A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and JuristsSymonds, John Addington
Philosophy
A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists
Symonds, John Addington
Homosexuality
The second of these sub-species embraces the individuals with whom the
reader of Carlier is familiar, and whom Ulrichs calls Weiblinge. In
their boyhood they exhibited a marked disinclination for the games of
their school-fellows, and preferred to consort with girls. They helped
their mothers in the household, learned to sew and knit, caught at every
opportunity of dressing up in female clothes. Later on, they began to
call themselves by names of women, avoided the society of normal
comrades, hated sport and physical exercise, were averse to smoking and
drinking, could not whistle. Whether they refrained from swearing is not
recorded. Many of them developed a taste for music, and prided
themselves upon their culture. Eventually, when they became unclassed,
they occupied themselves with toilette, scandal, tea, and talk about
their lovers--dressed as far as possible in female clothes, painted,
perfumed and curled their hair--addressed each other in the feminine
gender, adopted pseudonyms of Countess or of Princess, and lived the
life of women of a dubious demi-monde.[35]
Yet they remained in their physical configuration males. Unlike the
preceding sub-species, they did not feel as men feel towards their
sweethearts, but on the contrary like women. They had no impulse toward
active pæderasty, no inclination for blooming adolescents. What they
wanted was a robust adult; and to him they submitted themselves with
self-abandonment. Like all Urnings, they shrank from the act of coition
for the most part, and preferred embracements which produced a brief
and pleasurable orgasm. But some developed a peculiar liking for the
passive act of sodomy or the anomalous act of fellatio.
In this characterisation I have overpassed the limits of the fifteen
cases presented by Krafft-Ebing. In order to constitute the type, I have
drawn upon one reliable, because sympathetic, source in Ulrichs, and on
another reliable, because antipathetic, source in Carlier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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