Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 Sexual Inversion

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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.