and many other emotions then, for the first time, beginning to
seize me, a sense of literary power and a desire to express
myself through imaginative channels began to take hold of me. I
feared that my indulgence was having an enfeebling power on my
faculties (I had begun to experience physical languor and
depression), and certain religious scruples, the result of my
early training, took hold of me. For the first time I became
conscious that the ardors I felt toward my own sex were a
diversion of the sex-instinct itself, and to my astonishment and
consternation I found by chance the practices I had already
indulged in definitely denounced in the Bible as an abomination.
From that moment began a struggle which lasted for years. I made
a final breach with my former intimate, and thereupon a long
dispute took place between the conflicting influences that strove
for possession of my body. For a time I broke off the habit of
masturbation, but I could not so easily rid myself of the mental
indulgence, which was now almost an essential sedative for
inducing sleep. At this time a visit to the seaside, where, for
the first time, I was able to see men bathing in complete nudity,
frankly, in the full light of day, plunged me again for a time
headforemost into imaginative amours, and my scruples and
resolutions were flung to the winds. But, on the whole, I had now
entered a stage which, for want of a better term, I must describe
as the emotionally moral. To whatever depth of indulgence I
descended I carried a sense of obliquity with me; I believed that
I was a rebel from a law, natural and divine, of which yet no
instinct had been implanted in me. I still held unquestioned the
truth of the religion I had been brought up in, and my whole
life, every thought of my brain, every impulse of my body, were
in direct antagonism to the will of God. At times physical desire
broke down these barriers, but I practised considerable restraint
physically, though not mentally, and made great efforts to
conquer my aversion from women and extreme devotion for men,
without the slightest success. I was 30, however, before I found
a companion to love me in the way my nature required. I am quite
a healthy person, and capable of working at very high pressure.
Under sexual freedom I have become stronger."
HISTORY XXII.--T.J., aged 50; man of letters. Height 5 feet 7
inches; weight 10 stone, but formerly much less. Belongs to an
entirely normal family, all married and with children.
"Owing to the fact that my mother suffered from some malady the
whole period of gestation prior to my birth, I came into the
world so puny a child, so ill-nourished, that for some time the
doctors despaired of my life. Till the age of puberty, though
never ill, I suffered greatly from delicate health. I was
abnormally sensitive and all my affections and passions
extraordinarily developed. Owing to my brothers being much older
than myself I was thrown into the society of my sister. Till 8
years old she was my chief playmate. With her I played with dolls
and abandoned myself wholly to the delights of an imaginary land
which was much more real to me than the world around me. I never
remember learning to read, but at 5 the _Arabian Nights_ and
Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_ were my favorite books. Living in
the country the society of other children was difficult to
obtain. My whole affections centered in my father, my mother
having died when I was a child. This affection for my father was
rather a morbid passion which absorbed my life. I dared not leave
his side for fear of a final separation from him. I would wake
him when asleep to see if he still lived. To this day, though he
died twenty-six years ago, his memory haunts me.
"My first abnormal desires were connected with him. I had seen
him occasionally micturating in the garden alleys or out in the
country. These occasions excited me terribly, and I would, if
possible, wait till he had gone, and touch the humid leaves,
drawing a terrible pleasure from the contact. Afterward, though
he never suspected it, desire for him became a consuming passion,
and I remember on one occasion, when on a holiday, I occupied the
same bed with him, the excitement of his propinquity brought on
such a formidable attack of heart palpitation that my father
called in the family physician on our return home. Needless to
say my heart was found quite sound. The desire still remains
after all these years, and nothing excites me more even now than
the memory of my father in his morning bath.
"The whole world for me in my early childhood was peopled with
imaginary beings. While still a young child I would invent
stories and relate them to any listener I could find, one such
story lasting three years. I was an omnivorous reader, but my
favorite reading was poetry. At 7 I could repeat the greater part
of Longfellow's poems; Scott followed; then Milton captivated me
when I was 14; then came Tennyson, Arnold, Swinburne, and Morris.
Later came the Greek and Latin poets. From 7 years on I wrote
verses to my father. Till 8 years I was excessively timid of the
dark and, indeed, of all loneliness. This passed, however, and
developed into an extreme sensitiveness of seeing or meeting
people. Even on a country road I would walk miles out of my way
to avoid meeting the ordinary yokel. At this period my day-dreams
were my favorite occupation. Even to the present day my visions
take up the greater part of my life. Though timid I was not
wanting in courage. At an early age I would fight boys even older
than myself. Later I have risked my life many times in various
parts of Europe. As regards sports, I can do a little of
everything: swimming, riding, fencing, shooting,--a little of
each. Cricket and football I also played passably, but sports
never interested me much. Literature became and is the passion
of my life and for some years has remained my sole occupation.
"At 8 years the sexual inversion began to manifest itself, though
till I had attained 10 years of age I was practically quite
innocent. At 8 years of age, my family removed to another country
and I made the acquaintance of a little boy who attracted me
sexually. We masturbated in company, without any reason except
the pleasure of seeing each other exposed. Then I had connection
with him _in anum_. This really at that time was an exception to
my ordinary tastes which speedily developed into an intense
desire of _fellatio_ and later on of intercrural pleasures. This
latter perhaps may be accounted for by the visit to our house of
a small boy with whom I slept for about a year. Every night
during this period, I had intercrural connection with him twice
and sometimes three times. Then came a consuming passion for all
young boys and very old men. Boys after 14 or 15 ceased to
attract me, more particularly when the hair of the pubes began to
develop. From 8 to 14, when first I had sexual emissions, I
masturbated at every opportunity. From 14 to 27, always once a
day, generally twice and sometimes three times a day. At 27 I
took rooms and formed acquaintance with the family occupying the
house. The boys, one by one, were allowed to sleep with me and I
conceived an extraordinary passion for one of them, an attachment
which lasted till I finally left England. The attachment was much
more that of a man for his wife and had nothing degrading in it.
I was wretched when away from him, and as he was very attached to
sport of all kinds I suffered 'divers kinds of death' each time
that I imagined his life to be endangered. I can honestly say
that in each of my attachments, and I have had many, the
prevailing sentiment was the delight of protecting a weaker being
than myself. Each person whom I have loved has been perfectly
normal and all are now fathers of families. Each still regards me
with affection and respect in spite of what has passed between
us. All my life I have been possessed with the passion for
paternity, I could almost say maternity. Willingly would I have
suffered the pains of hell could I have borne a son to the person
I loved. That I can honestly say has been the dominant instinct
of my life. In my passion I have never been brutal, nor save
under the influence of wine have I had connection with men over
the age of puberty. In Southern Europe my experiences have been
the same, a predominant passion for a boy exhibiting itself in
every species of protecting care, and though terminating so far
as sexual passion was concerned when the boy reached 15 or 16
years, yet still lasting and enduring in an honest and unselfish
affection. At the age of 51, I still masturbate once or twice a
week, though I long for some person whom I love to share the
pleasure with me. I tried vainly at the age of 27 to bring
myself into line with others. Prostitutes caused me horror,
whether male or female. I attempted the act of coitus four or
five times, twice with women of loose lives and at other times
with married women. Save in one case the attempts were either
abortive or caused me extreme disgust.
"Practically from the time of puberty I have attracted sexually
not only women but men. Women, oddly enough, though I care
nothing for them sexually, either hate me or adore me, and I have
had five offers of marriage. At the same time up till five years
ago, I was pursued by men and have had the oddest experiences
both in England and abroad. In the early period of this history I
suffered tremendously from the feeling that I was isolated and
unique in the world. I strove against the habit of masturbation
and my perverted tastes with all my might. Scourges, vigils,
burnings, all were of no avail. Deeper reading in the Classics
showed me how common was the taste of sex for the same sex. At 27
I began to have a settled philosophy. Then as now, I made endless
resolutions to avoid masturbation, though I can see nothing wrong
in the mutual act of two persons drawn together by love. I am and
always have been an extremely religious man, and if I am not
altogether an orthodox Catholic, do my duties and have a high
sense of the supernatural. I suffered much from melancholy from
my earliest years. At 18, though nothing definitely was wrong, a
vague but profound _malaise_ induced me to open the veins of my
arm. I fainted, however, and was promptly succored. At the age of
35, after a return from abroad, I took an enormous dose of
poison. This time again a singular coincidence saved me, and I
once more came back to life. After this I purposely went abroad
to obtain death and sought it in every possible way. Quite in
vain, as you see. One thing I have never had a fear of, but have
always longed for--Death. I am sure that if we only knew what
joys lay on the other side of death, the whole world would rush
madly to suicide. I have, apart from any perversion of taste, an
honest and genuine passion for children and animals, and I am
never happier than when in their society. Both adore me.
"My life has not dimmed nor deadened my faculties, for I am
occupied at the present time with very important work and I write
steadily. But my real life is passed in my visions, which take me
into another world quite as real as this sensuous one, and where
I always retreat on all occasions possible. And yet, a strange
paradox--I am a convinced Stoic and almost confine my reading to
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the 'Imitation.' I am extremely
emotional, fond of the society of women, though I loathe the
sexual side of them, and when I love, though passion is certainly
inextricably mixed, the prevailing sentiment is spiritual. I
shall probably end by being a Carthusian or a fakir."
HISTORY XXIII.--Englishman, aged 70, of German descent on
father's side. Was first child of his mother, who was 36 at his
birth; a younger brother normal; has no other relatives.
He was brought up in England, and went to school at the age of
13. At a very early age, between 6 and 8, was deeply impressed by
the handsome face of a young man, a royal trumpeter on horseback,
seen in a procession. This, and the sight of the naked body of
young men in a rowing-match on the river, caused great commotion,
but not of a definitely sexual character. This was increased by
the sight of a beautiful male model of a young Turk smoking, with
his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the
waist. He became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures
of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and
he read with avidity the _Arabian Nights_ and other Oriental
tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc.
He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male
ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private
theatricals; he excelled in female parts, and sang the songs of
Madame Vestris, encouraged in this by his father.
The sexual organs have never been fully developed, and the
testicles, though large, are of a flabby consistence. He cannot
whistle. He thinks he ought to have been a woman.
At school he was shy and reserved, and had no particular intimacy
with anyone, although he once desired it. He learned self-abuse
from his younger brother, who had learned it from an older boy.
He has never had erotic dreams. He never touched anyone but his
brother until later when travelling in Italy, and then only his
fellow-traveller. When travelling in Asia Minor he had many
opportunities, but always put them aside from fear, afterward
regretting his fearfulness. He yearned for intimacy with
particular friends, but never dared to express it. He went much
to theaters, and what he saw there incited him to masturbation.
When he was about 30 years of age his reserve, and his fear of
treachery and extortion, were at last overcome by an incident
which occurred late at night at the Royal Exchange, and again in
a dark recess in the gallery of the Olympic Theater when Gustavus
Brooke was performing. From that time the Adelphi Theater, the
Italian Opera, and the open parks at night became his fields of
adventure. He remarks that among people crowding to witness a
fire he found many opportunities. His especial intimates were a
railway clerk and an Italian model. In more recent years he has
chiefly found gratification among footmen and policemen.
