Chapter XVII
In my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” published in the years 1902 and 1903, I for the first time attempted to deal systematically, from the standpoint of the =anthropologist= and =ethnologist=, with the great province of the so-called “psychopathia sexualis,” the field of sexual aberrations, degenerations, anomalies, perversities, and perversions. I started from the point of view that, in order to obtain new ideas regarding the nature of psychopathia sexualis, and in order to revise the old ideas in the light of recent knowledge, we must keep before our eyes, not one-sidedly “=the sick man=,” but comprehensively “=man as man=,” both as =civilized man= and as =savage man=.
Previously the doctrine of psychopathia sexualis had been dominated exclusively by =clinical, purely medical conceptions=. Observations had been limited to morbid phenomena, occurring in individuals with an abnormal vita sexualis. Thus there had arisen a general view of the =nature= of sexual anomalies, by which these anomalies were allotted almost entirely to the province of the physician, and were described as =stigmata of degeneration=. H. J. Löwenstein,[456] Häussler,[457] and Kaan,[458] in the third and fifth decades of the nineteenth century, were the first to adopt this medical point of view of sexual aberrations; and finally, in the last quarter of the same century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing[459] converted modern sexual pathology into a comprehensive scientific system,[460] which stands and falls with the idea of =degeneration=.
Von Krafft-Ebing is, and remains, the true founder of modern sexual pathology. Without wishing in the slightest degree to underestimate the value of the clinical researches he carried out in this province of research, characterized by precision and profound scientific zeal--without undervaluing for a moment these extraordinary services--I am compelled to point out that his purely medical view of sexual aberrations is one-sided, and to insist that it must be amplified and rectified by anthropological and ethnological researches.
Let us leave the hospital and the medical consulting-room; let us make a journey round the world; let us observe the sexual activity of the genus homo in its manifold phenomena, not as physicians, but as ordinary observers; let us compare the sexuality of the civilized human being with that of the savage: then we shall recognize the vast extension of our visual field for the comprehension of psychopathia sexualis; we shall see how the civilized and temporary phenomenon becomes absorbed into the general human phenomenon, presenting amid all local variations =the same fundamental lineaments=. Psychopathia sexualis exists =everywhere= and =at all times=. Culture, civilization, and diseases play only the parts of favouring, modifying, intensifying factors.
I do not go so far as Freud, who, on account of the now generally recognized wide diffusion of perverse sexual tendencies, is compelled to adopt the view “that the rudiments of perversions are the =primeval= general rudiments of the human sexual impulse, out of which the normal sexual mode of behaviour is developed in the course of evolution, in consequence of organic changes and psychical inhibitions”;[461] but I do maintain that sexual perversities and perversions appertain to the human race as such, and independently of civilization. I am convinced that they are =supplementary= to normal sexual manifestations, and that their diffusion among civilized and savage peoples =extends far more widely than the circle of true degenerative phenomena=.
The sexual impulse, as a purely physical function, is neither an object of comparison nor a distinctive characteristic between primitive and civilized humanity. The “elementary ideas” of humanity return everywhere again in the elementary manifestations of sexual aberrations.
From the investigations collected and published in the above-mentioned work I have been led to the firm conviction, which I must now put forward as a =scientific truth= based upon the teaching of anthropology, folk-lore, and the history of civilization, that at the present day, in our time so widely decried as “nervous,” “degenerate,” and “overcivilized,” not only are there no more sexually “perverse” persons than there were in former days--let us think only of the middle ages, with their frightful excesses, appearing in epidemic diffusion--but, further, that the greater part of the perversions of the present day are not to be regarded as “degenerations” at all; and, finally, that the factors which are to weaken and undermine the vital forces of a nation must be something other than purely sexual factors. For sexual aberrations alone have, taken as a whole, but a trifling influence in effecting the decadence of a nation. They first gain such an influence in combination with causes, which we cannot now discuss, of an economic and political nature.
As old as humanity is the fable of the good old times, of the golden youth of the human race, of the glorious past, to which an always corrupt, physically and morally rotten =present= is supposed to have succeeded.[462] The ancients held this view; it recurred at the time of the renascence; and since the time of Rousseau’s unfortunate condemnation of all civilization, it has been, in the hands of all zealots, moral fanatics, backsliders, and guardians of conventional morality, a greatly prized weapon, and one, also, of great power when used to influence the ignorant and easily misled. Anthropology, the history of primitive man, and the history of civilization in general, have utterly destroyed this beautiful dream of the good old times and of the =better= days of the past. Nothing has been left but the ever =more beautiful= present!
The critical and far-sighted Lessing opposed Rousseau’s hypothesis of corruption by means of “civilization.” It was true, he said, that Athens, standing so high in civilization, and at the same time so corrupt, passed away; but the =virtuous= Sparta, did not this also pass away? Rousseau himself had to admit that the destruction of civilization would be of no use, that the world would then relapse into barbarism, and that the corruption would =none the less= persist. The philologist Muff,[463] discussing this question, added that if civilization had not come, vice would still have been dominant, and that civilization, involving as it does =intellectual= progress, provides also the means for counteracting vice.
Physicians and natural philosophers have long protested against the theory of the corrupt and degenerate “present.” For instance, a countryman of Rousseau’s, Dr. Delvincourt,[464] exclaimed:
“How false is the assumption of the fanatics and the pious who attribute to the moral corruption of our century the majority of diseases, and, above all, venereal diseases; who maintain that the race is degenerating; and who thunder an anathema against modern young men, whom they would gladly muzzle as we muzzle an animal.”
Must we, then, he asks, at a moment when civilization is marching forward with giant strides, have our ears wearied with sophisms which can no longer deceive even the ignorant masses? And he shows how =since primeval times, everywhere=, all over the earth, vice has been diffused. He rightly points to the innumerable monuments de turpitude of all ages.
About the same time (be it noted, more than sixty years ago) in Germany the celebrated natural philosopher Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, in an academic speech with the distinctive title “=The Fear that Progressive Intellectual Development will Lead to Physical National Degeneration: A Demonstration that this Fear is entirely devoid of Scientific and Medical Foundation=” (Berlin, 1842), opposed the belief in the unwholesome influence of civilization upon the popular strength and popular morals. Of special interest to us are his remarks upon the alleged deleterious influence of civilization upon sexuality. He says (p. 8):
“The occurrence of puberty in warm climates at a comparatively early age (from ten to fifteen years), in cold climates somewhat later (from fourteen to eighteen years), is a natural measure of human intelligence and power; and if our sexually mature youths at school, at the time at which their development has naturally progressed to this point, experience also sexual stimulation, this is entirely according to the nature of things, and only imposes upon those in charge of schools, and upon parents, the special duty of watchfulness in these respects. Even if secret vice becomes general anywhere among young fellows in a manner open to regret, still, this does not mean that our schools are the cause of physical weakness, of overstimulation, and of deterioration of the people and of the epoch; it merely indicates a local deficiency in energetic purposive education, and a lack of the necessary watchfulness over the youths in the particular institution in which the trouble has occurred, or that the family life of the children thus affected is less strictly moral than we could wish; and the evil is only to be overcome by counteracting its especial causes. In many cases we may compare outbreaks of premature sexuality with epidemics of disease, which also find entrance through lack of sufficient care. Just the same is it in respect of the great mass of adults who, by exhortation and example on the part of those whose business it is to give them counsel, are in most cases so easily led in the right direction, but who, in the absence of such judicious treatment, often give way to the most unbridled licentiousness. The student of popular history will easily find numerous instances of cause and effect, now of the former and now of the latter kind.”
Ehrenberg comes to the conclusion, most encouraging to ourselves and to our time, and one which may be unhesitatingly accepted, that the entire history of humanity, in so far as that history is open to us, leads us to believe, not that the progress of civilization[465] has given rise to infirmity or to nervous overstimulation of the people, but, on the contrary, that as the centuries pass, =our bodies are as powerfully developed as formerly=, and that there is an ever-happier development of all the nobler human activities, such as can only result from an improvement in our mental faculties.
At the fifty-ninth Congress of German Natural Philosophers and Physicians, held at Berlin in the year 1886, the celebrated physicist Werner von Siemens, discussing the same problem in a formal speech, proved the nullity of the hypothesis of the evil influence of civilization upon the physical and moral nature of humanity, and expressed himself as fully convinced that
“our activity in research and discovery conducts humanity to higher stages of civilization, ennobles humanity, and makes ideal aims more easily accessible; that the coming scientific age will diminish poverty and illness, will increase the enjoyment of life, and will make humanity better, happier, and more contented with its lot.”
“Has humanity degenerated?” asks a celebrated specialist,[466] who, owing to the nature of his speciality, has been able to obtain exhaustive information regarding what is often believed to be a symptom of degeneration--namely, falling out of the hair and baldness--and he answers:
“=Certainly not!= In the process of civilization, which has lasted for many thousands of years, our organization has not experienced any serious convulsion of its fundamental nature. Superficially only have the battles we have had to fight made any mark upon us.”
To a frightful extent in earlier times the great infective epidemic diseases decimated civilized humanity, to an extent which is hardly realized at the present day, and those of more powerful constitution were undoubtedly carried off quite as much as those endowed with weaker powers of resistance. Bubonic plague, small-pox, leprosy, the sweating sickness, scarlatina, cholera, and syphilis (which at its commencement was a far more severe disease than it is at the present day), have often annihilated the blossoms of youth; and yet mankind as a whole has not suffered therefrom. Formerly there were much more violent and obstinate nervous troubles than our modern “nervousness,” which, to a large extent, represents merely a =phenomenon of adaptation=, not a disease in the proper sense of the term. St. Vitus’s dance, the dancing mania, and similar psycho-nervous epidemics, disturbed medieval humanity, without, however, giving rise to any permanent injury, and without causing progressive degeneration. And the most frightful sexual excesses can do no harm to the strength of the nation.
With regard to this point, the reputed connexion between sexual excesses and the political downfall of a nation, Carl Bleibtreu[467] rightly remarks:
“Ancient Rome produced its greatest men during a period of moral degeneration. The finest blossoms of Hellenic civilization coincided with a period of fundamental immorality. We might easily urge that after Pericles, Phidias, Aristophanes, Euripides, Alcibiades, and Socrates, the decay of the Greek race began, notwithstanding the fact that much later in Greek history the vital force of the nation was proved by the appearance of men of the first rank, such as Alexander, Aristotle, and Demosthenes. But this rejoinder does not help us much, for in the earliest days of Greek history, in the legal codes of Solon and Lycurgus, we find the most notable and clear indications that precisely in respect of sexual relationship, and more especially in regard to marriage and the procreation of children, the morals of this fresh and youthful race were disordered to the greatest possible extent.
“Just the same do we find it at the time of the Italian renascence and at the time of the Hohenstaufen dynasty--a complete confusion of sexual relationships. The eighteenth century, also, notwithstanding all the justified jeremiads of Rousseau regarding the widespread unnaturalness of the time, and notwithstanding all the sorrows of the young Werther, was distinguished by the production of an incredible abundance of men of genius; and in contemporary France, the country which was most severely affected by this moral decay, there flourished the generation to which such men as Mirabeau and Napoleon belonged--men whose unparalleled vitality influences us to this moment.”
Finally, I must refer to two leading authors of recent years, Eli Metchnikoff and Georg Hirth, whose writings exhibit a remarkable similarity in respect of general philosophical foundation. Both have energetically opposed the unfounded fantasies of degeneration (there exists also a =justified= campaign against the continuously effective causes of degeneration in the form of alcohol, syphilis, etc.), and both have advocated a belief in life and in the life-force.
In his work “The Nature of Man” (English translation by Chalmers Mitchell; Heinemann, 1903), Metchnikoff advances an “optimistic philosophy,” in opposition to the pessimistic degenerative theory of our time, of which latter P. J. Möbius may be regarded as the chief advocate, and he proves how the imperfections and “disharmonies” of the human organism may give place to a further development and perfectibility of human nature, and this =precisely in connexion with culture and civilization. It is now that humanity first begins really to live.=[468] Mankind has not degenerated in consequence of civilization, but has, on the contrary, by means of civilization, first attained the possibility of establishing “physiological old age” and “physiological death.” Our device is not =backwards=, but =forwards=! The pessimists cry out: “Existence has no meaning! For what purpose do we live, and for what purpose do we die?” This dreadful “=for what purpose=” with which Friedrich von Hellwald concludes his history of civilization, disturbs day by day emotional minds. Metchnikoff proves that this problem is connected with the existence of the disharmonies of human nature. But evolution continues to transform these disharmonies into harmonies (“orthobiosis”). Thus the aim of human existence lies in “the completion of the entire physiological cycle of life with a normal old age, so that, with the cessation of the instinct to live, and with the appearance of the instinct for natural death, the cycle comes to an end.” This is, to a certain extent, the =scientific= formulation of the “superman” of Nietzsche, who based upon quite similar considerations his opposition to the hypothesis of degeneration, and who, out of the disharmonies, imperfections, and pains of life, also created the conviction of a progressive evolution, and thus, like Metchnikoff, thoroughly =affirmed= life. Metchnikoff’s ideal human being of the future is realizable, but only by means of the principles of science and intelligent culture.
Similar views to those of Metchnikoff are advanced by Georg Hirth. He, above all, has introduced into science the most felicitous conception of “=hereditary enfranchisement=.”[469] Thus to the pessimistic degeneration theories and the psychical paralysis evoked by the idea of “hereditary taint” (we now hear the expression from every mouth), Hirth opposes a =word of power=, a word expressing “an energetic opposing stream of tendency.” Thus the incontestable fact finds simple expression, that
“The requirements of all individuals through millions of generations =constitute an inalienable, progressively influential common possession of the whole of humanity=, an =impulsive force= based upon natural law, which marches victoriously forward over the sins and failures of individuals.... That is to say, that in our entire organism, so long as it continues to =live=, in addition to the disturbing influences which we have inherited or have acquired by our own faults, there exists also a mass of =old= and =new= constructive influences, which work towards the =restitution of the former condition=.... =Enfranchisement= by means of primevally old, healthy, and strong reproductive cells is stronger than the quite recent =tainting= by means of weakly and diseased germs. If it were not so, the entire human race would long since have passed away, for there can hardly exist a single family tree at the foot of which there are not somewhere worms gnawing.”
I cannot here examine more closely the extremely interesting foundation of this view, which rightly places in the foreground the capacity for =self-regeneration=, for the removal of morbid vital stimuli, and their replacement by new and healthy vital stimuli, and which notably limits the extension of hereditary “tainting.” The conclusion which Hirth draws from this view is identical with that of Metchnikoff--namely, =that our life remains capable of upward progress=, a view which Hirth everywhere happily employs in his battle “with the forces of obscurity and degeneration.”
The theory of degeneration finds a thorough scientific refutation also in the admirable work by Dr. William Hirsch, “Genius and Degeneration: a Psychological Study” (Berlin and Leipzig, 1904). At the end of the book (p. 340) the writer says:
“In view of the investigations I have made, we are necessarily led to the conclusion that the authors mentioned have =by no means= adduced proof of a general degeneration of the civilized nations. Humanity need not be alarmed with regard to the alleged ‘black plague of degeneration,’ and the world need be as little concerned by these fables of the ‘twilight of the nations’ as by Herr Falb’s prophecies of the approaching destruction of our planet.”
It cannot be denied that the wide diffusion of the deleterious means of sensual gratification (alcohol, tobacco, etc.), the increase in the number of large towns, and the rapid growth in their population, by means of which prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases are especially favoured, constitute important etiological factors for the degeneration of the race. Still, the wide diffusion of public hygiene, which is more and more brought under the notice of the individual, affords here an effective counterpoise. “Enfranchisement” in Hirth’s sense is here clearly manifested.
After we have seen that the “degeneration” of our time, to the medical idea of which we shall return to speak more exactly in the next chapter, is not greater now than it was in earlier epochs, and that sexual anomalies have always existed, let us return to consider this point, to the anthropological view of psychopathia sexualis.
In my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis” I have collected the general human phenomena of the sexual impulse in primitive and civilized states--that is, the everywhere recurring fundamental lineaments and phenomena of the vita sexualis peculiar to the genus homo as such.
As the principal result of this inquiry, the following propositions appear to me to be established:
=Degeneration cannot be employed, as von Krafft-Ebing has employed it in his “Psychopathia Sexualis,” as a heuristic principle in the investigation, recognition, and judgment of sexual aberrations and perversions.=
At the most, degeneration is no more than a =favouring= factor of the diffusion of sexual abnormalities, an influence which =increases the frequency= of their appearance.
=On the contrary, the ultimate cause of all sexual perversions, aberrations, abnormalities, and irrationalities, is the need for variety in sexual relationships peculiar to the genus homo, which is to be regarded as a physiological phenomenon, and the increase of which to the degree of a sexual irritable hunger is competent to produce the most severe sexual perversions.=
In contrast with this, “degeneration” or diseases play only a subordinate part, and can be invoked for the explanation of only a small number of sexual aberrations--at most for those which come to the notice of physicians on account of pathological conditions or in foro. In fact, the =majority= of cases of sexual perversions which come the way of the physicians in clinical or forensic relationships =are= pathological, but these constitute only a =minority of all cases=. The large majority of cases do =not= come within the scope of degeneration.[470]
Freud, in his “Three Essays on the Sexual Theory,” recognizes the justice of my view, and on p. 80 he writes:
“Physicians who have first studied perversions in well-marked examples and peculiar conditions are naturally inclined to regard them as signs of disease or as stigmata of degeneration, just as in the case of sexual inversion. Daily experience has shown that the majority of these transgressions--at any rate, the less marked of them--constitute a seldom lacking constituent of the sexual life of healthy persons. In favourable conditions =the normal individual may exhibit such a perversion for a considerable length of time in the place of his normal sexual activity; or the perversion may take its place beside the normal sexual activity. Probably there is no healthy person in whom there does not exist, at some time or other, some kind of supplement to his normal sexual activity, to which we should be justified in giving the name of ‘perversity.’=”[471]
A =second= important factor in the genesis of sexual anomalies is the =ease with which the sexual impulse is affected by external influences, the associative inclusion of manifold external stimuli in sexual perception itself=, the “=synæsthetic stimuli=,” as I myself have called them, in the amatory life of mankind. In this way gradually all the relations of art, religion, fashion, etc., to sexuality have developed, and they offer, in conjunction with the sensory impressions and the psychical and physical imaginative associations which accompany the sexual act, an incredibly rich material for the manifold realizations of the sexual need for variation.
The need for variety in sexual relationships, in conjunction with the sexual “demand for stimulation” (Hoche),[472] plays a great part, especially in the occurrence of sexual perversions in =adult= persons and at a more advanced age of life. The effect of =external influences= is most clearly noticeable in =childhood=, when it is experienced most deeply and in a most enduring manner, and when it can become permanently associated with sexual perception (Binet and von Schrenck-Notzing).
Alexander von Humboldt, in his “Cosmos” (vol. ii., Introduction), drew attention to the well-known experience that “=sensual impressions and apparently chance occurrences are, in the case of youthful emotional individuals, often capable of determining the entire course of a human life=.” Freud draws attention to the psychological fact that impressions of childhood, which have apparently been forgotten, may, notwithstanding, have left the most profound marks upon our psychical life, and may have determined our entire subsequent development. The impressions of childhood are often incorporated fate. For this reason, for example, the children of criminals become criminals themselves, not because they are “born” criminals, but because, as =children=, they grow up in the atmosphere of crime, and the impressions they here receive become firmly and deeply rooted in their natures. Hence the campaign against crime must in the first place take into consideration the =education of the children of criminals=!
From the need for variety in sexual relationships, and from the effect of external influences, we deduce the possibility and the actual frequency of the =acquirement= and the =artificial production= of sexual perversions and perversities; and these, in proportion to the =intensity= of the sexual impulse (=very variable= in strength in different individuals, according to the ease with which it is excited), will appear now earlier, now later, will be now transient and now enduring.
The =third= important etiological factor in the origination of sexual perversions is the =frequent repetition= of the =same= sexual aberration. There can be no doubt whatever that the normal human being can become =accustomed= to the most diverse sexual aberrations, so that these become perversions, which appear in =healthy= human beings just as they do in the diseased.
=Fourthly=, =suggestion= and =imitation= play an extremely important rôle in the vita sexualis alike of primitive and of civilized nations, in accordance with which certain aberrations in the sexual sphere become diffused with great rapidity, and make their appearance as customs, fashions, and psychical epidemics. Those who everywhere trace perversities from morbid rudiments underestimate the powerful influence which =example= and =seduction= exercise in the human sexual life. This is especially noticeable to-day in those sexual perversions which have become =national customs=. The most celebrated example is that of =Hellenic pæderasty=, reputedly introduced from Crete, but probably in the first place originated by a few =genuinely= homosexual individuals, who in their own interest transmitted artificially by suggestion their peculiar tendencies to a few heterosexual individuals, until at last the love of boys became a national custom which every heterosexual man adopted. The momentous part which modern =prostitution=, and more especially =brothels=, plays in the suggestion of perversions has already been mentioned. It is a matter to which we shall frequently have occasion to return. Schrank alludes (“Prostitution in Vienna,” vol. i., p. 285) to a prostitute who enjoyed a “European reputation” as an artist in sexual perversities of every kind, and who enjoyed the nickname of “the Ever-Virgin,” because she allowed men every possible kind of enjoyment except that of regular normal intercourse (which she avoided for fear of becoming impregnated).
