these 49 cases were reported without solicitation, since there was no reference to homosexual love in the questionnaire. Many of the answers to the syllabus are so beautiful, Lancaster observes, that if they could be printed in full no comment would be necessary. He quotes a few of the answers. Thus a woman of 33 writes: “At 14 I had my first case of love, but it was with a girl. It was insane, intense love, but had the same quality and sensations as my first love with a man at 18. In neither case was the object idealized. I was perfectly aware of their faults; nevertheless my whole being was lost, immersed in their existence. The first lasted two years, the second seven years. No love has since been so intense, but now these persons, though living, are no more to me than the veriest stranger.” Another woman of 35 writes: “Girls between the ages of 14 and 18 at college or girls’ schools often fall in love with the same sex. This is not friendship. The loved one is older, more advanced, more charming or beautiful. When I was a freshman in college I knew at least thirty girls who were in love with a senior. Some sought her because it was the fashion, but I knew that my own homage and that of many others was sincere and passionate. I loved her because she was brilliant and utterly indifferent to the love shown her. She was not pretty, though at the time we thought her beautiful. One of her adorers, on being slighted, was ill for two weeks. On her return she was speaking to me when the object of our admiration came into the room. The shock was too great and she fainted. When I reached the senior year I was the recipient of languishing glances, original verses, roses, and passionate letters written at midnight and three in the morning.” No similar confessions are recorded from men.
IV.
In South America corresponding phenomena have been found in schools and colleges of the same class. There they have been especially studied by Mercante in the convent High Schools of Buenos Aires where the students are girls between the ages of 10 and 22. Mercante found that homosexuality here is not clearly defined or explicit and usually it is combined with a predisposition to romanticism and mysticism. It is usually of a passive kind, but in this form so widespread as to constitute a kind of epidemic. It was most manifest in institutions where the greatest stress was placed on religious instruction.
The recreations of the school in question were quiet and enervating; active or boisterous sports were prohibited to the end that good manners might be cultivated. In the play-rooms, the girls observed the strictest etiquette, and discipline was maintained independent of oversight by teachers. Mercante could hardly believe, however, that the decorum was more than external.
Later, when the girls broke up, they were found in pairs or small groups, in corners, on benches, beside the pillars, arm in arm or holding hands. What they were speaking of could be surmised. “Their conversation and confidences came to me indirectly. They were sweethearts talking about their affairs. In spite of the spiritual and feminine character of these unions, one element was active, the other passive, thus confirming the authorities on this matter, Gamier, Régis, Lombroso, Bonfigli.”
Mercante found the points of view of the two members of each pair to be quite different in moral aspect. “One takes the initiative, she commands, she cares for, she offers, she gives, she makes decisions, she considers the present, she imagines the future, she smoothes over difficulties, gives encouragement and initiative, she commands, she cares for, she offers, she gives, she docile, gives way in matters of dispute, and expresses her affection with sweet words and promises of love and submission. The atmosphere, silent and quiet, was, however, charged with jealousy, squabble, desires, illusions, dreams, and lamentations.”
Mercante’s informant assured him that practically every girl had her affinity, and that there were at least twenty well-defined love affairs. The active party starts the conquest by making eyes, next she becomes more intimate, and finally proposes. Women being highly adaptable, the neophyte, unless she is rebellious, gets into the spirit of it all. If she is not complaisant, she must prepare for conflict, because the prey becomes more desirable the more the resistance encountered.
Opportunity was offered to Mercante to observe some of the correspondence between the girls. Though of indifferent training and ability in other respects, the girls speak and write regarding their affairs with most admirable diction and style. No data are given regarding the actual intimate relations between the girls.
THE END
Footnotes
[1] Taking all its forms en bloc, as they are known to the police, homosexuality is seen to possess formidable proportions. Thus in France, from official papers which passed through M. Carlier’s bureau during ten years (1860-70), he compiled a list of 6342 pederasts who came within the cognizance of the police; 2049 Parisians, 3709 provincials, and 584 foreigners. Of these, 3432, or more than the half, could not be convicted of illegal acts.
[2] The chief general collection of data (not here drawn upon) concerning homosexuality among animals is by the zoölogist Prof. Karsch, “Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Tieren,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ii. Brehm’s Tierleben also contains many examples. See also a short chapter (ch. xxix) in Hirschfeld’s Homosexualität.
[3] Féré, Comptes-rendus Société de Biologie, July 30, 1898. We may perhaps connect this with an observation of E. Selous (Zoölogist, May and Sept., 1901) on a bird, the Great Crested Grebe; after pairing, the male would crouch to the female, who played his part to him; the same thing is found among pigeons. Selous suggests that this is a relic of primitive hermaphroditism. But it may be remembered that in the male generally sexual intercourse tends to be more exhausting than in the female; this fact would favor a reversion of their respective parts.
[4] Beardmore also notes that sodomy is “regularly indulged in” in New Guinea on this account.
[5] I have been told by medical men in India that it is specially common among the Sikhs, the finest soldier-race in India.
[6] In old Japan (before the revolution of 1868) also, however, according to F. S. Krauss, the homosexual relations between knights and their pages resembled those of ancient Greece.
[7] Among the Sarts of Turkestan a class of well-trained and educated homosexual prostitutes, resembling those found in China and many regions of northern Asia, bearing also the same name of batsha, are said to be especially common because fostered by the scarcity of women through polygamy and by the women’s ignorance and coarseness. The institution of the batsha is supposed to have come to Turkestan from Persia. (Herman, “Die Päderastie bei den Sarten,” Sexual-Probleme, June, 1911.) This would seem to suggest that Persia may have been a general center of diffusions of this kind of refined homosexuality in northern Asia.
[8] Rev. J. H. Weeks, Journal Anthropological Institute, 1909, p. 449. I am informed by a medical correspondent in the United States that inversion is extremely prevalent among American negroes. “I have good reason to believe,” he writes, “that it is far more prevalent among them than among the white people of any nation. If inversion is to be regarded as a penalty of ‘civilization’ this is remarkable. Perhaps, however, the Negro, relatively to his capacity, is more highly civilized than we are; at any rate his civilization has been thrust upon him, and not acquired through the long throes of evolution. Colored inverts desire white men as a rule, but are not averse to men of their own race. I believe that 10 per cent, of Negroes in the United States are sexually inverted.”
[9] Among the Papuans of German New Guinea, where the women have great power, marriage is late, and the young men are compelled to live separated from the women in communal houses. Here, says Moskowski (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1911, Heft 2, p. 339), homosexual orgies are openly carried on.
[10] C. G. Seligmann, “Sexual Inversion Among Primitive Races,” Alienist and Neurologist, Jan., 1902. In a tale of the Western Solomon Islands, reported by J. C. Wheeler (Anthropophyteia, vol. ix, p. 376) we find a story of a man who would be a woman, and married another man and did woman’s work.
[11] In further illustration of this I have been told that among the common people there is often no feeling against connection with a woman per anum.