He is exclusively passive; also likes mutual _fellatio_. He used
greatly to admire finely developed forms (conscious of his own
shortcomings), shapely limbs, and delicate brown hair, and always
admired strength and manly vigor. He never took any interest in
boys, and has always been indifferent to women.
HISTORY XXIV.--A medical man, English, aged 30. He believes that
his father, who was a magistrate, was very sympathetic toward
men; on several occasions he has sat with him on the bench when
cases of indecent assault were brought up; he discharged three
cases, although there could be little doubt as to their guilt,
and was very lenient to the others.
From the age of 9 he loved to sleep with his brother, ten years
older, who was in the navy; they slept in different beds, and the
child went to bed early, but he always kept awake to see his
brother undress, as he adored his naked body; and would then get
into his bed. He learned the habit of masturbation from his
brother at the age of 9; at that time there was no sexual orgasm,
but watching it in his brother was a perpetual source of wonder
and pleasure. During his brother's absence at sea the boy longed
for his return and would practice self-abuse with the thought of
his brother's naked body before him. This brother's death was a
source of great grief. At the age of 12 he went to
boarding-school and was constantly falling in love with
good-looking boys. He was always taken into one of the bigger
boys' beds. At this age he was thoroughly able to enjoy the
sexual orgasm with boys. His erotic dreams have always been of
men and especially of boys; he has never dreamed sexually of
women. From the age of 9 to the age of 21, when he left school,
he never gave women a thought sexually, though he always liked
their society. For two years after leaving school he had
connection with women, not because he thought there was sin in
loving his own sex, but because he regarded it as a thing that no
one did after leaving school. During these two years he still
really preferred men and used to admire the figures of soldiers
and sailors. He then paid a visit to London, which may be
described in his own words: "I went to see an old schoolfellow
who was living there. In his room was a young fellow, fair,
extremely good looking, with a good figure and charming manners.
From that moment all my past recollections came back. I could not
get him out of my mind; in fact, I was in love with him. I
pictured him naked before me as a lovely statue; my dreams were
frequent at night, always of him. For a fortnight afterward I
practised masturbation with the picture of his lovely face and
form always before me. We became fast friends, and from that day
women have never entered my thoughts."
Although up to the present he has no wish or intention to marry,
he believes that he will eventually do so, because it is thought
desirable in his profession; but he is quite sure that his love
and affection for men and boys will never lessen.
In earlier life he preferred men from 20 to 35; now he likes boys
from 16 upward; grooms, for instance, who must be good looking,
well developed, cleanly, and of a lovable, unchanging nature; but
he would prefer gentlemen. He does not care for mere mutual
embracing and reciprocal masturbation; when he really loves a man
he desires _pedicatio_ in which he is himself the passive
subject.
He has curly hair and moustache, and well-developed sexual
organs. His habits are masculine; he has always enjoyed field
sports, and can swim, ride, drive, and skate. At the same time,
he is devoted to music, can draw and paint, and is an ardent
admirer of male statuary. While fond of practical occupations of
every sort, he dislikes anything that is theoretical.
He adds: "As a medical man, I fail to see morally any
unhealthiness, or anything that nature should be ashamed of, in
connection with, and sympathy for, men."
HISTORY XXV.--A.S. Schoolmaster, aged 46.
"My father was, I should say, below the average in capacity for
friendship. He liked young girls, and was never interested in
boys. He was a man of strongly Puritanical morality, capable of
condemning with gloomy bitterness. He was also a man capable of
great sacrifice for principle, and mentally very well endowed. My
mother was a clever, practical woman, with wide sympathies. She
was capable of warm friendship, especially toward those younger
than herself. Her father (whom I never saw) was a teacher. He was
devoted to his wife, but also delighted in the company of young
men. He had always some young man on his arm, my mother would
tell me. My mother's family is of Welsh descent. I learned to
read at 5, and I can scarcely have been more than 6 when I used
to read again and again David's lament for Absalom. Even now I
can dimly recall the siren charm for me of that melancholy
refrain, 'O my son Absalom.... O Absalom, my son, my son!' Of
late, when I have thought of the amount of devotion I have shown
to lads, and the amount I have sometimes suffered for them, I
have felt as if there were something almost weirdly prophetic in
that early incident.
"I was always an impressionable creature. My mother was very
musical, and her singing 'got hold' of me wonderfully. The
dramatic and the poetic always strongly appealed to me.
"I felt I should like to act; but I never dared. In the same way
I felt that one day I should like to be a schoolmaster, but I
dared not say so. A shy, retiring creature was obviously unfitted
for such occupations. Well, the teaching came about, and the
strange part was that the boys were somehow or other attracted
by me, and the 'worst' customers were attracted most. And there
came a chance of acting too. Owing to some difficulties about the
cast in a play at school, I took a part. After that I _knew_ that
(within a certain range) I could act. I spent two holidays with a
dramatic company. I should undoubtedly have remained on the
stage, but for one thing. I don't wish to be sanctimonious, but
dirty and ugly jokes are odious to me. It was this sort of thing
that drove me away. I threw myself into the school work instead.
"It was partly the dramatic interest, partly a quite genuine
interest in human nature, that led me to do some preaching too.
When I had been badly hurt by one or two youngsters whom I loved,
I thought of going in for pastoral work, but this too was given
up--and very wisely. I should never be able to work comfortably
with any organization. For one thing I have a way of taking on
new ideas, and organizations do not like that. For another, all
social functions are anathema to me.
"Interest in 'art' as usually understood began to be marked only
after I was 30. It started with architecture and passed on to
painting and sculpture. The tendency to do rather a variety (too
great a variety) of things characterizes many uranians. We are
rather like the labile chemical compounds: our molecules readily
rearrange themselves.
"As a boy of 10 I had the ordinary sweethearting with a girl of
the same age. The incident is worth perhaps a little further
comment for the following reason: When I was 16 years old the
girl lived with us for a year. She was a nice, pleasant, bright
girl, and she thought a great deal of me. I was strongly
attracted by her. I remember especially one little incident. I
had been showing her how to do some algebra and she was kneeling
at the table by the side of my chair. Her hair was flowing over
her shoulders and she looked rather charming. She expressed warm
admiration of the way I had worked the problem out. I remember
that I deliberately squashed out the feeling of attraction that
came over me. I scarcely know why I did this; but I fancy there
was a vague sense that I did not want my work disturbed. There
was no sexual attraction or, at least, none that was manifest.
The girl, there is no doubt, grew to love me. I am sorry to say
that in two other cases, later, women loved me, and have both
permanently remained unmarried on my account. I sometimes feel
that in a wisely free society I should be able to give both of
these women children. That I believe I could do, and I think it
would be an immense satisfaction to them. A permanent union with
a woman would, however, be impossible to me. A permanent union
with a man would, I believe, be possible. At least I know that
attractions which have been at all homosexual in character have
in my case been very lasting.
"I was strongly attracted when not more than 13 to a lad slightly
older. It was a love story, there is no doubt, but I do not
recollect any outer sexual signs. There were other passing cases,
but in no case was there any warm response till I was 15. I then
made friends with a lad of entirely different type from myself. I
was a reader. I liked long walks and fresh air, but I was too shy
to go in for sports. Indeed I was frightfully shy. He was a great
sportsman and always at home in society. But he asked me to help
him with some work, and we took to working together. I grew
passionately fond of him. His caresses always caused some
erection. Personally, I believe it would have been wiser to have
obtained complete sexual expression. The absence of knowledge led
to two distinctly undesirable results. The first was marked
congestion and pain at times; the second was a tendency to a sort
of modified masochism. There is always, I suppose, some erotic
attraction about the buttocks, and of course also, to boys, they
afford an irresistibly attractive mark for a good smack. I found
that when this lad spanked me it produced some amount of sexual
excitement, and the desire for this form of stimulus grew upon
me. The result, in my case, was bad. It was sensualism, not love.
I can say this with confidence, because in a much later case of
deeply passionate love, I shrank from any such method, but the
mutual, naked embrace I found was for me an absolutely natural
and _pure_ expression of love. I never felt any touch of
grossness in it, and it destroyed the earlier and (for me at
least) less wholesome desire.
"The school friendship disappeared with the marriage of my
friend. I was furiously jealous, and the young man's mother was
opposed to me, but I still think of that early friendship with
tenderness. I know that my boy friend was the first who made me
capable of self-expression, the first who taught me how to make
friends at all. And if he still cared for me, I know that his
love would be dear to me still.
"My chief regret, as I look back, is that I did not know about
these things early. I cannot but think that all youngsters should
be spoken to about the love of comrades and encouraged to seek
help in any sort of trouble that this may bring. We homogenic
folk may be but a small percentage of mankind, but our numbers
are still great, and surely the making or marring of our lives
should count for something. At college I fell violently in love
with a friend with whom I did work in science. He loved me too,
though not with such heat. He also was largely uranian, but this
I only realized a year or two back. He remains unmarried, and is
still my friend. We did some research work together which is
pretty well known. I am quite sure that the love we had for each
other gave tremendous zest to our work and greatly increased our
powers.
"While I was working at college I was interested in a lad who was
working as errand boy for a city firm. I helped him to get better
training, and spent money on him. My father was making me some
allowance at the time and demurred. I said I would in future
support myself, and in this way came to take up schoolmastering.
I at once became quite absorbed in my work with the boys. Of
course I loved them. And here I feel I must touch upon what seems
to me a characteristic of most of us uranians. Our genital organs
are with us ordinarily and usually organs of _expression_. The
clean-minded heterogenic man is apt to look upon such a view of
the genital organs as monstrous; we, on the other hand, are
compelled (at least for ourselves) to regard it as the natural
and pure one. For my own part I had many Puritan
prejudices--prejudices that I retained for many a long and weary
day--but my affection for those of my own sex so often expressed
itself by some sexual stirring, and more or less erection, that I
was _obliged_ to look upon this as inevitable, and in general I
paid no attention to it whatever. It was the older boys' who
sometimes attracted me strongly. My love for them was I know a
genuinely spiritual thing, though inevitably having some physical
expression. I was capable of great devotion to them and sacrifice
for them, and I would certainly rather have died than have
injured them. The boys got on well with me. I was never weak with
them, and I was able to allow all kinds of familiarities without
any loss of respect. The older boys usually, out of class, called
me by my Christian name, and I remember one writing to ask me
whether he might do so, as it made him feel 'nearer' to me. A few
of the lads I of course loved with special devotion. They kissed
me and loved to have me embrace them. One of these was, I now
know, pure uranian, and there was in his case certainly some
sexual response, but though I often slept with him, when he was a
lad of 17 and 18, there was never any idea in our minds of any
sexual act. We are still warm friends, and always kiss when we
meet. Looking back upon those days, I feel that I was a little
inclined to pass on from one love to another, but each was a
genuine devotion, and involved real hard work on the lad's
behalf. And I know that where the lad stuck to me into manhood a
real tenderness and love remain still.
