Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 Sexual Inversion

In at least 24, probably many more, of my male cases there is a marked contrast, and in a still larger number a less-marked contrast, between the subject and the individuals he is attracted to; either he is of somewhat feminine and sensitive nature, and admires more simple and virile natures, or he is fairly vigorous and admires boys who are often of lower social class. Inverted women also are attracted to more clinging feminine persons.[203] A sexual attraction for boys is, no doubt, as Moll points out, that form of inversion which comes nearest to normal sexuality, for the subject of it usually approaches nearer to the average man in physical and mental disposition. The reason of this is obvious: boys resemble women, and therefore it requires a less profound organic twist to become sexually attracted to them. Anyone who has watched private theatricals in boys' schools will have observed how easy it is for boys to personate women successfully, and it is well known that until the middle of the seventeenth century women's parts on the stage were always taken by boys, whether or not with injury to their own or other people's morals.[204] It is also worthy of note that in Greece, where homosexuality flourished so extensively, and apparently with so little accompaniment of neurotic degeneration, it was often held that only boys under 18 should be loved; so that the love of boys merged into love of women.

About 18 of my cases are most strongly attracted to youths,—preferably of about the age of 18 to 20,—and they are, for the most part, among the more normal and healthy of the cases. A preference for older men, or else a considerable degree of indifference to age alone, is more common, and perhaps indicates a deeper degree of perversion.

Putting aside the age of the object desired, it must be said that there is a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to approach the feminine type, either in psychic disposition or physical constitution, or both.[205] I cannot say how far this is explained by the irritable nervous system and delicate health which are so often associated with inversion, though this is certainly an important factor. Although the invert himself may stoutly affirm his masculinity, and although this femininity may not be very obvious, its wide prevalence may be asserted with considerable assurance, and by no means only among the small minority of inverts who take an exclusively passive rôle, though in these it is usually most marked. In this I am confirmed by Q., who writes: "In all, or certainly almost all, the cases of congenital male inverts (excluding psycho-sexual hermaphrodites) that I know there has been a remarkable sensitiveness and delicacy of sentiment, sympathy, and an intuitive habit of mind, such as we generally associate with the feminine sex, even though the body might be quite masculine in its form and habit."[206] When, however, a distinguished invert said to Moll: "We are all women; that we do not deny," he put the matter in too extreme a form. The feminine traits of the homosexual are not usually of a conspicuous character. "I believe that inverts of plainly feminine nature are rare exceptions," wrote Näcke:[207] and that statement may be accepted even by those who emphasize the prevalence of feminine traits among inverts.

In inverted women some degree of masculinity or boyishness is equally prevalent, and it is not usually found in the women to whom they are attracted. Even in inversion the need for a certain sexual opposition—the longing for something which the lover himself does not possess—still prevails. It expresses itself sometimes in an attraction between persons of different race and color. I am told that in American prisons for women Lesbian relationships are specially frequent between white and black women.[208] A similar affinity is found among the Arabs, says Kocher; and if an Arab woman has a Lesbian friend the latter is usually European. In Cochin China, too, according to Lorion, while the Chinese are chiefly active pederasts, the Annamites are chiefly passive.

It must, however, be remembered that, in normal love, homogamy, the attraction of the like, prevails over heterogamy, the attraction of the unlike, which is chiefly confined to those features which belong to the sphere of the secondary sexual characters;[209] the same appears to be true in inversion, and the homosexual are probably, on the whole, more attracted by the traits which they seem to themselves to possess than by those which are foreign to themselves.[210]

PHYSICAL ABNORMALITIES.—The circumstances under which many of my cases were investigated often made information under this head difficult to obtain, or to verify. In at least 4 cases the penis is very large, while in at least 3 it is small and undeveloped, with small and flabby testes. It seems probable that variations in these two directions are both common, but it is doubtful whether they possess as much significance as the tendency to infantilism of the sexual organs in inverted women seems to possess. Hirschfeld considers that the genital organs of inverts resemble those of normal people. He finds, however, that phimosis is rather common.[211]

