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)
During all this period, M.O. had now one girl sweetheart and now
another. This was conventional among the children, and was
fostered by the banter of older persons. M.O.'s sexual curiosity
was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex. At this
time, however, his homosexual interests appeared. With a boy two
or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where
they looked at each other's organs and handled them. He and
another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off
all their clothes, the better to examine each other. The other
boy then offered to kiss M.O.'s fundament, and did so. It caused
a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first
sexual shock that he can remember experiencing. He refused to
reciprocate, however, when asked.
Toward the end of this period there was a new and increasing
development of another sort, not recognized then as at all sexual
in character. He began to feel toward certain boys in a way very
different and much keener than he had done thus far toward girls,
although at the time he made no comparisons. For instance there
was a boy whom he considered very pretty. They visited each other
often and spent long times playing together. In school they
looked and looked at each other until delicious, uncontrollable
giggling spells came on. Sexual matters were never discussed or
thought of. These experiences were, in their way, very
sentimental and ideal. M.O. is sure that with himself the main
consideration was always the other boy's beauty. He began to
recall with great fondness a certain much older and very handsome
youth who had lived near him in the first neighborhood, and had
at the time shown him, various little friendly attentions. He
seldom saw him now, and hardly sought to do so, yet was immensely
pleased by a casual word or look from him in the schoolyard, and
much interested when other people spoke of him.
A cousin about two years younger than M.O. often visited him and
slept with him. They were very fond of each other, and handled
each other's organs.
When M.O. was about 11 years of age the family removed to a
distant neighborhood, where there were almost no children of his
own age, and where any association with those in the one just
left was practically impossible. From this time until the changes
of puberty were well under way his sexual life contrasted
strongly, in its solitude, with the former promiscuity. He
remembers liking to wrestle with two or three schoolboys and to
get their heads between his legs. He thinks they were not aware
of his sexual impulses. He flirted, consciously flirted, with
certain school-girls, but never even suggested anything sexual to
them. He read a few family medical books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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