"While teaching I made the acquaintance of a non-conformist
minister, who, though happily married, had certainly some
homogenic tendencies. He was most devoted to boys and helped me
with regard to some difficult cases. It was the difficult cases
that always attracted me. I had to punish these lads and my
friend recommended spanking with the hand on the bare buttocks. I
mention that I adopted this method, because it might have been
thought specially dangerous to me. It certainly never produced in
me the remotest suggestion of any sexual act, though it did
sometimes produce a slight amount of sexual excitement. I
disregarded this, or put it out of my mind, as I found the method
most efficacious. It was capable of great variation of intensity,
and the boys were always ready to joke about it. I never came
across a case where any sexual excitement was produced by it. The
boys whom I had to be most 'down' on almost always, however, grew
fonder of me. There may be a slight and normal masochistic
tendency in most boys, and _perhaps_ the erogenic character of
the buttocks has something to do with the development of
affection. If so, I am inclined to regard it as normal and useful
rather than otherwise, for in my experience no undesirable result
was ever produced. But then, of course, there was no playing with
the business; that might, I am sure, in some cases be decidedly
injurious.
"One experience of my schoolmastering days is, I think, important
in its bearing upon general sexual psychology. I always noticed
that during the term I was specially free from 'wet dreams.' What
is noteworthy is this: During term there was never anything more
than a very partial sexual expression of any feeling of mine,
such expression indeed as was wholly inevitable. There was
therefore no actual loss of semen, and it seems clear that the
'wet dreams' were not due to mere physical pressure. The psychic
satisfaction of love in this case made the complete physical
expression less urgent. But it was a love of a distinctly tender
kind that was needed to keep the physical from obtruding. Of that
further experience has made me sure. I am, moreover, now
convinced that a _mutual_ uranian love will reach its best
results, both spiritual and physical, where there is complete
sexual expression.
"Of the character of the sexual dreams I have had, there is not
much to be said. During the period of masochistic tendency, they
were masochistic in character; otherwise they have been dreams
simply of the naked embrace. Usually there has been a
considerable element of ideal love in the dream. I have not more
than three times at most dreamed of intercourse with one of the
opposite sex. There was only in one case anything that I could
call actual emotion in such a dream. The other dreams have often
(not always) been dreams of real yearning, and not at all what I
should call merely sensual.
"In the course of time I wanted more freedom to do things in my
own way than could be obtained in a public school. I started a
school of my own. The work was for a good many years very happy.
I loved the boys, and they loved me. I was active, ardent, and
they made a chum of me. But people got into the way of sending me
awkward customers. I poured out my love on these, I used myself
up for them. Unfortunately (though I was never 'orthodox') my
Puritanical morality was still strong within me, my views of
human psychology were too limited, and I imposed them on the
boys. Some were very devoted; but, as years went by and the
proportion of _mauvais sujets_ increased, there tended to be a
split in the small camp and one or two boys whom I loved deceived
me terribly. To a man of my temperament this was heart-rending
and from then the work was doomed. Troubles at school went along
with troubles at home, and these things contributed to center my
affection upon a lad who was with me, and who had given me much
trouble. For some reason or other I went on believing that he
would get right. Deceit was his great difficulty. He was
certainly partly homosexual himself. Looking back I can see that
with a wider and more charitable knowledge I could have dealt
more wisely and helpfully with certain homosexual episodes of
his. I am convinced now that mere sweeping condemnation of the
physical is not the wholesome way of help. However, to cut the
story short, all seemed at last to go well, and the lad was
growing into a young man. Our love deepened, and we always slept
together, but quite ascetically. Later, when quite in his young
manhood he had left school, there was, unfortunately,
misunderstandings with his parents, who forbad him to sleep with
me. What followed is of some importance. Up till then, though
certainly his affection seemed ardent, I had observed no sexual
signs on his part. I had been quite frank with him as to mine. He
was then 19, and I thought old enough to have things explained to
him. Sleeping with him I had found peaceful and helpful, and more
than once he told me that it greatly helped him. But _after we
were forbidden to sleep together_, I found the passion in me more
difficult to control, and it suddenly leaped out in him. We were
still, however, rather ascetic, though we used to kiss each
other, and we used to embrace naked. This produced emission not
infrequently with me, but only once with him, though always
powerful erection. I would not allow any friction. Perhaps this
was a mistake. A more complete expression might have helped him.
"All my life I had been hungry for a complete response, and at
one time the lad thought he could give it. He was then nearing
20. 'I have never been so happy in my life,' he said. It was a
blow to me when I found he had mistaken his own feelings, but I
was quite ready to accept what love he could give. I also never
dreamed of any sort of insistence on sexual expression. With such
love as he could give I was quite ready to make myself content.
'The true measure of love,' wrote a uranian schoolmaster to me
once, 'is self-sacrifice'; not 'What will you give?' but 'What
will you give up?' Not 'What will you do for him?' but 'What will
you forego for his sake?' I quote this gladly, for the
conventional English moralists regard an invert as a kind of
deformed beast. I can only say that I tried to realize the ideal
which these words express. No 'moralist' would have helped me one
whit. The parents, also, separated us. They have done much harm
by their mistake. How difficult it is for parents to allow
freedom to their children! Their ideal is successful constraint,
not free self-discovery. But in spite of them, and in spite of
the separation, I know that my friend and I have helped each
other.
"There is one fear parents have which I believe is unwarranted.
As far as I have seen, I do not conclude that the early
expression of homosexual love prevents heterosexual love from
developing later. Where this love is a part of the individual's
inborn nature, it will show itself. I do, however, believe that a
noble homogenic love in early life will sometimes help a lad to
avoid a low standard of heterogenic attachment. The Greeks did
well, at their best time, in cultivating and ennobling the
homogenic love. Amongst us, as can be understood by all who know
the working of society taboos, it is the baser forms that are
unhindered, the noblest forms that are debased.
"We urnings are, I think, dependent upon individual love. Many of
us, I know, need to work for an individual to do our best. Is
this the outcome of the woman in the uranian temperament? And the
tragedy of our fate is that we whose souls vibrate only to the
touch of the hand of Eros are faced with the fiercest taboo of
all that can give our lives meaning. The other taboos have been
given up one by one. Will not this, the last of the taboos, soon
vanish? I have known lives darkened by it, weakened by it,
crushed out by it. How long are the western moralists to maim and
brand and persecute where they do not understand?"
The next case belongs to a totally different class from all the preceding
histories. These--all British or American--were obtained privately; they
are not the inmates of prisons or of asylums, and in most cases they have
never consulted a physician concerning their abnormal instincts. They pass
through life as ordinary, sometimes as honored, members of society. The
following case, which happens to be that of an American, is acquainted
with both the prison and the lunatic asylum. There are several points of
interest in his history, and he illustrates the way in which sexual
inversion can become a matter of medico-legal importance. I think,
however, that I am justified in believing that the proportion of sexually
inverted persons who reach the police-court or the lunatic asylum is not
much larger in proportion to the number of sexually inverted persons among
us than it is among my cases. For the documents on which I have founded
the history of Guy Olmstead I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Talbot,
of Chicago, well known from his studies of abnormalities of the jaws and
face, so often associated with nervous and mental abnormality. He knew the
man who addressed to him the letters from which I here quote:--
HISTORY XXVI.--On the twenty-eighth of March, 1894, at noon, in
the open street in Chicago, Guy T. Olmstead fired a revolver at a
letter-carrier named William L. Clifford. He came up from behind,
and deliberately fired four shots, the first entering Clifford's
loins, the other three penetrating the back of his head, so that
the man fell and was supposed to be fatally wounded. Olmstead
made little attempt to escape, as a crowd rushed up with the
usual cry of "Lynch him!" but waved his revolver, exclaiming:
"I'll never be taken alive!" and when a police-officer disarmed
him: "Don't take my gun; let me finish what I have to do." This
was evidently an allusion, as will be seen later on, to an
intention to destroy himself. He eagerly entered the prison-van,
however, to escape the threatening mob.
Olmstead, who was 30 years of age, was born near Danville, Ill.,
in which city he lived for many years. Both parents were born in
Illinois. His father, some twenty years ago, shot and nearly
killed a wealthy coal operator, induced to commit the crime, it
is said, by a secret organization of a hundred prominent citizens
to whom the victim had made himself obnoxious by bringing suits
against them for trivial causes. The victim became insane, but
the criminal was never punished, and died a few years later at
the age of 44. This man had another son who was considered
peculiar.
Guy Olmstead began to show signs of sexual perversity at the age
of 12. He was seduced (we are led to believe) by a man who
occupied the same bedroom. Olmstead's early history is not clear
from the data to hand. It appears that he began his career as a
schoolteacher in Connecticut, and that he there married the
daughter of a prosperous farmer; but shortly after he "fell in
love" with her male cousin, whom he describes as a very handsome
young man. This led to a separation from his wife, and he went
West.
He was never considered perfectly sane, and from October, 1886,
to May, 1889 he was in the Kankakee Insane Asylum. His illness
was reported as of three years' duration, and caused by general
ill-health; heredity doubtful, habits good, occupation that of a
schoolteacher. His condition was diagnosed as paranoia. On
admission he was irritable, alternately excited and depressed. He
returned home in good condition.
At this period, and again when examined later, Olmstead's
physical condition is described as, on the whole, normal and
fairly good. Height, 5 feet 8 inches; weight, 159 pounds. Special
senses normal; genitals abnormally small, with rudimentary penis.
His head is asymmetrical, and is full at the occiput, slightly
sunken at the bregma, and the forehead is low. His cephalic index
is 78. The hair is sandy, and normal in amount over head, face,
and body. His eyes are gray, small, and deeply set; the zygomæ
are normal. The nose is large and very thin. There is arrested
development of upper jaw. The ears are excessively developed and
malformed. The face is very much lined, the nasolabial fissure is
deeply cut, and there are well-marked horizontal wrinkles on the
forehead, so that he looks at least ten years older than his
actual age. The upper jaw is of partial V-shape, the lower well
developed. The teeth and their tubercles and the alveolar process
are normal. The breasts are full. The body is generally well
developed; the hands and feet are large.
Olmstead's history is defective for some years after he left
Kankakee. In October, 1892, we hear of him as a letter-carrier in
Chicago. During the following summer he developed a passion for
William Clifford, a fellow letter-carrier about his own age, also
previously a schoolteacher, and regarded as one of the most
reliable and efficient men in the service. For a time Clifford
seems to have shared this passion, or to have submitted to it,
but he quickly ended the relationship and urged his friend to
undergo medical treatment, offering to pay the expenses himself.
Olmstead continued to write letters of the most passionate
description to Clifford, and followed him about constantly until
the latter's life was made miserable. In December, 1893, Clifford
placed the letters in the postmaster's hands, and Olmstead was
requested to resign at once. Olmstead complained to the Civil
Service Commission at Washington that he had been dismissed
without cause, and also applied for reinstatement, but without
success.