More significant, perhaps, than specifically genital peculiarities are the deviations found in the general conformation of the body.[212] In at least 2 cases there are well-developed breasts, in 1 the breasts swelling and becoming red.[213] In 1 case there are "menstrual" phenomena, physical and psychic, recurring every four weeks. In several cases the hips are broad and the arms rounded, while some are skillful in throwing a ball. One was born with a double squint. At least 2 were 7 months' children. In the previous chapter I have referred to the tendency to hypertrichosis and occasionally oligotrichosis among inverted women; among the men it is the latter condition which seems more common, and in several cases the bodies are hairless, or with but scanty hair. A few are left-handed, though not perhaps an abnormal proportion.[214] The sexual characters of the handwriting are in some cases clearly inverted, the men writing a feminine hand and the women a masculine hand.[215] A high feminine voice is sometimes found.[216]

A marked characteristic of many inverts, though one not easy of precise definition, is their youthfulness of appearance, and frequently child-like faces, equally in both sexes. This has often been remarked,[217] and is pronounced among many of my subjects.

The frequent inability of male inverts to whistle was first pointed out by Ulrichs, and Hirschfeld has found it in 23 per cent. Many of my cases confess to this inability, while some of the women inverts can whistle admirably. Although this inability of male inverts is only found among a minority, I am quite satisfied that it is well marked among a considerable minority. One of my correspondents, M. N., writes to me: "With regard to the general inability of inverts to whistle (I am not able to do so myself), their fondness for green (my favorite color), their feminine caligraphy, skill at female occupations, etc., these all seem to me but indications of the one principle. To go still farther and include trivial things, few inverts even smoke in the same manner and with the same enjoyment as a man; they have seldom the male facility at games, cannot throw at a mark with precision, or even spit!"

Nearly all these peculiarities indicate a minor degree of nervous disturbance and lead to modification, as my correspondent points out, in a feminine direction. It is scarcely necessary to add that they by no means necessarily imply inversion. Shelley, for instance, was unable to whistle, though he never gave an indication of inversion; but he was a person of somewhat abnormal and feminine organization, and he illustrates the tendency of these apparently very insignificant functional anomalies to be correlated with other and more important psychic anomalies.

The greater part of these various anatomical peculiarities and functional anomalies point, more or less clearly, to the prevalence among inverts of a tendency to infantilism, combined with feminism in men and masculinism in women.[218] This tendency is denied by Hirschfeld, but it is often well indicated among the subjects whose histories I have been able to present, and is indeed suggested by Hirschfeld's own elaborate results; so that it can scarcely be passed over. I regard it as highly significant, and it is in harmony with all that we are learning to know regarding the important part played by the internal secretions, alike in inversion and the general bodily modifications in an infantile, feminine, and masculine direction.

If we are justified in believing that there is a tendency for inverted persons to be somewhat arrested in development, approaching the child type, we may connect this fact with the sexual precocity sometimes marked in inverts, for precocity is commonly accompanied by rapid arrest of development.

1. A., male, eldest child of typically neurotic family. Three children in all: 2 male and 1 female. The other 2 are somewhat eccentric, unsocial, and sexually frigid, 1 in a marked degree. The curious point about this case is that A., the only one of the family possessed of mental ability and social qualifications, should be inverted. Parents' marriage was very ill-assorted and inharmonious, the father being of great stature and the mother abnormally small and of highly nervous temperament, both of feeble health. Ancestry unfortunate, especially on mother's side.

6. F., male, invert, second child of family of 5. Eldest child a girl, died in youth. After F. a boy G., a girl H., and another girl stillborn. Parents badly matched; mother of considerable mental and physical strength; father last representative of moribund stock, the result of intermarriage. Children all resembling father in appearance and mother in disposition. Drink-tendency in both boys, to which F.'s death at the age of 30 was mainly due. G. committed suicide some years later. The girl H. married into a family with worse ancestry than her own. Has two children:—

7. I. and J., boy and girl, both inverted as far as I am able to judge. The boy was born with some deformity of the feet and ankles; is of effeminate tastes and appearance. Boy resembles mother, and girl, who is of great physical development, resembles father.

"I have noticed little abnormal with regard to the genital formation of inverts. There are, however, frequent abnormalities of proportion in their figures, the hands and feet being noticeably smaller and more shapely, the waist more marked, the body softer and less muscular. Almost invariably there is either cranial malformation or the head approaches the feminine in type and shape."