[12] Chevalier (L’Inversion Sexuelle, pp. 85-106) brings forward a considerable amount of evidence regarding homosexuality at Rome under the emperors. See also Moll, Konträre Sexualempfindung, 1899, pp. 56-66, and Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, 1913, pp. 789-806. On the literary side, Petronius best reveals the homosexual aspect of Roman life about the time of Tiberius.
[13] The following note has been furnished to me: “Balzac, in Une Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin, describes the morals of the French bagnes. Dostoieffsky, in Prison-Life in Siberia, touches on the same subject. See his portrait of Sirotkin, p. 52 et seq., p. 120 (edition J. and R. Maxwell, London). We may compare Carlier, Les Deux Prostitutions, pp. 300-1, for an account of the violence of homosexual passions in French prisons. The initiated are familiar with the fact in English prisons. Bouchard, in his Confessions, Paris, Liseux, 1881, describes the convict station at Marseilles in 1630.” Homosexuality among French recidivists at Saint-Jean-du-Maroni in French Guiana has been described by Dr. Cazanova, Arch. d’Anth. Crim., January, 1906, p. 44. See also Davitt’s Leaves from a Prison Diary, and Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist; also Rebierre, Joyeux et Demifous, 1909.
[14] Hirschfeld and others have pointed out, very truly, that inverts are less prone than normal persons to regard caste and social position. This innately democratic attitude renders it easier for them than for ordinary people to rise to what Cyples has called the “ecstasy of humanity,” the emotional attitude, that is to say, of those rare souls of whom it may be said, in the same writer’s words, that “beggars’ rags to their unhesitating lips grew fit for kissing because humanity had touched the garb.” Edward Carpenter (Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk, p. 83) remarks that great ethical leaders have often exhibited feminine traits, and adds: “It becomes easy to suppose of those early figures—who once probably were men—those Apollos, Buddhas, Dionysus, Osiris, and so forth—to suppose that they too were somewhat bisexual in temperament, and that it was really largely owing to that fact that they were endowed with far-reaching powers and became leaders of mankind.”
[15] Thus she writes in 1701 (Correspondence, edited by Brunet, vol. i, p. 58): “Our heroes take as their models Hercules, Theseus, Alexander, and Cæsar, who all had their male favorites. Those who give themselves up to this vice, while believing in Holy Scripture, imagine that it was only a sin when there were few people in the world, and that now the earth is populated it may be regarded as a divertissement. Among the common people, indeed, accusations of this kind are, so far as possible, avoided; but among persons of quality it is publicly spoken of; it is considered a fine saying that since Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord has punished no one for such offences.”
[16] In early Teutonic days there was little or no trace of any punishment for homosexual practices in Germany. This, according to Hermann Michaëlis, only appeared after the Church had gained power among the West Goths; in the Breviarium of Alaric II (506), the sodomist was condemned to the stake, and later, in the seventh century, by an edict of King Chindasvinds, to castration. The Frankish capitularies of Charlemange’s time adopted ecclesiastical penances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries death by fire was ordained, and the punishments enacted by the German codes tended to become much more ferocious than that edicted by the Justinian code on which they were modelled.
[17] Raffalovich discusses German friendship, Uranisme et Unisexualité, pp. 157-9. See also Birnbaum, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. viii, p. 611; he especially illustrates this kind of friendship by the correspondence of the poets Gleim and Jacobi, who used to each other the language of lovers, which, indeed, they constantly called themselves.
[18] Alexander’s not less distinguished brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, though not homosexual, possessed, a woman wrote to him, “the soul of a woman and the most tender feeling for womanliness I have ever found in your sex;” he himself admitted the feminine traits in his nature. Spranger (Wilhelm von Humboldt, p. 288) says of him that “he had that dual sexuality without which the moral summits of humanity cannot be reached.”
[19] Krupp caused much scandal by his life at Capri, where he was constantly surrounded by the handsome youths of the place, mandolinists and street arabs, with whom he was on familiar terms, and on whom he lavished money. H. D. Davray, a reliable eyewitness, has written “Souvenirs sur M. Krupp à Capri,” L’Européen, 29 November, 1902. It is not, however, definitely agreed that Krupp was of fully developed homosexual temperament (see, e.g., Jahrbuch f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. v, p. 1303 et seq.) An account of his life at Capri was published in the Vorwärts, against which Krupp finally brought a libel action; but he died immediately afterward, it is widely believed, by his own hand, and the libel action was withdrawn.
[20] Madame, the mother of the Regent, in her letters of 12th October, 4th November, and 13th December, 1701, repeatedly makes this assertion, and implies that it was supported by the English who at that time came over to Paris with the English Ambassador, Lord Portland. The King was very indifferent to women.
[21] Anselm, Epistola lxii, in Migne’s Patrologia, vol. clix, col. 95. John of Salisbury, in his Polycrates, describes the homosexual and effeminate habits of his time.
[22] Coleridge in his Table Talk (14 May, 1833) remarked: “A man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object—an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In Elizabeth’s and James’s time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling. Certainly the language of the two friends Musidorus and Pyrocles in the Arcadia is such as we could not use except to women.” This passage of Coleridge’s is interesting as an early English recognition by a distinguished man of genius of what may be termed ideal homosexuality.
[23] Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield, edited with an introduction by A. B. Grosart, 1876. The poems of Barnfield were also edited by Arber, in the English Scholar’s Library, 1883. Arber, who always felt much horror for the abnormal, argues that Barnfield’s occupation with homosexual topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was “for the most part but an amusement and had little serious or personal in it.” Those readers of Barnfield, however, who are acquainted with homosexual literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his poems. This is also the opinion of Moll in his Berühmte Homosexuelle.
[24] As Raffalovich acutely points out, the twentieth sonnet, with its reference to the “one thing to my purpose nothing,” is alone enough to show that Shakespeare was not a genuine invert, as then he would have found the virility of the loved object beautiful. His sonnets may fairly be compared to the In Memoriam of Tennyson, whom it is impossible to describe as inverted, though in his youth he cherished an ardent friendship for another youth, such as was also felt in youth by Montaigne.
[25] A scene in Vanbrugh’s Relapse, and the chapter (ch. li) in Smollett’s Roderick Random describing Lord Strutwell, may also be mentioned as evidencing familiarity with inversion. “In our country,” said Lord Strutwell to Rawdon, putting forward arguments familiar to modern champions of homosexuality, “it gains ground apace, and in all probability will become in a short time a more fashionable vice than simple fornication.”
[26] These observations on eighteenth century homosexuality in London are chiefly based on the volumes of Select Trials at the Old Bailey, published in 1734.
[27] A youthful attraction of this kind in a poet is well illustrated by Dolben, who died at the age of nineteen. In addition to a passion for Greek poetry he cherished a romantic friendship of extraordinary ardor, revealed in his poems, for a slightly older schoolfellow, who was never even aware of the idolatry he aroused. Dolben’s life has been written, and his poems edited, by his friend the eminent poet, Robert Bridges (The Poems of D. M. Dolben, edited with a Memoir by R. Bridges, 1911).