In the meanwhile, apparently on the advice of friends, he went
into hospital, and in the middle of February, 1894, his testicles
were removed. No report from the hospital is to hand. The effect
of removing the testicles was far from beneficial, and he began
to suffer from hysterical melancholia. A little later he went
into hospital again. On March 19th he wrote to Dr. Talbot from
the Mercy Hospital, Chicago: "I returned to Chicago last
Wednesday night, but felt so miserable I concluded to enter a
hospital again, and so came to Mercy, which is very good as
hospitals go. But I might as well go to Hades as far as any hope
of my getting well is concerned. I am utterly incorrigible,
utterly incurable, and utterly impossible. At home I thought for
a time that I was cured, but I was mistaken, and after seeing
Clifford last Thursday I have grown worse than ever so far as my
passion for him is concerned. Heaven, only knows how hard I have
tried to make a decent creature out of myself, but my vileness is
uncontrollable, and I might as well give up and die. I wonder if
the doctors knew that after emasculation it was possible for a
man to have erections, commit masturbation, and have the same
passion as before. I am ashamed of myself; I hate myself; but I
can't help it. I have friends among nice people, play the piano,
love music, books, and everything that is beautiful and
elevating; yet they can't elevate me, because this load of inborn
vileness drags me down and prevents my perfect enjoyment of
anything. Doctors are the only ones who understand and know my
helplessness before this monster. I think and work till my brain
whirls, and I can scarce refrain from crying out my troubles."
This letter was written a few days before the crime was
committed.
When conveyed to the police station Olmstead completely broke
down and wept bitterly, crying: "Oh! Will, Will, come to me! Why
don't you kill me and let me go to him!" (At this time he
supposed he had killed Clifford.) A letter was found on him, as
follows: "Mercy, March 27th. To Him Who Cares to Read: Fearing
that my motives in killing Clifford and myself may be
misunderstood, I write this to explain the cause of this homicide
and suicide. Last summer Clifford and I began a friendship which
developed into love." He then recited the details of the
friendship, and continued: "After playing a Liszt rhapsody for
Clifford over and over, he said that when our time to die came he
hoped we would die together, listening to such glorious music as
that. Our time has now come to die, but death will not be
accompanied by music. Clifford's love has, alas! turned to deadly
hatred. For some reason Clifford suddenly ended our relations and
friendship." In his cell he behaved in a wildly excited manner,
and made several attempts at suicide; so that he had to be
closely watched. A few weeks later he wrote to Dr. Talbot: "Cook
County Gaol, April 23. I feel as though I had neglected you in
not writing you in all this time, though you may not care to hear
from me, as I have never done anything but trespass on your
kindness. But please do me the justice of thinking that I never
expected all this trouble, as I thought Will and I would be in
our graves and at peace long before this. But my plans failed
miserably. Poor Will was not dead, and I was grabbed before I
could shoot myself. I think Will really shot himself, and I feel
certain others will think so, too, when the whole story comes out
in court. I can't understand the surprise and indignation my act
seemed to engender, as it was perfectly right and natural that
Will and I should die together, and nobody else's business. Do
you know I believe that poor boy will yet kill himself, for last
November when I in my grief and anger told his relations about
our marriage he was so frightened, hurt, and angry that he wanted
us both; to kill ourselves. I acquiesced gladly in this proposal
to commit suicide, but he backed out in a day or two. I am glad
now that Will is alive, and am glad that I am alive, even with
the prospect of years of imprisonment before me, but which I will
cheerfully endure for his sake. And yet for the last ten months
his influence has so completely controlled me, both body and
soul, that if I have done right he should have the credit for my
good deeds, and if I have done wrong he should be blamed for the
mischief, as I have not been myself at all, but a part of him,
and happy to merge my individuality into his."
Olmstead was tried privately in July. No new points were brought
out. He was sentenced to the Criminal Insane Asylum. Shortly
afterward, while still in the prison at Chicago, he wrote to Dr.
Talbot: "As you have been interested in my case from a scientific
point of view, there is a little something more I might tell you
about myself, but which I have withheld, because I was ashamed to
admit certain facts and features of my deplorable weakness. Among
the few sexual perverts I have known I have noticed that all are
in the habit of often closing the mouth with the lower lip
protruding beyond the upper. [Usually due to arrested development
of upper jaw.] I noticed the peculiarity in Mr. Clifford before
we became intimate, and I have often caught myself at the trick.
Before that operation my testicles would swell and become sore
and hurt me, and have seemed to do so since, just as a man will
sometimes complain that his amputated leg hurts him. Then, too,
my breasts would swell, and about the nipples would become hard
and sore and red. Since the operation there has never been a day
that I have been free from sharp, shooting pains down the abdomen
to the scrotum, being worse at the base of the penis. Now that my
fate is decided, I will say that really my passion for Mr.
Clifford is on the wane, but I don't know whether the improvement
is permanent or not. I have absolutely no passion for other men,
and have begun to hope now that I can yet outlive my desire for
Clifford, or at least control it. I have not yet told of this
improvement in my condition, because I wished people to still
think I was insane, so that I would be sure to escape being sent
to the penitentiary. I know I was insane at the time I tried to
kill both Clifford and myself, and feel that I don't deserve such
a dreadful punishment as being sent to a State prison. However, I
think it was that operation and my subsequent illness that caused
my insanity rather than passion for Clifford. I should very much
like to know if you really consider sexual perversion an
insanity."
When discharged from the Criminal Insane Asylum, Olmstead
returned to Chicago and demanded his testicles from the City
Postmaster, whom he accused of being in a systematized conspiracy
against him. He asserted that the postmaster was one of the chief
agents in a plot against him, dating from before the castration.
He was then sent to the Cook Insane Hospital. It seems probable
that a condition of paranoia is now firmly established.
The following cases are all bisexual, attraction being felt toward both
sexes, usually in predominant degree toward the male:--
HISTORY XXVII.--H.C., American, aged 28, of independent means,
unmarried, the elder of two children. His history may best be
given in his own words:--
"I am on both sides distantly of English ancestry, the first
colonists of my name having come to New England in 1630. Both my
mother's and my father's families have been prolific in soldiers
and statesmen; my mother's contributed one president to the
United States. So far as I am aware, none of my antecedents have
betrayed mental vagaries, except a maternal uncle, who, from
overstudy, became for a year insane.
"I am a graduate of two universities with degrees in arts and
medicine. After a year as physician in a hospital, I relinquished
medicine altogether, to follow literature, a predilection since
early boyhood.
"I awoke to sexual feeling at the age of 7, when, at a small
private school, glimpsing bare thighs above the stockings of girl
schoolmates, I dimly exulted. This fetishism, as it grew more
definite, centered at last upon the thighs and then the whole
person of one girl in particular. My first sexually tinged dream
was of her--that while she stood near I impinged my penis upon a
red-hot anvil and then, in beatific self-immolation, exhibited
the charred stump to her wondering, round eyes. This love,
however, abated at the coming of a new girl to the school, who,
not more beautiful, but more buxom, made stronger appeal to my
nascent sexuality. One afternoon, in the loft of her father's
stable, she induced me to disrobe, herself setting the example.
The erection our mutual handlings produced on me was without
conscious impulse; I felt only a childish curiosity on beholding
our genital difference. But the episode started extravagant
whimsies, one of which persistently obsessed me: with these
obviously compensatory differences, why might not the girl and I
effect some sort of copulation? This fantasy, drawn exclusively
from that unique experience, charmed with its grotesqueness only,
for at that time my sense of sex was but inchoate and my
knowledge of it was nothing. The bizarre conceit, submitted to
the equally ignorant girl and approved, was borne to the paternal
hay-loft and there, with much bungling, brought to surprising and
pleasurable consummation.
"In the four ensuing years I repeated the act not seldom with
this girl and with others.
"When I was 11 my sister and I were taken by our parents to
Europe, where we remained six years, attending school each winter
in a different city and, during the summer, travelling in various
countries.
"Abroad my lust was glutted to the full: the amenable
girl-playmate was ubiquitous, whom I plied with ardor at Swiss
hotels, German watering-places, French pensions,--where not?
Toward puberty I first repaired at times to prostitutes.
"Masturbation, excepting a few experiments, I never resorted to.
Few of my schoolmates avowedly practised it.
"Of homosexuality my sole hearing was through the classics,
where, with no long pondering, I opined it merely our modern
comradery, poetically aggrandized, masquerading in antique
habiliments and phraseology. It never came home to me; it attuned
to no tone in the scale of my sympathies; I possessed no
touchstone for transmitting the recitals of those ambiguous
amours into fiery messages. The relation to my own sex was,
intellectually, an occasional friendship devoid of strong
affection; physically, a mild antagonism, the naked body of a man
was slightly repellant. Statues of women evoked both carnal and
esthetic response; of men, no emotions whatever, save a deepening
of that native antipathy. Similarly in paintings, in literature,
the drama, the men served but as foils for the delicious maidens,
who visited my aërial seraglios and lapped me in roseate
dreamings.
"In my eighteenth year we returned to America, where I entered
the university.
"The course of my love of women was now a little erratic; normal
connection began to lose fascination. As long ago I had
formulated untutored the _rationale_ of coitus, so now
imagination, groping in the dark, conceived a fresh fillip for
the appetite--_cunnilinctus_. But this, though for a while quite
adequate, soon ceased to gratify. At this juncture, Christmas of
my first college year, I was appointed editor of a small
magazine, an early stricture of whose new conduct was paucity of
love stories. Such improvident neglect was in keeping with my
altering view of women, a view accorded to me by self-dissipation
of the glamour through which they had been wont to appear. I had
wandered somehow behind the scenes, and beheld, no footlights of
sex intervening, the once so radiant fairies resolved into a
raddled humanity, as likable as ever, but desirable no longer.
"Soon after this the Oscar Wilde case was bruiting about. The
newspaper accounts of it, while illuminating, flashed upon me no
light of self-revelation; they only amended some idle conjectures
as to certain mystic vices I had heard whispered of. Here and
there a newspaper allusion still too recondite was painstakingly
clarified by an effeminate fellow-student, who, I fancy now,
would have shown no reluctance had I begged him to adduce
practical illustration. I purchased, too, photographs of Oscar
Wilde, scrutinizing them under the unctuous auspices of this same
emasculate and blandiloquent mentor. If my interest in Oscar
Wilde arose from any other emotion than the rather morbid
curiosity then almost universal, I was not conscious of it.
"Erotic dreams, precluded hitherto by coition, came now to beset
me. The persons of these dreams were (and still are) invariably
women, with this one remembered exception: I dreamed that Oscar
Wilde, one of my photographs of him incarnate, approached me with
a buffoon languishment and perpetrated _fellatio_, an act
verbally expounded shortly before by my oracle. For a month or
more, recalling this dream disgusted me.