ARTISTIC AND OTHER APTITUDES.—All avocations are represented among inverts. Among the subjects here dealt with are found, at one end of the scale, numerous manual workers, and at the other end an equal number, sometimes of aristocratic family, who exercise no profession at all. There are 12 physicians, 9 men of letters, at least 7 are engaged in commercial life, 6 are artists, architects, or composers, 4 are or have been actors. These figures cannot give any clue to the relative extent of inversion in various occupations, but they indicate that no class of occupation furnishes a safeguard against inversion.

There are, however, certain avocations to which inverts seem especially called.[219] One of the chief of these is literature. The apparent predominance of physicians is easily explicable. The frequency with which literature is represented is probably more genuine. Here, indeed, inverts seem to find the highest degree of success and reputation. At least half a dozen of my subjects are successful men of letters, and I could easily add others by going outside the group of Histories included in this study. They especially cultivate those regions of belles-lettres which lie on the borderland between prose and verse. Though they do not usually attain much eminence in poetry, they are often very accomplished writers of verse. They may be attracted to history, but rarely attempt tasks of great magnitude, involving much patient labor, though to this rule there are exceptions. Pure science seems to have relatively little attraction for the homosexual.[220]

An examination of my Histories reveals the interesting fact that 45 of the subjects, or in the proportion of 56 per cent., possess artistic aptitudes of varying degree. Galton found, from the investigation of nearly 1000 persons, that the average showing artistic tastes in England was only about 30 per cent. It must also be said that my figures are probably below the truth, as no special point was made of investigating the matter, and also that in some cases the artistic ability is of high order.

It is suggested that Adler's theory of Minderwertigkeit—according to which we react strenuously against our congenital organic defects and fortify them into virtues—may be applied to the invert's acquirement of artistic abilities (G. Rosenstein, "Die Theorien der Organminderwertigkeit und die Bisexualität," Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen, vol. ii, 1910, p. 398). This theory is in some cases of valuable application, but it seems doubtful to me whether it is very profitable in the present connection. The artistic aptitudes of inverts may better be regarded as part of their organic tendencies than as a reaction against those tendencies. In this connection I may quote the remarks of an American correspondent, himself homosexual: "Regarding the connection between inversion and artistic capacity, so far as I can see, the temperament of every invert seems to strive to find artistic expression—crudely or otherwise. Inverts, as a rule, seek the paths of life that lie in pleasant places; their resistance to opposing obstacles is elastic, their work is never strenuous (if they can help it), and their accomplishments hardly ever of practical use. This is all true of the born artist, as well. Both inverts and artists are inordinately fond of praise; both yearn for a life where admiration is the reward for little energy. In a word, they seem to be 'born tired,' begotten by parents who were tired, too."

Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 66) gives a list of pictures and sculptures which specially appeal to the homosexual. Prominent among them are representations of St. Sebastian, Gainsborough's Blue Boy, Vandyck's youthful men, the Hermes of Praxiteles, Michelangelo's Slave, Rodin's and Meunier's working-men types.

As regards music, my cases reveal the aptitude which has been remarked by others as peculiarly common among inverts. It has been extravagantly said that all musicians are inverts; it is certain that various famous musicians, among the dead and the living, have been homosexual. Ingegnieros speaks of a "genito-musical synæsthesia," analogous to color-hearing, in this connection. Calesia states (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1900, p. 209) that 60 per cent, inverts are musicians. Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 500) regards this estimate as excessive, but he himself elsewhere states (p. 175) that 98 per cent, of male inverts are greatly attracted to music, the women being decidedly less attracted. Oppenheim (in a paper summarized in the Neurologische Centralblatt for June 1, 1910, and the Alienist and Neurologist for Nov., 1910) well remarks that the musical disposition is marked by a great emotional instability, and this instability is a disposition to nervousness. It is thus that neurasthenia is so common among musicians. The musician has not been rendered nervous by the music, but he owes his nervousness (as also, it may be added, his disposition to homosexuality) to the same disposition to which he owes his musical aptitude. Moreover, the musician is frequently one-sided in his gifts, and the possession of a single hypertrophied aptitude is itself closely related to the neuropathic and psychopathic diathesis.

