Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual InversionEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
"Personally, barring this love for males, I am in all ways
masculine, given to outdoor sports, and to smoking and drinking
moderately. In appearance I am but a boy of 18. My face and
figure are generally considered beautiful: I am clean-shaved,
with black, curling hair, red cheeks and brown eyes; features
delicate and regular; body, of medium height, everywhere
practically hairless. By years of training I have attained alike
great strength and classic proportions, the muscular contours
smoothly rounded with adipose tissue. My hands and feet are
small. My penis, though perfectly shaped, is rather
enormous--erect, ten and a half inches in length, seven and a
quarter inches in circumference.
"Some abetment of my apostasy from orthodox methods was, no
doubt, this hypertrophy of the penis, which already in my
twentieth year had acquired its present redundance, rendering
coitus impracticable with most women I essayed and painful where
insertion was effected. Since falling heir to inversion, a unique
recurrence of normal desire, six years ago, persuaded me to
attempt coitus with eleven or twelve prostitutes, and, strangely
enough, with much of the old-time salacity and full erection,
but, as it chanced, always with too great disparity of parts for
success."
A certain preciosity in the manner of this communication may be
put down partly to the nature of the literary avocations with
which the writer is by preference occupied, and partly, no doubt
more fundamentally, to the special character of his predominantly
esthetic temperament and attraction to the exotic. An attraction
for exotic experiences will not, however, suffice to account for
the rather late development of homosexual tendencies, a late
development which may be held to place this case in the retarded
group of inverts. H.C. has himself pointed out to me that his
aversion to women, beginning to appear in the eighteenth year,
was already well pronounced before he had ever heard definitely
of specific homosexual acts, and fully a year before he
experienced the slightest sexual interest in men or boys.
Moreover, while it is true that the actual tendency to homosexual
attraction only appeared after he had read Krafft-Ebing and come
in contact with inverts, such influences would not suffice to
change the sexual nature of a normally constituted man.
It may be added that H.C. is not attracted to normal males. As
regards his moral attitude he remarks: "I have no scruples in the
indulgence of my passion. I perceive the moral objections
advanced, but how speculative they are, and constructive; while,
immediately, inversion is the source of so much good." He looks
upon the whole sexual question as largely a matter of taste.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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