Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German EditionWeininger, Otto
Philosophy
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Weininger, Otto
Character; Sex; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics
The failure is to be expected from our standpoint. The hypnotiser
suggests to the subject the image of a “typical” woman, ignorant of the
innate differences in the subject and unaware that such a type is
naturally repulsive to him. And as the normal typical woman is not his
complement, it is fruitless of the doctor to advise the services of any
casual Venus, however attractive, to complete the cure of a man who has
long shunned normal intercourse. If our formula were used to discover
the complement of the male invert, it would point to the most man-like
woman, the Lesbian or Sapphist type. Probably such is the only type of
woman who would attract the sexual invert or please him. If a cure for
sexual inversion must be sought because it cannot be left to its own
extinction, then this theory offers the following solution. Sexual
inverts must be brought to sexual inverts, from homo-sexualists to
Sapphists, each in their grades. Knowledge of such a solution should
lead to repeal of the ridiculous laws of England, Germany and Austria
directed against homo-sexuality, so far at least as to make the
punishments the lightest possible. In the second part of this book it
will be made clear why both the active and the passive parts in male
homo-sexuality appear disgraceful, although the desire is greater than
in the case of the normal relation of a man and woman. In the abstract
there is no ethical difference between the two.
In spite of all the present-day clamour about the existence of different
rights for different individualities, there is only one law that governs
mankind, just as there is only one logic and not several logics. It is
in opposition to that law, as well as to the theory of punishment
according to which the legal offence, not the moral offence, is
punished, that we forbid the homo-sexualist to carry on his practices
whilst we allow the hetero-sexualist full play, so long as both avoid
open scandal. Speaking from the standpoint of a purer state of humanity
and of a criminal law untainted by the pedagogic idea of punishment as a
deterrent, the only logical and rational method of treatment for sexual
inverts would be to allow them to seek and obtain what they require
where they can, that is to say, amongst other inverts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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