Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Ii Part 20

Anna Ruling has some remarks on this point, Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. vii, 1905, p. 141 et seq.

[139]

This, of course, by no means necessarily indicates the existence of s.e.xual 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 s.e.x frequently involves the coexistence of masculine, feminine, and infantile traits.

[140]

Various references to Queen Hatschepsu are given by Hirschfeld (Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 739). Hirschfeld's not severely critical list of distinguished h.o.m.os.e.xual persons includes 18 women. It would not be difficult to add others.

[141]

Sophie Hochstetter, in a study of Queen Christina in the Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen (vol. ix, 1908, p. 168 et seq.), regards her as bis.e.xual, while H. J. Schouten (Monatsschrift fur Kriminalanthropologie, 1912, Heft 6) concludes that she was h.o.m.os.e.xual, 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 fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. vii, 1905, p. 307 et seq.

[143]

Rosa Bonheur, the painter, is a specially conspicuous example of p.r.o.nounced 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 att.i.tude 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 fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901, pp. 85-9) brings together some pa.s.sages concerning h.o.m.os.e.xuality in women among various peoples.

[148]

Gandavo, quoted by Lomaeco, Archivio per l'Antropologia, 1889, fasc. 1.

[149]

Journal Anthropological Inst.i.tute, July-Dec., 1904, p. 342.

[150]

G. H. Lowie, "The a.s.siniboine," 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 fur Ethnologie, Heft 6, 1899, p. 669.

[152]

I. Bloch, Die Prost.i.tution, 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual manners of the women, the latter made his post so uncomfortable that he was compelled to resign. Salillas (Vida Penal en Espana) a.s.serts 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 prost.i.tutes it is found, according to Kocher, though among Arab women generally it is rare.

[156]

Monatsschrift fur Harnkrankheiten, Nov., 1905; in his Tribadie Berlins, he states that among 3000 prost.i.tutes at least ten per cent. were h.o.m.os.e.xual. See also Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prost.i.tution, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 159, 169; Martineau, Les Deformations v.u.l.v.aires et a.n.a.les; and Iwan Bloch, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, 1902, vol. i, p. 244.

[157]

Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 330.

[158]

Eulenburg, s.e.xuelle Neuropathie, p. 144.

[159]

See vol. vi of these Studies, "s.e.x in Relation to Society," ch. vii.

[160]

The prost.i.tute has sometimes been regarded as a special type, a.n.a.logous 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality among prost.i.tutes 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 a.s.sociation with the same s.e.x, such as is common in brothels; (d) maturity and old age, inverting the secondary s.e.xual characters and predisposing to s.e.xual inversion; (e) disgust of men produced by a prost.i.tute's profession, combined with the longing for love. For cases of h.o.m.os.e.xuality in American prost.i.tutes, see D. McMurtrie, Lancet-Clinic, Nov. 2, 1912.

[161]

Thus Casanova, who knew several nuns intimately, refers to h.o.m.os.e.xuality as a childish sin so common in convents that confessors imposed no penance for it (Memoires, ed. Garnier, vol. iv, p. 517). h.o.m.os.e.xuality 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 friends.h.i.+ps 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 s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual practices, but we see clearly here what may be termed the h.o.m.os.e.xual diathesis.

[167]

Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 137.

[168]

S. Weissenberg, Zeitschrift fur 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 s.e.xual organs normal; in the others they were more or less undeveloped.

[171]

h.o.m.os.e.xual persons generally, male and female, unlike the heteros.e.xual, are apt to feel more modesty with persons of the same s.e.x than with those of the opposite s.e.x. See, e.g., Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 76.