The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women — John Shaqi
The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and WomenCarpenter, Edward
General
The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
Carpenter, Edward
Homosexuality; Sex
“Successful love,” says Moll (p. 125) “exercises a helpful influence on
the Urning. His mental and bodily condition improves, and capacity of
work increases--just as it happens in the case of a normal youth with
_his_ love.” And further on (p. 173) in a letter from a man of this kind
occur these words:--“The passion is I suppose so powerful, just because
one looks for everything in the loved man--Love, Friendship, Ideal, and
Sense-satisfaction.… As it is at present I suffer the agonies of a deep
unresponded passion, which wake me like a nightmare from sleep. And I am
conscious of physical pain in the region of the heart.” In such cases the
love, in some degree physically expressed, of another person of the same
sex, is allowed to be as much a necessity and a condition of healthy life
and activity, as in more ordinary cases is the love of a person of the
opposite sex.
If then the physical element which is sometimes present in the love of
which we are speaking is a difficulty and a stumbling-block, it must
be allowed that it is a difficulty that Nature confronts us with, and
which cannot be disposed of by mere anathema and execration. The only
theory--from K. H. Ulrichs to Havelock Ellis--which has at all held its
ground in this matter, is that in congenital cases of sex-inversion
there is a mixture of male and female elements in the same person; so
that for instance in the same embryo the emotional and nervous regions
may develop along feminine lines while the outer body and functions
may determine themselves as distinctly masculine, or _vice versa_.
Such cross-development may take place obviously in a great variety of
ways, and thus possibly explain the remarkable varieties of the Uranian
temperament; but in all such cases, strange as may be the problems thus
arising, these problems are of Nature’s own producing and can hardly
be laid to the door of the individual who has literally to bear their
cross. For such individuals expressions of feeling become natural, which
to others seem out of place and uncalled for; and not only natural,
but needful and inevitable. To deny to such people _all_ expression of
their emotion, is probably in the end to cause it to burst forth with
the greater violence; and it may be suggested that our British code of
manners, by forbidding the lighter marks of affection between youths and
men, acts just contrary to its own purpose, and drives intimacies down
into less open and unexceptionable channels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account