=Fifthly=, the =difference= between man and woman in the essence, the kind, and the intensity, of sexual perception (sexual activity in man, sexual passivity in woman) constitutes a rich source of sexual aberrations, most of which belong to the provinces of masochism and sadism.
=Sixthly=, and lastly, in otherwise =healthy individuals there occur at a very early age=, and probably in consequence of =congenital= conditions, changes in the direction and the aim of sexual perception, variations from the type of differentiated heterosexual love. =Genuine homosexuality= is the principal phenomenon to be considered under this head. It occurs in perfectly =healthy= individuals quite independently of degeneration and of civilization; and it is diffused throughout the whole world.
From all these facts may be deduced the =untenability= of a purely =clinical and pathological= conception of sexual aberrations and perversions. We must now accept the point of view that, although numerous morbid degenerate and psychopathic individuals exhibit sexual anomalies, yet these =identical= anomalies and aberrations are extraordinarily common in =healthy= persons.
Ethnological research, for more exact details of which I may refer to my own work already mentioned, and to the pioneer works of Ploss-Bartels,[473] Mantegazza,[474] Friedrich S. Krauss,[475] and Havelock Ellis,[476] has adduced stringent proof that sexual aberrations and perversions are =ubiquitous=, diffused throughout the entire world, just as much among primitive races as among civilized nations, that on the psycho-physical side they are “elementary ideas” in Bastian’s sense, that they recur everywhere in a qualitatively identical manner as a result of similar conditions. As it is with prostitution, so it is also with sexual perversions--a tendency to sexual aberration is deeply rooted in human nature. It is a primitive, purely anthropological phenomenon, which is not strengthened by civilization, but, on the contrary, is mitigated thereby. Charles Darwin rightly points out that the =hatred= of sexual immorality and of sexual aberrations is a “modern virtue,” appertaining exclusively to “civilized life,” and entirely foreign to the nature of primitive man. Primitive man revelled in wild indecency (as Wilhelm Roscher also proves), in sexual perversions, and libertinism.[477] The sexual aberrations of civilized mankind are for the most part =imitations= of the examples given by primitive peoples.
Thus, the well-known “stimulating rings” of European rubber manufacturers (cf. Weissenberg, in the “Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1893, p. 135) correspond to the “stimulating stones” of the Battaks (Staudinger, op. cit., 1891, p. 351), to the “penis stones” of the savage Orang Sinnoi in Malacca (Vaughan Stevens in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, pp. 181, 182), the “ampallang” of the Sunda Islands (see Miklucho-Maclay in the “Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1876, pp. 22-28). The “renifleurs” and “gamahucheurs” of the Parisian brothels and houses of accommodation find their typical analogues in the urine fetichists and cunnilingi of the Island of Ponape, in the Carolines (cf. Ploss-Bartels), who are, in truth, far removed from the fin-de-siècle life. And what a perverse imagination have the women of this same island! According to Otto Finsch (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1880, p. 316), the men of this island have all only =one= testicle, because in boys at the age of seven or eight years the left testicle is removed by a piece of sharpened bamboo. This is said to make the men more desirable =to the women=! Among the Masai, for similar reasons, circumcision is effected in such a manner that a portion of the prepuce is left behind to form a kind of firm button of skin. “This mode of circumcision is greatly prized by the women. Among the black races, indeed, everything turns round the question of sensual enjoyment” (“Medical Notes from Central Africa,” by M. C., published in the Deutsche Medizinische Presse, 1902, No. 14, p. 116). And how can our roués compete with the Tauni islanders of the South Seas? These select certain women, who are not allowed to marry, but are reserved as simple “objects of sensual pleasure,” and with these every kind of sexual artifice is practised (Dempwolf, “Medical Notes on the Tauni Islanders,” published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1902, p. 335).
Thus between primitive and civilized races in these respects there are no important differences; and according to recent researches we find the same may be said with regard to civilized nations, that there is no difference between =town= and =country=.[478] I quote here the account given by an experienced author sixty years ago:
“People usually believe that in the country morals are much better than in the towns, but this belief is quite erroneous. Brothels and professional prostitutes naturally cannot exist in the country, but nearly every peasant-girl in the country is equivalent to a secret prostitute. It is incredible what sexual excesses go on between the masculine and feminine inhabitants of the villages. Every barn, every shed, every haystack, every copse, bears witness to this. Especially disadvantageous to morals is it when in the heat of summer persons of different sexes work side by side, half undressed, in remote fields for the whole day, and lie down to rest side by side.”[479]
We may here allude to a fact that we shall have to discuss later--that young men, after the conclusion of their term of military service, carry back with them to the country the knowledge of sexual excesses and perversities which they have acquired in the town, and thus diffuse these tendencies more and more widely.
Since sexual anomalies constitute a phenomenon generally characteristic of humanity, =race= and =nationality=, as such, have less to do with the matter than is commonly imagined. The Mongol and the Malay are not less voluptuous than the Semites, or than many Aryan races. Among the Semites, the Arabs and the Turks are pre-eminently sexually perverse nations. They seek sexual gratification indifferently in the female harem and in the boys’ brothel (see numerous descriptions of travellers on the moral customs of Turkey, the Levant, Cairo, Morocco, the Arabian Soudan, the Arabs in Africa, etc.). Among the Aryan races the Aryans of India must be considered pre-eminent as refined practitioners of psychopathia sexualis, which they have reduced to a =system=. In addition to recognizing forty-eight figuræ Veneris (different postures in sexual intercourse), they practise every possible variety of sexual perversion; and they have in various textbooks[480] a systematic introduction to sexual immorality. Here there is manifestly no trace of morbid conditions, of degeneration, or of psychopathia; it is simply a matter of popular manners and customs. Sexual perversion among the Greeks and the Romans, two other Aryan nations, is too well known to need detailed description. In modern Europe the French were at one time believed to lead the way in sexual artifices. For a long time this has ceased to be true, and, in fact, never was true. They do, indeed, excel, if one may use the expression, all other nations in the outward technique and in the elegance of their sexual excesses. To them from very early times there has been ascribed a certain preference for the skatological element in the sexual life; but according to the recent researches of Friedrich S. Krauss regarding the Slavs, published in his “Anthropophyteia,” this alleged pre-eminence is extremely doubtful. That among the Slavs sexual perversions of every kind have an extraordinarily wide diffusion has been shown by this investigator by the collection of an enormous mass of material. It is also very generally known that the English from early days have exhibited a marked tendency to sadistic practices, and especially to flagellation. I will return later to this remarkable phenomenon. The French accuse the Germans of an especial tendency to homosexuality (le vice Allemand), but there are no sufficient grounds for this accusation. In psychopathia sexualis, the Germans are as cosmopolitan as they are in other respects.
With regard to the =age= of the individual in relation to sexual perversions, the frequency of these is greater after puberty than before,[481] and the frequency increases with advancing years. The time at which the imagination unfolds its greatest activity, the commencement of manhood, is extremely favourable to the origination of sexual aberrations, and to their becoming habitual practices; and, again, the age at which the sexual powers begin to decline, and when for their incitation new stimuli are needed, is one at which abnormal varieties of sexual gratification frequently originate.[482]
Which =sex= is more inclined to abnormalities of the sexual impulse, the male or the female?
The primitively more powerful sexual impulsive life of man in association with his greater use of alcohol makes him distinctly more inclined to follow sexual bypaths than woman, whose sexuality at first develops very gradually, and experiences, in consequence of motherhood, powerful inhibitions to the development of any sexual anomalies. On the other hand, the much =more difficult development= of voluptuous sensations in women, by means of normal coitus, is not rarely the cause of a tendency to perverse varieties of sexual intercourse. They often seduce man in this direction, and excel him in the discovery of sexual artifices. Among primitive races, where the relationships are clearest, this is still easily recognizable, whereas by civilization the matter is often obscured. All the artificial deformities of the male genital organs amongst savages, which give the man much more trouble than pleasure, but which, on the other hand, increase the voluptuous enjoyment of the woman during the sexual act, cannot otherwise be explained except on the ground of an original demand on the part of women. To this category belong incisions in the glans penis, and the implanting of small stones in the wounds until the skin has a warty appearance (Java); perforation of the penis to enable rods beset with bristles, feathers, rods with balls (the well-known “ampallang” of the Dyaks of Borneo), bodkins, rings, bell-shaped apparatus, to be inserted through these perforations; the wrapping up of the penis in strips of fur with the hair outwards, or enveloping it in a leaden cylinder, etc. The feminine imagination has proved inexhaustible in this direction. Miklucho-Maclay, the great authority on the sexual psychology of the savage races of the Malay Archipelago and the South Sea Islands, declares it to be extremely probable =that all these customs and all these apparatus were invented by or for women=. The women reject all men who do not possess these stimulating apparatus on the penis. Finsch and Kubary confirm this, and state that in most cases it is the frigidity of the women which makes them desire such means of artificial stimulation. Among civilized races, also, abundant material can be collected with regard to sexual perversities among women, as has recently been done by Paul de Régla in “Les Perversités de la Femme” (Paris, 1904), and by René Schwaeblé in “Les Détraquées de Paris” (Paris, 1904).
The following case shows that European women sometimes demand artificial changes in the male genital organs, in order to increase their voluptuous sensations. Some years ago a man, fifty years of age, was admitted into the syphilis wards of the Laibacher Hospital. The discharge from the penis was, however, found to be due merely to balanitis. On examination the greatly enlarged penis was found to be perforated by rod-shaped objects, and an incision through the skin showed that these were pins and hairpins. The pins were about two inches long, with brass heads the size of a peppercorn, and they were at least ten in number. One of the pins was run partly into the testicle. After the foreign objects had been removed, the man informed us that his mistress had stuck these in, in order that she might experience more ardent sensations. The pins were all subcutaneous; several of them ran right round the penis.
=Social differences= in respect of the frequency of sexual perversions do not exist. Sexual perversions are just as widely diffused among the lower classes as among the upper. A. Ferguson, Havelock Ellis, Tarnowsky, and J. A. Symonds are all in agreement regarding this fact, which, indeed, in view of the anthropological conception of psychopathia sexualis, does not require additional explanation.
Finally, we come to the last and most important point--to the question of the relation of =culture= and =civilization= to psychopathia sexualis. Even though psychopathia sexualis is in its =essence= independent of culture, is a general human phenomenon, still we cannot fail to recognize that civilization has exercised a certain influence upon the external mode of manifestation, and also upon the inner psychical configuration of sexual aberrations. Especially as regards the latter--the psychical relationships--the perversity of the civilized man is more complicated than that of primitive man, although in =essence= the two are identical.
The modern civilized man is in respect of his sexuality a peculiar =dual being=. The sexuality within him leads a kind of independent existence, notwithstanding its intimate relationship to the whole of the rest of his spiritual life. There are moments in which, even in men of lofty spiritual nature, pure sexuality becomes separated from love, and manifests itself in its utterly elementary nature beyond good and evil. I expressed earlier the idea that this frequent phenomenon reminded me of the “monomania” of the older alienists. “Il y a en nous deux êtres, l’être moral et la bête: l’être moral sait ce que mérite l’amour véritable, la bête aspire à la fange où on la pousse,” we find in a French erotic work (“Impressions d’une Fille” par Léna de Mauregard, vol. i., pp. 57, 68; Paris, 1900).
No other human impulsive manifestation is so ill adapted as sexuality to the =coercion= and =conventionality= which civilization necessarily entails. Carl Hauptmann, in an interesting socio-psychological study, “Unsere Wirklichkeit” (“Our Reality”; Munich, 1902), has described very impressively this frightful conventionality, especially characteristic of our own time, which so painfully represses the “reality” of love, suppresses everything primitive in it, banishes it into the darkness of its own interior, and only allows the conventionally sanctioned forms of sexual love to subsist. This coercion, this outward pressure, develops a volcano of elementary sexuality, which usually slumbers, but may suddenly break out in eruption, and give free vent to excesses of the wildest nature. Dingelstedt in his poem “Ein Roman,” has excellently described this condition:
“Wenn du die =Leidenschaft= willst kennen lernen, Musst du dich nur nicht aus der Welt entfernen. Such’ sie nicht auf in friedlicher Idylle, In strohgedeckter und begnügter Stille... Da suche sie in festlich vollem Saale Bei Spiel und Tanz, an feierlichem Mahle, Dort, eingeschnürt =in Form und Zwang und Sitte=, Thront sie wie Banquos Geist in ihrer Mitte.”
[“If you wish to learn to know passion, You must, above all, not remove yourself from the world. Do not look for it in a peaceful idyll, In padded and satisfied quietude.... Look for it in the full festal hall, At the game and the dance, at the brilliant banquet; There, entrapped amid form, and coercion, and custom, Enthroned, like Banquo’s ghost, it sits amid the throng.”]
Similarly, Charles Albert[483] remarks:
“If love nowadays so often manifests itself in the form of aberration or passion, this is almost always to be explained by the hindrances of every kind which have been opposed to it. No other feeling is so hindered, opposed, detested, and loaded with material and moral fetters. We know how education makes a beginning in this way, declaring that love is something forbidden, and how the hardness of economic life continues the process. Hardly has a young man or a young girl gone out into life, hardly have they begun to feel their way into society, but they encounter a thousand difficulties which are opposed to their living out their life from a sexual point of view. How would it be possible that, in the limits of such a society, love could become anything else but a fixed idea of the individual, and how could it fail to give rise to continuous restlessness? Nature does not allow herself to be inhibited by our artificial social arrangements. The need for love within us remains active; it cries out in unsatisfied desire; and when no answer is forthcoming, beyond the echo of its own pain, it takes a perverse form. The love which is prevented from obtaining complete satisfaction and repose is to many an intensely painful torment.... The over-rich imagination and the unsatisfied longing give rise to the most horrible and abnormal forms of love. Above all, in a society which will make no room for love, the love-passion must give rise to the greatest devastation. The impulse to love which is repressed by the organization of society does not only fight violently for air--the inevitable consequence of any pressure--but it discovers also all those artifices and corruptions which are supposed to make the enjoyment of love more intense. Conscious of being despised by society, it endeavours to regain by violence what is wanting to it in sensuality.”
The struggle for reality in love, for the elementary and the primitive, manifests itself in the search for the greatest possible =contrast= to the conventional, to the commonly sanctioned mode of sexual activity. Love cries out for “nature,” and comes thereby to the “unnatural,” to the =coarsest, commonest= dissipation. This connexion has been already explained (pp. 322-325). Certain temporary phenomena exhibit also this fact--for example, the remarkable preference for the most brutal, the coarsest, the commonest dances, mere limb dislocations, such as the cancan, the croquette (machicha), the cake-walk, and other wild negro dances, which rejoice the modern public more than the most beautiful and gracious spiritual ballet. It was only when the above-described connexion became clear to me that I was able to understand the remarkable alluring power of these dances, which had hitherto been incomprehensible to me.
An additional factor which favours the origination of sexual perversions is the =unrest= always connected with the advance of civilization, the haste and hurry, the more severe struggle for existence, the rapid and frequent change of new impressions. Fifty years ago the celebrated alienist Guislain exclaimed:
“What is it with which our thoughts are filled? Plans, novelties, reforms. What is it that we Europeans are striving for? Movement, excitement. What do we obtain? Stimulation, illusion, deception.”[484]
There is no longer any time for quiet, enduring love, for an inward profundity of feeling, for the culture of the =heart=. The struggle for life and the intellectual contest of our time leaves the possibility only for transient sensations; the shorter they are, the more =violent=, the more intense must they be, in order to replace the failing grande passion of former times. Love becomes a mere =sensation=, which in a brief moment must contain within itself an entire world. Modern youth eagerly desires such =experience= of a whole world by means of love. The everlasting feeling of our classic period had been transformed, more especially among our leading spirits, into a passionate yearning to reflect within themselves truly the spirit of the time, to live through in themselves all the unrest, all the joy, all the sorrow, of modern civilization.
From this there results a peculiar, more spiritual configuration of modern perversity, a distinctive spiritualization of psychopathia sexualis, a true wandering journey, an “Odyssey” of the spirit, throughout the wide province of sexual excesses. Without doubt the French have gone furthest in this direction, and the names of Baudelaire, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Verlaine, Hannon, Haraucourt, Jean Larocque, and Guy de Maupassant, indicate nearly as many peculiar spiritual refinements and enrichments of the purely sensual life.
We have no longer to deal with the pure love of reflection, as in the case of Kierkegaard and Grillparzer, and in the writings of young Germany, where, indeed, reflection predominates, but which still more extends to the direction of =higher love=. Contrasted with this is the =simple lust of the senses=, by means of which new psychical influences are to be obtained. Voluptuousness becomes a cerebral phenomenon, ethereal. In this way the most remarkable, unheard-of, sensory associations appear in the province of sexuality--true fin-de-siècle products which are, above all, specifically =modern=, and could not possibly exist in former times. For it is always the same play of emotion, the same effects, the same terminal results: ordinary voluptuousness. The dream of Hermann Bahr, of “non-sexual voluptuousness,” and the replacement of the animal impulse by means of finer organs, is only a dream. The elemental sexual impulse resists every attempt at dismemberment and sublimation. It returns always unaltered, always the same. It is vain to expect new manifestations of this impulse. Such efforts end either in bodily and mental impotence, or else in sexual perversities. In these relationships the imagination of civilized man is unable to create novelties in the =essence=; it can do so only as regards the objective =manifestations=. This is confirmed by the increase of purely ideal sexual perversities in connexion with certain spiritual tendencies of our time. Martial d’Estoc, in his book, “Paris Eros” (Paris, 1903), has given a clear description of these peculiar spiritual modifications of sexual aberrations. (It is interesting to note that Schopenhauer remarks, in his “Neue Paralipomena,” pp. 234 and 235: “The caprices arising from the sexual impulse resemble a will-o’-the-wisp. They deceive us most effectively; but if we follow them, they lead us into the marsh and disappear.”)
Appendix
SEXUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO DISEASE
It is the immortal service of Casper and von Krafft-Ebing to have insisted energetically upon the fact that =numerous= individuals whose vita sexualis is abnormal are persons suffering from =disease=. This is their monumentum ære perennius in the history of medicine and of civilization. Purely medical, anatomical, physical, and psychiatric investigations show beyond question that there are many persons whose abnormal sexual life is pathologically based.
I shall not here discuss the peculiar =borderland state between health and disease=, the existence of which can be established in many sexually perverse individuals; I shall not refer to the “abnormalities,” the “psychopathic deficiencies,” the “unbalanced,” etc.; nor shall I discuss the question of the significance of the stigmata of degeneration, because these will be adequately dealt with in connexion with the forensic consideration of punishable sexual perversions.
Here we shall speak only of actual and easily determined diseases which possess a causal importance in the origination and activity of sexual perversions. The great majority of these are, naturally, =mental disorders=.
Von Krafft-Ebing, to whom we owe the most important observations regarding the pathological etiology of sexual perversions, enumerates the following conditions: Psychical developmental inhibitions (idiocy and imbecility), acquired weak-mindedness (after mental disorders, apoplexy, injuries to the head, syphilis, in consequence of general paralysis), epilepsy, periodical insanity, mania, melancholia, hysteria, paranoia.
Among these, =epilepsy= possesses the greatest importance.[485] It comes into play =much more frequently= as a causal morbid influence in the case of sexually perverse actions and offences than has hitherto been believed. The psychiatrist Arndt maintains that wherever an abnormal sexual life exists, we must always consider the possibility of epileptic influence. Lombroso assumes that all premature and peculiar instances of satyriasis are instances of larval epilepsy. He gives several examples in support of this view, and also a case of Macdonald’s which illustrates the connexion between epilepsy and sexual perversity.[486] Especially in the so-called epileptic “confusional states” do we meet with sexually perverse actions; exhibitionism and other manifestations of sexual activity coram publico are frequently referable to epileptic disease. Similar impulsive sexual activities and similar confusional states are seen after =injuries to the head= and in =alcoholic intoxication=, also after =severe exhaustion=. Many cases of “=periodic psychopathia sexualis=” are due to epilepsy.
=Senile dementia= and =paralytic dementia= (general paralysis of the insane), also severe forms of =neurasthenia= and =hysteria=, often change the sexual life in a morbid direction, and favour the origin of sexual perversions.
It is a fact of great interest that Tarnowsky and Freud attribute to =syphilis= an important rôle in the pathogenesis of sexual anomalies. In 50 % of his sexual pathological cases Freud found that the abnormal sexual constitution was to be regarded as the last manifestation of a syphilitic inheritance (Freud, op. cit., p. 74). Tarnowsky observed that congenital syphilitics, and also persons whose parents had been syphilitic, but who themselves had never exhibited any definite symptoms of the disease, were apt later to show manifestations of a perverse sexual sensibility (Tarnowsky, op. cit., pp. 34 and 35). =Obviously this is to be explained by the deleterious influence upon the nervous system (perhaps by means of toxins?) which syphilis is also supposed to exert in the causation of tabes dorsalis and general paralysis of the insane.= When investigating the clinical history of cases of sexual perversion, it appears that previous syphilis is a fact to which some importance should be attached.[487]
From syphilis we pass to consider direct =physical= abnormalities and =morbid changes in the genital organs= as causes of sexual anomalies. In women prolapsus uteri sometimes leads to perverse gratification of the sexual impulse--for example, by pædication;[488] in men, shortness of the frænum preputii plays a similar part,[489] also phimosis. Wollenmann reports the case of a young man suffering from phimosis, who, at the first attempt at coitus, experienced severe pain, and since that time had an antipathy to normal sexual intercourse. He passed under the influence of a seducer to the practice of mutual masturbation. Only after operative treatment of the phimosis did his inclination towards the male sex pass away, and the sexual perversion then completely disappeared.[490]
[456] Hermann Joseph Löwenstein, “De Mentis Aberrationibus ex Partium Sexualium Conditione Abnormi Oriundis” (Bonn, 1823).