[28] A well-informed narrative of the Oscar Wilde trial is given by Raffalovich in his Uranisme et Unisexualité, pp. 241-281; the full report of the trial has been published by Mason. The best life of Wilde is probably that of Arthur Ransome. André Gide’s little volume of reminiscences, Oscar Wilde (also translated into English), is well worth reading. Wilde has been discussed in relation to homosexuality by Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901). An instructive document, an unpublished portion of De Profundis, in which Wilde sought to lay the blame for his misfortune on a friend,—his “ancient affection” for whom has, he declares, been turned to “loathing, bitterness, and contempt,”—was published in the Times, 18th April, 1913; it clearly reveals an element of weakness of character.
[29] It is as such that Whitman should be approached, and I would desire to protest against the tendency, now marked in many quarters, to treat him merely as an invert, and to vilify him or glorify him accordingly. However important inversion may be as a psychological key to Whitman’s personality, it plays but a small part in Whitman’s work, and for many who care for that work a negligible part. (I may be allowed to refer to my own essay on Whitman, in The New Spirit, written nearly thirty years ago.)
[30] I may add that Symonds (in his book on Whitman) accepted this letter as a candid and final statement showing that Whitman was absolutely hostile to sexual inversion, that he had not even taken its phenomena into account, and that he had “omitted to perceive that there are inevitable points of contact between sexual inversion and his doctrine of friendship.” He recalls, however, Whitman’s own lines at the end of “Calamus” in the Camden edition of 1876:—
“Here my last words, and the most baffling,
Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting,
Here I shade down and hide my thoughts—I do not expose them,
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.”
[31] Whitman’s letters to Peter Doyle, an uncultured young tram-conductor deeply loved by the poet, have been edited by Dr. Bucke, and published at Boston: Calamus: A Series of Letters, 1897.
[32] Whitman acknowledged, however (as in the letter to Symonds already referred to), that he had had six children; they appear to have been born in the earlier part of his life when he lived in the South. (See a chapter on Walt Whitman’s children in Edward Carpenter’s interesting book, Days with Walt Whitman, 1906.) Yet his brother George Whitman said: “I never knew Walt to fall in love with young girls, or even to show them marked attention.” And Doyle, who knew him intimately during ten years of late life, said: “Women in that sense never came into his head.” The early heterosexual relationship seems to have been an exception in his life. With regard to the number of children I am informed that, in the opinion of a lady who knew Whitman in the South, there can be no reasonable doubt as to the existence of one child, but that when enumerating six he possibly included grandchildren.
[33] While the homosexual strain in Walt Whitman has been more or less definitely admitted by various writers, the most vigorous attempts to present the homosexual character of his personality and work are due to Eduard Bertz in Germany, and to Dr. W. C. Rivers in England. Bertz has issued three publications on Whitman: see especially his Der Yankee-Heiland, 1906, and Whitman-Mysterien, 1907. The arguments of Rivers are concisely stated in a pamphlet entitled Walt Whitman’s Anomaly (London: George Allen, 1913). Both Bertz and Rivers emphasize the feminine traits in Whitman. An interesting independent picture of Whitman, at about the date of the letter to Symonds, accompanied by the author’s excellent original photographs, is furnished by Dr. John Johnston, A Visit to Walt Whitman, 1898. It may be added that, probably, both the extent and the significance of the feminine traits in Whitman have been overestimated by some writers. Most artists and men of genius have some feminine traits; they do not prove the existence of inversion, nor does their absence disprove it. Dr. Clark Bell writes to me in reference to the little book by Dr. Rivers: “I knew Walt Whitman personally. To me Mr. Whitman was one of the most robust and virile of men, extraordinarily so. He was from my standpoint not feminine at all, but physically masculine and robust. The difficulty is that a virile and strong man who is poetic in temperament, ardent and tender, may have phases and moods of passion and emotion which are apt to be misinterpreted.” A somewhat similar view, in opposition to Bertz and Rivers, has been vigorously set forth by Bazalgette (who has written a very thorough study of Whitman in French), especially in the Mercure de France for 1st July, 1st Oct., and 15th Nov., 1913.
[34] Lepelletier, in what may be regarded as the official biography of Verlaine (Paul Verlaine, 1907) seeks to minimize or explain away the homosexual aspect of the poet’s life. So also Berrichon, Rimbaud’s brother-in-law, Mercure de France, 16 July, 1911 and 1 Feb., 1912. P. Escoube, in a judicious essay (included in Préférences, 1913), presents a more reasonable view of this aspect of Verlaine’s temperament. Even apart altogether from the evidence as to the poet’s tendency to passionate friendship, there can be no appeal from the poems themselves, which clearly possess an absolute and unquestionable sincerity.
[35] Sir Richard Burton, who helped to popularize this view, regarded the phenomenon as “geographical and climatic, not racial,” and held that within what he called the Sotadic Zone “the vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, while the races to the north and south of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust.” He adds: “The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me, and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere only occurs sporadically” (Arabian Nights, 1885, vol. x, pp. 205-254). The theory of the Sotadic Zone fails to account for the custom among the Normans, Celts, Scythians, Bulgars, and Tartars, and, moreover, in various of these regions different views have prevailed at different periods. Burton was wholly unacquainted with the psychological investigations into sexual inversion which had, indeed, scarcely begun in his day.
[36] Spectator (Anthropophyteia, vol. vii, 1910), referring especially to the neighborhood of Sorrento, states that the southern Italians regard passive pedicatio as disgraceful, but attach little or no shame to active pedicatio. This indifference enables them to exploit the homosexual foreigners who are specially attracted to southern Italy in the development of a flourishing homosexual industry.
[37] It is true that in the solitude of great modern cities it is possible for small homosexual coteries to form, in a certain sense, an environment of their own, favorable to their abnormality; yet this fact hardly modifies the general statement made in the text.
[38] Hirschfeld mentions the case of two men, artists, one of them married, who were intimate friends for a great many years before each discovered that the other was an invert.
[39] It is a fact significant of the French attitude toward homosexuality that the psychologist, Dr. Saint-Paul, when writing a book on this subject, though in a completely normal and correct manner, thought it desirable to adopt a pseudonym.
[40] This: is doubtless the reason why so many English inverts establish themselves outside England. Paris, Florence, Nice, Naples, Cairo, and other places, are said to swarm with homosexual Englishmen.
[41] In England aberration of the sexual instinct, or the tendency of men to feminine occupations and of women to masculine occupations, had been referred to in the Medical Times and Gazette, February 9, 1867; Sir G. Savage first described a case of “Sexual Perversion” in the Journal of Mental Science, vol. xxx, October, 1884.