"The few subsequent endeavors, tentative and half-hearted, to
repristinate my venery were foredoomed, partly because I had
feared they were, to failure: erection was incomplete,
ejaculation without pleasure.
"There seemed a fallacy in this behavior. Why coitus without
sensual desire for it? No sense of duty impelled me, nor dread of
sexual aberration. The explanation is this: attraction to females
was not expunged, simply sublimed; my imagination, no longer
importing women from observation, created its own delectable
sirens, grown exacting and transcendental, petitioned reality in
vain. Substance had receded for good now, and soon even these
tormenting shadows of it became ever dimmer and dimmer, until
they too at length faded into nothingness.
"The antipodes of the sexual sphere turned more and more toward
the light of my tolerance. Inversion, till now stained with a
slight repugnance, became esthetically colorless at last, and
then delicately retinted, at first solely with pity for its
victims, but finally, the color deepening, with half-conscious
inclination to attach it to myself as a remote contingency. This
revolution, however, was not without external impetus. The
prejudiced tone of a book I was reading, Krafft-Ebing's
_Psychopathia Sexualis_, by prompting resentment, led me on to
sympathy. My championing, purely abstract though it was to begin
with, none the less involved my looking at things with eyes
hypothetically inverted,--an orientation for the sake of
argument. After a while, insensibly and at no one moment,
hypothesis merged into reality: I myself was inverted. That
occasional and fictitious inversion had never, I believe,
superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those
many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus
strong and prolonged enough, as a man awakens when he is loudly
called.
"In presenting myself thus sexually transformed, I do not aver
having had at the outset any definitive inclination. The instinct
so freshly evolved remained for a while obscure. Its primary
expression was a feebly sensuous interest in the physical
character of boys--in their feminine resemblances especially. To
this interest I opposed no discountenance; for wantonness with
women under many and diverse conditions having long ago medicined
my sexual conscience to lethargy, no access of reasons came to me
now for its refreshment. On the other hand, intellectual delight
in the promises of the new world, as well as sensuality, conduced
to its deliberate exploration. Still, for a year, the yearning
settled with true lust upon no object more concrete than youths
whose only habitation was my fancy.
"A young surgeon, having read my copy of _Psychopathia Sexualis_,
fell one evening to discussing inverts with such relish that I
inquired ingenuously if he himself was one. He colored, whether
confirmatively or otherwise I could not guess, in spite of his
vehement no. Presently he very subtly recanted his denial. But to
his counter-question I maintained my own no, lest he propose some
sexual act, a point the esthetics of my developing inversion
would not yet concede, the boys of my imagination being still
predominant.
"One evening, soon after this, he convoyed me to several of the
café's where inverts are accustomed to foregather. These trysting
places were much alike: a long hall, with sparse orchestra at one
end, marble-topped tables lining the walls, leaving the floor
free for dancing. Round the tables sat boys and youths, Adonises
both by art and nature, ready for a drink or a chat with the
chance Samaritan, and shyly importunate for the pleasures for
which, upstairs, were small rooms to let. One of the boys,
supported by the orchestra, sang the 'Jewel Song' out of
'_Faust_.' His voice had the limpid, treble purity of a
clarinet, and his face the beauty of an angel. The song
concluded, we invited him to our table, where he sat sipping neat
brandy, as he mockingly encountered my book-begotten queries. The
boy-prostitutes gracing these halls, he apprised us, bore
fanciful names, some of well-known actresses, others of heroes in
fiction, his own being Dorian Gray. Rivals, he complained, had
assumed the same appellation, but he was the original Dorian; the
others were jealous impostors. His curly hair was golden; his
cheeks were pink; his lips, coral red, parted incessantly to
reveal the glistening pearliness of his teeth. Yet, though
deeming him the beautifulest youth in the world, I experienced no
sexual interest either in him or in the other boys, who indeed
were all beautiful--beauty was their chief asset. Dorian,
further, dilated on the splendor of his female attire, satin
corsets, low-cut evening gowns, etc., donned on gala nights to
display his gleaming shoulders and dimpled, plump, white arms.
Thus arrayed, he bantered, he would bewitch even me, now so
impassive, until I should throw myself, in tears of happiness,
into his loving embrace.
"My first venture upon _fellatio_ was a month later, with the
young surgeon. I confessed the whim to try it, and he acceded.
Though this nauseous and fatiguing act, very imperfectly
performed, was prompted mostly by curiosity, there arose soon a
passional hankering for repetition. In short, appetence for
_fellatio_ grew slowly from the night of that mawkish fiasco and
waxed eventually into a sovereign want.
"Perhaps miscarriage of that initiatory experiment was due to
precipitance, incubation of my perverse instinct being not yet
complete. A hiatus of a month now supervened, in which, while
further _fellatio_ was not attempted, my mind came always nearer
to a reconcilement with the grossness of the act, and began to
discover for its creatures some correlation in pretty boys beheld
in the flesh. One evening, in Broadway, I conceived suddenly a
full-fledged desire for a youth issuing from an hotel as I
passed. Our glances met and dwelled together. At a shop-window he
first accosted me. He was an invert. With him, in his room at the
hotel whence I had seen him emerge, I passed an apocalyptic
night. Thereafter commerce with boys only in the spirit ceased to
be an end; the images were carnalized, stepped from their
framework into the streets. That boy, that god out of the
machine, I see him clearly: his brown, curling hair; his eyes
blue as the sea; his chest both arched and so plump, his rounded
arms, his taper waist, the graceful swell of his hips and full,
snowy thighs; I recall as of yesterday the dimples in his knees,
the slenderness of his ankles, the softness of his little feet,
with insteps pink like the inside of a shell. How I gloated over
his ample roundness, his rich undulations!
"In the last eight years I have performed _fellatio_ (never
_pedicatio_) with more than three hundred men and boys. My
preference is for boys between 15 and 20, refined, pretty,
girlish, and themselves homosexual.
"Personally, barring this love for males, I am in all ways
masculine, given to outdoor sports, and to smoking and drinking
moderately. In appearance I am but a boy of 18. My face and
figure are generally considered beautiful: I am clean-shaved,
with black, curling hair, red cheeks and brown eyes; features
delicate and regular; body, of medium height, everywhere
practically hairless. By years of training I have attained alike
great strength and classic proportions, the muscular contours
smoothly rounded with adipose tissue. My hands and feet are
small. My penis, though perfectly shaped, is rather
enormous--erect, ten and a half inches in length, seven and a
quarter inches in circumference.
"Some abetment of my apostasy from orthodox methods was, no
doubt, this hypertrophy of the penis, which already in my
twentieth year had acquired its present redundance, rendering
coitus impracticable with most women I essayed and painful where
insertion was effected. Since falling heir to inversion, a unique
recurrence of normal desire, six years ago, persuaded me to
attempt coitus with eleven or twelve prostitutes, and, strangely
enough, with much of the old-time salacity and full erection,
but, as it chanced, always with too great disparity of parts for
success."
A certain preciosity in the manner of this communication may be
put down partly to the nature of the literary avocations with
which the writer is by preference occupied, and partly, no doubt
more fundamentally, to the special character of his predominantly
esthetic temperament and attraction to the exotic. An attraction
for exotic experiences will not, however, suffice to account for
the rather late development of homosexual tendencies, a late
development which may be held to place this case in the retarded
group of inverts. H.C. has himself pointed out to me that his
aversion to women, beginning to appear in the eighteenth year,
was already well pronounced before he had ever heard definitely
of specific homosexual acts, and fully a year before he
experienced the slightest sexual interest in men or boys.
Moreover, while it is true that the actual tendency to homosexual
attraction only appeared after he had read Krafft-Ebing and come
in contact with inverts, such influences would not suffice to
change the sexual nature of a normally constituted man.
It may be added that H.C. is not attracted to normal males. As
regards his moral attitude he remarks: "I have no scruples in the
indulgence of my passion. I perceive the moral objections
advanced, but how speculative they are, and constructive; while,
immediately, inversion is the source of so much good." He looks
upon the whole sexual question as largely a matter of taste.
I regard the foregoing case as of considerable interest. It presents what
is commonly supposed to be a very common type of inversion, Oscar Wilde
being the supreme exemplar, in which a heterosexual person apparently
becomes homosexual by the exercise of intellectual curiosity and esthetic
interest. In reality the type is far from common; indeed, an intellectual
curiosity and an esthetic interest, strong enough even apparently to
direct the sexual impulse in any new channel, are themselves far from
common. Moreover, a critical reading of this history suggests that the
apparent control over the sexual impulse by reason is merely a superficial
phenomenon. Here, as ever, reason is but a tool in the hands of the
passions. The apparent causes are really the results; we are witnessing
the gradual emergence of a retarded homosexual impulse.
HISTORY XXVIII.--English, aged 40, surgeon. Sexual experiences
began early, about the age of 10, when a companion induced him to
play at intercourse with their sisters. He experienced no
pleasure. A little later a servant-girl began to treat him
affectionately and at last called him into her bedroom when she
was partially undressed, fondled and kissed his member, and
taught him to masturbate her. On subsequent occasions she
attempted a simulation of intercourse, which gave her
satisfaction, but failed to induce emission in him. On returning
to school mutual masturbation was practised with schoolfellows,
and the first emission took place at the age of 14.
On leaving school he became a slave to the charms of women, and
had frequent coitus about the age of 17, but he preferred
masturbating girls and especially in persuading girls of good
position, to whom the experience was entirely novel, to allow him
to take liberties with them. At 25 he became engaged, and mutual
masturbation was practised to excess during the engagement; after
marriage connection generally took place twice every twenty-four
hours until pregnancy.
"At this time," he writes, "I stayed at the house of an old
school-fellow, due of my lovers of old days. There were so many
guests that I shared my friend's bedroom. The sight of his body
gave rise to lustful feelings, and when the light was out I stole
across to his bed. He made no objection, and we passed the night
in mutual masturbation. We passed the next fortnight together,
and I never took the same pleasure in coitus with my wife, though
I did my duty. She died five years later, and I devoted myself
heart and soul to my friend until his death by accident last
year. Since then I have lost all interest in life."
I am indebted for this case to a well-known English alienist, who
remarks that the patient is fairly healthy to look at, but with
neurasthenia and tendency to melancholia, and neurotic
temperament. The body is masculine and pubic hair abundant. One
testicle shows wasting.