[457] Joseph Häussler, “The Relations of the Sexual System to the Psyche” (Würzburg, 1826).
[458] Heinrich Kaan, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Leipzig, 1844).
[459] R. von Krafft-Ebing, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Stuttgart, 1882).
[460] We must not omit to mention the fact that a little earlier the French physician Moreau de Tours published a comprehensive work upon psychopathia sexualis, entitled “Des Aberrations du Sens Génésique” (Paris, 1880).
[461] S. Freud, “Three Essays in Contribution to the Sexual Theory,” p. 70.
[462] Cf. the interesting remarks of G. H. C. Lippert, “Mankind in a State of Nature,” p. 1 et seq. (Elberfeld, 1818).
[463] Christian Muff, “What is Civilization?” pp. 30, 31 (Halle, 1880).
[464] G. L. N. Delvincourt, “De la Mucite Génito-Sexuelle,” p. 64 (Paris, 1834). Apt remarks on the alleged degeneration of the French are to be found also in the work of P. Näcko, “The Alleged Degeneration of the Latin Races, more Especially of the French,” published in Archives for Racial and Social Biology, 1906, vol. iii.
[465] As, for example, Immermann, in his work “Epigonen,” published at the same period (1836), assumes. In the mouth of the physician he puts the following words: “The physician has a great task to perform in the present day. Diseases, especially nervous troubles, to which for a number of years the human race has been especially disposed, are a modern product.” Cf. Leopold Hirschberg, “Medical Matters as dealt with in General Literature: the Judgment of a Member of the Laity regarding Nervousness in the Year 1876,” published in Medizinische Wochenschrift, 1906, No. 41, p 428. Seventy years ago the German people was “nervous”; thirty-four years before Sedan, thirty years after Jena! Therefore neither Jena nor Sedan can be connected with the nervous “degeneration.” The authors of the eighteenth century (!) made similar complaints of the nervousness of their time, upon which Cullen and Brown founded their medical theories.
[466] J. Pohl-Pincus, “The Diseases of the Human Hair, and the Care of the Hair,” third edition, p. 57 (Leipzig, 1885).
[467] Carl Bleibtreu, “Paradoxes the Conventional Lies,” sixth edition, pp. 1, 2 (Berlin, 1888).
[468] See “Nature and Man,” E. Ray Lankester’s Romanes Lecture, 1905.--TRANSLATOR.
[469] G. Hirth, “Hereditary Enfranchisement,” published in “Ways to Freedom,” pp. 106-127 (Munich, 1903).
[470] Näcke’s thesis is in agreement with this, that “all sexual abnormal practices in an asylum are =for the most part much more rare= than the laity, =or even many physicians, imagine=.” Cf. P. Näcke, “Some Psychologically Obscure Cases of Sexual Aberrations in the Asylum,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. v., p. 196 (Leipzig, 1903). See also, by the same author, “Problemi nel Campo delle Psicopatie Sessuali,” in Archivio delle Psicopatie Sessuali, 1896; “Sexual Perversities in the Asylum,” in the Wiener klinische Rundschau, 1899, Nos. 27-30.
[471] S. Freud, op. cit., pp. 19, 20.
[472] A. Hoche, “The Problem of the Forensic Condemnation of Sexual Transgressions,” published in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, p. 58.
[473] Ploss-Bartels, “Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde,” eighth edition, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1906).
[474] Mantegazza, “Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Sexual Relationship of Mankind.”
[475] F. S. Krauss, “Morals and Customs relating to Sexual Reproduction among the Southern Slavs,” published in “Kryptadia,” vols. vi.-viii. (Paris, 1899-1902); and in the larger work, “Anthropophyteia” (Leipzig, 1904-1906).
[476] In all his works.
[477] Cf. Charles Darwin, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,” vol. i., p. 182 (2 vols., London, 1898).
[478] Cf. the inquiry of C. Wagner, containing extremely valuable material, “The Sexual and Moral Relationships of the Protestant Agricultural Population of the German Empire” (3 vols., Leipzig, 1897, 1898).
[479] “Prostitution in Berlin and its Victims,” p. 27 (Berlin, 1846).
[480] Cf. the detailed bibliography of these works in my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 29, 30.
[481] Typical sexual perversions have, however, been observed even in children, and it is this fact which has chiefly given rise to the doctrine of the “congenital” character of sexual perversions.
[482] Cf. the remarks of the Marquis de Sade regarding the abnormal sexuality of elderly men, in my “New Research Concerning the Marquis de Sade,” pp. 421, 422 (Berlin, 1904).
[483] C. Albert, “Free Love,” p. 148.
[484] Joseph Guislain, “Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases,” p. 229 (Berlin, 1854).
[485] Kowalewski, “Perversions of Sexual Sensibility in Epileptics,” published in the Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie, 1887, vol. vii., No. 3.
[486] C. Lombroso, “Recent Advances in the Study of Criminology,” pp. 197-200 (Gera, 1899).--Tarnowsky has even described a form of “epileptic pæderasty” (cf. B. Tarnowsky, “Morbid Phenomena of Sexual Sensibility,” pp. 8, 51; Berlin, 1886).
[487] E. Laurent (“Morbid Love,” pp. 43-45; Leipzig, 1895) regards tubercular inheritance as an important etiological factor of sexual anomalies, for these occur more frequently in blonde, weakly individuals, than in brunettes (?).
[488] Bacon, “The Effect of Developmental Anomalies and Disorders of the Female Reproductive Organs upon the Sexual Impulse,” published in the American Journal of Dermatology, 1899, vol. iii., No. 2.
[489] M. Féré, “Sexual Hyperæsthesia in Association with Shortness of the Frænum Preputii,” published in the Monatshefte für praktische Dermatologie, 1896, vol. xxiii., p. 45.
[490] A. G. Wollenmann, “Phimosis as a Cause of Perversion of Sexual Sensibility,” published in Der ärztliche Praktiker, 1895, No. 23. Matthaes has shown that morbid changes of the genital sphere or its vicinity are apt to give rise to offences against morality (“The Statistics of Offences against Morality,” published in the Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1903, vol. xii., p. 319).
XVIII. MISOGYNY
“Thou priestess of the most flowery life, how is it possible that such things should draw near to thee--one of those pale phantoms, one of those general maxims, which philosophers and moralists have invented in their despair of the human race?”--G. JUNG.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVIII
Non-identity of misogyny with homosexuality -- History of misogyny -- Misogyny among the Greeks -- Christian misogyny the true source of the modern contempt for women -- Characteristics of modern misogyny -- De Sade and his modern disciples (Schopenhauer, Strindberg, Weininger) -- Scientific misogyny (Möbius, Schurtz, B. Friedländer, E. von Mayer) -- Distinctions between the individual varieties -- Counteracting tendencies -- Beginnings of a new amatory life of the sexes -- A common share in life -- Freedom with, not without, woman.
Chapter XVIII
Before proceeding to the consideration of homosexuality I propose to give a brief account of contemporary misogyny, in order to avoid confusing these two distinct phenomena under one head, and also to avoid making the male homosexuals, who are often erroneously regarded as “woman-haters,” responsible for the momentarily prevalent spiritual epidemic of hatred of women. This would be a gross injustice, because, in the first place, this movement has =in no way= proceeded from the homosexual, but rather from heterosexual individuals, such as Schopenhauer, Strindberg, etc.; and because, in the second place, the homosexual as such are not misogynists at all, and it is only a minority of them who shout in chorus to the misogynist tirades of Strindberg and Weininger.
The misogynists form to-day a kind of “=fourth sex=,”[491] to belong to which appears to be the fashion, or rather has =once more= become the fashion, for misogyny is an old story. There have always been times in which men have cried out: “Woman, what have I to do with you? I belong to the century”;[492] times in which woman was renounced as a soulless being, and the world of men became intoxicated with itself, and was proud of its “splendid isolation.”
Of less importance is it that the Chinese since ancient times have denied to woman a soul, and therewith a justification for existence,[493] than that among the most highly developed civilized races of antiquity such men as Hesiod, Simonides,[494] and, above all, Euripides, were all fierce misogynists. In the “Ion,” the “Hippolytus,” the “Hecuba,” and the “Cyclops” we find the most incisive attacks on the female sex. The most celebrated passage is that in the “Hippolytus” (verses 602-637, 650-655):
“Wherefore, O Jove, beneath the solar beams That evil, woman, didst thou cause to dwell? For if it was thy will the human race Should multiply, this ought not by such means To be effected; better in thy fane Each votary, on presenting brass or steel, Or massive ingots of resplendent gold, Proportioned to his offering, might from thee Obtain a race of sons, and under roofs Which genuine freedom visits, unannoyed By women, live.”[495]
In this passage we have the entire quintessence of modern misogyny. But Euripides betrays to us also the real motive of misogyny. In a fragment of his we read “the =most invincible= of all things is a woman”! Hinc illæ lacrimæ! It is only the men who are not a =match= for woman, who do not allow woman as a free personality to influence them, =who are so little sure of themselves= that they are afraid of suffering at the hands of woman damage, limitation, or even annihilation of their own individuality. These only are the true misogynists.
It is indisputable that this Hellenic misogyny was closely connected with the love of boys as a popular custom. To this we shall return when we come to describe Greek pæderasty.
Among the Romans woman occupied a far higher position than among the Greeks--a fact which the institution of the vestal virgins alone suffices to prove. Among the Germans, also, woman was regarded as worthy of all honour.
The =true source= of modern misogyny is Christianity--the Christian doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of woman. A Strindberg, a Weininger, even a Benedikt Friedländer, notwithstanding his hatred of priests--all are the last offshoots of a movement against the being and the value of woman--a movement which has persisted throughout the Christian period of the history of the world.
“If I were asked,” says Finck,[496] “to name the most influential, refining element of modern civilization, I should answer: ‘Woman, beauty, love, and marriage’! If I were asked, however, to name the most inward and peculiar essence of the early middle ages, my answer would be: ‘Deadly hostility to everything feminine, to beauty, to love, and to marriage.’”
The history of medieval misogyny was described by J. Michelet in his book “The Witch.” Since woman and the contact with woman were regarded as radically evil, it followed that in theory and practice asceticism was the ideal; celibacy was only the natural consequence of this hatred of woman; so also were the later witch trials the natural consequence. Therefore to this medieval misogyny, in contrast with modern misogyny, which represents only a weak imitation, we cannot deny a certain justification. The misogyny of the middle ages was earnestly meant; but it has become to-day mere phrase-making, dilettante imitation, and ostentation. In contrast with the utterances of the modern misogynist, the coarse abuse of women by such a writer as Abraham a Santa Clara has a refreshing and amusing character.[497]
Modern misogyny is certainly an inheritance of Christian doctrine, and a tradition handed down from much earlier times, but still it has its own characteristic peculiarities. Misogyny is, however, now much more an affair of =satiety= or =disillusion= than of =belief= or =conviction=; whereas in the days of medieval Christianity belief and conviction were the effective causal factors of misogyny. In addition, among our neo-misogynists we have the factor of the =spiritual pride= of a man who, from the standpoint of academic theoretical culture (which to men of this kind appears the highest summit of existence), looks down upon women, whom he regards as mentally insignificant, while he sympathizes with her “physiological weak-mindedness.” He smiles on her with pity, and completely overlooks the profound life of emotion and feeling characteristic of every true woman, which forms a counterpoise to any amount of purely theoretical knowledge--quite apart from the fact that women of intellectual cultivation are by no means rare.
If, in fact, we regard the =lives= of those who have reduced modern misogyny to a system, we shall be able to detect the above-mentioned causes in their personal experiences and impressions. The first important modern advocate of misogyny, the Marquis de Sade, lived an extremely unhappy married life, was deceived also in a love relationship, and nourished his hatred of women by a dissolute life and a consequent state of satiety.
And as regards Schopenhauer, who does not recall his unhappy relations with his mother? For he who has really loved his =mother=, he who has experienced the unutterable tenderness and self-sacrifice of maternal love, can never become a genuine, thoroughgoing woman-hater. But the mutual relationship of Schopenhauer and his mother was rather =hatred= than love. Beyond question, also, his infection with syphilis, to which I was the first to draw attention, played a part in his subsequent hatred of women.
Strindberg, in his “Confessions of a Fool,” has himself offered us the proof of the causal connexion between his misogyny and his personal experiences and disillusions; and in Weininger’s book we can read only too clearly that he had had no good fortune with women, or had had disagreeable experiences in his relations with them.
De Sade, who, perhaps, was not unknown to Schopenhauer,[498] was the first advocate of consistent misogyny on principle. It is an interesting fact, to which I have alluded in an earlier work (“Recent Researches regarding the Marquis de Sade,” p. 433), that de Sade’s and Schopenhauer’s opinions on the physical characteristics of women are to some extent =verbally= identical. While Schopenhauer, in his essay “On Women” (“Works,” ed. Grisebach, vol. v., p. 654), speaks of the “stunted, narrow-shouldered, wide-hipped and =short-legged= sex,” which only a masculine intellect when =clouded by sexual desire= could possibly call “beautiful,” we find in the “Juliette” (vol. iii., pp. 187, 188) of the Marquis de Sade the following very similar remarks on the feminine body: “Take the clothes off one of these idols of yours! Is it these two =short= and crooked legs which have =turned your head= like this?” This physical hatefulness of women corresponds to the mental hatefulness of which de Sade gives a similar repellent picture (“Juliette,” vol iii., pp. 188, 189). In all his works we find the same fanatical hatred of women. Sarmiento, in “Aline et Valcour” (vol. ii., p. 115), would like to annihilate all women, and calls that man happy who has learned to renounce completely intercourse with this “debased, false, and noxious sex.”
Quite in the spirit of de Sade, to whom the misogynists of the Second Empire referred as an authority, Schopenhauer, in the previously quoted essay “On Women,” Strindberg, in the “Confessions of a Fool,” and Weininger, in “Sex and Character,” preached contempt for the feminine nature;[499] and this seed has fallen upon fruitful soil in modern youth. Every young blockhead inflates himself with his “masculine pride,” and feels himself to be the “knight of the spirit” in relation to the inferior sex; every disillusioned and satiated debauchee cultivates (as a rule, indeed, transiently) the fashion of misogyny, which strengthens his sentiment of self-esteem. If we wish to speak at all of “physiological weak-mindedness,” let us apply the term to this disagreeable type of men. As Georg Hirth truly remarks (“Ways to Freedom,” p. 281), such masculine =arrogance= is merely a variety of “mental defect.”
Unfortunately, this misogyny has intruded itself also into science. The work of P. J. Möbius,[500] notwithstanding the esteem I feel for the valuable services of the celebrated neurologist in other departments, can only be termed an aberration, a lapsus calami.[501] But he does not stand alone. The admirable work of Heinrich Schurtz, also, upon “Age Classes and Associations of Men” (Berlin, 1902), is permeated by this misogynist aura; not less so is the equally stimulating work, “The Vital Laws of Civilization” (Halle, 1904), by Eduard von Mayer. This book, in association with the equally thoughtful and compendious work “The Renascence of Eros Uranios” (Berlin, 1904), by Benedikt Friedländer, and in conjunction with the efforts of Adolf Brand, the editor of the homosexual newspaper Der Eigene, and Edwin Bab (cf. this writer’s “The Woman’s Movement and the Love of Friends”; Berlin, 1904), to found a special homosexual group demanding the “=emancipation of men=,” have been the principal causes of the belief that the male homosexuals are the true “repudiators of woman,” and that from them has proceeded the increasing diffusion of modern misogyny. I repeat that this connexion is true only for the above-named group; that, on the contrary, genuine misogyny has been taught us by the world’s typically heterosexual men, such as Schopenhauer and Strindberg. Benedikt Friedländer and Eduard von Mayer preached, above all, a “masculine civilization,” a deepening of the spiritual relationships between men; whereas Strindberg and Schopenhauer, and even Weininger, really leave us in uncertainty as to what they imagine is to take woman’s place. All five agree in this, that the “intercourse” of man with woman is to be limited as much as possible; but only the two first-named openly and freely advocate homosexual relationships, or at least a “physiological friendship” (B. Friedländer), between men. Schopenhauer, Strindberg, and Weininger did not venture to deduce these consequences. Yet this is the =necessary= consequence of misogyny based on principle.
To the heterosexual men--and such men form an =enormous majority=--the noble, ideal, asexual friendship of man for man appears in quite another light from that in which it appears to the misogynist, to whom it is to serve to =replace= sexual love, whereas for heterosexual men friendship for other men is a valuable treasure =additional= to the love of woman.
Is there, then, any reason for this contempt and hatred for woman? Do not the signs increase on all hands to show us that =new= relationships are forming between the sexes, that a number of new points of contact of the spiritual nature are making their appearance--in a word, that =an entirely new, nobler, most promising amatory life= is developing? I will not fall into the contrary error to misogyny and inscribe a dithyramb of praise to feminine nature, as Wedde, Daumer, Quensel, Groddeck, and others, have done; but I merely indicate the signs of the times when I say =that woman also is awakening=! Woman is awakening to the entirely new existence of a free personality, conscious of her rights and of her duties. Woman, also, will have her share in the content and in the tasks of life; she will not enslave us, as the misogynists clamour, for she wishes to see =free men= by her side. What would become of woman if men became slaves? How could slaves give love?
Life has to-day become a difficult task both for man and for woman. Man and woman alike must endeavour to perform that task with confidence in their respective powers; but each, also, must have confidence in the powers of the other--a confidence which becomes =palpable= in the form of love or friendship, so that those who feel it have their own powers strengthened.
Not “Free =from= woman” is the watchword of the future, but “Free =with= woman.”
[491] V. Hoffmann, in a bad novel, “Das vierte Geschlecht” (Berlin, 1902), gives this name to the non-homosexual misogynists.
[492] Karl Gutzkow, “Säkularbilder,” vol. i., p. 55 (Frankfurt, 1846).
[493] In the Shi-king we find the following characterization of woman:
“Enough for her to avoid evil, For what can a woman do that is good?”
Indian literature is also full of such ideas. Cf. H. Schurtz, “Altersklassen und Männerbunde” (Age Classes and Associations of Men), p. 52.
[494] Simonides considered that women were derived from various animals. W. Schubert (“From the Berlin Collection of Papyri,” published in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 23, January 15, 1907) reproduces long fragments of a Greek anthology which collates praise and blame of woman in the original words of the poets.
[495] I quote from “The Plays of Euripides in English,” in two volumes, vol. ii., p. 136 (Everyman’s Library, Dent, London).--TRANSLATOR.
[496] H. T. Finck, “Romantic Love and Personal Beauty,” vol. i., pp. 186, 187 (Breslau, 1894).
[497] Equally amusing is the misogynist “Alphabet de l’Imperfection et Malice des Femmes,” by Jacques Olivier (Rouen, 1646), in which all the bad qualities of woman, observed down to the year 1646, are described with effective care and completeness.
[498] We know that Schopenhauer was a lover of erotic writings; a fuller account of this matter will be found in Grisebach’s “Conversations and Soliloquies of Schopenhauer.”
[499] That Nietzsche is wrongly accredited with misogyny is convincingly proved by Helene Stocker (“Nietzsches Frauenfeindschaft,” published in Zukunft, 1903; reprinted in “Love and Women,” pp. 65-74; Minden, 1906).
[500] P. J. Möbius, “The Physiological Weak-mindedness of Woman,” fourth edition (Halle, 1902). Näcke terms the recently deceased Möbius the “German Lombroso,” in order by this term to indicate, on the one hand, the man’s indubitable genius, and on the other hand the superficiality and purely hypothetical character of his scientific deductions.
[501] The grounds for this opinion were given in the fifth chapter.
XIX. THE RIDDLE OF HOMOSEXUALITY
“Through Science to Justice!”--MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIX
Actual existence of original congenital homosexuality -- Its distinction from pseudo-homosexuality -- Homosexuality an anthropological phenomenon, not a manifestation of degeneration -- Secondary origin of “homosexual neurasthenia” -- Rarity of stigmata of degeneration among homosexuals -- Early spontaneous appearance of homosexuality -- As an essential product of personality -- Homosexuality in the child -- Physical and mental characteristics of completely developed homosexuality -- Effeminate and virile urnings -- Physical peculiarities of the homosexual -- Mental peculiarities -- Diffusion -- Numbers -- Ethnology of homosexuality -- Earlier history and literature -- Celebrated homosexual individuals -- Modes of activity of homosexual love -- Relations between homosexual and heterosexual individuals -- Mode of sexual intercourse -- Examples -- Social relationships of the homosexual -- Places of rendezvous -- The “Allée des Veuves” of Paris -- An adventure of Victor Hugo’s -- Urning clubs in the Second Empire -- Urning balls at Paris -- Social relationships of the homosexuals of Berlin -- Meeting-places of urnings -- Men’s balls in Berlin -- Male prostitution -- Male brothels -- Blackmail -- § 175 -- Criticism of this section -- Demonstration of the necessity for its repeal -- Blackmail of homosexuals and suicide -- Need for the diffusion of general enlightenment regarding homosexuality -- Activity of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee -- Homosexuality in women -- The smaller percentage of genuine female homosexuals -- “Thoughts of a Solitary Woman” -- Relations of homosexual women to men -- The Woman’s Movement and homosexuality -- Sexual relationships of tribades -- The “protectrices” -- Social life of tribades -- Lesbian prostitution.