[42] “Eugen Dühren” (Iwan Bloch) remarks, however (Neue Forschungen über den Marquis de Sade und seine Zeit, p. 436), that de Sade in his Aline et Valcour seems to recognize that inversion is sometimes inborn, or at least natural, and apt to develop at a very early age, in spite of all provocations to the normal attitude. “And if this inclination were not natural,” he makes Sarmiento say, “would the impression of it be received in childhood?... Let us study better this indulgent Nature before daring to fix her limits.” Still earlier, in 1676 (as Schouten has pointed out, Sexual-Probleme, January, 1910, p. 66), an Italian priest called Carretto recognized that homosexual tendencies are innate.
[43] Ulrichs scarcely went so far as to assert that both homosexual and heterosexual love are equally normal and healthy; this has, however, been argued more recently.
[44] Thus Godard described the little boys in Cairo as amusing themselves indifferently either with boys or girls in sexual play. (Egypte et Palestine, 1867, p. 105.) The same thing may be observed in England and elsewhere.
[45] Thus, of the Duc d’Orleans, in the seventeenth century, as described in Bouchard’s Confessions, one of my correspondents writes: “This prince was of the same mind as Campanella, who, in the Città del Sole, laid it down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women for the avoidance of sexual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the sexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman prelates.” The homosexuality of youth was also well recognized among the Romans, but they adopted the contrary course and provided means to gratify it, as the existence of the concubinus, referred to by Catullus, clearly shows.
[46] Iwan Bloch, in The Sexual Life of Our Time, makes this distinction as between “homosexuality” (corresponding to inversion) and “pseudo-homosexuality.” According to the terminology I have accepted, the term “pseudo-homosexuality” would be unnecessary and incorrect. More recently (Die Prostitution, Bd. i, 1912, p. 103) Bloch has preferred, in place of pseudo-homosexuality, the more satisfactory term, “secondary homosexuality.”
[47] Alfred Fuchs, who edited Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis after the latter’s death, distinguishes between congenital homosexuality, manifesting itself from the first without external stimulation, and homosexuality on a basis of inborn disposition needing special external influences to arouse it (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iv, 1902, p. 181).
[48] Krafft-Ebing, “Ueber tardive Homosexualität,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901, p. 7; Näcke, “Probleme auf den Gebiete der Homosexualität,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1902, p. 805; ib., “Ueber tardive Homosexualität,” Sexual-Probleme, September, 1911. Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, January, 1913, p. 228) considers that retarded cases should not be regarded as bisexual, but as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheterosexuality which at last falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period.
[49] This was the term used in the earlier editions of the present Study. I willingly reject it in favor of the simpler and fairly clear term now more generally employed. It is true that by bisexuality it is possible to understand not only the double direction of the sexual instinct, but also the presence of both sexes in the same individual, which in French is more accurately distinguished as “bisexuation.”
[50] J. Van Biervliet, “L’Homme Droit et l’Homme Gauche,” Revue Philosophique, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the constitution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is preponderant on the left side.
[51] Catharina Margaretha Lincken, who married another woman, somewhat after the manner of the Hungarian Countess Sarolta Vay (i.e., with the aid of an artificial male organ), was condemned to death for sodomy, and executed in 1721 at the age of 27 (F. C. Müller, “Ein weiterer Fall von conträrer Sexualempfindung,” Friedrich’s Blätter für Gerichtliche Medizin, Heft 4, 1891). The most fully investigated case of sexual inversion in a woman in modern times is that of Countess Sarolta Vay (Friedrich’s Blätter, Heft, 1, 1891; also Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, Eng. trans. of 10th. ed., 416-427; also summarized in Appendix E of earlier editions of the present Study). Sarolta always dressed as a man, and went through a pseudo-marriage with a girl who was ignorant of the real sex of her “husband.” She was acquitted and allowed to return home and continue dressing as a man.
[52] This, of course, by no means necessarily indicates the existence of sexual inversion, any more than the presence of feminine traits in distinguished men. I have elsewhere pointed out (e.g., Man and Woman, 5th ed., 1915, p. 488) that genius in either sex frequently involves the coexistence of masculine, feminine, and infantile traits.
[53] Various references to Queen Hatschepsu are given by Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 739). Hirschfeld’s not severely critical list of distinguished homosexual persons includes 18 women. It would not be difficult to add others.
[54] Sophie Hochstetter, in a study of Queen Christina in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (vol. ix, 1908, p. 168 et seq.), regards her as bisexual, while H. J. Schouten (Monatsschrift für Kriminalanthropologie, 1912, Heft 6) concludes that she was homosexual, and believes that it was Monaldeschi’s knowledge on this point which led her to instigate his murder.
[55] Rosa Bonheur, the painter, is a specially conspicuous example of pronounced masculinity in, a woman of genius. She frequently dressed as a man, and when dressed as a woman her masculine air occasionally attracted the attention of the police. See Theodore Stanton’s biography.
[56] There is some difference of opinion as to whether there is less real delinquency among women (see Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 6th ed., 1915, p. 469), but we are here concerned with judicial criminality.
[57] This apparently widespread opinion is represented by the remark of a young man in the eighteenth century (concerning the Lesbian friend of the woman he wishes to marry), quoted in the Comte de Tilly’s Souvenirs: “I confess that that is a kind of rivalry which causes me no annoyance; on the contrary it amuses me, and I am immoral enough to laugh at it.” That attitude of the educated and refined was not probably shared by the populace. Madame de Lamballe, who was guillotined at the Revolution, was popularly regarded as a tribade, and it was said that on this account her charming head received the special insults of the mob.
[58] In a Spanish prison, some years ago, when a new governor endeavored to reform the homosexual manners of the women, the latter made his post so uncomfortable that he was compelled to resign. Salillas (Vida Penal en España) asserts that all the evidence shows the extraordinary expansion of Lesbian love in prisons. The mujeres hombrunas receive masculine names—Pepe, Chulo, Bernardo, Valiente; new-comers are surrounded in the court-yard by a crowd of lascivious women, who overwhelm them with honeyed compliments and gallantries and promises of protection, the most robust virago having most successes; a single day and night complete the initiation.
[59] Even among Arab prostitutes it is found, according to Kocher, though among Arab women generally it is rare.
[60] Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten, Nov., 1905; in his Tribadie Berlins, he states that among 3000 prostitutes at least ten per cent. were homosexual. See also Parent-Duchâtelet, De la Prostitution, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 159, 169; Martineau, Les Déformations vulvaires et anales; and Iwan Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, 1902, vol. i, p. 244.
[61]Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten, Nov., 1905; in his Tribadie Berlins, he states that among 3000 prostitutes at least ten per cent. were homosexual. See also Parent-Duchâtelet, De la Prostitution, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 159, 169; Martineau, Les Déformations vulvaires et anales; and Iwan Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, 1902, vol. i, p. 244. The prostitute has sometimes been regarded as a special type, analogous to the instinctive criminal. This point of view has been specially emphasized by Lombroso and Ferrero, La Donna Delinquente. Apart from this, these authors regard homosexuality among prostitutes as due to the following causes (p. 410 et seq.): (a) excessive and often unnatural venery; (b) confinement in a prison, with separation from men; (c) close association with the same sex, such as is common in brothels; (d) maturity and old age, inverting the secondary sexual characters and predisposing to sexual inversion; (e) disgust of men produced by a prostitute’s profession, combined with the longing for love. For cases of homosexuality in American prostitutes, see D. McMurtrie, Lancet-Clinic, Nov. 2, 1912.