HISTORIES XXIX AND XXX.--I give the following narrative in the
words of an intimate friend of one of the cases in question: "My
attention was first drawn to the study of inversion--though I
then regarded all forms of it as depraving and abominable--at a
public school, where in our dormitory a boy of 15 initiated his
select friends into the secrets of mutual masturbation, which he
had learned from his brother, a midshipman. I gave no heed to
this at the time, though I remembered it in after-years when
immersed in Plato, Lucretius, and the Epicurean writers. But my
attention was riveted to it at the age of 20, when I spent a
holiday with A., a companion with whom I was, and still am, on
terms of great friendship. We enjoyed many things in common,
studied together and discussed most unconventional matters, but
not this. Previously we had always occupied separate sleeping
apartments; on this occasion we were abroad in a country place,
and were compelled to put up with what we could get. We not only
had to share a room, but a bed. I was not surprised at his
throwing his arm over me, as I knew he was extraordinarily
attached to me, and I had always felt a brute for not returning
his affection so warmly. But I was surprised when later I awoke
to find him occupied in _fellatio_ and endeavoring to obtain my
response. Had it been anyone else I should have resented strongly
such a liberty, and our acquaintance would have ended, but I
cared for him too well, though never very demonstrative. This
episode led to discussion of the topic. He told me that his
sexual strength was great, that he had tested it in many ways,
and that it was essential to his well-being that he should have
satisfaction in some way. He loathed prostitution and considered
it degrading; he felt physically attracted to some women and
intellectually to others, but the two elements were never
combined, and though he had been intimate with a few he felt that
it was not right to them, as he could not marry them because he
held too high an ideal of marriage. He had always felt attracted
to his own sex, and had kept up a Platonic friendship with a
college chum, X (to whom I knew he was passionately attached),
for some years. Both considered it perfectly moral, and both,
felt better for it. Both abhor _pedicatio_. X., however, would
never discuss the subject, and seemed half-ashamed of it. A., on
the other hand, though showing a great self-respect in all things
else, feels no shame, though he says he would never discuss it
except with close friends or if asked for private advice.
"A. is the elder child of a military officer. His parents were 21
and 19, respectively, at the time of his birth. Both parents are
healthy, and the two children (both boys) have good
constitutions, though the elder has the better. He is of medium
height and slender limbs, proud carriage, handsome and
intellectual face (classic Greek type), excellent complexion,
charming manners, and good temper. The penis is large, the
foreskin very short. He is fond of philosophy, natural science,
history, and literature. He is reflective and patient rather than
smart, but strong-willed and very active when roused, never
resting till he has accomplished what he wants, even if this
takes years. He sings excellently, and is fond of cycling,
boating, swimming, and mountain-climbing. He enjoys excellent
health, and has never had a day's illness since he was 12 years
of age. He says the only time he cannot sleep has been when in
bed with some one who could not or would not satisfy him. He
requires satisfaction at least once a week, twice or thrice in
the hot season. He never smokes, nor drinks beer or spirits. He
is still single, but believes that marriage would meet all his
needs.
"X. is also an oldest child, of young and healthy parents
(between 21 and 24 at his birth) of different class; father a
builder. He is of pleasing, but not handsome, appearance; very
sensitive, very neat, and methodical in all things; not very
strong-willed, and very reserved to women. He is of very studious
disposition, especially fond of philosophy, politics, and natural
science; a good musician. Takes moderate exercise, but rather
easily fatigued. Is generally healthy, but not overstrong. He is
a vegetarian, and was brought up as a free-thinker. Until two
years ago he was never attracted toward a girl; indeed, he
disliked girls; but he is now engaged. For about eighteen months,
he has relinquished homosexuality, but has suffered from dreams,
bad digestion, and peevishness since. He thinks the only remedy
is marriage, which he is pushing on. He regards homosexuality as
quite natural and normal, though his desires are not strong, and
once a fortnight has always satisfied him. He was led to the
practice by the reasoning of A., and because he felt a certain
vague need, and this comforted him. He thinks it a matter of
temperament and not to be discussed, except by scientists. He
says he could never perform it except with his dearest friend,
whose request he could not resist. He has a long foreskin, flesh
like a woman's, and is well proportioned.
"Both men are ardent for social reform, the one actively, the
other passively engaged in it. Both also regard the law as to
homosexuality as absurd and demoralizing. They also think that
the law prohibiting polygamy is largely the cause of
prostitution, as many women are prevented from living honest
lives and being cared for by someone, and many men could marry
one woman for physical satisfaction and another for intellectual.
"They were devoted to each other when I first knew them; they are
still friends, but separated by distance. Both are exceedingly
honorable, and the latter is truthful to a fault."
According to later information X. had married and his homosexual
tendencies were almost completely in abeyance, partly, perhaps,
owing to the fact that he now lives quietly in the country. A.
has surprised his friends by his ardent attachment to a lady of
about his own age to whom he has become engaged. He declares that
he loves this woman better than any man, but nevertheless he
still feels strong passion for his men friends. It is evident
that the homosexual tendency in A. is distinctly more pronounced
than in his friend X. As is found more often in bisexual than in
homosexual persons, he is of predominantly masculine type,
possesses great vitality, and desires to exert all his faculties.
He has a sound nervous system and is very free from all
"nervousness." He has written a scientific treatise and can study
undisturbed amid violent noises. His voice is manly (in singing
deep base). He can whistle. He is not vain, though well formed,
and his hands are delicate. His favorite color is green. The
demonstrative warmth of his affection for his friends is the
chief feminine trait noted in him. He rarely dreams and has never
had an erotic dream; this he explains by saying (earlier than
Freud) that all dreams not caused by physical conditions are
wish-dreams, and as he always satisfies his sexual needs at once,
with a friend or by masturbation, his sexual needs have no
opportunity of affecting his subconscious life.
There may be some doubt as to the classification of the two foregoing
cases: they are not personally known to me. The following case, with which
I have been acquainted for many years, I regard as clearly a genuine
example of bisexuality:--
HISTORY XXXI.--Englishman, independent means, aged 52, married.
His ancestry is of a complicated character. Some of his mother's
forefathers in the last and earlier centuries are supposed to
have been inverted. He remembers liking the caresses of his
father's footmen when he was quite a little boy. He dreams
indifferently about men and women, and has strong sexual feeling
for women. Can copulate, but does not insist on this act; there
is a tendency to refined, voluptuous pleasure. He has been
married for many years, and there are several children by the
marriage.
He is not particular about the class or age of the men he loves.
He feels with regard to older men as a women does, and likes to
be caressed by them. He is immensely vain of his physical beauty;
he shuns _pedicatio_ and does not much care for the sexual act,
but likes long hours of voluptuous communion during which his
lover admires him. He feels the beauty of boyhood. At the same
time he is much attracted by young girls.
He is decidedly feminine in his dress, manner of walking, love of
scents, ornaments, and fine things. His body is excessively
smooth and white, the hips and buttocks rounded. Genital organs
normal. His temperament is feminine, especially in vanity,
irritability, and petty preoccupations. He is much preoccupied
with his personal appearance and fond of admiration; on one
occasion he was photographed naked as Bacchus. He is physically
and morally courageous. He has a genius for poetry and
speculation, with a tendency to mysticism.
He feels the discord between his love for men and society, also
between it and his love for his wife. He regards it as, in part,
at least, hereditary and inborn in him.
HISTORY XXXII.--C.R., physician; age 38. Nationality, Irish, with
a Portuguese strain. "My mother came of an old Quaker family. I
was quite unaware of sexual differences until I was about 14, as
I was carefully kept separate from my sisters and, although from
time to time strange longings which I did not understand
possessed me, I was a virgin in thought and deed until that
period of life.
"When I was 14 a cousin some years older than myself came to stay
with us and shared my bed. To my surprise he took hold of my
penis and rubbed it for a time, when a most pleasant feeling
seized me and increased until a discharge came out of my organ;
he then asked me to do the same to him. We frequently repeated
the process during the following month; I was quite unaware of
any harm resulting.
"The same year I went to school, but none of my schoolmates for
some time even suggested such actions until a friend staying with
us for the holidays one day in the bathroom repeated the process
and pressed his penis between my thighs, when a similar discharge
took place. I shortly found out that several of my school friends
and male cousins had the same desires, and an elder brother of my
first introducer into sexuality repeatedly spent the night with
me, when we would amuse ourselves in a similar way.
"A little later, my mother being away from home, I shared my
father's bed and he took my penis in his hand and pulled my
foreskin back. I in return took hold of his and found that he had
an erection. I proceeded to rub him when he stopped me and told
me that I should not do so, that when I was a little older I
should love a woman to do it and that if I did not rub myself and
allow other boys to do so, I would enjoy myself much more. I am
quite certain that my father was inverted, as he frequently, if
sleeping with me, used to press my naked body against his and he
always had a strong erection. On one occasion he rubbed me until
I had a discharge and then, turning over on his back, made me
take his penis in my hand and rub him for a few minutes. I used
to jest frequently with my father, as from my seventeenth year my
penis was larger than his. I will return to my father a little
later. When I was 17 a college friend shared my bed, and when
undressing he said that he envied me my penis being so much
larger than his; after getting into bed, he asked me to turn on
my side and I found that he was attempting _pedicatio_. I was
astonished at his doing so when he informed me that next to a
woman this process gave most pleasure. However, nothing resulted
and this is the only experience of _pedicatio_ that I have ever
had.
"When I was 18 one evening a college chum introduced me to a
woman and she was the first I ever had connection with. We went
behind some rocks and she took hold of my penis and pressed it
into her body, lying against me.
"My father evidently suspected me when I came home, and a few
days afterward told me that it was very dangerous to have
anything to do with women, that I should wait until I was older,
that when a boy became a man he ought to have a woman
occasionally, and that if I ever had a nasty disease I should
promptly tell him so that I could be properly cured.
"At college I found several chums who were fond of sharing my bed
and indulging in mutual masturbation, pressing our bodies
together face to face until there was mutual discharge, but never
again anyone who tried anal connection.
"A short time afterward I was in Brussels and I paid my first
visit to a brothel, a place close to the Cathedral. I picked a
girl of about 18 from eight naked beauties paraded for my choice.
She was avaricious and demanded 10 francs, I had paid 20 for my
room and had only 2 left. I wanted her to play with me, but she
only seized the penis and pulled me to her with such vigorous
action that I discharged very rapidly. I was so disgusted with
the result that I masturbated when I returned to my boarding
house.
"A year later I paid Portugal a visit and my friends there
frequently brought me to brothels and also introduced me to
ladies of easy virtue. I had connection with them; the Portuguese
prostitutes never suggested anything unnatural and in no instance
did a male approach me for sexual purposes.
"When I became a medical student, I used to visit a Turkish bath
frequently; on one occasion I playfully slapped a friend on the
buttocks, when my father, who was present, told me not to do so
as it was not proper conduct in public, that if I liked to do so
to him or one or two others it was no harm in private. Until I
was 21, in the bath my father always covered his penis from my
view, but after I attained my majority he always exposed himself
and repeatedly showed me pictures of naked women; he also taught
me the use of the condom.
"In my twenty-fourth year, a tall, handsome man who used to
frequent the baths one day sat down beside me and playfully
knocked my toes with his; he then pressed his naked thigh against
mine and a little later in the cooling room slipped his hand
under my sheet and grasped my penis; he then asked me to meet him
a few days later in the baths, saying I would be pleased with
what he would do.