Appendix: Theory of Homosexuality. -- Homosexuality a heterogeneous sexuality -- Insufficiency of the theory of intermediate stages -- My own theory of homosexuality -- The significance of homosexuality in relation to civilization.
Chapter XIX
Homosexuality--=love between man and man= (uranism), or =between woman and woman= (tribadism), a =congenital state=, or =one spontaneously appearing in very early childhood=--I consider “a riddle,” because, in fact, the more closely in recent years I have come to know it, the more I have endeavoured to study it scientifically, the more enigmatical, the more obscure, the more incomprehensible, it has become to me. But it =exists=. About that there is no doubt.
In the years 1905 and 1906 I was occupied almost exclusively with the problem of homosexuality, and I had the opportunity of seeing and examining a very large number of genuine homosexual individuals, both men and women. I was able to observe them during long periods, both at home and in public life. I learnt to know them--their mode of life, their habits, their opinions, their whole activity, not only in relation to one another, but also in relation to other non-homosexual individuals and to persons of the opposite sex. This experience taught me the indubitable fact that the diffusion of true homosexuality as a congenital natural phenomenon is =far greater= than I had earlier assumed;[502] so that I find myself now compelled to separate from true homosexuality the other category of =acquired, apparent, occasional homosexuality=, of the existence of which I am now, as formerly, =firmly convinced=. I denote this latter by the term “=pseudo-homosexuality=,” and treat of it in a separate chapter.
Formerly I believed that true homosexuality was only a variety of pseudo-homosexuality--in a sense larval pseudo-homosexuality. Now, however, I must recognize that true homosexuality constitutes a =special well-defined group=, sharply distinguishable from all forms of pseudo-homosexuality. From my medical observations, which have been as exact and objective as possible, I must draw the conclusion that among =thoroughly healthy individuals= of both sexes, not to be distinguished from other normal human beings, there appears =in very early childhood=, and certainly not evoked by any kind of external influence, an =inclination=, and after puberty a =sexual impulse, towards persons of the same sex=; and that this inclination and this impulse are =as little to be altered= as it is possible to expel from a heterosexual man the impulse towards woman.
Above all, in this definition of true original homosexuality I lay the stress upon the word “=healthy=”; for von Krafft-Ebing, though he admits the existence of congenital homosexuality yet regards it as a morbid degenerative phenomenon, as the expression of severe hereditary taint and of a neuro-psychopathic constitution; and this view is shared by many alienists.[503] Now, we must admit that a =portion= of genuine homosexuals--just as is the case with a portion of heterosexual individuals--possess such a morbid constitution; and we must acknowledge that yet =another portion= exhibit =manifestations of nervousness= and neurasthenia, which, beyond doubt, have developed during life out of an originally healthy state, in consequence of the struggle for life, the painful experience of being “different” from the great mass of people, etc.; but we ascertain that a =third=, and, in fact, the =largest, section= of original homosexuals are thoroughly =healthy, free from hereditary taint, physically and psychically normal=.
I have observed a great number of homosexuals belonging to all ages and occupations in whom not the slightest trace of morbidity was to be detected. They were just as healthy and normal as are heterosexuals. At an earlier date, though I was not yet aware of the relatively great frequency of true original homosexuality, it had become clear to me, on the ground of my own anthropological theory of sexual anomalies, that homosexuality might just as well appear in healthy human beings as in diseased. Therein I have always agreed with Magnus Hirschfeld, the principal advocate of this view, in opposition to the theory of the degenerative nature of homosexuality. For me there is no longer any doubt =that homosexuality is compatible with complete mental and physical health=.
It is very interesting to note that von Krafft-Ebing himself later came to the same view, and thus formally abandoned the degenerative hypothesis. In his “New Studies in the Domain of Homosexuality” he writes:[504]
“In view of the experience that contrary sexuality is a congenital anomaly, that it represents a disturbance in the evolution of the sexual life, and of the physical and mental development, in normal relationship to the kind of reproductive glands which the individual possesses, =it has become impossible to maintain in this connexion the idea of ‘disease.’= Rather, in such a case we must speak of a malformation, and treat the anomaly as parallel with physical malformation--for example, anatomical deviations from the structural type. At the same time, the assumption of a simultaneous psychopathia is not prejudiced, for persons who exhibit such an anatomical differentiation from type (stigmata degenerationis) =may remain physically healthy throughout life, and even be above the average in this respect=. Of course, a difference from the generality so important as contrary sexual sensation must have a much greater importance to the psyche than the majority of other anatomical or functional variations. In this way it is to be explained that a disturbance in the development in the normal sexual life may often be antagonistic to the development of a harmonious psychical personality.
“Not infrequently in the case of those with contrary sexuality do we find neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, as, for example, predisposition to constitutional neurasthenia and hysteria, to the milder forms of periodic psychosis, to the inhibition of the development of psychical energy (intelligence, moral sense), and in some of these cases the ethical deficiency (especially when hypersexuality is associated with the contrary sexuality) may lead to the most severe aberrations of the sexual impulse. And yet we can always prove that, relatively speaking, the heterosexual are apt to be much more depraved than the homosexual.
“Moreover, other manifestations of degeneration in the sexual spheres, in the form of sadism, masochism, and fetichism, are relatively much commoner among the former.
“That contrary sexual sensation =cannot= thus be necessarily regarded as =psychical= degeneration, or even as a manifestation of disease, is shown by various considerations, one of the principal of which is =that these variations of the sexual life may actually be associated with mental superiority=.... The proof of this is the existence of men of all nations whose contrary sexuality is an established fact, and who, none the less, are the pride of their nation as authors, poets, artists, leaders of armies, and statesmen.
“A further proof of the fact that contrary sexual sensation is =not necessarily disease, nor necessarily a vicious self-surrender to the immoral=, is to be found in the fact that all the noble activities of the heart which can be associated with heterosexual love can equally be associated with homosexual love... in the form of noble-mindedness, self-sacrifice, philanthropy, artistic sense, poietic activity, etc., but also the passions and defects of love (jealousy, suicide, murder, unhappy love, with its deleterious influence on soul and body, etc.).”
According to my own investigations and observations, the =relationship between health and disease= is among homosexuals =originally identical with that among heterosexuals=, and only in the course of life, in consequence of the social and individual isolation of the homosexual, which acts on them as a =psychical trauma=, is this relationship somewhat altered in favour of the predominance of disease. Here, however, we have, as a rule, to do chiefly with =acquired= nervous troubles and disorders, with the development of a peculiar type of “=homosexual neurasthenia=,” and in these cases by superficial observers there may easily be a confusion between post hoc and propter hoc.
Magnus Hirschfeld, who unquestionably possesses, relatively and absolutely, the greatest experience in the domain of homosexuality, maintains[505] that, according to his material of investigation--and this is of gigantic extent--at least 75 % of homosexuals are born of healthy parents and of happy marriages, often prolific marriages, and that nervous or mental anomalies, alcoholism, blood-relationship, and syphilis are no more frequent among the ancestors of homosexuals than among the ancestors of those endowed with normal sexuality. Only among from 20 to 25 % of homosexuals was he able, in conjunction with E. Burchard, to find hereditary taint. Only in 16 % could they find well-developed “stigmata of degeneration”; and, indeed, those with stigmata were throughout hereditarily tainted. This view is supported also by the facts (to which I already alluded in my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis”) that homosexuality is universally diffused in space and time; that it is independent of civilization, occurs among savage races who are not exposed to the conditions giving rise to degeneration in the same degree as civilized races; and that it is prevalent in the country, where the degenerative influence of life in large towns is not operative.
The most important characteristic of genuine homosexuality, its =spontaneous appearance very early in life=, which can only be referred to natural inheritance, appears to me to be a fact proved altogether beyond dispute. Men of the highest and most respected professions--above all, =judges=, =practising physicians=, =men of science=, =theologians=, and =scholars=--have described themselves to me as having been through and through homosexual from early childhood, so that I am thoroughly convinced that primary homosexuality makes its appearance at any rate very early in life.
The reports of physicians are of especially great importance. Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 12) quotes the utterance of a leading alienist, himself homosexual: “I can and must declare that I have never known a case of homosexuality which I could regard as other than congenital,” and the accuracy of this statement has been confirmed to me personally by several homosexual physicians. The idea “congenital” harmonizes very well with the demonstrable casual =objective= cause of the first homosexual tendencies, which we are able to learn in almost every case of homosexuality. These can, as is well known, also occur transiently in heterosexual individuals--a matter which is discussed in the chapter “Pseudo-Homosexuality.” In the case of genuine homosexuality, however, these homosexual activities play from the very beginning a predominant rôle, and =remain permanent=, because they result from a natural inheritance, from a deeply rooted impulse. This is shown in the following interesting autobiography of a man of letters thirty years of age:
“From my earliest childhood there was something girlish in my whole nature, both outwardly and (more especially) inwardly. I was very quiet, obedient, diligent, sensitive to praise and blame, rather bright. I associated chiefly with adults, and was generally beloved. Sexual activity began in me unusually early. When I was about six years of age a tutor sat down on my bed, in which I was lying in a fever. He caressed me, and with his hand membrum meum tetigit. The voluptuous sensation which resulted was so intense that it has never disappeared from my memory. At school, where I always distinguished myself by my application and success, I sometimes enjoyed mutual ‘feeling’ with several other boys. From which side I inherited the unusual intensity of the sexual impulse I do not know, but I remember that when I was about twelve years old I already suffered a good deal from sexual desire, and that it came to me as a solution of a great difficulty when a comrade instructed me in the practice of masturbation. It is remarkable that for some time afterwards there was no evacuation of semen. When this first appeared I was very much alarmed and disquieted, but I soon became accustomed to it, and this the more readily because I had no doubt whatever that all men regularly indulged in the same pleasure. This ‘paradisaical’ state did not, however, last for long; and after a time, when I recognized the unnatural and dangerous nature of my conduct, I conducted a severe and unsuccessful contest against my desires. In my life generally I had a good deal to bear, and I can say that I have hardly preserved a single really pleasant memory of my past; and yet I could look back to this past with a certain pride and satisfaction if it had not been that the sexual side of my life has left such gloomy shadows in my soul.
“I remember that from very early days my eyes involuntarily turned with longing towards elderly vigorous men, but I did not pay much attention to this fact. I believed that I only practised masturbation (the influence of which I doubtless exaggerate in memory to some extent) because it was not possible for me to have sexual intercourse with women. I was accustomed sometimes to have friendly association with young girls, who appeared to be extremely attracted towards me. I always took care, however, that such love tendencies were nipped in the bud, because I felt that it was impossible for me to go any further with them. Ultimately I determined to seek salvation in intercourse with prostitutes, although they were disagreeable to my æsthetic and moral feelings; but I got no help here: either I was unable to complete the normal sexual act, or in other cases it was completed without any particular pleasure, and I was always consumed with anxiety with respect to infection. I had, indeed, often the opportunity of forming an ‘intimacy’ with a woman, but I did not do it, and always supposed that my failure to do so depended upon my ridiculous bashfulness and upon the excessive sensitiveness of my conscience. But though there is some truth in both of these suggestions, I have not taken into account the principal grounds--namely, that I am congenitally homosexual, and that I feel no physical attraction, or almost none, towards the other sex. This suffices to explain the fact (which can be explained in no other way) that when masturbating I almost always represented in imagination handsome elderly men. In my lascivious dreams, also, such men play the principal rôle. These longings were so powerful that it was impossible that I should not soon have my attention directed to them; but as I could not understand them and would not take the matter seriously (I knew, indeed, that man =must= feel drawn towards woman, and not towards man), I continued unceasingly and despairingly to fight against these fixed ideas, while at the same time with varying success I endeavoured to cure myself of masturbation; for in the first place it now gave very little satisfaction, and in the second place it destroyed my hopes of eventually procreating healthy children. I had almost come to believe myself no longer competent for the sexual life when I noticed one day that the view of a membrum virile set my blood flowing fiercely. I then remembered that this had sometimes happened before, although to a less marked extent. I was now compelled to recognize that I was not the same as every one else. This fact, which I had before suspected, and of which I now became more and more firmly convinced, reduced me to despair, which was all the greater because in other ways I felt extremely unhappy, and because I did not dare to speak of it to any human being. Sometimes I still thought that there must be some ‘misunderstanding,’ and that there must be some salvation for me. Then it happened that a simple girl fell in love with me, and I went so far as to enter into an intimacy with her, although I openly assured her that as far as I was concerned it was simply a matter of physical enjoyment, and that I could not in any way make myself responsible for her future, for which reason care must be taken that there should be no offspring. During this intimacy, which lasted several months, I sometimes overcame my enduring inclinations towards men, but completely to suppress them was impossible. My association with the girl was still continuing, when one day in a public lavatory I saw an elderly gentleman whose appearance greatly pleased me. He looked at me tentatively. Cautiously he leaned over, in order membrum meum videre; he gradually drew near to me, moved his shaking hand and ... membrum meum tetigit. I was so much surprised and alarmed that I ran away, and avoided for some time afterwards passing by the same place. All the stronger, however, was the impulse to find this remarkable man once more, and this was not at all difficult. What an enigma such a man seemed to me! How could it happen that he dared to do that of which I had always been able only to think, to dream, with heart-quaking and horror? Could there, perhaps, be another man like this--perhaps several such exceptional beings? A short period convinced me that I was not quite alone in my way of feeling; but this was a weak consolation. Rather, since that time--that is to say, during the last five years--my inward battle has become more unbearable, for earlier my only battle was to reject homosexual ideas, and to overcome the habit of solitary self-abuse. Now sometimes I practise with another mutual onanism (to me the proper ‘natural’ mode of sexual gratification), and yet I cannot forgive myself for doing it because it is effected in so unæsthetic a manner, and is associated with such dangers. Notwithstanding all my endeavours, however, I have never been able to resist the temptation for a long time together; and thus I am hunted always by my impulse as by a wild animal, and can nowhere and in nothing find repose and forgetfulness. I have frequently changed my place of residence, but I always before long form new ‘relationships.’ The tortures which I suffer in consequence of the incomparable power of the impulse are greater them I can possibly express in words. I can only wonder that I did not lose my reason, and that in the eyes of my friends and acquaintances I am now, as before, ‘the most normal of all human beings.’ In the senseless and utterly unsuccessful contest with an impulse which, as far as I am concerned, is wholly, or almost wholly, congenital, I have lost the best of my powers, although I have long recognized the fact that this impulse in and by itself is neither morbid nor sinful, for a divergence from the norm is not a disease, and the gratification of a natural impulse, which in no respect and for no human being leads to evil consequences, cannot be regarded as sinful. Why, then, must I continue to strive against this impulse like a madman? Because it is very generally misunderstood, so unpardonably condemned. What help is it that I am now surrounded by love and respect? I know that so many would turn away from me with horror if they were to learn my sexual constitution, although it is a matter which does not concern them at all. Scorn and contempt would then be my lot. I should be regarded by the majority of human beings as a libertine; whereas I feel and know that, notwithstanding all the sensuality of my nature, I have been created for some other purpose than simply to follow my lustful desire. Who will believe that I suffer in the struggle with myself? Who will have compassion upon me? This idea is intolerable. I am condemned to eternal solitude. I have not the moral right to found a home, to embrace a child who would give me the name of ‘father.’ Is not this punishment sufficiently severe for God knows what sins? Why, then, should the consciousness be superadded that I am a pariah, an outcast from society? Owing to the opinion of society regarding the homosexual--an opinion based upon ignorance, stupidity, and ill-nature--society drives these unhappy beings to death (or to a marriage which in their case is criminal), and then triumphantly exclaims: ‘Look what degenerate beings they are!’ No, they are not degenerates, those whose lives you have made unbearable; they are for the most part spiritually and morally very healthy human beings. I will speak of myself. Why do I long for death? Certainly not because I am mentally abnormal. I am no morbid pessimist, and I know well enough that life can be very beautiful. But, unfortunately, it cannot be so for me; for my life is a hell; I am intolerably weary of my internal conflict; it has become horribly difficult to me to play the hypocrite, to pretend continually to be a happy man rejoicing in life; I am bending beneath the burden of my heavy iron mask. Recently I had myself hypnotized, in order to have my thoughts turned away as far as possible from sexual matters. My hypnotist said to me: ‘You see, you will be at rest now,’ and involuntarily in sleep I had to swallow these words, ‘Be at rest’! Good God, is that possible? Does the ‘normal’ man know how this word sounds in our ears? Who will understand my intolerable pain? Perhaps my dear parents could have done so, as they loved me above all, as if they had a presentiment that I should be the most unhappy of their children; but they have been dead for several years, and so, notwithstanding my numerous relatives and friends, I stand quite alone in this world, and vainly seek an answer to the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘Wherefore?’”
Genuine homosexuality exhibits, like heterosexuality, the character of an impulse arising from the =very nature= of the personality, which, in activity from the cradle to the grave, expresses the =continuity of the individual= in respect also of this peculiar sexual tendency. Thus there does not exist a homosexuality =limited= merely to a certain age of life, as to childhood or youth, to maturity, or even to old age. Hence we must distinguish from genuine homosexuality the pæderasty of old men described by Schopenhauer, which does not begin till old age appears. We must distinguish, also, the love of Greek boys for elderly men; these must be included in the category of =pseudo-homosexuality=. An inclination which, like original homosexuality, is an =outflow of the essential nature= of the individual concerned, cannot disappear so long as the individual himself persists, cannot begin or end except with the beginning or end of his life. Homosexuality extends throughout the lifetime, and if by any cause whatever--for example, enforced marriage--it is apparently temporarily suppressed, it always reappears. It seems very doubtful if there really exists, as von Krafft-Ebing[506] assumes, a genuine =retarded= homosexuality--that is, original homosexuality which does not manifest itself until a comparatively advanced age. There do, doubtless, exist transient cases of pseudo-homosexuality, which have in some cases developed in those previously heterosexual, and which in other cases are superimposed upon a bisexual basis. These belong to the category of “=acquired=” homosexuality, which is always a pseudo-homosexuality.
The course of life of genuine homosexuals is a complete expression of the results of simple inversion of the sexual impulse, and the homosexual type makes its appearance in childhood. The fact of the “=difference=” between the homosexual and others is not experienced merely by the person himself, but is also noticed =very early= by those who have care of him. The “girlish” (in the case of female homosexuality, “boyish”) and “peculiar” nature is often observed by members of the family, by comrades, and by tutors, and gives rise to the use of nicknames. These manifestations and perceptions are a valuable objective confirmation of the subjective sensations of homosexual children. A Protestant clergyman whose homosexual son also studied theology remarked to M. Hirschfeld: “He was from the very beginning different from my five other sons.” The physical and moral peculiarities presently to be described are often manifested in very early childhood. Hirschfeld has frequently been able to diagnose “homosexuality” in children from ten to fourteen years of age. He alludes, among others, to a very timid boy, twelve years of age, who suffered from migraine, who cried frequently, who kept himself apart from his schoolfellows, and corresponded daily with a boy friend. He was fond of flowers and music; he had very little inclination to mathematics (according to Hirschfeld, a somewhat characteristic phenomenon in cases of homosexuality). The examination of the boy, who was extremely bashful, showed that =the genital organs were still completely undeveloped=, the penis resembling that of a boy of four years, whilst the breasts were markedly developed like those of a girl at the commencement of puberty.
I doubt whether the fondness on the part of boys for girls’ games, or on the part of girls for boys’ games, can be regarded as a symptom of diagnostic importance in regard to the existence of homosexuality, for a fondness for playing with girls and for cooking may often be observed in boys who later prove thoroughly heterosexual. Still, these things do play a great part in the autobiography of homosexuals, and have, in fact, great importance in cases in which these tendencies persist =after= puberty, when the heterosexually differentiated psyche would, after the transitory episode of these youthful games, display activities now corresponding to the fully developed sexual sensibility.
Puberty is the most important period with regard to the final =determination= of homosexuality by means of particular =physical= and =mental= characteristics.
The consideration of the physical and mental characters of male homosexuals leads clearly to the distinction of two different types--the =effeminate= and the =virile= urnings. With regard to the relative numbers of these two types there exist no definite data. Hirschfeld, in his “Urnings,” describes chiefly the type of the more or less effeminate urnings--that is, of those who show the greatest resemblance to the feminine nature--and does not express an opinion as to whether the number of effeminate homosexuals is greater than the number of virile homosexuals--that is, of those whose nature is predominantly masculine. Another experienced observer of urnings, Dr. J. E. Meisner,[507] is of opinion that in the =majority= of cases the male type of homosexuals is encountered rather than the female. According to my own observations, it appears to me that the number of virile and of effeminate urnings is about identical.[508] There are certainly numerous virile homosexuals, or rather homosexuals of a thoroughly =masculine= build of body, without great deviations from the normal type, who yet have a more or less feminine mode of sensibility. The distinction between effeminate and virile homosexuals would appear therefore to be only relative, and for the majority of cases Hirschfeld’s remarks (“Urnings,” p. 86) apply:
“A homosexual who was not distinguishable physically and mentally from the complete man is a being I have not yet encountered among fifteen hundred cases, and I am therefore unable to believe in the existence of such until I personally encounter one.”