[62] Thus Casanova, who knew several nuns intimately, refers to homosexuality as a childish sin so common in convents that confessors imposed no penance for it (Mémoires, ed. Garnier, vol. iv, p. 517). Homosexuality in convent schools has been studied by Mercante, Archivos di Psiquiatria, 1905, pp. 22-30.
[63] I quote the following from a private letter written in Switzerland: “An English resident has told me that his wife has lately had to send away her parlor-maid (a pretty girl) because she was always taking in strange women to sleep with her. I asked if she had been taken from hotel service, and found, as I expected, that she had. But neither my friend nor his wife suspected the real cause of these nocturnal visits.”
[64] An interesting ancient example of a woman with an irresistible impulse to adopt men’s clothing and lead a man’s life, but who did not, so far as is known, possess any sexual impulses, is that of Mary Frith, commonly called Moll Cutpurse, who lived in London at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith appeared in 1662; Middleton and Rowley also made her the heroine of their delightful comedy, The Roaring Girl (Mermaid Series, Middleton’s Plays, volume ii), somewhat idealizing her, however. She seems to have belonged to a neurotic and eccentric stock; “each of the family,” her biographer says, “had his peculiar freak.” As a child she only cared for boys’ games, and could never adapt herself to any woman’s avocations. “She had a natural abhorrence to the tending of children.” Her disposition was altogether masculine; “she was not for mincing obscenity, but would talk freely, whatever came uppermost.” She never had any children, and was not taxed with debauchery: “No man can say or affirm that ever she had a sweetheart or any such fond thing to dally with her;” a mastiff was the only living thing she cared for. Her life was not altogether honest, but not so much from any organic tendency to crime, it seems, as because her abnormal nature and restlessness made her an outcast. She was too fond of drink, and is said to have been the first woman who smoked tobacco. Nothing is said or suggested of any homosexual practices, but we see clearly here what may be termed the homosexual diathesis.
[65] Bringing together ten cases of inverted women from various sources (including the three original cases mentioned above), in only four were the sexual organs normal; in the others they were more or less undeveloped.
[66] Homosexual persons generally, male and female, unlike the heterosexual, are apt to feel more modesty with persons of the same sex than with those of the opposite sex. See, e.g., Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 76.
[67] The term “cunnilinctus” was suggested to me by the late Dr. J. Bonus, and I have ever since used it; the Latin authors commonly used “cunnilingus” for the actor, but had no corresponding term for the action. Hirschfeld has lately used the term “cunnilinctio” in the same sense, but such a formation is quite inadmissible. For information on the classic terms for this perversion, see, e.g., Iwan Bloch, Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, p. 612 et seq.
[68] I have found a notice of a similar case in France, during the sixteenth century, in Montaigne’s Journal du Voyage en Italie en 1850 (written by his secretary); it took place near Vitry le François. Seven or eight girls belonging to Chaumont, we are told, resolved to dress and to work as men; one of these came to Vitry to work as a weaver, and was looked upon as a well-conditioned young man, and liked by everyone. At Vitry she became betrothed to a woman, but, a quarrel arising, no marriage took place. Afterward “she fell in love with a woman whom she married, and with whom she lived for four or five months, to the wife’s great contentment, it is said; but, having been recognized by some one from Chaumont, and brought to justice, she was condemned to be hanged. She said she would even prefer this to living again as a girl, and was hanged for using illicit inventions to supply the defects of her sex” (Journal, ed. by d’Ancona, 1889, p. 11).
[69] Roux, Bulletin Société d’Anthropologie, 1905, No. 3. Roux knew a Comarian woman who, at the age of 50, after her husband’s death, became homosexual and made herself an artificial penis which she used with younger women.
[70] There are few traces of feminine homosexuality in English social history of the past. In Charles the Second’s Court, the Mémoires de Ghrammont tell us, Miss Hobart was credited with Lesbian tendencies. “Soon the rumor, true or false, of this singularity spread through the court. They were gross enough there never to have heard of that refinement of ancient Greece in the tastes of tenderness, and the idea came into their heads that the illustrious Hobart, who seemed so affectionate to pretty women, must be different from what she appeared.” This passage is interesting because it shows us how rare was the exception. A century later, however, homosexuality among English women seems to have been regarded by the French as common, and Bacchaumont, on January 1, 1773, when recording that Mlle. Heinel of the Opera was settling in England, added: “Her taste for women will there find attractive satisfaction, for though Paris furnishes many tribades it is said that London is herein superior.”
[71] “I believe,” writes a well-informed American correspondent, “that sexual inversion is increasing among Americans—both men and women—and the obvious reasons are: first, the growing independence of the women, their lessening need for marriage; secondly, the nervous strain that business competition has brought upon the whole nation. In a word, the rapidly increasing masculinity in women and the unhealthy nervous systems of the men offer the ideal factors for the production of sexual inversion in their children.”
[72] Homosexual women, like homosexual men, now insert advertisements in the newspapers, seeking a “friend.” Näcke (“Zeitungsannoncen von weiblichen Homosexuellen,” Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1902, p. 225) brought together from Munich newspapers a collection of such advertisements, most of which were fairly unambiguous: “Actress with modern ideas desires to know rich lady with similar views, for the sake of friendly relations, etc.;” “Young lady of 19, a pretty blonde, seeks another like herself for walks, theatre, etc.,” and so on.
[73] The following analysis is based on somewhat fuller versions of my Histories than it was necessary to publish in the preceding chapters, as well as on various other Histories which are not here published at all. Numerous apparent discrepancies may thus be explained.
[74] This frequency of nervous symptoms is in accordance with the most reliable observation everywhere. Thus, Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 177) states that of 500 inverts, 62 per cent. showed nervous symptoms of one kind or another: sleeplessness, sleepiness, tremors, stammering, etc.
[75] Hirschfeld finds that 54 per cent, of inverts become conscious of their anomaly under the age of 14. The anomaly may, however, be present at this early age, but not consciously until later. Hence the larger percentage recorded above.
[76] In this connection I may quote an observation by Raffalovich: “It is natural that the invert should very clearly recall the precocity of his inclinations. In the existence of every invert a moment arrives when he discovers the enigma of his homosexual tastes. He then classes all his recollections, and to justify himself in his own eyes he remembers that he has been what he is from his earliest childhood. Homosexuality has colored all his young life; he has thought over it, dreamed over it, reflected over it—very often in perfect innocence. When he was quite small he imagined that he had been carried off by brigands, by savages; at 5 or 6 he dreamed of the warmth of their chests and of their naked arms. He dreamed that he was their slave and he loved his slavery and his masters. He has had not the least thought that is crudely sexual, but he has discovered his sentimental vocation.”