"I kept the appointment and he took me into the hottest room,
where we lay on the floor; in a few minutes he turned on his side
and threw one of his legs across me; I got frightened and jumped
up; he had a powerful erection, but I refused to lie down again,
although he pulled his foreskin back to excite my desires; I was
afraid of being surprised by another bather. Twice on future
occasions I met this man and he made advances. I believe that I
would have yielded then if we had met at a private house.
"Shortly afterward I met an elderly gentleman at the baths who
also made advances to me, but from fear I resisted him. I also
disliked him as he had a foul breath and bad teeth; besides I was
now able to go to the Continent and enjoy female charms to my
heart's desire.
"After qualification I joined the army in South Africa and to my
astonishment found many of my comrades fond of male society; one
officer who had been wounded shared my bedroom at a military
hospital and when undressing frequently admired my penis; we used
to play with each other until we had powerful erections, but we
never masturbated or tried any unnatural vice.
"I used to have connection with women as frequently as I could,
and I frequently visited the Turkish baths and found that several
clients were abnormal, including one of the masseurs; the latter
enjoyed playing with my penis, kissing and tickling me.
"I married at 28. My married life has been normal and my wife and
I are still in love with one another; we have had several
children.
"My last sexual experiences have been in Australia; once in
Sydney at the baths a fellow-bather playfully began tickling me,
when I had an erection; he grasped my penis, I jumped up, and he
asked me to do anything that I liked with him. I refused. Once
on board a coasting steamer a fellow-passenger used to expose
himself, posing as a statue; we became very familiar and he
wanted me to spend a night with him. I also refused his offers.
"I am very healthy and strong, fond of riding, fishing, and
shooting. I lead a very active life. I am neither musician nor
artist, but fond of hearing music and I admire works of art.
"In person I am 6 feet high, inclined to fat; my body is very
strong; my penis is six inches long in repose and eight in
erection; I can without fatigue discharge twice in the night and
have connection at least twice a week. My scrotum is tense and
both testicles large. I am rather slow at discharging. I have
never had any desire to have connection with any other woman
since marriage, but several times I have met men who attracted
me. I have a friend (another doctor) who is very familiar with me
and if we spend a night together we will play with each other. I
have a great desire for him to circumcize me. We have never
indulged in anything beyond feeling or pressing our bodies
together like schoolboys.
"My favorite color is green.
"My erotic dreams, when I have any, are of my wife or of a male
lover.
"Sexual inversion is more widespread than is popularly supposed
and I have never had any twinge of conscience after any of my
affairs. I regard the homosexual instinct as quite natural, and,
except in regard to my wife, it is stronger in my case than the
heterosexual instinct. I have never initiated a youth into the
sexual life or had any desire to seduce a girl. Boys under 17, or
persons of lower social class, have no attraction for me."
HISTORY XXXIII.--M.O., 30 years of age, born in the United
States, of English father and of mother whose father was
Scotch,--the rest of his ancestry being English of long standing
in America, with a very little admixture of Dutch blood. He is 5
feet 8 inches in height, and has brown hair and eyes. No
hereditary troubles so far as known. In childhood, for some time
"threatened with chorea." Is subject to tonsillitis and a
stubborn though not severe form of indigestion, induced by
sedentary habits. He is of quick, nervous temperament. Has an
aversion from most outdoor sports, but a great esthetic
attraction to nature. Highly educated.
As far back as he can remember, he lived in a house from which
his parents removed when he was 4 years old. Before this removal,
he remembers two distinctly sexual experiences. A cousin five
years older was in the bathroom, seated, and M.O. was feeling his
sexual organs; his mother called him out. On another occasion he
was in a wagonhouse with a girl of his own age. They were lying
on a carriage-seat attempting intercourse. The girl's older
sister came in and found them. She said: "I am going to tell
mamma; you know she said for you not to do that any more." With
each of these clear memories comes the strong impression that it
was but one among many. Five years ago M.O. met a man of his own
age who had lived in that neighborhood at the same time.
Comparing notes, they found that nearly all the small children in
it had been given to such practices. The neighborhood was a
thoroughly "respectable" middle-class one.
From it, M.O. removed to another of just about the same
character, and lived there until he was 11 years old. Of this
period his memories are very fresh and abundant. With a single
exception, all the children between 5 and 14 years of age appear
to have indulged freely in promiscuous sexual play. In little
companies of from four to twelve they went where trees or long
grass hid them from observation, and exhibited their persons to
one another; sometimes, also, they handled one another, but not
in the way of masturbation. Of this last, M.O. was wholly
ignorant. Sometimes when but two or three were together,
intercourse was attempted. In M.O.'s case there was eager sexual
curiosity, and a more or less keen desire, but actual contact
brought no great satisfaction. On two or three occasions girls
practised _fellatio_, and he then reciprocated with
_cunnilinctus_, but without pleasure. In all these plays he is
sure that girls took the initiative as often as boys did.
During all this period, M.O. had now one girl sweetheart and now
another. This was conventional among the children, and was
fostered by the banter of older persons. M.O.'s sexual curiosity
was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex. At this
time, however, his homosexual interests appeared. With a boy two
or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where
they looked at each other's organs and handled them. He and
another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off
all their clothes, the better to examine each other. The other
boy then offered to kiss M.O.'s fundament, and did so. It caused
a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first
sexual shock that he can remember experiencing. He refused to
reciprocate, however, when asked.
Toward the end of this period there was a new and increasing
development of another sort, not recognized then as at all sexual
in character. He began to feel toward certain boys in a way very
different and much keener than he had done thus far toward girls,
although at the time he made no comparisons. For instance there
was a boy whom he considered very pretty. They visited each other
often and spent long times playing together. In school they
looked and looked at each other until delicious, uncontrollable
giggling spells came on. Sexual matters were never discussed or
thought of. These experiences were, in their way, very
sentimental and ideal. M.O. is sure that with himself the main
consideration was always the other boy's beauty. He began to
recall with great fondness a certain much older and very handsome
youth who had lived near him in the first neighborhood, and had
at the time shown him, various little friendly attentions. He
seldom saw him now, and hardly sought to do so, yet was immensely
pleased by a casual word or look from him in the schoolyard, and
much interested when other people spoke of him.
A cousin about two years younger than M.O. often visited him and
slept with him. They were very fond of each other, and handled
each other's organs.
When M.O. was about 11 years of age the family removed to a
distant neighborhood, where there were almost no children of his
own age, and where any association with those in the one just
left was practically impossible. From this time until the changes
of puberty were well under way his sexual life contrasted
strongly, in its solitude, with the former promiscuity. He
remembers liking to wrestle with two or three schoolboys and to
get their heads between his legs. He thinks they were not aware
of his sexual impulses. He flirted, consciously flirted, with
certain school-girls, but never even suggested anything sexual to
them. He read a few family medical books.
One day, lying on an old uneven couch, innocently enough at
first, he induced a new and delicious sensation, altogether
different from any he had ever dreamed of--something far beyond
the satisfaction of mere curiosity. He repeated the thing and
before long produced emissions. Masturbation soon followed.
Certain days he would perform the act two or three times, but
again he would avoid it for days. He began at once to fight the
tendency, and felt very guilty and very ashamed for indulging it.
He prayed for help and at times wept over his failures to break
the habit so quickly formed. For a certain period, after two or
three years, he seemed to have succeeded, but he observed that he
had intense erotic dreams with copious emissions regularly every
eight days. Just then certain newspaper advertisements fell under
his eye, and these persuaded him that he had produced in himself
a diseased condition. He never resorted to the remedies
advertised, but he was discouraged in his efforts to overcome the
bad habit; and since the evil effects appeared to consist only in
the seminal losses, he concluded that he might as well have the
greater enjoyment of masturbation.
For a short time, he remembers that he had an intense but
revolting interest in the sexual organs of animals, especially
horses. The males were much more interesting.
Gradually he began to develop, entirely from within, the ideal of
a male comrade,--a beautiful, emotional boy between whom and
himself there might exist a powerful romantic passion. He lay for
hours dreaming of this, and inventing thrilling situations.
Suddenly, at church, he became acquainted with the very youth,
Edmund, who seemed to satisfy all his longings. M.O. was then 16½
and Edmund 15. A real wooing ensued, Edmund finally yielding to
the physical appeals of M.O. after several fits of misgiving. The
yielding was in the end complete, however. The two spent night
after night together, enjoying intercrural intercourse and
sometimes mutual masturbation. Their parents may have been
slightly uneasy at times, but the connection continued
uninterruptedly for a year and a half or more. In the meantime
M.O. occasionally had relations with other boys, but never
wavered in his real preference for Edmund. For girls he had no
sexual desire whatever, though he was much associated with them.
Then M.O. and Edmund went to college at different places, but
they met in vacations and wrote frequent and ardent love-letters.
Both had genuine attacks of love-sickness and of jealousy. As
M.O. looks back on this first love passion he can by no means
regret it. It doubtless had great formative influence.
After the first year at college, Edmund transferred to another
school farther away from M.O. and the opportunities for meeting
became rarer, but their affection was maintained and the
intercourse resumed whenever it was possible. Gradually, however,
Edmund became interested in women and finally married. M.O. also
formed relations repeatedly with college friends and occasionally
with others.
On the whole M.O. preferred boys a year or two younger than
himself, but as he grew older the age difference increased. At 30
he regarded himself as virtually "engaged" to a youth of 17, one
unusually mature, however, and much larger than himself.
M.O. is always unhappy unless his affections have fairly free
course. Life has been very disappointing to him in other
respects. His greatest joys have come to him in this way. If he
is able to consummate his present plan of union with the youth
just referred to, he will feel that his life has been crowned by
what is for him the best possible end; otherwise, he declares, he
would not care to live at all.
He admires male beauty passionately. Feminine beauty he perceives
objectively, as he would any design of flowing curves and
delicate coloring, but it has no sexual charm for him whatever.
Women have put themselves in his way repeatedly, but he finds
himself more and more irritated by their specifically feminine
foibles. With men generally he is much more patient and
sympathetic.
The first literature that appealed to him was Plato's dialogues,
first read at 20 years of age. Until then he had not known but
what he stood alone in his peculiarity. He read what he could of
classic literature. He enjoys Pater, appreciating his attitude
toward his own sex. Four or five years, later he came across
Raffalovich's book, and ever since has felt a real debt of
gratitude to its author.
M.O. has no wish to injure society at large. As an individual he
holds that he has the same right to be himself that anyone else
has. He thinks that while boys of from 13 to 15 might possibly be
rendered inverts, those who reach 16 without it cannot be bent
that way. They may be devoted to an invert enough in other ways
to yield him what he wishes sexually, but they will remain
essentially normal themselves. His observations are based on
about 30 homosexual relationships that have lasted various
lengths of time.
M.O. feels strongly the poetic and elevated character of his
principal homosexual relationships, but he shrinks from appearing
too sentimental.
With regard to the traces of feminism in inverts he writes:--
"Up to the age of 11 I associated much with a cousin five years
older (the one referred to above) and took great delight in a
game we often played, in which I was a girl,--a never-ending
romance, a non-sexual love story.