More especially after removing any beard or moustache that may be present, we sometimes see much more clearly the feminine expression of face in a male homosexual, whilst before the hair was removed they appeared quite man-like. Still more important for the determination of a feminine habitus are direct physical characteristics. Among these there must be mentioned a =considerable deposit of fat=, by which the resemblance to the feminine type is produced, the contours of the body being more rounded than in the case of the normal male. In correspondence with this the =muscular system= is less powerfully developed than it is in heterosexual men, the skin is delicate and soft, and the complexion is much clearer than is usual in men. Last winter I attended an urnings’ ball, and I was much impressed, when looking at the décolleté men, with the remarkable whiteness of their skin on the shoulders, neck, and back--also in those who had not applied powder--and by the fact that the little acne spots almost always present in normal men were absent in these. The peculiar rounding of the shoulders was also remarkable, from its resemblance to what one sees in women.
According to Hirschfeld, the skin of the urning almost always feels warmer than his environment. He refers the expression commonly used among the people (in Germany), “warm brothers,” to this circumstance, and derives the Latin homo mollis (“soft man”) from the softness of the skin and of the muscular system (though in my opinion this term is applied rather to the =entire= effeminate, soft nature of the urning). Of great interest is the relation =between the breadth of the shoulders and the width of the pelvis= in homosexual men. Whilst the breadth of the shoulders of heterosexual men is several centimetres in excess of the width of the pelvis, and in women the width of the pelvis is greater than the breadth of the shoulders, according to Hirschfeld in the urning there is little or no difference between these two measurements. This, in respect of the bodily structure, would completely justify the expression “intermediate stage,” and would give the homosexual man a position between the heterosexual man and the heterosexual woman. Still, there are, without doubt, numerous virile homosexual men in whom this great width of the pelvis is not present. Investigations regarding the corresponding relationships among homosexual women have not to my knowledge hitherto been made. Very striking is the =often luxuriant growth of hair=, especially in the effeminate types, whereas the virile homosexuals are in this respect more approximate to normal men, baldness being common among them.
Our attention having been recently directed by the investigation of H. Swoboda to the existence of =equivalents of menstruation= in men, the occurrence of such equivalents among urnings is of interest. Hirschfeld reports the case of an effeminate homosexual who since the age of fourteen had suffered at intervals of twenty-eight days from migraine, associated with severe pains in the back and loins, so that his stepmother said to him: “It is with you just as it is with us.”
The =gait= and the =movements= of effeminate urnings also have a somewhat womanly appearance, and attract the attention even of one who is not in the secret. Short, tripping paces and elegant movements are characteristic of the effeminate.
In an earlier chapter we came to the conclusion that the fully adult normal woman was approximate in physical characteristics rather to the child and to the youthful human being than to the adult man; and in this connexion it is of interest that we must describe as a distinctively =feminine= characteristic the peculiarity of many male homosexuals, which enables them =for a long time to preserve a youthful appearance and demeanour=.
Very remarkable is the behaviour of the voice. The change in the voice may not occur at all, or does not occur till very late. The capacity for singing soprano or falsetto is also long preserved. Others, in whom the change of voice had failed to occur, were able to lower the pitch considerably by practice. A typical and well-known example is that of the baritone singer Willibald von Sadler-Grün, whom I had the opportunity of hearing recently, when, under the name of “Urany Verde,” he made a professional journey through Germany, and sang his songs dressed as a woman. He said of himself: “My voice has never cracked in a definite way. At twenty-three years of age I could sing soprano, and can still do so to-day, at the age of thirty. The deeper tones for speech and singing I acquired only by instruction and practice” (Hirschfeld, “Urnings,” p. 65). In this typical effeminate, the breasts also had a completely feminine character, as, according to Hirschfeld, is by no means rare in boy urnings, who at puberty experience swelling of the breasts, associated with painful sensations.[509] I must, however, maintain, in opposition to Hirschfeld, that abnormally marked development of the breasts is by no means rare in perfectly normal heterosexual men. For the diagnosis of homosexuality, the imperfect development of the larynx, and the failure of the voice to crack, are more important than the marked development of the breasts. I remember distinctly that in the case of a fellow-student of mine years ago his high voice used greatly to strike me. To-day I am able to understand how this fact was associated with his complete disinclination to sexual intercourse with women and his insensibility to feminine charms in general; and I am able in his case to diagnose homosexuality with absolute certainty.
In the case of =virile= homosexuals, all the above-mentioned physical peculiarities are far less noticeable. In their outward appearance they much more nearly resemble heterosexual men, but still they always have =comparatively= more of the feminine in their nature than the latter. Such a typically virile homosexual, in whose appearance the impression of femininity was entirely absent, I was able recently to recognize during a railway journey, in the course of which he confided to me misogynous opinions against other fellow-travellers, and also said that in the whole of his life--he was a man of a little over thirty--he had not had intercourse with women more than three or four times. During the long wait of the train at a station I took the opportunity, having mentioned that I was a physician by profession, to ask him if he was not homosexual, a fact which he at once admitted. Already in very early childhood he had felt himself distinctly drawn only towards masculine beings, and had =never= experienced the least inclination towards women. In this case also any kind of outward influence was excluded, because he had grown up at home and chiefly in a =feminine= environment. As I have already said, in appearance he was masculine, and he himself stated that he had no physical characteristics which suggested a feminine impression. That this is the case in numerous virile homosexuals is proved by the distinctive fact that many of them are =professional soldiers=, especially officers, in respect of whose appearance virility is very strongly insisted on.
The =mental= qualities of male homosexuals correspond fully to the physical, and occupy a middle region between the psyche of the heterosexual man and that of woman. But every =emotional element= is in them more prominent than energetic will-power and clear-sighted reason. Something soft and pliable is characteristic of the majority of urnings. This adaptability manifests itself in good-humouredness, in inclination to self-sacrifice, but, above all, in a most astonishing =mobility of the imaginative life=, which seems to be something characteristic of the homosexual, and to explain his frequent artistic capacity, above all his talents for =music=, for which vocation, indeed, his less fixed and more sketchy nature especially fits him, but also for poetry, painting, acting, and sculpture. “For all the fine arts,” says Hirschfeld, “from cooking and artistic needlework to sculpture, we find that urnings have exceptional talent.” The inclination to intellectual occupation is distinctly greater among homosexuals than the inclination to bodily work. Associated with this is the ambition to distinguish themselves mentally above those by whom they are surrounded. Hirschfeld’s assertion that homosexuals belonging to the lower classes exhibit intellectual predominance over their environment, I am able emphatically to confirm, after frequent conversations with homosexual workmen and menservants. The peculiarity of their congenital tendencies has here early given rise to a certain intellectual profundity, has early taught these men to =reflect= about the world and about human existence. Every homosexual is a philosopher for himself. Most heterosexuals, especially those of the lower classes, never arrive at thinking so much about themselves and about their relations to the external world, as is a matter of course among homosexuals. The =imaginative=, the =dreamy=, is much more predominant in the homosexual than a crude sense of reality. This expresses itself particularly in his love, which far less frequently and exclusively than among the heterosexual takes the form of a gross and material sensuality. On the contrary, it permits us to recognize the inward need for tenderness and delicacy, for a peculiar ideal colouring. Goethe has contrasted this latter with the more sensual heterosexual love; he speaks of the
“remarkable phenomenon of the love of men for each other. Let it be admitted that this love is seldom pushed to the highest degree of sensuality, but rather occupies the intermediate region between inclination and passion. I am able to say that I have seen with my own eyes the most beautiful manifestations of this love, such as we have handed down to us from the days of Greek antiquity; and as an observant student of human nature I was able to observe the intellectual and moral elements of this love.”[510]
The ideal conception of Platonic--that is, of homosexual--love was a non-sensual, assexual love. The psychical element also plays an important part in modern uranism--a part overlooked or underestimated, whereas the sensual side is exaggerated.
Homosexuality as an anthropological phenomenon is diffused throughout all classes of the population. We find it among workmen just as much as among aristocrats, princely personalities, and intellectual heroes. Physicians, lawyers, theologians, philosophers, merchants, artists, etc., all contribute their contingents to uranism. If the extraordinarily frequent occurrence of homosexuality in the highest classes of society, especially in the leaders of the aristocracy, may possibly be brought into relationship with the processes of “degeneration,” still, on the other hand, numerous homosexuals are derived from healthy families, such as have not transmitted hereditary taint through a long series of ancestors. Recently G. Merzbach[511] has studied the relationship between homosexuality and the choice of a profession, and has proved that this choice is usually a consequence of the natural tendency. Thus we find an especially large number of homosexuals engaged in the production of ready-made clothing and in other manufacturing trades; others become music-hall comedians playing women’s parts, actors, dancers. Actors and singers appearing on the stage as women are to a large extent original homosexuals.[512] Among hairdressers and waiters we find also a relatively large number of urnings.
As regards the =diffusion= of homosexuality, the data obtainable up to the most recent times have been extremely contradictory. The first exact information is to be found in the work of a physician, published under the name of M. Kertbeny,[513] on “§ 143 of the Prussian Criminal Code of April 14, 1851, and its Continuance as § 152 in the Proposal for a Criminal Code for the North German Bund” (Leipzig, 1869). The author enumerates in Berlin 10,000 homosexuals among 700,000 inhabitants (equal to 1·425 %). A patient of von Krafft-Ebing, living in a town of 13,000 inhabitants, was acquainted with 14 urnings; and in another town of 60,000 he knew of at least 80. Many other equally uncertain estimates are recorded by Magnus Hirschfeld. They vary between 2 % and 0·1 %--vary, that is to say, within very wide limits. In view, therefore, of the importance of the exact determination of the number of homosexuals, which I myself had earlier declared to be desirable, we owe great thanks to Magnus Hirschfeld for having made an attempt[514] to obtain some exact data regarding this matter. He deduces from a compilation of thirty test investigations (reports regarding homosexuals in various classes of the population), and by means of an inquiry made with sealed letters, that the proportion of male homosexuals to the population =is about= 1·5 %. That is a very much =greater= percentage than has hitherto been assumed to exist. Formerly I doubted the accuracy of this figure, but since numerous respected, honourable, well-behaved persons, of whom I had not suspected it, have assured me that they have been homosexual since childhood, I have no longer any doubt regarding the approximate accuracy of Hirschfeld’s statistics. The enquiry made by Dr. von Römer in Amsterdam gave similar results, for he found the proportion of homosexuals to be 1·9 %. A third enquiry made by Hirschfeld among the metal-workers of Berlin gave a proportion of 1·1 %.
=Normal heterosexual= love was reported in about 94 to 96 % of the three inquiries.
“An imposing recognition of the love of man for woman, a powerful manifestation of the provision for the preservation of the species, and a contradiction to the fear that the uranian element in the population could ever seriously impair the well-being of the great majority” (Hirschfeld).
As “=bisexual=”--that is, as exhibiting tendencies towards both sexes--the average of the three enquiries reported 3·9 %, of whom, however, 0·8 % were mainly homosexual.
The total number of the purely and mainly homosexual was thus 2·2 %. Hence, according to the results of the last census of 1900, in the total population of the German Empire, numbering 56,367,178, there would be about 1,200,000 =homosexuals=; whilst of the population of Berlin, numbering 2,500,000, 56,000 would be homosexual.
In the interest of the scientific and social study of homosexuality, it is urgently necessary that these statistical investigations should be pursued, for if it should appear that the above estimates really apply to the whole Empire--which I do not feel justified in assuming without further evidence, since it is naturally possible that Berlin might contain a relatively greater number of homosexuals--uranism would, in fact, have a greater social importance than it has hitherto been assumed to possess. In any case, the number of urnings is large enough to make them appear a remarkable anthropological variety of our race.
The truth of this assertion is supported by the fact of the ubiquitous diffusion of uranism in time and space. In addition to homosexuality as a popular custom, genuine homosexuality also played a part in antiquity; and F. Karsch[515] has proved in an admirable book its occurrence among all savage races, although unquestionably numerous cases of non-genuine homosexuality must have been included. That homosexuality is in no way a sign of “degeneration” is proved also by the fact that it is more widely diffused among the still thoroughly vigorous Germans and Anglo-Saxons than it is among the Latin peoples. It is especially frequent in the German Ostsee provinces. It existed among the ancient Scandinavians.[516] Recently F. Karsch has announced the publication of ethnological researches on homosexuality, the first volume of which has already been issued, under the title “Homosexual Life among the Inhabitants of Eastern Asia: the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans”[517] (Munich, 1906). In the preface he states expressly that he treats not only of original homosexuality, but also of artificially produced or acquired homosexuality--that which I call “pseudo-homosexuality.”
My earlier view, that true homosexuality is rare among the =Jews=, I find it necessary to revise, for recently I have made the acquaintance of numerous Jewish homosexuals.
For the =earlier history and literature of homosexuality= the most important, and, in fact, nearly exhaustive, sources are the article “Pæderasty,” by Meier, in Ersch and Gruber’s “General Encyclopædia,” section iii., part 9, pp. 149-189 (Leipzig, 1837); Rosenbaum’s “History of Syphilis in Antiquity,” pp. 119-227[518] (Halle, 1893); and, finally, the writings of the earliest German student of homosexuality, containing numerous interesting data, the Hanoverian official Karl Heinrich Ulrichs,[519] who, under the pseudonym “Numa Numantius,” published numerous works devoted to the emancipation of homosexuals, and to the proof of the congenital nature of homosexuality. The general title of these works is “Anthropological Studies on the Sexual Love of Man for Man.” They were published under various peculiar separate titles, such as: “Vindex” (Leipzig, 1864); “Inclusa” (Leipzig, 1864); “Vindicta” (Leipzig, 1865); “Formatrix” (Leipzig, 1865); “Ara Spei” (Leipzig, 1865); “Gladius Furens” (Kassel, 1868); “Memnon” (Schleiz, 1868); “Incubus” (Leipzig, 1869); “Argonauticus” (Leipzig, 1869); “Araxes” (Schleiz, 1870); “Uranus” (Leipzig, 1870); “Kritische Pfeile” (Stuttgart, 1879). In addition, Ulrichs, whose lifetime extended from 1825 to 1895, published uranian poetry under the title of “Auf Bienchens Flügeln” (“On the Wings of the Bee”); Leipzig, 1875. These writings, most of which are very rare in their original editions (although many were reprinted in the year 1898), contained a number of new points of view for the consideration of homosexuality, which have been recognized as sound by recent investigators.
Important contributions to the knowledge of homosexuality are afforded us by the studies of the life and works of celebrated and intellectually distinguished urnings. As unquestionably homosexual we may mention the poet Platen,[520] Michael Angelo,[521] Heinrich Hössli,[522] Heinrich Bulthaupt,[523] Johannes von Müller (the historian),[524] King Henry III. of France,[525] the musician Franz von Holstein,[526] Peter Tschaikowsky,[527] the authors Count Emmerich von Stadion and Emil Mario Vacano,[528] Duke August von Gotha,[529] George Eekhoud,[530] and the Belgian sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy (1602-1654).[531] The following celebrated persons have also been regarded as urnings, but, as it appears to me, on insufficient proofs: Frederick the Great; J. J. Winkelmann, who at most was bisexual, since we know of passionate letters written by him to a woman; and Alexander von Sternberg,[532] of whom the same is true; the reformers Beza[533] and Calvin,[534] who have unquestionably been wrongfully accused; and finally Byron and Grillparzer,[535] without troubling to enumerate hypotheses utterly without foundation. It is unquestionably a fact that a large number of intellectually prominent men were genuine homosexuals, and that their abnormal congenital tendencies did not prevent their doing important work in other spheres of activity. But this happened =notwithstanding=, and =not=, as many talented apologists wish to prove, =because of= their uranism.
When we pass to consider the =activity= of homosexual love, we find that homosexuals may, and actually do, love either other homosexual or heterosexual individuals. According to the account given by Meisner (“Uranism,” pp. 19, 20), the amatory ideal of most homosexual men is a heterosexual man, and intercourse between two urnings is, properly speaking, only a matter of necessity. But by several homosexuals with whom I discussed the matter this view was declared to be erroneous; in the majority of cases the attraction between two homosexuals plays the principal rôle. Ulrichs endeavoured to provide a theoretical justification for the sexual relationship between two homosexuals, and maintained (cf., for example, “Inclusa,” pp. 64, 65) that Nature destined the heterosexual, or “dioning,” as he calls them, by no means for woman alone, but also for the urning, for the “fulfilment of the sexual purposes of Nature, not directed towards reproduction.” According to Hirschfeld (“Urnings,” pp. 22, 23), it is unquestionable that, whilst many homosexuals greatly prefer to associate with those who also feel in a uranian manner, and whilst to many also it is a matter of indifference whether or not those with whom they have sexual relations are themselves endowed with contrary sexuality, quite a number of urnings feel attracted =exclusively= to normal, sexually powerful natures. As a rule, it is not difficult for homosexuals to gratify their inclinations in intercourse with heterosexual individuals. A middle-aged urning informed me that young heterosexual men =almost always= acceded in this matter to the expressed wish of homosexuals--in the first place from simple curiosity, and in the second place by no means rarely from sexual excitement. Indeed, according to this authority, effeminate homosexual men often produce in powerfully sensual heterosexual men the impression of femininity, and are seduced by the latter to mutual masturbation, especially in a state of alcoholic intoxication. Not infrequently does it happen--a striking example having come to my knowledge--that a young heterosexual has a love intimacy with a girl, and yet occasionally, when he is for any reason unable to have sexual intercourse with her, he =very willingly= transfers his affections to a homosexual man. Male prostitutes are also, to a large extent, heterosexual men who give themselves to homosexuals for pecuniary reward. Occasionally, moreover, heterosexual men mistake very effeminate urnings going about in women’s clothing for genuine women, and have intercourse with them in this belief--a belief which these latter are clever enough to keep up until the last possible moment.
Passing now to the consideration of the special circumstances of sexual attraction, we find that the true love of boys,[536] or rather the love of children (=pædophilia=), is rare in homosexuals. The age chiefly preferred is that between seventeen and twenty-five years, alike by mature homosexual men and by old men. On the other hand, it =is by no means an exceptional phenomenon= for youths, or even mature men, to feel attracted exclusively by elderly men (the so-called “=gerontophilia=”). There exists also a heterosexual “gerontophilia”--that is to say, abnormal love exhibited by young men for old women, or by young women for old men. Thus Féré reports (“Note sur une Anomalie de l’Instinct Sexuel: Gerontophilie,” published in the Journal de Neurologie, 1905) the case of a man twenty-seven years of age who was sexually attracted only by white-haired, elderly women. He referred this to an impression received in very early youth. When four years old he slept in the same bed with an elderly lady, a family friend, who was visiting the house, and he then for the first time experienced sexual excitement. He had a dislike to young girls and young married women. A white-haired elderly woman whom he loved dyed her hair light brown, whereupon he ceased to care for her. Further, effeminate urnings prefer virile homosexuals; whereas many of these latter have a great dislike to effeminates and to men in women’s clothing--to those male “women” who adopt by preference feminine nicknames, such as Louisa instead of Louis, Georgina instead of George, and who speak to one another as “sister,” just as the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus wished to be addressed as “mistress” instead of “lord.” Many urnings love beardless men; others love men with a moustache or a full beard; many homosexuals are fascinated by bright-coloured cloth, just as women are. Moreover, every possible individual detail may here have an attractive force, just as is the case with heterosexual love (the hair, the stature, the gait, the eyes, the intelligence, and the character).
Ideal love and the gratification of the grossest sensuality are also the two poles between which the =amatory manifestations= of male homosexuals oscillate. Many confine themselves to simple contacts, caresses, kisses and embraces. Most frequently sexual gratification is obtained by mutual masturbation. The idea that the non-homosexual especially associates with the word “pæderasty” is “pædication”[537]--that is, immissio membri in anum. This sexual act is, however, far less frequent than it is commonly assumed to be by heterosexuals. According to Magnus Hirschfeld, it occurs only in 8 %, according to G. Merzbach only in 6 %, of all cases of intercourse between male homosexuals. In an essay on pædication which I possess, written by a homosexual, it is represented as much commoner, and as “the most natural and least harmful means of gratification.” According to a verbal communication made to me, the author of this essay knew of one hundred cases of pædication in which no harm had resulted. Frequently coitus inter femora takes the place of pædication; still more frequently “fellation,” or coitus in os, and the widely diffused “tongue kiss.”[538] Other perverse manifestations of the homosexual impulse also occur, such as anilinctus, fetichism, masochism, sadism, exhibitionism, etc., just as they occur in heterosexual individuals.
With regard to the relations of true homosexuals to women, generally speaking they =loathe sexual intercourse= with woman, but they do not dislike woman herself. Women, on the contrary, are greatly liked by most homosexuals; effeminate urnings more especially gladly seek their society, in order to gossip with them about all kinds of feminine belongings. =Marriages= are often contracted by homosexuals who are really ignorant as to their own condition, or who hope to conceal it from the world, or simply for pecuniary considerations. They result most unhappily if the wife has need of love, and understands the real nature of the case; or, again, if she becomes jealous of her husband’s male lovers; but when the wife is frigid, they may turn out quite happily. They are, however, always very unnatural. Hirschfeld[539] has thoroughly discussed the question of the marriage of homosexuals, and has also alluded to the occasional marriages between homosexual men and homosexual women. The fact proved by him that among homosexuals the impulse towards the preservation of the species is almost entirely wanting--not more than 3 % have the wish to possess children--shows how little fitted they are for the purposes of marriage.