[77] Leppmann mentions a case (certainly extreme and abnormal) of a little girl of 8 who spent the night hidden on the roof, merely in order to be able to observe in the morning the sexual organs of an adult male cousin (Bulletin de l’Union Internationale de Droit Pénal, 1896, p. 118).
[78] I fully admit, as all investigators must, the difficulty of tracing the influence of early suggestions, especially in dealing with persons who are unaccustomed to self-analysis. Sometimes it happens, especially in regard to erotic fetichism, that, while direct questioning fails to reach any early formative suggestion, such influence is casually elicited on a subsequent occasion.
[79] I may add that I see no fundamental irreconcilability between the point of view here adopted and the facts brought forward (and wrongly interpreted) by Schrenck-Notzing. In his Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Conträrer Sexualempfindung (Vienna, 1895), this writer states: “The neuropathic disposition is congenital, as is the tendency to precocious appearance of the appetites, the lack of psychic resistance, and the tendency to imperative associations; but that heredity can extend to the object of the appetite, and influence the contents of these characters, is not shown. Psychological experiences are against it, and the possibility, which I have shown, of changing these impulses by experiment and so removing their danger to the character of the individual.” It need not be asserted that “heredity extends to the object of the appetite,” but simply that heredity culminates in an organism which is sexually best satisfied by that object. It is also a mistake to suppose that congenital characters cannot be, in some cases, largely modified by such patient and laborious processes as those carried on by Schrenck-Notzing. In the same pamphlet this writer refers to moral insanity and idiocy as supporting his point of view. It is curious that both these congenital manifestations had independently occurred to me as arguments against his position. The experiences of Elmira Reformatory and Bicêtre—not to mention institutions of more recent establishment—long since showed that both the morally insane and the idiotic can be greatly improved by appropriate treatment. Schrenck-Notzing seems to be unduly biased by his interest in hypnotism and suggestion.
[80] “If an invert acquires, under the influence of external conditions,” Féré wrote with truth (L’Instinct Sexuel, p. 238), “it is because he was born with an aptitude for such acquisition: an aptitude lacking in those who have been subjected to the same conditions without making the same acquisitions.”
[81] One of my subjects writes: “Inverts are, I think, naturally more liable to indulge in self-gratification than normal people, partly because of the perpetual suppression and disappointment of their desires, and also because of the fact that they actually possess in themselves the desired form of the male. This idea is a little difficult of explanation, but you can readily imagine to what frenzies of self-abuse a normal man would be impelled supposing that he included in his own the form of the female.”
[82] I do not here enter upon the consideration of the normal prevalence and significance of masturbation and allied phenomena, as I have dealt with this subject in the study of “Auto-erotism,” in volume i of these Studies.
[83] Hirschfeld also finds, among German inverts (Die Homosexualität, ch. iii), that the majority (though a smaller majority than I find in England and the United States) have not had intercourse with women; 53 per cent., he states, including a few married men, have never even attempted coitus, and over 50 per cent, are presumably impotent. The number of inverted women who have never had intercourse with men is still larger.
[84] Erotic dreams have been discussed in “Auto-erotism,” vol. i of these Studies, and the wider bearings of the subject in another work, The Study of Dreams. Many references to the extensive literature will be found in both these places.
[85] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 71 et seq. Hirschfeld considers that the dreams of the inverted fall into two groups: one in which the dreamer imagines he is embracing a person of the same sex, and another in which he imagines that he is himself of the opposite sex. The latter class of dreams, constituting a pseudo-heterosexual group, seems to me to be rare, and they may, moreover, occur in heterosexual persons.
[86] Pedicatio (or pædicatio) is the most generally accepted technical term for the sodomitical intromission of the penis into the anus. It is usually derived from the Greek pais (boy), but some authorities have derived it from pedex or podex (anus). The terms “paiderastia” and “pederast” are sometimes used to indicate the same act and agent. This use, however, is undesirable. It is best to confine the word “paiderastia” to its proper use as the name of the special institution of Greek boy love. It may be added that the Greeks themselves had many names (as many as 74) for paiderastia. See, on this subject of nomenclature, Iwan Bloch, Der Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, pp. 527, 563.
[87] It is the grosser forms of perversion which are first revealed in every field. In the first edition of this Study the predominance of pedicatio was still greater; it is not practised by any of the subjects of the Histories added to the present edition, though several see no objection to it.
[88] “Men,” remarks Q., “tend to fall in love with boys or youths, boys or youths with grown men, feminine natures with virile natures and vice versâ, and different races with each other.”
[89] Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, affirmed that “players and play-haunters in their secret conclaves play the Sodomites,” and refers to some recent examples of men who had been desperately enamoured of player-boys thus clad in women’s apparel, so far as to solicit them by words, by letters, even actually to abuse them. Later on, in 1633, Prynne, in his Histrio-Mastix (part 1, p. 208 et seq.), strongly condemned “this putting on of woman’s array” by actors on the same ground, and adds that he has heard credibly reported of a scholar of Balliol College that he was violently enamoured of a boy-player. In Japan, again where, as in China, woman’s parts on the stage are taken by men (not always youths), the homosexuality of these players became, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so notorious that they constituted a class requiring special regulation as Joro, or prostitutes.
[90] This was remarked by even the earliest modern writers on homosexuality, like Hössli. See Hirschfeld, “Vom Wesen der Liebe,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, p. 124 et seq.
[91] Similarly Numa Praetorius asserts (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, p. 732) that even the most virile homosexual men exhibit feminine traits, and adds that we could scarcely expect it to be otherwise when we find how constantly homosexual women show masculine traits.
[92] So also among American boarding-school girls. Thus Margaret Otis (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June, 1913) has described the attraction which negro girls exert on white girls at school. The correspondence of these lovers, and sometimes their method of sex gratification, may occasionally be of an even coarsely passionate nature.
[93] Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 283) found that 55 per cent. of inverts are attracted to qualities unlike their own, and 45 per cent. to qualities resembling their own, without regard to whether these qualities belonged to the secondary sexual sphere. It may be added that as regards the age of the persons they are attracted to, Hirschfeld (p. 281) admits two main groups, each including about 45 per cent. of the homosexual; ephebophils, attracted to youths between 14 and 21, and androphils, attracted to adults in the prime of life. This division, as may be seen from the histories included in the present volume, seems to hold good of British and American inverts.
[94] Krafft-Ebing tells of an inverted physician (a man of masculine development and tastes) who had had sexual relations with 600 more or less inverted men. He observed no tendency to sexual malformation among them, but very frequently an approximation to a feminine form of body, as well as insufficient hair, delicate complexion, and high voice. Well-developed breasts were not rare, and some 10 per cent, showed a taste for feminine occupations.
[95] A similar condition of gynecomasty has been observed in connection with inversion by Moll, Laurent, Wey, etc. Olano (“La Secrecion Mamaria en los Invertidos Sexuales,” Archivos de Criminologia, May, 1902, p. 305) further observed a certain amount of mammary secretion in an inverted man, 20 years of age, in Lima.
