"During my unhappy adolescence I heard that a former playmate was

going to visit at my home. I began to look forward to the visit

with much eagerness and at her arrival was much excited. I wished

to stay alone with her and to caress her, and when we slept

together I pressed my body against her in a sensual manner, which

act she permitted, but without passion. I was greatly excited and

could scarcely sleep. This was the first time I had acted in such

a way, and after she left I felt shame and dislike for her. At

future meetings there was never the least sensuality; we never

referred to the first visit and are still friends, though not

intimate.

"A diary which I kept during my fourteenth and fifteenth years is

filled with romantic sentiments and endearing terms applied

successively to three girls of my own age. I had but a speaking

acquaintance with them, but I was strongly infatuated with all.

One boy was also the object of adoration.

"During my thirteenth year I became for a time very religious and

devoted to religious exercises. This passed and by my fourteenth

year I had become heretical, but was still keenly sensitive to

religious influences.

"When barely 16 I slept one night with a woman of low morals. She

acted toward me in a sensual manner and aroused my sexual

feelings. I felt at the time that this was a sin, but I was

carried away by passion. Afterward I hated this woman and

despised myself.

"I then went away to a co-educational boarding school. Here for

the first time I became happy. A girl of my own age, of fine

character and noticeable refinement, fell in love with me and

caused me to reciprocate. On retrospection I believe this to have

been a genuine and beautiful love on both sides. After a few

months, however, our relation, at my initiative and against my

friend's will, became a physical one. We expressed our affection

by mutual caresses, close embraces and lying on each other's

bodies. I sometimes touched her sexual organs sensually. All this

contact gave me exquisite thrills. After three years we had a

misunderstanding and separated. I was greatly grieved and

troubled for many years, and came to regret greatly the physical

relationship that had existed between us. My friend at length

fell in love and married. I had several other slighter

infatuations for women, was courted by several men to whom I

remained cold and bored except in one instance, where I was

somewhat touched, and finally found a lasting friendship with a

woman who had fallen deeply in love with me in her school days

and had never been able to care for any one else. She is a woman

of considerable literary talent and of good general ability and

high ideals. She is usually much liked by men. Her love for me is

the most real thing in the world for me, and seems the most

permanent. At first my feeling for her was almost purely

physical, although there were no sexual relations. I hated this

feeling and have succeeded in overcoming it pretty largely. At

times after long separations we have embraced with great passion,

at least on my part. This has always had a bad physical effect on

me. At present, however, it very rarely occurs. We both consider

sexual feelings degrading and deleterious to real love. Whether

at any time we have had complete physical satisfaction or

gratification, I hardly know. I have experienced very keen

physical pleasure, mingled with what I took to be great mental

exaltation and quickening of the emotions. This condition was

brought about by close contact with the body of my friend,

usually by lying upon it. But if by 'gratification' it is meant

that desire, having been completely satisfied, ceases

temporarily, I think I have never had that experience. If I did,

it was when I was about 18 when I lived with a girl friend in

intimate relations. Of late years, at any rate, it has never

happened to me, and an embrace, however close, always leaves me

with a desire for a closer union, both physical and spiritual. So

a few years since, I came to the conclusion that it was

impossible to obtain physical satisfaction through the woman I

loved. I came to this conclusion because of the bad physical

effects of contact. My sexual organs became highly sensitive and

inflamed and I suffered pain from the inflammation and resulting

leucorrhea. Should I allow myself to indulge in caresses this

condition would return. My friend, fortunately, though very

affectionate and demonstrative toward me, has very little sexual

passion. The idea that our relationship is based upon it is very

repugnant to her. I was at one time, a few years since, much

discouraged and almost hopeless of being able to overcome my

appetite, and I decided that we could not associate unless I

succeeded. At present, with help, I have very largely succeeded

in living with my friend on a basis of normal, though

affectionate and tender, companionship. I have been helped more,

and have learned more, through this companionship, than through

anything else. The keen pleasure that I have felt when in

responsive contact I never experienced in masturbation. So far as

I remember it never took place till I was well along in my 'teens

and was never an habitual practice, except the first summer I was

separated from a school friend whom I loved. Thoughts of her

aroused feelings which I attempted to satisfy in this way, but

the entire sensuality of the act soon led me to refrain and to

see that that was not what I wanted.

"A peculiar incident that might have some significance occurred

to me about five years ago. I was sitting in a small room where a

seminar was being conducted. The leader of the discussion was a

man about 50, whom I looked up to on account of his attainments

and respected as a man, though I knew him socially very slightly.

