CHAPTER IV.—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,[137] 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.[138]
It has been noted of distinguished women in all ages and in all fields of
activity that they have frequently displayed some masculine traits.[139]
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.[140] 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.[141]
Great religious and moral leaders, like Madame Blavatsky and Louise
Michel, have been either homosexual or bisexual or, at least, of
pronounced masculine temperament.[142] 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.[143] 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.[144] 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.[145] 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.[146]
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.[147]
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[148] 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.[149] 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.[150]
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.[151]
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.[152] 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."[153] 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.[154] 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.[155] 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.[156] Hirschfeld thinks that inverted women are specially prone
to become prostitutes.[157] 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."[158] 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.[159]
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,[160] 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.[161] The same again is today the case
with the female servants in large hotels, among whom homosexual practices
nave been found very common.[162] 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.[163] 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.[164] 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.[165] 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.[166] 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.[167] 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.[168]
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.[169] 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.[170] 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.[171]
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.[172] 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."[173]
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.[174] 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.[175]
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.[176] 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.[177] 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.[178]
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,[179] 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.[180] There
are many influences in our civilization today which encourage such
manifestations.[181] 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.[182] 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.
[137]
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.
[138]
Anna Rüling has some remarks on this point, Jahrbuch für
sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. vii, 1905, p. 141 et seq.
[139]
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.
[140]
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.
[141]
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.
[142]
Cf. Hans Freimark, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; Levetzow,
"Louise Michel," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. vii, 1905,
p. 307 et seq.
[143]
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.
[144]
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.
[145]
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.
[146]
Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 5th ed., 1915, especially
chapters xiii and xv.
[147]
Karsch (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii,
1901, pp. 85-9) brings together some passages concerning homosexuality in
women among various peoples.
[148]
Gandavo, quoted by Lomaeco, Archivio per l'Antropologia,
1889, fasc. 1.
[149]
Journal Anthropological Institute, July-Dec., 1904, p.
342.
[150]
G. H. Lowie, "The Assiniboine," Am. Museum of Nat. Hist.,
Anthropological Papers, New York, 1909, vol. xiv, p. 223; W. Jones, "Fox
Texts," Publications of Am. Ethnological Soc., Leyden, 1907, vol. i, p.
151; quoted by D. C. McMurtrie, "A Legend of Lesbian Love Among the North
American Indians," Urologic Review, April, 1914.
[151]
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Heft 6, 1899, p. 669.
[152]
I. Bloch, Die Prostitution, vol. i, pp. 180, 181.
[153]
Corre, Crime en Pays Creoles, 1889.
[154]
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.
[155]
Even among Arab prostitutes it is found, according to
Kocher, though among Arab women generally it is rare.
[156]
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.
[157]
Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 330.
[158]
Eulenburg, Sexuelle Neuropathie, p. 144.
[159]
See vol. vi of these Studies, "Sex in Relation to
Society," ch. vii.
[160]
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.
[161]
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.
[162]
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."
[163]
For a series of cases of affection of girls for girls, in
apparently normal subjects in the United States, see, e.g., Lancaster,
"The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence," Pedagogical Seminary,
July, 1897, p. 88; also, for school friendships between girls, exactly
resembling those between boys and girls, Theodate L. Smith, "Types of
Adolescent Affection," ib., June, 1904, pp. 193, 195.
[164]
Obici and Marchesini, Le "Amicizie" di Collegio, Rome,
1898.
[165]
See Appendix B, in which I have briefly summarized the
result of the investigation by Obici and Marchesini, and also brought
forward observations concerning English colleges.
[166]
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.
[167]
Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 137.
[168]
S. Weissenberg, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1892, Heft 4,
p. 280.
[169]
This case was described by Gasparini, Archivio di
Psichiatria, 1908, fasc. 1-2.
[170]
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.
[171]
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.
[172]
Κρυπτάδια, vol. vi, p. 197.
[173]
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.
[174]
Casanova, Mémoires, ed. Gamier, vol. iv, p. 597.
[175]
Hirschfeld deals in a full and authoritative manner with
the differential diagnosis of inversion and the other groups of
transitional sexuality in Die Homosexualität, ch. ii; also in his fully
illustrated book Geschlechtsübergänge, 1905.
[176]
Havelock Ellis, "Auto-erotism," in vol. i of these
Studies; Iwan Bloch, Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, p. 589; ib.,
Die Prostitution, vol, i, pp. 385-6; for early references, Crusius,
Untersuchungen zu den Mimiamben der Herondas, pp. 129-30.
[177]
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).
[178]
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.
[179]
Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 47.
[180]
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."
[181]
"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."
[182]
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. |