[96] Hirschfeld finds. 7 per cent, inverts left-handed, and 6 per cent, partly so. Fliess attaches special importance to left-handedness in inversion, believing that in left-handed men feminine secondary sexual characters are marked, and in left-handed women masculine sexual character (Der Ablauf des Lebens, 1906). I am not prepared to deny this statement, but, more evidence is needed.
[97] Bloch (The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 500) attaches importance to this peculiarity, but it must be remembered that a high-pitched voice occurs frequently in undoubtedly heterosexual men in whom it seems often associated with high intellectual ability (Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, p. 200).
[98] Moll’s experience in Germany also reveals the prevalence of inversion among literary men, though, of all occupations, he found the highest proportion among actors. Jäger has referred to the frequency of homosexuality among barbers. I have been told that among London hairdressers homosexuality is so prevalent that there is even a special attitude which the client may adopt in the chair to make known that he is an invert. Dr. Kiernan informs me that in Chicago, also, inversion is specially prevalent among barbers, and he adds that he is acquainted with two cases among women-barbers, a relatively large proportion. It is not difficult to understand this, bearing in mind the close physical association between the barber and his client. “W. G. was a barber’s assistant,” writes one of my subjects, “and I took an immense fancy to him at first-sight. He used to lather me, and the touch of his fingers was a delight. Later on he shaved me and I always looked forward to going to the barber’s. If he were not able to attend to me I felt an incredible sinking of heart. The whole day seemed dull and useless. I used to make a mark in my pocket-diary every time he shaved me.”
[99] See, e.g., “Vom Weibmann auf der Bühne,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901, p. 313. It is curious to find a medico-legal record of this connection long before inversion was recognized. In June, 1833 (see Annual Register under this date), a man died who had lived as a kept woman under the name of Eliza Edwards. He was very effeminate in appearance, with beautiful hair, in ringlets two feet long, and a cracked voice; he played female parts in the theater, “in the first line of tragedy,” and “appeared as a most lady-like woman.” The coroner’s jury “strongly recommended to the proper authorities that some means may be adopted in the disposal of the body which will mark the ignominy of the crime.”
[100] The proportion is not so large, however, as Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 314) now finds in Germany, where inverts are better informed on the subject of this anomaly, for here 95 per cent. regard their feelings as natural.
[101] The love of relations may be tinctured by all degrees of sexual love, some of which are so faint and vague that they cannot be considered unnatural or abnormal; it is misleading to term them incestuous. The Russian novelist, Artzibascheff, in his Sanine described a brother’s affection for his sister as thus touched with a perception of her sexual charm (I refer to the French translation), and the book has consequently been much abused as “incestuous,” though the attitude described is very pale and conventional compared to the romantic passion sung in Shelley’s Laon and Cythna, or the tragic exaltation of the same passion in Ford’s great play, “‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.”
[102] Thus Numa Praetorius, a sagacious observer with, a very wide and thorough knowledge of homosexuality, finds himself quite unable to accept the “Œdipus Complex” explanation of inversion (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, July, 1914, p. 362).
[103] It cannot be maintained that the frequency of inversion among the near relatives of inverts is a chance coincidence, for it must be remembered that few estimates of the prevalence of inversion yield a higher proportion than 3 per cent.
[104] It has been denied by some (Meynert, Näcke, etc.) that there is any sexual instinct at all. I may as well, therefore, explain in what sense I use the word. (See also “Analysis of the Sexual Impulse” in vol. iii of these Studies.) I mean an inherited aptitude the performance of which normally demands for its full satisfaction the presence of a person of the opposite sex. It might be asserted that there is no such thing as an instinct for food, that it is all imitation, etc. In a sense this is true, but the automatic basis remains. A chicken from an incubator needs no hen to teach it to eat. It seems to discover eating and drinking, as it were, by chance, at first eating awkwardly and eating everything, until it learns what will best satisfy its organic mechanism. There is no instinct for food, it may be, but there is an instinct which is only satisfied by food. It is the same with the “sexual instinct.” The tentative and omnivorous habits of the newly hatched chicken may be compared to the uncertainty of the sexual instinct at puberty, while the sexual pervert is like a chicken that should carry on into adult age an appetite for worsted and paper. It may be added here that the question of the hereditary nature of the sexual instinct has been exhaustively discussed and decisively affirmed by Moll in his Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, 1898. Moll attaches importance to the inheritance of the normal aptitudes for sexual reaction in an abnormally weak degree as a factor in the development of sexual perversions.
[105] This view was revived in a modified form by Näcke (Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, vol. xv, Heft 5, 1913), who supposed that there may be an anatomical “homosexual center” in the brain; i.e., a feminine libido-center in the inverted man, and a masculine libido-center in the inverted woman. He expressed a hope that in the future the brains of inverted persons would be more carefully investigated.
[106] I do not present this view as more than a picture which helps us to realize the actual phenomena which we witness in homosexuality, although I may add that so able a teratologist as Dr. J. W. Ballantyne considers that “it seems a very possible theory.”
[107] This explanation of homosexuality has already been tentatively put forth. Thus, Iwan Bloch (Sexual Life of Our Time, ch. xix, Appendix) vaguely suggests a new theory of homosexuality as dependent on chemical influences. Hirschfeld also believes (Die Homosexualität, ch. xx) that the study of the internal secretions is the path to the deepest foundations of inversion.
[108] It is this fact which has caused the Italians to be shy of using the word “degeneration;” thus, Marro, in his great work, I Caratteri del Delinquenti, made a notable attempt to analyze the phenomena lumped together as degenerate into three groups: atypical, atavistic, and morbid.
[109] Hirschfeld and Burchard among 200 inverts found pronounced stigmata of degeneration in only 16 per cent. (Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. xx.)
[110] Alcohol has sometimes been considered an important exciting cause of homosexuality, and alcoholism is certainly not uncommon in the heredity of inverts; according to Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 386) it is well marked in one of the parents in over 21 per cent, of cases. But it probably has no more influence as an exciting cause in the individual homosexual person than in the individual heterosexual person. From the Freudian standpoint, indeed, Abraham believes (Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Heft 8, 1908) that even in normal persons alcohol removes the inhibition from a latent homosexuality, and Juliusburger from the same standpoint (Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Heft 10 and 11, 1912) thinks that the alcoholic tendency is unconsciously aroused by the homosexual impulse in order to reach its own gratification. But we may accept Näcke’s conclusions (Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, vol. lxviii, 1911, p. 852), that (1) alcohol cannot produce homosexuality in persons not predisposed, that (2) it may arouse it in those who are predisposed, that (3) the action of alcohol is the same on the homosexual as the heterosexual, and that (4) alcoholism is not common among inverts.