I had lost a night's sleep from toothache and was feeling

nervous. I was giving my entire attention to the subject in hand,

when suddenly I felt a very strong physical compulsion toward

that man. I did not know what I was going to do, but I felt on

the point of losing all control of myself. I was afraid to leave,

for fear the slightest movement would throw me into a panic. The

attraction was entirely physical and like nothing I had felt

before. And I had a strange feeling that its cause was in the man

himself; that he was willing it; I was like a spectator. It was

some moments before the assemblage broke up, when my 'possession'

completely disappeared and never recurred.

"Regarding dreams, I will say that not until the past year or two

have I been conscious of having clear-cut dreams with definite

happenings. They seemed usually to leave only vague impressions,

such as a feeling that I had been riding horseback, or trying to

perform some hard task. Sexual dreams I do not recall having had

for several years, except that occasionally I am awakened by a

feeling of uncomfortable sexual desire, which seems usually

caused by a need to urinate. Between the ages of 17 and 22,

approximately, I frequently, perhaps several times a month, would

have vague sexual dreams. These always, I think, occurred when I

happened to be sleeping with someone whom, in my dream, I would

mistake for my intimate friend, and would awaken myself by

embracing my bedfellow with sometimes a slight, sometimes

considerable degree of passion. I have finally arrived at some

understanding of my own temperament, and am no longer miserable

and melancholy. I regret that I am not a man, because I could

then have a home and children."

HISTORY XXXIX.--Miss D., actively engaged in the practice of her

profession, aged 40. Heredity good, nervous system sound, general

health on the whole satisfactory. Development feminine but manner

and movements somewhat boyish. Menstruation scanty and painless.

Hips normal, nates small, sexual organs showing some

approximation toward infantile type with large labia minora and

probably small vagina. Tendency to development of hair on body

and especially lower limbs. The narrative is given in her own

words:--

"Ever since I can remember anything at all I could never think of

myself as a girl and I was in perpetual trouble, with this as the

real reason. When I was 5 or 6 years old I began to say to myself

that, whatever anyone said, if I was not a boy at any rate I was

not a girl. This has been my unchanged conviction all through my

life.

"When I was little, nothing ever made me doubt it, in spite of

external appearance. I regarded the conformation of my body as a

mysterious accident. I could not see why it should have anything

to do with the matter. The things that really affected the

question were my own likes and dislikes, and the fact that I was

not allowed to follow them. I was to like the things which

belonged to me as a girl,--frocks and toys and games which I did

not like at all. I fancy I was more strongly 'boyish' than the

ordinary little boy. When I could only crawl my absorbing

interest was hammers and carpet-nails. Before I could walk I

begged to be put on horses' backs, so that I seem to have been

born with the love of tools and animals which has never left me.

"I did not play with dolls, though my little sister did. I was

often reproached for not playing her games. I always chose boys'

toys,--tops and guns and horses; I hated being kept indoors and

was always longing to go out. By the time I was 7 it seemed to me

that everything I liked was called wrong for a girl. I left off

telling my elders what I did like. They confused and wearied me

by their talk of boys and girls. I did not believe them and could

hardly imagine that they believed themselves. By the time I was 8

or 9 I used to wonder whether they were dupes, or liars, or

hypocrites, or all three. I never believed or trusted a grown

person in consequence. I led my younger brothers in everything. I

was not at all a happy little child and often cried and was made

irritable; I was so confused by the talk, about boys and girls. I

was held up as an evil example to other little girls who

virtuously despised me.

"When I was about 9 years old I went to a day school and began to

have a better time. From 9 to 13 I practically shaped my own

life. I learned very little at school, and openly hated it, but I

read a great deal at home and got plenty of ideas. I lived,

however, mainly out of doors whenever I could get out. I spent

all my pocket money on tools, rabbits, pigeons and many other

animals. I became an ardent pigeon-catcher, not to say thief,

though I did not knowingly steal.

"My brothers were as devoted to the animals as I was. The men

were supposed to look after them, but we alone did so. We

observed, mated, separated, and bred them with considerable

skill. We had no language to express ourselves, but one of our

own. We were absolutely innocent, and sweetly sympathetic with

every beast. I don't think we ever connected their affairs with

those of human beings, but as I do not remember the time when I

did not know all about the actual facts of sex and reproduction,

I presume I learned it all in that way, and life never had any

surprises for me in that direction. Though I saw many sights that

a child should not have seen, while running about wild, I never

gave them a thought; all animals great and small from rabbits to

men had the same customs, all natural and right. My initiation

here was, in my eyes, as nearly perfect as a child's should be. I

never asked grown people questions. I thought all those in charge

of me coarse and untruthful and I disliked all ugly things and

suggestions.