"Somewhat later and until puberty, I took great delight in
acting, but generally took female roles, wearing skirts, shawls,
beads, wigs, head-dresses. When I was about 13 my family began to
make fun of me for it. I played secretly for a while, and then
the desire for it left, never to return.
"There still lingers, however, a minor interest, which began
before puberty, in valentines. My feeling for them is much like
my feeling for flowers.
"Before I reached puberty I was sometimes called a 'sissy' by my
father. Such taunts humiliated me more than anything else has
ever done. After puberty my father no longer applied the term,
and gradually other persons ceased to tease me that way. The
sting of it lasted, though, and led me more than once to ask
intimate friends, both men and women, if they considered me at
all feminine. Every one of them has been very emphatically of the
opinion that my rational life is distinctively masculine, being
logical, impartial, skeptical. One or two have suggested that I
have a finer discrimination than most men, and that I take care
of my rooms somewhat as a woman might, though this does not
extend to the style of decorations. One man said that I lacked
sympathy with certain 'grosser manifestations of masculine
character, such as smoking.' Some women think me unusually
observing of women's dress. My own is by no means effeminate. In
a muscular way I have average strength, but am supple far beyond
what is usual. If trained for it early, I believe I would have
made a good contortionist.
"I have never had the least inclination to use tobacco, generally
take neither tea nor coffee, and seldom any liquor, never malt
liquors. The dessert is always the best part of the meal. These
tastes I attribute largely to my sedentary life. When out camping
I observed a marked change in the direction of heartier food and
mild stimulants.
"My physical courage has never been put to the test, but I
observe that others appear to count on it. I am very aggressive
in matters of religious, political, social opinion. In moral
courage I am either reckless or courageous, I do not know which.
"I am, perhaps, a better whistler than most men.
"When I was quite little my grandmother taught me to do certain
kinds of fancy-work, and I continued to do a little from time to
time until I was 24. Then I became irritated over a piece that
troubled me, put it in the fire, and have not wanted to touch any
since. As a pet economy I continue to do nearly all of my own
mending.
"I have a decided aversion for much jewelry. My estheticism is
very pronounced as compared with most of the men with whom I
associate, although I have never been able to give it much scope.
It makes for cleanliness, order, and general good taste. My dress
is economical and by no means fastidious; yet it seems to be
generally approved. I have been complimented often on my ability
to select appropriate presents, clothing, and to arrange a room."
M.O. states that he practises the love-bite at times, though very
gently. He often wants to pinch one who interests him sexually.
He considers very silly the statement somewhere made, that
inverts are always liars. Very few people, he says, are perfectly
honest, and the more dangerous society makes it for a man to be
so, the less likely he is to be. While he himself has been unable
in two or three instances to keep promises made to withhold from
sexual intercourse with certain attractive individuals, he has
never otherwise been guilty of untruth about his homosexual
relations.
The foregoing narrative was received eight years ago. During this
interval M.O.'s health has very greatly improved. There has been
a marked increase in outdoor activities and interests.
Two years since M.O. consulted a prominent specialist who
performed a thorough psychoanalysis. He informed M.O. that he
was less strongly homosexual than he himself supposed, and
recommended marriage with some young and pretty woman. He
attributed the homosexual bent to M.O.'s having had his "nose
broken" at the age of 6, by the birth of a younger brother, who
from that time on received all the attention and petting. M.O.
had continued up to that age very affectionate toward his mother
and dependent on her. He can remember friends and neighbors
commenting on it. At first M.O. was inclined to reject this
suggestion of the specialist, but on long reflection he inclines
to believe that it was indeed a very important factor, though not
the sole one. From his later observations of children and
comparisons of these with memories of his own childhood, M.O.
says he is sure he was affectionate and demonstrative much beyond
the average. His greatest craving was for affection, and his
greatest grief the fancied belief that no one cared for him. At
10 or 11 he attempted suicide for this reason.
Also as a result of the psychoanalysis, but trying to eliminate
the influence of suggestion, he recollects and emphasizes more
the attraction he felt toward girls before the age of 12. Had his
sexual experiences subsequently proved normal, he doubts if those
before 12 could be held to give evidence of homosexuality, but
only of precocious nervous and sexual irritability, greatly
heightened and directed by the secret practices of the children
with whom he associated. He does not see why these experiences
should have given him a homosexual bent any more than a
heterosexual one.
The psychoanalysis recalled to M.O. that during the period of
early flirtation he had often kissed and embraced various girls,
but likewise he recalled having observed at the same time, with
some surprise, that no definitely sexual desire arose, though the
way was probably open to gratify it. Such interest as did exist
ceased wholly or almost so as the relation with Edmund developed.
There was no aversion from the company of girls and women,
however; the intellectual friendships were mainly with them,
while the emotional ones were with boys.
Very recently M.O. spent several days with Edmund, who has been
married for several years. With absolutely no sexual interest in
each other, they nevertheless found a great bond of love still
subsisting. Neither regrets anything of the past, but feels that
the final outcome of their earlier relation has been good.
Edmund's beauty is still pronounced, and is remarked by others.
In spite of his precocious sexuality, M.O. had from the very
first an extreme disgust for obscene stories, and for any
association of sexual things with filthy words and anecdotes.
Owing in part to this and in part to his temperamental
skepticism, he disbelieved what associates told him regarding
sexual emissions, only becoming convinced when he actually
experienced them; and the facts of reproduction he denied
indignantly until he read them in a medical work. Until he was
well over 25 the physical aversion from any thought of
reproduction was intense. He knows other, normal, young men who
have felt the same way, but he believes it would be prevented or
overcome by sex-education such as is now being introduced in
American schools.
Again, as to traces of feminism: Perhaps two years ago, all
impulse to give the love-bite disappeared suddenly. There has
been lately a marked increase of dramatic interest, arising in
perfectly natural ways, and without any of the peculiarities
noted before. The childish pleasure in valentines has all gone;
M.O. believes that _circumstances_ have lately been more
favorable for the development of a more robust estheticism.
For some years he has heard no definite reproach for feminism,
though some persons tell his friends that he is "very peculiar."
He forms many intimate, enduring, non-sexual friendships with
both men and women, and he doubts if the peculiarity noted by
others is due so much to his homosexuality as it is to his
estheticism, skepticism, and the unconventional opinions which he
expresses quite indiscreetly at times. With the improvement in
general health, has come the changes that would be expected in
food and other matters of daily life.
Resuming his narrative at the point where the earlier
communication left it, M.O. says that about a year after that
time, the youth of 17 to whom he had considered himself virtually
engaged withdrew from the agreement so far as it bore on his own
future, but not from the sentimental relation as it existed.
Although separated most of the time by distance, the physical
relation was resumed whenever they met. Subsequently, however,
the young man fell in love with a young woman and became engaged
to her. His physical relation with M.O. then ceased, but the
friendship otherwise continues strong.
Shortly after the first break in this relation, M.O. became,
through the force of quite unusual circumstances, very friendly
and intimate with a young woman of considerable charm. He
confided to her his abnormality, and was not repulsed. To others
their relation probably appeared that of lovers, and a painful
situation was created by the slander of a jealous woman. M.O.
felt that in honor he must propose marriage to her. The young
woman was non-committal, but invited M.O. to spend several months
at her home. Shortly after his arrival a sad occurrence in his
own family compelled him to go away, and they did not meet again
for four years. They corresponded, but less and less often. His
relations with boys continued.
Before his final meeting with her he became acquainted with a
woman whom he has since married. The acquaintance began in a
wholly non-sentimental community of interests in certain
practical affairs, and very gradually widened into an
intellectual and sympathetic friendship. M.O. had no secrets from
this woman. After a full and prolonged consideration of all sides
of the matter they married. Since that event he has had no sexual
relations except with his wife. With her they are not passionate,
but they are animated by the strong desire for children. Of the
parental instinct he had become aware several years before this.
M.O. believes that no moral stigma should be attached to
homosexuality until it can be proved to result from the vicious
life of a free moral agent,--and of this he has no expectation.
He believes that much of its danger and unhappiness would be
prevented by a thorough yet discreet sex-education, such as
should be given to all children, whether normal or abnormal.
FOOTNOTES:
[124] Thus Godard described the little boys in Cairo as amusing themselves
indifferently either with boys or girls in sexual play. (_Egypte et
Palestine_, 1867, p. 105.) The same thing may be observed in England and
elsewhere.
[125] Thus, of the Duc d'Orleans, in the seventeenth century, as described
in Bouchard's _Confessions_, one of my correspondents writes: "This prince
was of the same mind as Campanella, who, in the _Città del Sole_, laid it
down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women for the avoidance
of sexual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the
sexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman
prelates." The homosexuality of youth was also well recognized among the
Romans, but they adopted the contrary course and provided means to gratify
it, as the existence of the _concubinus_, referred to by Catullus, clearly
shows.
[126] "Our Public Schools: their Methods and Morals." _New Review_, July,
1893.
[127] Max Dessoir, "Zür Psychologie der Vita Sexualis," _Allgemeine
Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, 1894, H. 5.
[128] F.H.A. Marshall, _The Physiology of Reproduction_, 1910, pp. 650-8.
[129] Iwan Bloch, in _The Sexual Life of Our Time_, makes this distinction
as between "homosexuality" (corresponding to inversion) and
"pseudo-homosexuality." According to the terminology I have accepted, the
term "pseudo-homosexuality" would be unnecessary and incorrect. More
recently (_Die Prostitution_, Bd. i, 1912, p. 103) Bloch has preferred, in
place of pseudo-homosexuality, the more satisfactory term, "secondary
homosexuality."
[130] See, for instance, Hirschfeld's reasonable discussion of the matter,
_Die Homosexualität_, ch. xvii.
[131] Alfred Fuchs, who edited Krafft-Ebing's _Psychopathia Sexualis_
after the latter's death, distinguishes between congenital homosexuality,
manifesting itself from the first without external stimulation, and
homosexuality on a basis of inborn disposition needing special external
influences to arouse it (_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. iv,
1902, p. 181).
[132] Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber tardive Homosexualität," _Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, Bd. iii, 1901, p. 7; Näcke, "Probleme auf den Gebiete der
Homosexualität," _Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, 1902, p. 805;
ib., "Ueber tardive Homosexualität," _Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1911.
Numa Praetorius (_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, January, 1913, p.
228) considers that retarded cases should not be regarded as bisexual, but
as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheterosexuality which at last
falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a
prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period.
[133] Moll, _Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, 1897, pp, 458-8.
[134] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, ch. viii.
[135] This was the term used in the earlier editions of the present
_Study_. I willingly reject it in favor of the simpler and fairly clear
term now more generally employed. It is true that by bisexuality it is
possible to understand not only the double direction of the sexual
instinct, but also the presence of both sexes in the same individual,
which in French is more accurately distinguished as "bisexuation."
[136] J. Van Biervliet, "L'Homme Droit et l'Homme Gauche," _Revue
Philosophique_, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the constitution
of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided
persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is
preponderant on the left side.