The tendency to dramatic aptitude—found among a large proportion of my subjects who have never been professional actors—has attracted the attention of previous investigators in this field.[221] Thus, Moll refers to the frequency of artistic, and especially dramatic, talent among inverts, and remarks that the cause is doubtful. After pointing out that the lie which they have to be perpetually living renders inverts always actors, he goes on to say:—

Apart from this, it seems to me that the capacity and the inclination to conceive situations and to represent them in a masterly manner corresponds to an abnormal predisposition of the nervous system, just as does sexual inversion; so that both phenomena are due to the same source.

I am in agreement with this statement; the congenitally inverted may, I believe, be looked upon as a class of individuals exhibiting nervous characters which, to some extent, approximate them to persons of artistic genius. The dramatic and artistic aptitudes of inverts are, therefore, partly due to the circumstances of the invert's life, which render him necessarily an actor,—and in some few cases lead him into a love of deception comparable with that of a hysterical woman,—and partly, it is probable, to a congenital nervous predisposition allied to the predisposition to dramatic aptitude.

One of my correspondents has long been interested in the frequency of inversion among actors and actresses. He knew an inverted actor who told him he adopted the profession because it would enable him to indulge his proclivity; but, on the whole, he regards this tendency as due to "hitherto unconsidered imaginative flexibilities and curiosities in the individual. The actor, ex hypothesi, is one who works himself by sympathy (intellectual and emotional) into states of psychological being that are not his own. He learns to comprehend—nay, to live himself into—relations which were originally alien to his nature. The capacity for doing this—what makes a born actor—implies a faculty for extending his artistically acquired experience into life. In the process of his trade, therefore, he becomes at all points sensitive to human emotions, and, sexuality being the most intellectually undetermined of the appetites after hunger, the actor might discover in himself a sort of sexual indifference, out of which a sexual aberration could easily arise. A man devoid of this imaginative flexibility could not be a successful actor. The man who possesses it would be exposed to divagations of the sexual instinct under esthetical or merely wanton influences. Something of the same kind is applicable to musicians and artists, in whom sexual inversion prevails beyond the average. They are conditioned by their esthetical faculty, and encouraged by the circumstances of their life to feel and express the whole gamut of emotional experience.

Thus they get an environment which (unless they are sharply otherwise differentiated) leads easily to experiments in passion. All this joins on to what you call the 'variational diathesis' of men of genius. But I should seek the explanation of the phenomenon less in the original sexual constitution than in the exercise of sympathetic, assimilative emotional qualities, powerfully stimulated and acted on by the conditions of the individual's life. The artist, the singer, the actor, the painter, are more exposed to the influences out of which sexual differentiation in an abnormal direction may arise. Some persons are certainly made abnormal by nature, others, of this sympathetic artistic temperament, may become so through their sympathies plus their conditions of life." It is possible there may be some element of truth in this view, which my correspondent regarded as purely hypothetical.

In this connection I may, perhaps, mention a moral quality which is very often associated with dramatic aptitude, and also with minor degrees of nervous degeneration, and that is vanity and the love of applause. While among a considerable section of inverts it is not more marked than among the non-inverted, if not, indeed, less marked, among another section it is found in an exaggerated degree. In at least one of my cases vanity and delight in admiration, both as regards personal qualities and artistic productions, reach an almost morbid extent. And the quotations from letters written by various others of my subjects show a curious complacency in the description of their personal physical characters, markedly absent in other cases. It is suggested by Alexander Schmid, on the basis of Adler's views, that this vanity, which sometimes in the inverted artist becomes an exalted pride, as of a guardian of sacred mysteries, may be regarded as an effort to secure a compensation for the consciousness of feminine defect.[222]

The extreme type of this preoccupation with personal beauty is represented by the history of himself sent by a young Italian of good family to Zola in the hope—itself a sign of vanity—that the distinguished novelist would make it the subject of one of his works. The history is reproduced in the Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle (1894) and in L'Homosexualité et les Types Homosexuels (1910) by "Dr. Laupts" (G. Saint-Paul). I quote the following passage: "At the age of 18 I was, with few differences, what I am now (at 23). I am rather below the medium height (1.65 metres), well proportioned, slender, but not lean. My torso is superb; a sculptor could find nothing against it, and would not find it very different from that of Antinotis. My back is very arched, perhaps too much so; and my hips are very developed; my pelvis is broad, like a woman's; my knees slightly approximate; my feet are small; my hands superb; the fingers curved back and with glistening nails, rosy and polished, cut squarely like those of ancient statues. My neck is long and round, the nape charmingly adorned with downy hairs. My head is charming, and at 18 was more so. The oval of it is perfect and strikes all by its infantine form. At 23 I am to be taken for 17 at most. My complexion is white and rosy, deepening at the faintest emotion. The forehead is not beautiful; it recedes slightly and is hollow at the temples, but, fortunately, it is half-covered by long hair, of a dark blonde, which curls naturally.

