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)
Krafft-Ebing himself, in the earlier editions of _Psychopathia
Sexualis_, gave little special attention to inversion in women,
although he published a few cases. Moll, however, included a
valuable chapter on the subject in his _Konträre
Sexualempfindung_, narrating numerous cases, and inversion in
women also received special attention in the present Study.
Hirschfeld, however, in his _Homosexualität_ (1914) is the first
authority who has been able to deal with feminine homosexuality
as completely co-ordinate with masculine homosexuality. The two
manifestations, masculine and feminine, are placed on the same
basis and treated together throughout the work.
It is, no doubt, not difficult to account for this retardation in the
investigation of sexual inversion in women. Notwithstanding the severity
with which homosexuality in women has been visited in a few cases, for the
most part men seem to have been indifferent toward it; when it has been
made a crime or a cause for divorce in men, it has usually been considered
as no offense at all in women.[145] Another reason is that it is less
easy to detect in women; we are accustomed to a much greater familiarity
and intimacy between women than between men, and we are less apt to
suspect the existence of any abnormal passion. And, allied with this
cause, we have also to bear in mind the extreme ignorance and the extreme
reticence of women regarding any abnormal or even normal manifestation of
their sexual life. A woman may feel a high degree of sexual attraction for
another woman without realizing that her affection is sexual, and when she
does realize this, she is nearly always very unwilling to reveal the
nature of her intimate experience, even with the adoption of precautions,
and although the fact may be present to her that, by helping to reveal the
nature of her abnormality, she may be helping to lighten the burden of it
on other women. Among the numerous confessions voluntarily sent to
Krafft-Ebing there is not one by a woman. There is, again, the further
reason that well-marked and fully developed cases of inversion are
probably rarer in women, though a slighter degree may be more common; in
harmony with the greater affectability of the feminine organism to slight
stimuli, and its lesser liability to serious variation.[146]
The same aberrations that are found among men are, however, everywhere
found among women. Feminine inversion has sometimes been regarded as a
vice of modern refined civilization. Yet it was familiar to the
Anglo-Saxons, and Theodore's Penitential in the seventh century assigned a
penance of three years (considerably less than that assigned to men, or
for bestiality) to "a woman fornicating with a woman." Among the women of
savages in all parts of the world homosexuality is found, though it is
less frequently recorded than among men.[147]
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