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.
FOOTNOTES:
[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, _Zeitsch