The head is perfect in form, because of the curly hair, but on examination there is an enormous protuberance at the occiput. My eyes are oval, of a gray blue, with dark chestnut eyelashes and thick, arched eyebrows. My eyes are very liquid, but with dark circles, and bistered; and they are subject to slight temporary inflammation. My mouth is fairly large, with thick red lips, the lower pendent; they tell me I have the Austrian mouth. My teeth are dazzling, though three are decayed and stopped; fortunately, they cannot be seen. My ears are small and with very colored lobes. My chin is very fat, and at 18 it was smooth and velvety as a woman's; at present there is a slight beard, always shaved. Two beauty spots, black and velvety, on my left cheek, contrast with my blue eyes. My nose is thin and straight, with delicate nostrils and a slight, almost insensible curve. My voice is gentle, and people always regret that I have not learned to sing." This description is noteworthy as a detailed portrait of a sexual invert of a certain type; the whole history is interesting and instructive.

Certain peculiarities in taste as regards costume have rightly or wrongly been attributed to inverts,—apart from the tendency of a certain group to adopt feminine habits,—and may here be mentioned. Tardieu many years ago referred to the taste for keeping the neck uncovered. This peculiarity may occasionally be observed among inverts, especially the more artistic among them. The cause does not appear to be precisely vanity so much as that physical consciousness which is so curiously marked in inverts, and induces the more feminine among them to cultivate feminine grace of form, and the more masculine to emphasize the masculine athletic habit.

It has also been remarked that inverts exhibit a preference for green garments. In Rome cinædi were for this reason called galbanati. Chevalier remarks that some years ago a band of pederasts at Paris wore green cravats as a badge. This decided preference for green is well marked in several of my cases of both sexes, and in some at least the preference certainly arose spontaneously. Green (as Jastrow and others have shown) is very rarely the favorite color of adults of the Anglo-Saxon race, though some inquirers have found it to be more commonly a preferred color among children, especially girls, and it is more often preferred by women than by men.[223] The favorite color among normal women, and indeed very often among normal men, though here not so often as blue, is red, and it is notable that of recent years there has been a fashion for a red tie to be adopted by inverts as their badge. This is especially marked among the "fairies" (as a fellator is there termed) in New York. "It is red," writes an American correspondent, himself inverted, "that has become almost a synonym for sexual inversion, not only in the minds of inverts themselves, but in the popular mind. To wear a red necktie on the street is to invite remarks from newsboys and others—remarks that have the practices of inverts for their theme. A friend told me once that when a group of street-boys caught sight of the red necktie he was wearing they sucked their fingers in imitation of fellatio. Male prostitutes who walk the streets of Philadelphia and New York almost invariably wear red neckties.

It is the badge of all their tribe. The rooms of many of my inverted friends have red as the prevailing color in decorations. Among my classmates, at the medical school, few ever had the courage to wear a red tie; those who did never repeated the experiment."

MORAL ATTITUDE OF THE INVERT.—There is some interest in tracing the invert's own attitude toward his anomaly, and his estimate of its morality. As my cases are not patients seeking to be cured of their perversion, this attitude cannot be taken for granted. I have noted the moral attitude in 57 cases. In 8 the subjects loathe themselves, and have fought in vain against their perversion, which they often regard as a sin. Nine or ten are doubtful, and have little to say in justification of their condition, which they regard as perhaps morbid, a "moral disease." One, while thinking it right to gratify his natural instincts, admits that they may be vices. The remainder, a large majority (including all the women) are, on the other hand, emphatic in their assertion that their moral position is precisely the same as that of the normally constituted individual, on the lowest ground a matter of taste, and at least two state that a homosexual relationship should be regarded as sacramental, a holy matrimony; two or three even regard inverted love as nobler than ordinary sexual love; several add the proviso that there should be consent and understanding on both sides, and no attempt at seduction. The chief regret of 2 or 3 is the double life they are obliged to lead.