The above-described sexual relationships may be illustrated by a few original reports taken from the autobiographies of homosexuals. For example, a homosexual man, twenty-seven years of age, writes:
“When I was young, from four to six years of age, I loved to look at the male generative organs, without knowing why they attracted me. I liked to look at sculpture and pictures representing male nudity. I detest woman’s work and the fashions of the day: a simple costume suffices for me. I learned the ‘great secret of the world’ when I was twelve years old, but woman had no interest for me, and I was always asking little boys of from ten to fourteen years of age to show me their private parts. I commenced to have carnal intercourse with boys (aged eighteen to twenty-four) when I was myself twenty-four. Only coitus inter femora, face to face, never from behind. I always assume the active rôle. A young man from eighteen to twenty-four years of age is to me like a woman. A woman is to me a thing (!), not so a man. Perhaps it is original, odd for our time; but what is to be done? Woman is a machine for producing children, and nothing more. I am not married, and never shall marry.”
Another homosexual writes:
“I was about five years old when, walking with a nursemaid in the pleasure gardens, I saw a man masturbating. Although I did not know what he was doing, the picture busied my imagination for many years. In my dreams, up to the age of fourteen years, the thought of living together with a companion of the same age as myself played the principal part. At the age of thirteen I fell in love with a schoolfellow, who was, however, but little inclined towards me. What perhaps especially interested me in him was that he brought sexual enlightenment to our class. Through moving to another town I lost sight of him. Although at that time I knew nothing of the real sexual life, still I sought for objects which excited my sensuality.
“An unknown man of about thirty-five years of age seduced me, and practised pæderasty with me on the first occasion that he met me. I felt that there was something altogether wrong about this practice, but was too weak to withdraw myself from his influence. After about three months he disappeared. Now also I knew what masturbation was, for in the school this practice was common.
“At the age of eighteen I left the school, and as in my comrades the impulse towards women now showed itself, I, for my part, felt all the more how everything directed me towards man. I often endeavoured, in obedience to the urging of my friends, to form relationships with women of the half-world, but this always filled me with the greatest horror and repugnance. To me it is a dreadful feeling when I notice that a woman is interested in me. All the more, on the other hand, did the male sex interest me. When I love a man I do not think (only) of sexual union, but I try to read in him what I am myself prepared to give: a sole interest, faithfulness, unselfish surrender. If I love a man, anyone else is nothing to me.
“Every man of standing of twenty to forty years of age is interesting to me--every one who is not positively repulsive--but most of all anyone who possesses a distinguished psyche. In isolated cases sympathy has also led me to love.
“The kiss is of the highest importance to me, and precisely because I regard love as created only for a holy purpose, so that human beings may be mutually ennobled and morally advanced by this passion, it has always been repulsive to me to observe how men flirt with one another, just as is the case with heterosexuals. For this reason I am disinclined to visit places of general resort--such as, for example, the Casino of Dresden, where all kinds of people come together. I have met hardly any other urning who shares my sentiments in this respect.”
A homosexual physician, thirty-two years of age, gives the following account of his sexuality:
“I cannot tell you at what age sexual inclinations first appeared in me. My sexual impulse is directed towards males. Before and during the time of puberty the impulse was quite indeterminate. I believe that at this time I even cherished the idea of some day carrying out intercourse with a girl. But this was not love; it was a purely physical desire. The spiritual side of the impulse was at this time completely wanting. The sexual impulse now extends only towards young men. I have hitherto had sexual intercourse neither with males nor with females, but I believe that I should be competent for the normal sexual act. This act, however, would give me no pleasure; it would be nothing more than masturbation. I feel complete indifference towards the female sex, but I do not feel hatred or disgust. Sexual dreams[540] relate always to persons of the same sex. On the stage, in the circus, it is always the men who interest me more than the women. In addition, I admire celebrated actresses and female singers, but my interest in them is purely artistic. From this standpoint also I am fully able to do justice to the beauty of young women, and have often wished to paint a girl, but this interest is always that of a painter--the colour of the hair, the complexion, interesting features. Social intercourse with persons of the other sex is quite unrestrained. The sense of shame I feel more in regard to women, but still I have also a strong sense of shame with regard to men. I always have a great difficulty to overcome when I have to take off my clothes in the presence of other men, and it is also very difficult to me to urinate when other men are present.
“My love exists only towards youths from the ages of seventeen to twenty-four, or, to speak more strictly, towards youths at the time of puberty. One of these of whom I am fond is sixteen years of age, but sexually he is completely mature, so that every one imagines him to be twenty.
“The direction of my sexual impulse has first become perfectly clear to me since reading the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages. I was already fully aware of the fact that young men were especially interesting to me, but had not previously understood that this interest was of a sexual nature. I had, indeed, heard of pæderasty--the case of Krupp and others--but I imagined that these individuals had developed such a tendency in consequence of satiety. ‘You,’ I said to myself, ‘are purer and nobler in sentiment. Pæderasty is loathsome to you; no human being will ever understand you.’
“Every young man at the age of puberty awakens in me a certain sexual interest. This is especially the case when they are slender and wiry in build, not fat, with well-developed, but not excessively powerful, muscles, with gentle and modest character. Roughness always suffices to destroy completely the commencement of inclination. Sturdy, plump youths, and those with an excessive development of fat under the skin, or with a wide, feminine aspect of the buttocks, leave me comparatively cold. The youthful forms embodied in Grecian sculpture are my ideal type. It is indispensable that they should be beardless, or at most have the merest beginnings of a beard. A youth with a heavy moustache leaves me cold; he is too masculine for me. Intellectual culture plays no part in the attraction; modesty and gentleness are necessary to render an intimate relationship possible. I find no preference for any particular profession. I have, indeed, pedagogic inclinations, but these appear to me to play no part in producing attraction, but come into action only later. One whom one loves is one in whom one would be glad to produce spiritual perfection. The attraction depends, in the first place, upon beauty of the body; beauty of the face is only of secondary importance. Smell has no influence upon the attraction.”
It will be noted that this writer, now thirty-two years of age, has hitherto had no experience of sexual intercourse, either heterosexual or homosexual. This is characteristic. Homosexuals in general, in contrast to heterosexuals, often proceed =at a comparatively late age= to actual experience of their sexual impulse in action. He goes on to describe the first beginnings of his love for a beautiful youth, eighteen years of age. He writes:
“My eyes watched every movement of the body, which continually displayed new beauties. I should have loved to fall upon his neck and kiss him. For sexual intercourse he appeared to me too pure, too noble; I should rather have lain before him in the dust and prayed to his beauty. I felt that I should have been a poet in order to be able to clothe in the right words this delicate and holy sentiment. And I must shut this all up within myself, must remain outwardly cold. It was enough to drive me to madness! Have compassion on us, and allow us at least an embrace, a kiss. That certainly can do no one any harm, and for me it would be a good action. The distressing tension which tortures us to death would be for the time relaxed. I always have a feeling that the process of sexual attraction must be of an electrical nature. I seem to myself to be charged with electricity, the tension increasing up to the highest point when the beloved is near me, and a prolonged contact or a stroking with the hand already suffices to bring about a certain calming of the nerves. The tension is to some degree diminished. The various components of sexual enjoyment appear to be developed in human beings with very different strength. In this way it is explicable that in one person the odour of the loved one, in another the changing tones of the voice, in a third the taste of the kiss (the tongue kiss), is most stimulating. It is, indeed, even conceivable that there exists a purely mental sexual enjoyment, and that to some individuals merely to look at the beloved person, or to read a letter from him, suffices.
“Sexual intercourse had hitherto never been practised, but I can asseverate that the mode of my desire is rather feminine. It would be my ideal if the loved one should feel sexual ardour for me; I should be a willing sacrifice. I should like to possess feminine sexual organs, in order to appear desirable to the loved one.
“I have battled powerfully against my nature, and have felt very unhappy. I regard myself as physically and mentally healthy. I have received at birth a double nature (alas! two souls dwell within my breast). My body is that of a man, my soul rather that of a woman; hence the conflict, hence my sexual desires, considered outwardly and only from the physical point of view, are contrary to nature. Alas! my soul can be seen by no one.
“Why do I only love a young man? Because he in ideal fashion enlarges my nature. My sexual sensibility is mainly feminine, and is directed, therefore, towards the masculine, and more especially towards the masculine in the time of youth, because the feminine sensibility in my nature is damped by a small masculine note. The effeminate urning probably loves the complete man as the best complement of his own nature. The slightly masculine note of my own sexual perception demands also in the man whom I love a slight feminine note, such as we find in the youth. He has, in fact, something feminine in him--beardlessness, no immoderate strength of the muscular system, a gentle disposition, receptive emotions--and yet he is masculine and sexually mature. Sexual maturity is a necessary part of every love. The young man, therefore, is the ideal conception of my nature. My love is as great, as holy, and as pure, as heterosexual love; it is capable of self-sacrifice. Believe me, for a loved one who fully understood me in every respect, I would gladly go to my death.
“Ah! how painful it is to us when we are regarded as debauchees or as sick persons!”
I must say that the above account, given to me by a much respected medical colleague, one whose nature is characterized alike by intellectual power and ideal sensibility, has made the deepest impression upon me, and has been an important influence in confirming my views regarding the nature of original homosexuality. Similar oral communications have been received by me from other physicians who have been homosexual from childhood onwards, one a neurologist and the other an alienist, and I attribute the greatest importance to the account given by this colleague of mine, who has a =twofold= understanding of the matter in question--as physician and as homosexual. It is also important to note that uranian physicians declare the majority of homosexuals to be physically and mentally healthy, a fact which I myself had not previously doubted, and that they contest the general validity of the degeneration theory.
Whilst in the smaller provincial towns and in the country homosexuals are for the most part thrust back into themselves, compelled to conceal their nature, or at most able to communicate only with isolated individuals of like nature with themselves, in the larger towns from early days the homosexuals have been able to get into touch with one another. Certain meeting-places--places of rendezvous for urnings only--have been formed; in certain =streets= and =squares= there have been formed urning-clubs, boarding-houses, and restaurants, and even urning-balls, while certain health resorts are to a degree monopolized by them. Moreover, the individual social groups of the homosexuals form unions. Thus, for example, Hirschfeld[541] reports the existence of an evening association consisting exclusively of homosexual princes, counts, and barons. Such pæderastic meeting-places and unions existed in the eighteenth century in Paris. From this time until about 1840 certain dark lateral alleys of the Champs Elysées, the thickets from the Place de la Concorde to the Allée des Veuves, between the Grand Avenue des Champs Elysées and the Cour de la Reine, served from the commencement of twilight for the rendezvous of homosexuals, not simply as a place of masculine prostitution, but as a meeting-place of urnings in general, who here in the dark sought and found love. The central point of this evening activity was the Allée des Veuves (now known as the Avenue Montaigne), the “Widow’s Alley”--“widow” was at that time the term used to denote the passive pæderast. This region of the Champs Elysées was to a certain extent monopolized by the homosexuals. They would not tolerate here the presence of any heterosexuals; they closed the entrances with cords, and placed guards at the openings of the alleys, who demanded a pass-word from every comer. Even the police did not venture into this dark region.
“Victor Hugo, who in the year 1831 lived in the Rue Jean Goujon in this neighbourhood, often accompanied his friends who had been visiting him part of the way home at a late hour of the night. They walked in groups, talking of literature and art as far as the Place de la Concorde. There the celebrated poet parted from his guests and returned alone homewards, composing new verses by the way. He often noticed individuals who, as he passed the entrance to the Rue des Veuves, watched him from afar off without speaking to him. He could not believe that these people were thieves, and asked himself what could be the cause of their always waiting in this lonely place; but notwithstanding the frequent occurrence of these scenes, he made no further inquiry into the matter. But once in the midst of his poetical reverie he was disturbed by a man who stepped forward from the darkness of a thicket, and with a polite greeting said to him: ‘Sir, we beg you not to wait any longer in this place. We know who you are, and we should not wish that any one of us who does not know you should cause you any uneasiness.’ ‘What are you doing there, then?’ answered Victor Hugo. ‘Every evening I see people walking about here, and disappearing among the trees.’ ‘Don’t concern yourself about it, sir,’ was the brisk answer; ‘we disturb no one and do no one any harm, but we shall not permit anyone to disturb us or to do us any harm; =we are here in our own grounds=.’ Victor Hugo understood, bowed, and pursued his way. As on another evening, walking with his friends, he wished to pass through another alley running parallel to the Allée des Veuves, he found that this was closed by a number of chairs, which were fastened together with cords. ‘There is no thoroughfare,’ called out a threatening voice; but another, speaking more quietly, added: ‘We beg Monsieur Victor Hugo on this occasion to pass along the other side of the Avenue des Champs Elysées.’”[542]
During the Second Empire the Allée des Veuves maintained its former position as a place of rendezvous for homosexuals. An urnings’ club, the members of which belonged to the highest classes of society, being persons of the Imperial Court, senators, great financiers, etc., had their meeting-place in a beautifully furnished hotel in the Allée des Veuves, in which soldiers of the Empress’s bodyguard (Dragons de l’Impératrice) and of the Hundred Guard of the Emperor served, in return for valuable presents, as the beloved of the various distinguished urnings, for which function the term “faire l’Impératrice” came into use. In the hotel there also lived from time to time transient unknown persons, who were only admitted after showing a kind of medal bearing a secret inscription. When the police made an examination of the hotel, they found a number of women’s dresses and similar articles, such as those which the Empress Eugénie was accustomed to wear on festival occasions. Numerous letters were also discovered which had been exchanged by the members of the club and their favourites of the Hundred Guard or of the Empress’s guard. A report was made to the Emperor of the results of the examination of this house. When he saw that persons of the highest position, and bearing most celebrated names, were involved in the affair, he at once ordered that the matter should be dismissed, and said to the Procureur-General: “We must spare our people and our country from such a scandal, which would do no one any good, and would do a great deal of harm.” In fact, almost no details of this affair became public.[543] Tardieu gave an account of another urnings’ club of the Second Empire, where there were concealed closets, on the walls of which erotic pictures were displayed. The manner in which the urnings made acquaintance with homosexuals is shown in a police report of July 16, 1864, in which the conduct of a literary homosexual, “un vieux monsieur fort bien et puissamment riche,” is described in the following terms:
“He enters the Café Truffaut, sees a young soldier who pleases him. By the intermediation of the waiter he makes an appointment, and departs without waiting for an answer. If the soldier agrees, he goes to the appointed place of meeting, and never goes alone, because Father C----n (the elderly urning) is well known. As soon as the two have met, other soldiers make their appearance, beat the old man, and compel him to give them all the money which he has about him. He does this willingly, and without ceasing prays for pardon. When he has not a single sou left, and when he has also given up his watch, he goes away weeping, and continually repeating the words, ‘What a miserable man I am!’”
This elderly urning was manifestly also a masochist, and therefore a very suitable victim of blackmailers, whom we here see at their work. In the police report to which we have already referred homosexual orgies are also described, the participants in which assumed women’s names and practised mutual masturbation and fellation, and also carried out obscene practices with a bitch. When Oscar Metenier in his book “Vertus et Vices Allemands” (Paris, 1904) states that Berlin has a monopoly in the matter of urnings’ balls, which, in his opinion, were not possible in Paris, he is unquestionably wrong as regards the time of the Second Empire. In this police report two typical urnings’ balls are mentioned. One of these took place in a house in the Place de la Madeleine, belonging to E. D., a man of business, who gave the ball on January 2, 1864. The second urnings’ ball was given by the Vicomte de M. in the Pavilion Rohan, Rue de Rivoli, on January 16, 1864, at which at least 150 men, many of them in woman’s clothing, took part. In many cases the appearance was so deceptive that even those who had invited the guests were not always able to determine the sex with certainty.
It is doubtless true that there is no other town in which there are so many social unions of homosexuals as there are in Berlin. Hirschfeld records--in addition to private parties--dinners, suppers, evening parties, five o’clock teas, picnics, dances, and summer festivals of homosexuals, which are arranged every winter by urnings, and by female homosexuals or their friends. Moreover, the male and female homosexuals meet in certain restaurants, cafés, eating-houses, and public-houses frequented only by themselves.[544]
Such localities exclusively for the use of urnings exist in Berlin to the number of eighteen to twenty. There are also social literary unions, such as the club “Lohengrin,” the antifeministic “Gesellschaft der Eigenen,” the “Platen-Gemeinschaft,” etc. There are also cabarets (public-houses) for urnings. Hirschfeld, in his book “Berlin’s Third Sex,” written in a popular style, but extremely valuable owing to the clearness of his descriptions, gives an exhaustive account of all these institutions for urnings, and for further details I may refer my readers to this interesting work, the authenticity of which I am able to confirm as the result of my own visits to the above-mentioned places of meeting for urnings.[545]
In Paris there no longer exist places of entertainment frequented solely by urnings. In this respect they are replaced by certain Turkish baths, whose patrons are almost without exception homosexuals--men whose age varies from about twenty years upwards. In the industrial quarter, in the neighbourhood of the Place de la République, there existed a few years ago a Turkish bath, visited almost exclusively by young homosexuals between the ages of fifteen and twenty years. On the great boulevard there is a bath of a very expensive character, visited only by wealthy homosexuals, frequented, among others, by a celebrated French composer.[546]
A peculiar species of meeting-places for the urnings of Berlin is represented by the soldiers’ public-houses in the neighbourhood of the barracks, where soldiers are met and treated by homosexuals, and where arrangements are made for subsequent meetings. There also exists a “soldiers’ promenade,” where the soldiers walk up and down and offer themselves to homosexuals. Athletes also enter freely into relationships with homosexuals.
Urnings’ balls are to-day especially characteristic of Berlin. Von Krafft-Ebing has described them in detail, and recently also Hirschfeld has alluded to them in the above-mentioned work. I myself not long ago attended such a “men’s ball,” at which from eight hundred to a thousand homosexuals were present, some in men’s clothing, some in women’s clothing, some in fancy dress. The homosexuals dressed as women could have been distinguished from real women only by those in the secret. More particularly do I recall an elegant sylph, who, on the arm of a partner, glided across the hall--“glided” is the correct expression. During the dance his delicate features were leaning on the shoulder of the man, and he coquetted continually with ardent black eyes. I really believed this was a woman, but was assured that it was a male hairdresser. In the case of another urning dressed as a woman the diagnosis was rendered easier by a well-developed moustache.
The seamy side of the relationships of homosexuals in public life is constituted by the so-called “=male prostitution=,” which existed even in ancient times, and in our own day was especially well organized during the Second Empire, as we learn from the details given by Tardieu. The ranks of male prostitution are recruited partly from homosexual and partly from heterosexual men of the lower and more poverty-stricken classes, who give themselves for payment to well-to-do urnings, and are practised in all the arts of elaborate coquetry (they use rouge, make a coquettish display of male charms, etc.). These are the so-called “aunts.” In all large towns there exists what is called a “Strich” (promenade), where male prostitutes are accustomed to walk, in order to attract their clients. In Berlin the principal promenades are the Friedrichstrasse, the Passage,[547] and some of the walks in the Tiergarten. Like female prostitution, so also male prostitution has its “=houses of accommodation=”; and in France there even existed, and still exist, typical “=male brothels=.” From 1820 to 1826 such a brothel was to be found in the Rue du Doyenne in Paris. In the neighbourhood of the Louvre the male inmates of this establishment were even subjected to regular medical examination, in order to protect their clients from venereal infection. With the fall of twilight the visitors made their appearance, and were received by young effeminates.[548] Still worse was another form of male prostitution, at the time of the Restoration, and in the earlier years of the reign of Louis Philippe--namely, the so-called grande montre des culs in the Rue des Marais, where a number of male prostitutes displayed and offered their charms to the homosexuals visiting the place. A detailed account of the way in which this was done cannot be given, but is sufficiently indicated by what has already been said.[549]
Male brothels exist even at the present day in Paris. Thus, at the end of the year 1905 in the Rue St. Martin there was a small hotel whose homosexual proprietor not only let rooms to urnings for a brief stay, but also kept on the premises five or six young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two years, whose services were always available for homosexuals for payment. Besides this hotel there existed also in the year 1905 a kind of male brothel in the house of an urning, where at midday half a dozen young fellows were to be found, or could be fetched at brief notice, for the choice of homosexual visitors, for whose use a room was available at so many francs per hour.[550]
A phenomenon intimately related with male prostitution is =blackmail=, or “=chantage=.” Tardieu (op. cit., pp. 128-130) describes these relationships in vivid colours, and lays stress on the close relationship between male prostitution and criminality. Blackmail has become to-day a kind of special profession,[551] which is not directed solely against homosexuals, but also against heterosexuals, and the punishment of which cannot be too severe. Frequently these individuals, whose activity is a danger to the community at large, persecute their victims for many years in succession. Tardieu reports the case of a celebrated literary man, “whose purse the blackmailers regarded as their own.” =For more than twenty years in succession= he was plucked by successive generations of blackmailers, who considered him an assured source of income. He was “passed on from one to another.” As a rule, blackmailers wait for their victims in public lavatories; they suddenly assert that they have been indecently assaulted, and demand hush-money, which is commonly given to them, even by heterosexuals. A case of the last-mentioned kind recently occurred in Berlin, when a quite innocent young merchant was being plundered in this way, and his wife, by a courageous denunciation of the shameless blackmailer, freed him from this tyranny. It is, however, unquestionable that blackmail often ensues upon real advances on the part of homosexuals, and after the performance of sexual acts; and there is no doubt that in Germany the existence of § 175 of the Criminal Code has been most advantageous to professional blackmailers, has led to numerous scandals (alike disagreeable and dangerous to the community), and has given rise to numerous suicides.
