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
Considering the present state of the law in most countries to be
inequitable toward a respectable minority of citizens, Ulrichs proposes
that Urnings should be placed upon the same footing as other men. That
is to say, sexual relations between males and males should not be
treated as criminal, unless they be attended with violence (as in the
case of rape), or be carried on in such a way as to offend the public
sense of decency (in places of general resort or on the open street), or
thirdly be entertained between an adult and a boy under age (the
protected age to be decided as in the case of girls). What he demands is
that when an adult male, freely and of his own consent, complies with
the proposals of an adult person of his own sex, and their intercourse
takes place with due regard for public decency, neither party shall be
liable to prosecution and punishment at law. In fact he would be
satisfied with the same conditions as those prevalent in France, and
since June, 1889, in Italy.
If so much were conceded by the majority of normal people to the
abnormal minority, continues Ulrichs, an immense amount of misery and
furtive vice would be at once abolished. And it is difficult to conceive
what evil results would follow. A defender of the present laws of
England, Prussia, &c., might indeed reply: "This is opening a free way
to the seduction and corruption of young men." But young men are surely
at least as capable of defending themselves against seduction and
corruption as young women are. Nay, they are far more able, not merely
because they are stronger, but because they are not usually weakened by
an overpowering sexual instinct on which the seducer plays. Yet the
seduction and corruption of young women is tolerated, in spite of the
attendant consequences of illegitimate childbirth, and all which that
involves. This toleration of the seduction of women by men springs from
the assumption that only the normal sexual appetite is natural. The
seduction of a man by a male passes for criminal, because the inverted
sexual instinct is regarded as unnatural, depraved, and wilfully
perverse. On the hypothesis that individuals subject to perverted
instincts can suppress them at pleasure or convert them into normal
appetite, it is argued that they must be punished. But when the real
facts come to be studied, it will be found: first, that these instincts
are inborn in Urnings, and are therefore in their case natural;
secondly, that the suppression of them is tantamount to life-long
abstinence under the constant torture of sexual solicitation; thirdly,
that the conversion of them into normal channels is in a large
percentage of cases totally impossible, in nearly all where it has been
attempted is only partially successful, and where marriage ensues has
generally ended in misery for both parties. Ulrichs, it will be noticed,
does not distinguish between Urnings, in whom the inversion is admitted
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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