[111] This is now generally recognized. See, e.g., Roubinovitch and Borel, “Un Cas d’Uranisme,” L’Encéphale, Aug., 1913. These authors conclude that it is today impossible to look upon inversion as the equivalent or the symptom of a psychopathic state, though we have to recognize that it frequently coexists with morbid emotional states. Näcke, also, in his extensive experience, found that homosexuality is rare in asylums and slight in character; he dealt with this question on various occasions; see, e.g., Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906.
[112] Krafft-Ebing considered that the temporary or lasting association of homosexuality with neurasthenia having its root in congenital conditions is “almost invariable,” and some authorities (like Meynert) have regarded inversion as an accidental growth on the foundation of neurasthenia.
[113] Féré expressed himself concerning the general treatment of homosexuality in the same sense, and even more emphatically (Féré, L’Instinct Sexuel, 1899, pp. 272, 286). He considers that all forms of congenital inversion resist treatment, and that, since a change in the invert’s instincts must be regarded rather as a perversion of the invert than a cure of the inversion, one may be permitted to doubt not only the utility of the treatment, but even the legitimacy of attempting it. The treatment of sexual inversion, he declared, is as much outside the province of medicine as the restoration of color-vision in the color-blind. The ideal which the physician and the teacher must place before the invert is that of chastity; he must seek to harness his wagon to a star.
[114] I have been told by a distinguished physician, who was consulted in the case, of a congenital invert highly placed in the English government service, who married in the hope of escaping his perversion, and was not even able to consummate the marriage. It is needless to insist on the misery which is created in such cases. It is not, of course, denied that such marriages may not sometimes become eventually happy. Thus Kiernan (“Psychical Treatment of Congenital Sexual Inversion,” Review of Insanity and Nervous Diseases, June, 1894) reports the case of a thoroughly inverted girl who married the brother of the friend to whom she was previously attached merely in order to secure his sister’s companionship. She was able to endure and even enjoy intercourse by imagining that her husband, who resembled his sister, was another sister. Liking and esteem for the husband gradually increased and after the sister died a child was born who much resembled her; “the wife’s esteem passed through love of the sister to intense natural love of the daughter, as resembling the sister; through this to normal love of the husband as the father and brother.” The final result may have been satisfactory, but this train of circumstances could not have been calculated beforehand. Moll is also opposed, on the whole (e.g., Deutsche medicinische Presse, No. 6, 1902), to marriage and procreation by inverts.
[115] Hirschfeld also notes (Die Homosexualität, p. 95) that women often instinctively feel that there is something wrong in the love of their inverted husbands who may perhaps succeed in copulating, but betray their deepest feelings by a repugnance to touch the sexual parts with the hand. The homosexual woman, also, as Hirschfeld elsewhere points out with cases in illustration (p. 84), may suffer seriously through being subjected to normal sexual relationships.
[116] Féré reports the case of an invert of great intellectual ability who had never had any sexual relationships, and was not averse from a chaste life; he was urged by his doctor to acquire the power of normal intercourse and to marry, on the ground that his perversion was merely a perversion of the imagination. He did so, and, though he married a perfectly strong and healthy woman, and was himself healthy, except in so far as his perversion was concerned, the offspring turned out disastrously. The eldest child was an epileptic, almost an imbecile, and with strongly marked homosexual impulses; the second and third children were absolute idiots; the youngest died of convulsions in infancy (Féré, L’Instinct Sexuel, p. 269 et seq.) No doubt this is not an average case, but the numerous examples of the offspring of similar marriages brought forward by Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 391) scarcely present a much better result.
[117] It is scarcely necessary to add that the same principle is adaptable to the case of homosexual women. “In all such cases,” writes an American woman physician, “I would recommend that the moral sense be trained and fostered, and the persons allowed to keep their individuality, being taught to remember always that they are different from others, rather sacrificing their own feelings or happiness when necessary. It is good discipline for them, and will serve in the long run to bring them more favor and affection than any other course. This quality or idiosyncrasy is not essentially evil, but, if rightly used, may prove a blessing to others and a power for good in the life of the individual; nor does it reflect any discredit upon its possessor.”
[118] The existence of an affinity between homosexuality and the religious temperament has been referred to in ch. i as recognized in many parts of the world. See, for a more extended discussion, Horneffer, Der Priester, and Bloch, Die Prostitution, vol. i, pp. 101-110. The psychoanalysts have also touched on this point; thus Pfister, Die Frommingkeit des Grafen von Zinzendorf (1910), argues that the founder of the pietistic sect of the Herrenhuter was of sublimated homosexual (or bisexual) temperament.
[119] Forel, Die Sexuelle Frage, p. 528. Such ideas are, of course, often put forward by inverts themselves.
[120] Roman law previously seems to have been confined in this matter to the protection of boys. The Scantinian and other Roman laws against paiderasty seem to have been usually a dead letter. See, for various notes and references, W. G. Holmes, The Age of Justinian and Theodora, vol. i, p. 121.
[121] Epistle to the Romans, chapter i, verses 26-7.
[122] In practice this penalty of death appears to have been sometimes commuted to ablation of the sexual organs.
[123] For a full sketch of the legal enactments against homosexual intercourse in ancient and modern times, see Numa Praetorius, “Die straflichen Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. i, pp. 97-158. This writer points out that Justinian, and still more clearly, Pius V, in the sixteenth century, distinguished between occasional homosexuality and deep-rooted inversion, habitual offenders alone, not those who had only been guilty once or twice, being punished.
[124] The influence of the supposed connection of sodomy with unbelief, idolatry, and heresy in arousing the horror of it among earlier religions has been emphasized by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 486 et seq.
[125] “Any male person who in public or private commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor.”
[126] It is a remarkable and perhaps significant fact that, while homosexuality is today in absolute disrepute in France, it was not so under the less tolerant law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Duc de Gesvres, as described by Besenval (Mémoires, i, p. 178), was a well-marked invert of feminine type, impotent, and publicly affecting all the manners of women; yet he was treated with consideration. In 1687 Madame, the mother of the Regent, writes implying that “all the young men and many of the old” practised pederasty: il n’y a que les gens du commun qui aiment les femmes. The marked tendency to inversion in the French royal family at this time is well known.
[127] A man with homosexual habits, I have been told, declared he would be sorry to see the English law changed, as then he would find no pleasure in his practices.
[128] Blackmailing appears to be the most serious risk which the invert runs. Hirschfeld states in an interesting study of blackmailing (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, April, 1913) that his experience shows that among 10,000 homosexual persons hardly one falls a victim to the law, but over 3000 are victimized by blackmailers.
[129] Krafft-Ebing would place this age not under 16, the age at which in England girls may legally consent to normal sexual intercourse (Psychopathia Sexualis, 1893, p. 419). It certainly should not be lower.
[130] This is the home of the fraternity. Practically it is any corner where they can lay their heads; but, as a rule, it is either a lodging-house, a freight-car, or a nest in the grass near the railway watering-tank.
[131] All hoboes carry razors, both for shaving and for defense. Strange to say, they succeed in smuggling them into gaols, as they are never searched thoroughly.
[132] This word is of Hebrew origin, and means girl (Mädchen).