This celebrated § 175 runs as follows:
“Unnatural vice between two persons of the male sex, or between a man and an animal, is punishable with imprisonment; it can also be punished with loss of civil rights.”
This paragraph of the Imperial Criminal Code is identical with § 143 of the former Prussian Criminal Code. Similar ordinances,[552] in some cases even more severe, are found in the laws of Austria-Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Bulgaria, the State of New York, most of the cantons of Switzerland, and more especially in Great Britain, where the most severe punishments are inflicted, and, at any rate logically, are inflicted also on women who practise homosexual intercourse. On the other hand, punishment for homosexual intercourse has been completely =abolished= in France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Spain, the Swiss Cantons of Genf, Wallis, Waadt and Tessin, the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, the Principality of Monaco, and in Mexico.
§ 143 of the Prussian Criminal Code was adopted as the basis of § 175 of the German Criminal Code, in view of “the consciousness of right of the people,” who “condemn such practices not only as vicious, but also as criminal.” But this consciousness of right is based upon defective knowledge, and upon an erroneous view of homosexuality. As soon as we recognize that in homosexuality we have to do with a primary natural disposition, and as soon as this view has permeated wide circles of the population, the old consciousness of right will be replaced by a =new= one, =which will demand the repeal of a criminal law=, by which =a natural phenomenon= is regarded as a vice and a crime, and is esteemed as infamous. My studies in recent years having convinced me that in homosexuality we have to do with a typical biological phenomenon, I feel that I must unhesitatingly approve of the efforts of the =Scientific and Humanitarian Committee=, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, which aims at making the people understand the nature of homosexuality, and demands the repeal of § 175 of the German Criminal Code. All the more is this reform demanded because real homosexual =crimes= can be very readily dealt with by means of the sections of the Criminal Code relating to sexual delinquencies in general.
Apart from this general codification of the injustice of § 175, and apart from the above-mentioned tragical consequences of the existence of this section, it is also necessary to point out that the expressions used therein are absurd and illogical.
1. Unnatural vice between men is punished, whereas that between women is left impune. But why should this latter be the case, if we adopt the standpoint (which we have, indeed, seen to be untenable) that homosexual intercourse is in itself vicious and criminal--why should homosexual intercourse between women be less vicious and criminal than homosexual intercourse between men?
2. The idea “unnatural vice” is equally absurd and inconsequent, and makes justice in respect of these offences absolutely impossible. By this term is understood not merely pædication (immissio membri in anum), but also any kind of intercourse between men “resembling sexual intercourse”--that is, coitus in os, coitus inter femora, even simple frictio membri--whilst mutual masturbation and other perverse practices are not punishable.
3. § 175 does not safeguard any citizen,[553] for the sexual freedom of the individual is not disturbed in any way by the intercourse between two adult men who fully understand what they are doing, nor is the general moral sense injured in any way if the act is not seen by any third person. In this latter respect, however, § 183 of the Criminal Code, which punishes annoyance to the public by improper conduct, already affords sufficient protection.
4. If § 175 is maintained with especial reference to the existence of professional male unchastity, von Liszt has rightly replied to this contention that the latter form of unchastity can be rendered harmless by a modified reading of § 361_b_ of the Criminal Code, just as the protection of virtue can be safeguarded by other sections of the Code.
5. The effectiveness of § 175 is extremely limited. According to Hirschfeld (“Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages,” vol. vi., p. 175), no more than 0·007 % of the existing punishable homosexual practices of the present day are detected and punished. Therefore a few =isolated= individuals are punished for an offence which thousands of others commit with impunity.
6. When § 175 of the Criminal Code was drawn up, the law-givers knew absolutely nothing about the homosexual impulse as an essential outcome of the personality; they merely wished to punish heterosexuals who committed homosexual practices, not to punish genuine homosexuals (cf. Numa Prætorius, “The Question of the Responsibility of Homosexuals,” published in the Monthly Review of Criminal Psychology, edited by G. Aschaffenburg, 1906, p. 561).
The worst and most tragic consequence of § 175 is the permanent infamy and social contempt suffered by persons who, =without any blame to themselves=, have a mode of sexual perception diverging from that of the great majority. The state itself commits a crime when it enrols in the category of vice and crime a biological phenomenon which has recently been recognized as such even by the Evangelical and Catholic Churches,[554] and has been freed by these Churches from the stigma of immorality. The continuance of this great injustice is the frequent cause of the =suicide= of homosexuals, especially of such as are men of exceptional spiritual and moral cultivation, and =frequently before they have actually indulged in their homosexual impulse=, the best proof that we have to do, not with vicious, but with unhappy men, who are unable to bear the misery of being socially despised and unjustly misunderstood by their associates. How many suicides from homosexual grounds occur it is impossible to establish exactly. We can only suspect the cause from certain attendant circumstances. A highly respected literary man writes to me regarding this question of the suicide of homosexuals: “When a fine young fellow, suffering frightfully as a result of his inherited disposition, shoots himself, his family will rather suggest that the cause was a chancre (which he has never had), than they will admit his homosexuality.” Several such cases have come under his notice. “A better cause,” he suggests, “for the suicide would have been unhappy love, for that is the actual truth.” Zola,[555] speaking of the letters of a homosexual, says that they exhibited “the most heart-breaking cry of human agony” that he had ever known.
“He earnestly resisted yielding to such shameful, lustful love, and he longed to know whence came this contempt of all men, whence this continuous readiness of the law-courts to crush him down, when in his flesh and blood were inborn a disgust towards woman, whilst he had brought into the world with him a true feeling of love towards man. Never had one possessed by a demon, never had a poor human body given up to and tortured by the unknown powers of the sexual impulse, so painfully expressed his misery. Have we not here a truly physiological case definitely displayed before our eyes--an inversion, an error, on the part of Nature? Nothing, in my opinion, is more tragical, and nothing demands more urgently investigation and a means of cure, if such can possibly be found.”
The =complete enlightenment= of the people would give rise to a spontaneous change in their conception of homosexuality, to which, moreover, the greater number of homosexuals belonging to the better classes could contribute, if they would freely and openly admit their tendencies. The secrecy and hypocrisy of many urnings is partly responsible for the hitherto prevailing false views on homosexuality. We cannot spare them this reproach.
Finally, § 175 is not merely an injustice to homosexuals, but it is also a danger to heterosexuals, in consequence of the =blackmail= which is so intimately associated with the existence of this section. It is not enough that these criminals of the most debased kind, who to a small extent only are recruited from the ranks of male prostitutes, reduce numerous unhappy urnings to social and financial ruin, and drive many others to suicide or to crime, of which the remarkable case of a County Court Judge a few years ago afforded a typical example. These wretches also dare with ever-greater success to make use of § 175 for the purpose of blackmailing =completely normal heterosexuals=. In fact, they often succeed better with these latter than they do with homosexuals, because to the normal man the idea of being regarded as homosexual is so repulsive.
A remedy for all these evils--for the suicides as well as for the blackmailing--can only be found in the =enlightenment= of the whole people--the first and most important thing to do--and in the =unconditional repeal= of § 175 of the Criminal Code.
It has been a most useful service on the part of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee--a service the value of which has not yet been sufficiently recognized--that it has endeavoured, above all, to bring about the enlightenment of the people by means of popular writings,[556] and of the learned by means of scientific publications, such as the most successful Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages (8 volumes, 1899-1906), and by means of lectures, by the convocation of public meetings, by petitions, etc.
The petition of the committee to the legislative bodies of the German Empire, asking for the repeal of § 175 of the Criminal Code, was signed by 5,000 persons belonging to the circles of men of science, judges, physicians, priests, schoolmasters, authors, and artists, among whom were some of the most celebrated names of cultured Germany. I cite here a few only: Ferdinand Avenarius, Hans von Basedow, Woldemar von Biedermann, H. Bulthaupt, Professor Crédé, Albert Eulenburg, Theodor Gaedertz, Rudolf von Gottschall, Franz Görres, O. E. Hartleben, Gerhart Hauptmann, S. Jadassohn, Hermann Kaulbach, R. von Krafft-Ebing, Joseph Kürschner, H. Kurella, Walter Leistikow, Leppmann, Max Liebermann, G. von Liebig, Detlev von Lilieneron, Franz von Liszt, Berthold Litzmann, Ph. Lotmar, John Henry Mackay, Mendel, Friedrich Moritz, P. Näcke, Paul Natorp, Albert Neisser, Max Nordau, A. von Oechelhäuser, A. von Oppenheim, J. Pagel, Pelman, R. Penzig, Placzek, Felix Poppenberg, Rainer Maria Rilke, O. Rosenbach, Wilhelm Roux, Max Rubner, Benno Rüttenauer, Johannes Schlaf, Arthur Schnitzler, A. von Schrenck-Notzing, Alwin Schulz, Moritz Schwalb, Georg Schweinfurth, Adolf von Sonnenthal, K. von Tepper-Laski, H. Unverricht, Max Verworn, A. Vierkandt, Richard Voss, Hans Wachenhusen, Felix Weingartner, Adolf Wilbrandt, Ernst von Wildenbruch, F. von Winkel, E. von Wolzogen, Ernst Ziegler, Theobald Ziegler, Theophil Zolling.
In addition, we might mention that in the year 1904 not less than 2,800 German physicians, as well as 750 head masters and masters of higher schools, signed the petition to the Reichstag for the repeal of § 175. Owing to certain scandals by which the highest circles were sympathetically affected--I need recall only the cases of Hohenau, Krupp, Israel, von Schenk, etc.--the conviction has been forced upon members of the most influential political circles that the repeal of the paragraphs of the Criminal Code relating to urnings is an unconditional necessity. We may, therefore, expect that the repeal will be effected within the next few years.
* * * * *
Compared with true original homosexuality in men, the same condition in women is of considerably less importance, because in women homosexuality is undoubtedly =much less common= than it is in men. In comparison with the number of urnings, the number of =female homosexuals=--of “=urnindes=,” “=Lesbian lovers=,” or “=tribades=”--is relatively small; whereas in many women, even at a comparatively advanced age, the so-called “pseudo-homosexuality” (see the next chapter) is much more frequently met with than it is in men. In the case of heterosexual men it is usually impossible to induce a homosexual mode of perception or to give rise to any kind of taste for homosexual activity; whereas in heterosexual women the corresponding change certainly occurs much more easily. Tendernesses and caresses play, indeed, among normal heterosexual women a rôle which makes it easier for us to understand how readily in woman pseudo-homosexual tendencies may arise. =Still, it is impossible to doubt the existence also of original homosexuality in women.= These are the cases in which, just as in urnings, the homosexual impulse appears in very early childhood, often long before puberty, in which case also the girl is distinguished from her heterosexual comrades in external appearance, exhibiting indications of a masculine build of body (slight development of the breasts, narrowness of the pelvis, development of a moustache, a deep voice, etc.); but such indications may be entirely absent, and the girl may not be distinguished from others in any respect beyond the perverse direction of the sexual impulse. These true tribades are much rarer than the false tribades, the pseudo-Lesbian lovers. For example, when visiting an urnings’ ball we may be quite sure that 99 % of the male homosexuals assembled there are true homosexuals; but at a tribades’ ball--such, also, are given in Berlin--certainly a much smaller percentage are “genuine”; the bulk of the women present are pseudo-homosexuals. I here append the interesting reminiscences of a genuine urninde, by which this relationship between original homosexuality and pseudo-homosexuality in women is very clearly shown:
THOUGHTS OF A LONELY WOMAN!
“Born in the country, the daughter of a merchant, I grew up as a very dreamy being, with an unceasing yearning after something unknown, beautiful, great--with a longing to become a singer or an artist. At the age of twelve I was already completely ‘woman,’ very luxuriantly developed, although still half a child, =filled always with an uncontrollable longing for a beloved feminine being who should kiss me and caress me=, whom I was to regard with love and with a sentiment of self-sacrifice. At the age of thirteen I came to live with relatives in a provincial town, where for a year I attended a young ladies’ school. Of my dreams no single one could be fulfilled. My mother, who was widowed when I was only three years old, had a severe economical struggle, being encumbered with six small children. After my elder brothers and sisters were married, I myself, being then twenty-four years of age, had to go out into the world to seek my own living, ignorant of the world and its dangers, delivered up to commonness and intrigue. I got a position in the house of a widow, filling the post of ‘companion.’ My ‘principal,’ a woman sixty years of age, was at first unsympathetic to me, but she treated me in a loving and motherly manner, which pleased me, for I was of a pliant and receptive disposition. Gradually I became her confidante. Every evening I had to get into bed with her (I slept close by); I must touch her with my hands. I did not then really understand why I had to stroke her legs; but one evening this sexagenarian guided my hand into a forbidden place. Now it became clear to me that this woman still had erotic perceptions. I felt how she quivered under my touch, pressed me firmly to herself, etc.; but I, for my part, felt nothing. It might have been different had she been a friend of my own age. I had not at that time any idea that ‘psychically’ I was different from other girls. I had an unceasing yearning for love, not directly sensual love, but spiritual love, out of which sensual love might later develop. Among the inmates of our house was a young merchant, a fine-looking man, who besieged me with his love, and, after long hesitation, I at length one day consented to give him the best that woman has to give. He took possession of my body with brutal voluptuousness. I was under the delusion that he would make me his wife. I had in the sexual act =no perception at all=, and was disillusioned. One day my seducer told me that he was going to be married, asking me to return him the ring he had given me, and offering me money. Moved to the inmost soul, without any human being to give me counsel or help (from a feeling of shame I had not disclosed the matter to my principal), I threw the ring at him, resigned my position, and made myself independent. I will only say in a few words how I had to struggle, to fight for my existence, how I was lied to and deceived by rascally men. When I came to Berlin I heard and read of homosexual love, but could not find what I dreamed of--namely, spiritual love, out of which sensual love might spring. I learned to know homosexual women, but they exhibited to me such elemental passion, brutality, sensuality, that, notwithstanding all my yearning for ‘homosexual’ love, I remained unresponsive. Only in kissing the lips of a woman sympathetic to me I have experienced an agreeable sensation, but that sweet state which I was able to induce in others by contact with them was =in me= not forthcoming. I began to wonder whether Nature had denied me this sensation, though I was myself also a normally developed woman. For years I lived ‘ascetically,’ since I regarded myself as a ‘psychological’ problem--I avoided every kind of intercourse--I only had a desire for tenderness and caresses. I often loved handsome women, feeling the wish to kiss them and to touch them, and I had learned to know women of the kind who prostitute themselves to other women for money. These were hateful to me, and never could I form a friendship with such, because they knew only common brutal sensuality, towards which I was not responsive.
“Some years ago I suffered from a severe abdominal and nervous disorder. I have already passed my fortieth year. After an illness lasting two years, I still feel the desire for homosexual love. Hitherto I have lived unhappily, continually asking myself why Nature has treated me so cruelly. Is it not possible once at least to enjoy this perception? A few weeks ago I made the acquaintance of a married woman, whose husband has been impotent for years, whilst she, on the other hand, is a very passionate character. Unfortunately, this woman, although in other respects she is very sympathetic to me, is upon a comparatively low plane of culture, and, what frightens me more, she has an intimacy with a female friend who is quite uncultured, but who resembles her in respect of sexual love, and who night after night lies with her in bed =beside the husband=, and the two women indulge their perverse voluptuousness, the friend playing the ‘man’s’ part. I have seen many strange things in my course through life, but =such a marriage= is a new experience to me. The man terms himself an artist, a painter, and allows his wife free play in bisexual love. I believe that this man himself experiences a titillation of the senses when he sees the two women together, and also that he makes drawings of ‘acts,’ out of which he makes a profit. In this house I have seen into a deep abyss, yet other bisexual women visit it. Although I have found my peace disturbed by these women, although I have been to a certain extent intoxicated, the conditions are too repulsive to me--since this woman is sunk into a morass deeper than she herself understands. Only through me does she begin to understand it. But a longer intercourse with her is impossible, for she lacks all the qualities that I look for in a woman whom I could love. In actual fact I envy this creature, for she is happy, since she experiences to the full those sweet sensations which Nature denies to me. Are there any more beings unhappy like myself? Perhaps the acquaintanceship with a woman whose feelings were similar to my own would be a happiness, if Fate would only have so much pity upon me as to throw a sorrowful companion in my way. I hope for it, but I do not believe that it will happen.
“To what sex do I really belong?”
In the love-history of this genuine urninde the ideal element is especially manifest; likewise the instinctive disinclination to man, which, remarkably enough, is often more powerfully developed in strongly feminine characters than in the more masculine tribades, as the prototype of which latter we may mention the painter Rosa Bonheur. During childhood Rosa Bonheur felt herself to be a boy, and preferred the society of boys to that of girls.[557] Throughout her life, notwithstanding her homosexual love, she felt strong sympathy with men. Such a double relationship occurs also among urnindes of the first kind. Even the true urninde, I may say, is =not so extremely homosexual= as is the true urning. Take, for example, the following account[558] of an original homosexual, and you will see the difference:
“I have not lost any of the valuable things of life--far otherwise. Many-sided, many-shadowed intellectual sympathy leads any man of lofty mind into harmony with me. There emanates unconsciously from my soul a profound, tender charm. My friends find me necessary to them. I share their interests. In our relationship there pass between us the most wonderful shades of sympathetic feeling--what the French so expressively speak of as l’amitié amoureuse. Thus my mode of being becomes absorbed into that of my friend, a peculiar melody passes to and fro between us, and a peculiar melody sounds in the stillness of my own soul. All the fine and delicate sensations which I have received from my friends become in me transformed into poietic force--the ecstasies of my spirit assume form and substance. From the spiritualization of the impulse there springs a stream clear as crystal, there arise passion and ardour; my exceptional soul lifts me upwards, above all sorrows and vexations. In this way is a talent conceived, and amid ecstasy it is born.”
The need for a spiritual contact with men is among homosexual women much stronger than the corresponding inclination on the part of urnings for spiritual contact with woman natures. For this reason there is no doubt that the “=Woman’s Movement=”--that is, in the movement directed towards the acquirement by women of all the attainments of masculine culture--homosexual women have played a notable part.[559] Indeed, according to one author,[560] the “Woman’s Question” is mainly the question regarding the destiny of virile homosexual women. I find it necessary to doubt whether, as Hammer maintains,[561] the raging hatred of men--the converse quality to the anti-feminism of the male urnings--really proceeds from the uranian group of the Woman’s Movement, for there exist no literary documents of importance to prove the suggested connexion. Homosexual women of intellectual weight have also assured me that among them there does at times exist an enmity to men on principle, just as, mutatis mutandis, misogyny has been developed as a system both from the heterosexual and from the homosexual side. For the diffusion of pseudo-homosexuality the Woman’s Movement is of great importance, as we shall see later.
The individual and social relationships of feminine uranism are nearly the same as those of male uranism. In both cases there exists an entire scale, running from pure Platonism to ardent sensuality. One kind of Platonic tribades are those described by Catulle Mendés in his sketch “Protectrices.” These are ladies of position who allow themselves the luxury of a “protégée,” generally a girl employed at the theatre, with whom during the performances they exchange glances, whose expenses they pay, with whom they go out driving, without the matter proceeding to actual sexual relations. In other cases, however, sensual gratification is the desired goal, which is attained by kisses, embraces, friction of the genital organs, or cuninilinctus (the so-called “=Sapphism=”). In this intercourse one party--the “father”--plays the active part, the other--“the mother”--the passive part. There exist passionate and intimate relationships of long duration--true “marriages”--among tribades. Thus, d’Estoc reports (“Paris-Eros,” p. 58) relationships of this kind which have lasted thirty years. Still, as a general rule, feminine homosexuals change their relationships more frequently than male homosexuals. An elderly tribade, whose correspondence lies before me, had within four years three love relationships. In these relationships jealousy plays an even greater part than in heterosexual liaisons. Two sympathetic urnindes who lived together described to me very vividly the joys and sorrows of the amor lesbicus. The cause of the troubles is always a tertia, never a tertius gaudens.
Like the urnings, the tribades also have their meeting-places, jour fixes. One such meeting, at which four genuine female homosexuals and one male homosexual assembled, I had the opportunity of attending. They have their parties, and even their balls, at which the virile tribades appear in men’s clothing,[562] and (as also when at home) use male nicknames. There also exist female prostitutes who devote their services entirely to urnindes. This tribadistic prostitution is especially widespread in Paris. Such prostitutes are called gouines, or gougnottes, or chevalières du clair de lune. Theatrical agents are said to be especially occupied with tribadistic procurement. There also exist tribadistic brothels in Paris.[563]
Appendix
THEORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY
Original, congenital, enduring homosexuality would appear to be an exclusively human peculiarity. It is very doubtful whether a similar condition exists among animals. We recognize among the lower animals homosexual acts, but no homosexuality.[564] Thus we have no philogenetic starting-point for the explanation of homosexuality. Moreover, homosexuality is fundamentally different from the other sexual perversions, sadism and masochism. These represent quite =extreme= forms of biological phenomena, an abnormal increase of physiological impulsive manifestations that occur in the normal heterosexual life, as part of sexuality in general. But homosexuality is an alteration =in the direction of the very impulse itself=--a change in the very nature of sexuality. To put the matter shortly, it is the appearance of a sexuality =heterogeneous to and not corresponding with the bodily structure=. To define homosexuality as the appearance of a feminine sexual psyche in a masculine body, or of a masculine sexual psyche in a feminine body, does not apply to all cases--for example, it does not apply to virile urnings or to tribades who remain womanly. The definition of homosexuality as a sexuality which does not correspond to the bodily structure embraces both these possibilities.
Whenever homosexuality in men is associated with a marked development of feminine secondary sexual characters, or in women with a marked development of masculine secondary sexual characters, the homosexual sensibility may be said to have to some extent a physical basis, but not completely so. For the “intermediate stage theory” proposed by Hirschfeld--the intermixture of feminine and masculine characters--may apply satisfactorily to “bisexuality,” to indeterminate sexual sensibility; but it does not apply to the thoroughly one-sided, monistic sexual sensibility, directed =only= towards members of the same sex, and often appearing very early, before the days of puberty. Moreover, in heterosexual male individuals the external appearance may at times suggest that there is a strong intermixture of feminine characters. These men, though heterosexual, have a womanly appearance.
The “intermediate stage theory” of Hirschfeld, which von Krafft-Ebing also appears to have recognized in his last work (“New Studies in the Subject of Homosexuality”), a theory which explains homosexual phenomena as dependent upon the existence of transitional stages between the sexes (“sexual links” of Hirschfeld), and which, moreover, erroneously includes the typical hermaphrodite states--this interesting theory explains =a portion only= of original homosexuality. It fails in cases =in which homosexuality occurs in the absence of any divergence from type=--for example, in those cases in which male individuals with thoroughly normal masculine bodies exhibit marked homosexual sensibility in early childhood, long before puberty. But these are the cases which offer the greatest possible difficulties to a scientific explanation. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Ulrich’s “feminine soul in a masculine body” applies to =effeminate urnings=, such as he was himself. But is the mode of sensibility of =virile= homosexuals “effeminate”? Why do we speak of a third sex? Here lie difficulties which we cannot overcome without further assistance.
How does it come to pass that the central organs in homosexuals do not correspond to the peripheral sexual organs, although the latter are formed embryologically long before the former, so that the central organs should properly be guided in their development by the peripheral organs? But they are not so guided. That is only explicable in this way--that the association between the central organs and the peripheral organs is interrupted by a third influence, and that =this last influence has a peculiar effect= upon the central organs =altogether independent of the nature of the reproductive glands=.
I will formulate this new theory of homosexuality in the following terms:
1. The so-called “undifferentiated stage” of the sexual impulse (Max Dessoir) may often fail to appear in cases in which the sexual impulse, either in heterosexuals or homosexuals, is definitely directed before puberty unmistakably towards the members of one particular sex. Especially in homosexuals do we often see =before= puberty the clear and unmistakable direction of the sexual impulse towards members of the =same= sex.
2. A critical theory of homosexuality must also explain the extreme cases; above all, it must also explain male homosexuality associated with complete virility.
3. The sexual organs and the reproductive glands cannot be the determining cause, because homosexuality makes its appearance in association with thoroughly typical male reproductive organs; nor can the brain be the determining cause in cases of true homosexuality, for, notwithstanding the intentional and unintentional operation of heterosexual influences on thought and imagination, homosexuality cannot be eradicated, and continues to develop.
4. Since this homosexuality often makes its appearance as an inclination (not as the sexual impulse) long =before= puberty, and =before= the proper activity of the reproductive glands is developed, it appears a reasonable suggestion that in homosexuality some physiological manifestation associated with “sexuality,” but not directly associated with the reproductive glands, undergoes a =change= which results in an alteration of the direction of the sexual impulse.
6. The most obvious influences to think of in this connexion are =chemical= influences, changes in the chemistry of sexual tension, which latter is certainly to a large extent =independent= of the reproductive glands, since it may persist in eunuchs. But the nature of this sexual chemistry is still entirely obscure.
Such a way of conceiving the process is thoroughly reasonable and tenable on scientific grounds, as was shown by E. H. Starling and L. Krehl[565] in their communication to the Scientific Congress at Stuttgart in the year 1905, regarding disturbances of chemical correlation in the organism, especially disturbances of the chemical influences proceeding from the reproductive organs. All minuter details regarding these “sexual hormone” (to use Starling’s own phrase) are still unknown, but the experiments to which we alluded in an earlier chapter have proved their existence. In my view, the anatomical contradiction, the natural monstrosity, of a feminine--or, at any rate, an unmanly--psyche in a typical masculine body, or that of a feminine or unmanly sexual psyche associated with normally developed and normally functioning male genital organs, can only be explained in this manner by taking into account this intercurrent third factor. This can be deduced very readily from some early =embryonic disturbances= of sexual chemistry. This would also explain why it is that homosexuality so often occurs in perfectly healthy families, as an isolated phenomenon which has nothing to do either with inheritance or with degeneration. When von Römer, on the contrary, describes homosexuality as a process of “regeneration,” we must maintain that for this view there are no sufficient grounds. Here begins the =riddle= of homosexuality; for me, at any rate, it is one. My own theory only attempts to explain the proper physiological connexions of homosexuality better, and, above all, more scientifically than earlier theories. With regard to the ultimate cause of the relatively frequent occurrence of homosexuality as an original phenomenon, this theory has, however, nothing to say.
I do not suggest that I am able for a moment to find the ultimate reason of the being and nature of homosexuality. There remains here a riddle to be solved. But from the standpoint of civilization and reproduction homosexuality is a senseless and aimless dysteleological phenomenon, like many another “natural product”--as, for example, the human cæcum. In an earlier chapter I drew attention to the fact that civilization has entailed an increasingly sharp sexual differentiation--that is, the antithesis between “man” and “woman” has become continually clearer. The distinction between the sexes is a product rather of civilization than of primitive nature. All sexual indifference, all sexual links, are primitive characters. Eduard von Mayer rightly believes that in the earliest days of the human race homosexuality was much more widely diffused than it is at present, that, in fact, it came into being side by side with heterosexual love. Civilization by means of inheritance, adaptation, and differentiation, has continually more and more limited the extent of the homosexual impulse. Unquestionably the homosexual human being, =as human being=, has the same right to exist as the heterosexual. To doubt it would be preposterous. Also, as a sexual being, in so far as only the individual aspect of love comes under consideration, the homosexual has an equal right. But for the species, and also for the advancement of civilization, homosexuality has no importance, or very little. It is obvious that, as a kind of enduring “monosexuality,” it contradicts the purposes of the species. Equally obvious is it that the whole of civilization is the product of the physical and mental differentiation of the sexes, that civilization has, in fact, to a certain extent, a heterosexual character. The greatest spiritual values we owe to heterosexuals, not to homosexuals. =Moreover, reproduction first renders possible the preservation and permanence of new spiritual values.= In the last resort the latter are not possible without the former. However obvious it may appear, we must still repeat that spiritual values exist only in respect of the =future=, that they only attain their true significance =in the connexion and the succession of the generations=, and that they are, therefore, eternally dependent upon heterosexual love as the intermediary by which this continuity is produced. The monosexual and homosexual instincts permanently limited to their own ego or their own sex are, therefore, in their innermost nature =dysteleological= and =anti-evolutionistic=. In speaking thus we leave entirely out of consideration the possibility that temporarily and for the purposes of individual development they may possess a relative justification.[566]
Moreover, the majority of homosexuals have a deeply rooted sentiment of the lack of purpose and the aimlessness of their mode of sexual perception, and this often gives them a very tragical and pitiable expression. Especially in the case of noble, spiritually important homosexuals, true carriers of civilization, is this sense of the incongruity between homosexuality and life most plainly felt. Even the talented Numa Prætorius (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. vi., p. 543) recognizes that--
“The love of the majority of men towards the other sex, based upon heterosexual impulse, has undergone a development and refinement, and has obtained a significance which makes homosexual love, in comparison with it, play quite a subordinate part.”
[502] “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., p. 219.
[503] Lombroso, at the Sixth International Congress of Criminal Anthropologists at Turin, May, 1906, actually drew a parallel between congenital homosexuality and the congenital tendency to crime! That this parallel is utterly non-existent and that crime and homosexuality differ toto cælo is shown luminously by Paul Näcke (“Comparison between Criminality and Homosexuality,” published in the Monatsschrift für Kriminalpsychologie, 1906, pp. 477-487).
[504] Published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, edited by Magnus Hirschfeld, vol. iii., p. 5 (Leipzig, 1901). Cf. also the account of the newer views by P. Näcke, “Problems in the Domain of Homosexuality,” published in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1902, vol. lix., pp. 805-829 (this writer also maintains the existence of normal, healthy homosexual individuals).
[505] Magnus Hirschfeld, “Der Urnische Mensch,” p. 139 et seq. (Leipzig, 1903).
[506] Von Krafft-Ebing, “Retarded Homosexuality,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1901, vol. iii., pp. 7-20.
[507] J. E. Meisner, “Uranism, or the so-called Homosexual Love,” p. 11 (Leipzig, 1906).
[508] Max Katte (“Virile Homosexuals,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. vii., p. 94; Leipzig, 1905) remarks that it is an error on the part of recent writers in the domain of homosexuality to describe and vindicate so prominently the effeminate type of homosexual man, and to neglect the virile type. The same is true as regards the description of the corresponding types of homosexual women.
[509] This occurs also in heterosexual boys. I extract the following passage from the unpublished autobiography of a homosexual =physician=: “When puberty occurred I am not able to say--I expect it was about the age of sixteen or seventeen--but I know certainly that I noticed at the time of puberty a swelling of the breasts. There was only a slight forward curvature, which did not extend much beyond the areola, and was painful on pressure. I remember distinctly that I was anxious about the matter, and was afraid that there was some inflammation beginning. =However, the same seems to occur in every normal man.= A student whom I asked about the matter said that he had noticed a swelling of the mammary glands about the age of fifteen; recently, at the age of seventeen, he has had his first pollutions; his sexual sensibility is normal.”
[510] “Goethe’s Letters,” vol. vii., p. 314: letter of December 29, 1787, from Rome to Karl August (Weimar, 1890).
[511] G. Merzbach, “Homosexuality and Occupation,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. iv., pp. 187-198.
[512] Cf. W. S., “Woman-Man on the Stage,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. ii., pp. 313-325.
[513] This writer is also the inventor of the word “homosexual,” which is found for the first time in his book.
[514] Magnus Hirschfeld, “Result of the Statistical Investigations regarding the Percentage of Homosexuals,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1904, vol. vi., pp. 109-178.
[515] F. Karsch, “Uranism or Pæderasty and Tribadism among Savage Races,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1901, vol. iii., pp. 72-201.
[516] “Traces of Contrary Sexuality among the Ancient Scandinavians: Reports of a Norwegian Literary Man,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. v., pp. 244-263.
[517] Regarding homosexuality in Japan, cf. also “Pæderasty in Japan,” by Suyewo Iwaya, published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. iv., pp. 264-271.
[518] In the second volume, now in course of preparation, of my work on “The Origin of Syphilis,” will be found a detailed critical investigation, based upon the most recent data, of homosexuality and pseudo-homosexuality in ancient times and during the middle ages.
[519] Cf. “Four Letters of Carl Heinrich Ulrichs (‘Numa Numantius’) to his Relatives,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 36-96 (with portrait).
[520] Ludwig Frey, “The Spiritual Life of Count Platen,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 159-214; and 1904, vol. vi., pp. 357-448.
[521] Numa Prätorius, “Michael Angelo as an Urning,” op. cit., 1900, vol. ii., pp. 254-267.
[522] F. Karsch, “Heinrich Hössli,” op. cit., 1903, vol. v., pp. 449-556. Hössli was the author of the work “Eros: the Greek Love of Men” (Glarus and St. Gallen, 1836 and 1838, 2 vols.), which, according to Karsch, represented for our own time what Plato’s “Symposium” and “Phædrus” represents for antiquity. Karsch gives an excellent table of the contents and an analysis of the books under consideration.
[523] J. E. Meisner, “Uranism,” p. 16 (Leipzig); also verbal communications by Meisner, who was personally acquainted with Bulthaupt, to myself.
[524] F. Karsch, “Our Sources for the Consideration of Reputed and Real Urnings,” “Johann von Müller the Historian (1752-1809),” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1902, vol. iv., pp. 349-457.
[525] L. S. A. M. von Römer, “Henry III., King of France and Poland,” op. cit., vol. iv., pp. 572-669.
[526] J. E. Meisner, op. cit., p. 17.
[527] Magnus Hirschfeld, “Sexual Transitional Stages,” Plate XXXII. (Leipzig, 1905).
[528] Op. cit., Plate XXXII.
[529] F. Karsch, “Duke August the Fortunate (1772-1822),” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1903, vol. v., pp. 615-693.
[530] Numa Prätorius, “Georges Eekhoud: a Preface,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii., pp. 268-277.
[531] G. Eekhoud, “An Illustrious Urning of the Seventeenth Century, Jerom Duquesnoy, the Flemish Sculptor,” op. cit., pp. 277-287.
[532] F. Karsch, “A. von Sternberg, the Novelist,” op. cit., 1902, vol. iv., pp. 458-571. He obtained sexual gratification by masturbating while looking at masculine posteriora, but also frequently had relations with women.
[533] F. Karsch, “Theodor Beza, the Reformer (1519-1605),” op. cit., pp. 291-349.
[534] H. J. Schouten, “The Alleged Pæderasty of the Reformer John Calvin,” op. cit., 1905, vol. vii., pp. 291-306.
[535] Hans Rau, “Franz Grillparzer and his Amatory Life.” (Berlin, 1903).
[536] The love of boys, the “pæderasty,” of the Greeks related to young adult men.
[537] I have used the established spelling for this word, although probably its more correct spelling would be “pedication” (derived from pedex = podex).
[538] Cf. P. Näcko, “The Kiss of the Homosexual,” published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology and Criminal Statistics, by H. Gross, 1904, vol. xvii., Nos. 1, 2, p. 177. Cf. also the reports on the tongue kiss published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1905, vol. vii., pp. 757-759.
[539] M. Hirschfeld, “Are Sexual Intermediate Stages Suited for Marriage?” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1901, vol. iii., pp. 37-71.
[540] We owe to Näcke the recognition of the importance of sexual dreams in the diagnosis of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Cf. his essay, “The Forensic Significance of Dreams,” published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, 1889, vol. iii.; also P. Näcke, “The Dream as the Most Delicate Reagent for the Detection of the Mode of Sexual Sensibility,” published in the Annual Review of Criminal Psychology, 1905.
[541] M. Hirschfeld, “Berlin’s Third Sex,” p. 26 (Berlin and Leipzig, 1905).
[542] The description of this interesting scene, with other details regarding the organization of the homosexuals of Paris, is found in the work of Pisanus Fraxi (Henry Spencer Ashbee). “Centuria Librorum Absconditorum,” pp. 406-416 (London, 1879) (based upon personal reports by Paul Lacroix).
[543] Ambroise Tardieu, “Offences against Morality from the Point of View of State Medicine,” German translation by F. W. Theile, pp. 133, 134 (Weimar, 1860).
[544] There are also numerous places of public resort which are indeed largely attended by urnings, but are also frequented by heterosexuals.
[545] Cf. in this connexion also the remarks of P. Näcke, “A Visit to the Homosexuals of Berlin,” published in the Archives of Criminal Anthropology, 1904, vol. xv., Nos. 1 and 2.
[546] Cf. P. Näcke, “Quelques Détails sur les Homosexuels de Paris,” published in the Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, 1905, new series, iv., No. 138. See the reference in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1906, vol. viii., pp. 795, 796.
[547] Cf. “The Secrets of the Berlin Passage,” pp. 19, 20 (Berlin, 1877).
[548] Cf. Pisanus Fraxi, “Centuria Librorum Absconditorum,” pp. 404-406 (London, 1879) (according to the reports of Paul Lacroix, who himself was a witness of the occurrences).
[549] Op. cit., pp. 404-407.
[550] Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1906, vol. viii., pp. 796, 797. According to d’Estoc (“Paris-Eros,” pp. 207, 208), the male prostitutes in these brothels are more especially men from southern countries--Italians, Orientals, Berbers, and negroes.
[551] Cf. Ludwig Frey, “Characterization of Blackmail,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 71-96.
[552] Cf. Numa Prætorius, “The Criminal Character of Homosexual Intercourse, Considered Historically and Critically,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1899, vol. i., pp. 97-158.
[553] Cf. Z. Richter, “Does § 175 afford any Protection? A Criminalogical Study,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii., pp. 30-52.
[554] “Opinions of Roman Catholic Priests on the Attitude of Christianity towards the Criminal Prosecution of Homosexual Love” (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii., pp. 161-203); “What Position should the Church Assume towards Homosexual Love and its Criminal Prosecution?” by an Evangelical Theologian (op. cit., vol. iii., pp. 204-210); Caspar Wirz, “Urnings before the Church and Scripture” (Orthodox-Evangelical) (op. cit., vol. iv., pp. 63-108); “Homosexuality in the Bible,” by a Catholic priest (op. cit., vol. iv., pp. 199-243); “From the Memoirs of a (Catholic) Priest” (op. cit., pp. 1172-1178).
[555] A letter from Emile Zola to Dr. Laupts on the problem of homosexuality; translated, with an introduction, by Rudolf von Beulwitz (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1905, vol. ii., pp. 371-386).
[556] “What should the People know about the Third Sex?” An instructive work, published by the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee (Leipzig, 1904).
[557] Cf. “The Truth about Myself: Autobiography of a Contrary-Sexual,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. iii., pp. 292-307.
[558] M. F., “How I See the Matter,” op. cit., pp. 308-312.
[559] Cf. Anna Rüling, “What Interest has the Woman’s Movement in the Solution of the Homosexual Problem?” (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. vii., pp. 131-151).
[560] Arduin, “The Woman’s Question and Sexual Intermediate Stages” (op. cit., 1900, vol. ii., pp. 211-223).
[561] W. Hammer, “Tribadism in Berlin,” p. 97 (Berlin, 1906).
[562] Cf. “A Description of an Urnindes’ Ball,” given by M. Hirschfeld, “Berlin’s Third Sex,” pp. 56, 57.
[563] Cf. Martial d’Estoc, “Paris-Eros,” p. 59 et seq.
[564] Cf. F. Karsch, “Pæderasty and Tribadism among Animals as recorded in Literature,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, 1900, vol. ii., pp. 126-160; P. Näcke, “Pæderasty in Animals,” published in the Archives of Criminal Anthropology, 1904, vol. xiv., pp. 361, 362.
[565] L. Krehl, “The Disturbance of Chemical Correlations in the Organism” (Leipzig, 1907). Here, on p. 3, we find: “If we are compelled to assume that many varieties of cells in their rudimentary condition already bear the imprint of a masculine or feminine nature, =still this masculine or feminine nature doubtless only undergoes its real development under the enduring chemical influence of the ovaries and the testicles=.”
[566] This latter view has been maintained especially by Max Katte, in his treatise “The Purpose of the Existence of Homosexuals” (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. iv., pp. 272-288), but he completely ignores the evolutionary points of view. In the same way, Hans Freimark neglects them (“The Meaning of Uranism,” p. 14; Leipzig, 1906); he regards homosexuality as a transition to a state in which “mankind will no longer need gross material contact for purposes of reproduction.”
Chapter XX
PSEUDO-HOMOSEXUALITY (GREEK AND ORIENTAL PÆDERASTY, HERMAPHRODITISM, BISEXUAL VARIETIES)
“Nous sommes les enfants des anciennes Sodomes; Puisque l’on nous voit beaux, laissons-nous nous aimer. Notre sort est le plus désirable: charmer, Nous sommes adorés des femmes et des hommes!”
RACHILDE.
[“We are children of the ancient Sodom; _Since people regard us as beautiful, let us continue to love one another;_ Our lot is the most desirable: to charm, We are adored both by women and by men.”]
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XX
Connexion between pseudo-homosexuality and bisexuality -- Great antiquity of the idea of bisexuality -- Magnus Hirschfeld’s treatise on bisexuality -- Bisexuality of the time of puberty -- Pseudo-homosexual tendencies at this period of life -- Examples (Gutzkow, Grillparzer) -- On the large scale -- Analogy to the pseudo-heterosexuality of youthful homosexuals -- Persistence of bisexuality -- The “Junores” -- Delusion of sexual metamorphosis -- Cultivation of pæderasts -- Women-men and men-women -- Brouardel’s type of effeminate Parisian street-arab -- Homosexuality in the state of trance -- Pseudo-homosexuality owing to the lack of heterosexual intercourse -- Anal masturbators -- Pseudo-homosexuality of prostitutes -- Temporary pseudo-tribadism in Paris -- Pseudo-uranism as a popular custom -- Explanation of the Greek love of boys -- Its fundamental difference from modern true homosexuality -- Value of the noble asexual friendship of men for men -- A letter of Gutzkow’s -- The Platonic Eros and Græco-Oriental pæderasty -- Bisexuality in German romanticism -- Explanation of this -- Hermaphroditism -- Previous under-estimation of the importance of hermaphroditism -- Recent researches -- True hermaphroditism -- Pseudo-hermaphroditism -- Male and female apparent hermaphrodites.