"Every half-holiday I went out with the boys from my brothers'

school. They always liked me to play with them, and, though not

pleasant-tongued boys, were always civil and polite to me. I

organized games and fortifications that they would never have

imagined for themselves, led storming parties, and instituted

some rather dangerous games of a fighting kind. I taught my

brothers; to throw stones. Sometimes I led adventures such as

breaking into empty houses. I liked being out after dark.

"In the winter I made and rigged boats and went sailing them, and

I went rafting and pole-leaping. I became a very good jumper and

climber, could go up a rope, bowl overhand, throw like a boy, and

whistle three different ways. I collected beetles and butterflies

and went shrimping and learned to fish. I had very little money

to spend, but I picked things up and I made all traps, nets,

cages, etc., myself. I learned from every working-man, I could

get hold of the use of all ordinary carpenters' tools, and how to

weld hot iron, pave, lay bricks and turf, and so on.

"When I was about 11 my parents got more mortified at my behavior

and perpetually threatened me with a boarding-school. I was told

for months how it would take the nonsense out of me--'shape me,'

'turn me into a young lady.' My going was finally announced to me

as a punishment to me for being what I was.

"Certainly, the horror of going to this school and the cruel and

unsympathetic way that I was sent there gave me a shock that I

never got over. The only thing that reconciled me to going was my

intense indignation with those who sent me. I appealed to be

allowed to learn Latin and boys' subjects, but was laughed at.

"I was so helpless that I knew I could not run away without being

caught, or I would have run away anywhere from home and school. I

never cried or fretted, but burnt with anger and went like a

trapped rabbit.

"In no words can I describe the severity of the nervous shock, or

the suffering of my first year at school. The school was noted

for its severity and I heard that at one period the elder girls

ran away so often that they wore a uniform dress. I knew two who

had run away. The teachers in my time were ignorant,

self-indulgent women who cared nothing for the girls or their

education and made much money out of them. There was a suspicious

reformatory atmosphere, and my money was taken from me and my

letters read.

"I was intensely shy. I hated the other girls. There were no

refinements anywhere; I had no privacy in my room, which was

always overcrowded; we had no hot water, no baths, improper food,

and no education. We were not allowed to wear enough clean linen,

and for five years I never felt clean.

"I never had one moment to myself, was not allowed to read

anything, had even not enough lesson books, was taught nothing to

speak of except a little inferior music and drawing. I never got

enough exercise, and was always tired and dull, and could not

keep my digestion in order. My pride and self-respect were

degraded in innumerable ways, I suffered agonies of disgust, and

the whole thing was a dreary penal servitude.

"I did not complain. I made friends with a few of the girls. Some

of the older girls were attracted to me. Some talked of men and

love affairs to me, but I was not greatly interested. No one ever

spoke of any other matters of sex to me or in my hearing, but

most of the girls were shy with me and I with them.

"In about two years' time the teachers got to like me and thought

me one of their nicest girls. I certainly influenced them and got

them to allow the girls more privileges.

"I lay great stress upon the physical privations and disgust that

I felt during these years. The mental starvation was not quite so

great because it was impossible for them to crush my mind as they

did my body. That it all materially aided to arrest the

development of my body I am certain.

"It is difficult to estimate sexual influences of which as a

child I was practically unaware. I certainly admired the

liveliest and cleverest girls and made friends with them and

disliked the common, lumpy, uneducated type that made two-thirds

of my companions. The lively girls liked me, and I made several

nice friends whom I have kept ever since. One girl of about 15

took a violent liking for me and figuratively speaking licked the

dust from my shoes. I would never take any notice of her. When I

was nearly 16 one of my teachers began to notice me and be very

kind to me. She was twenty years older than I was. She seemed to

pity my loneliness and took me out for walks and sketching, and

encouraged me to talk and think. It was the first time in my life

that anyone had ever sympathized with me or tried to understand

me and it was a most beautiful thing to me. I felt like an orphan

child who had suddenly acquired a mother, and through her I began

to feel less antagonistic to grown people and to feel the first

respect I had ever felt for what they said. She petted me into a

state of comparative docility and made the other teachers like

and trust me. My love for her was perfectly pure, and I thought

of her's as simply maternal. She never roused the least feeling

in me that I can think of as sexual. I liked her to touch me and

she sometimes held me in her arms or let me sit on her lap. At

bedtime she used to come and say good-night and kiss me upon the

mouth. I think now that what she did was injudicious to a degree,

and I wish I could believe it was as purely unselfish and kind as

it seemed to me then. After I had left school I wrote to her and

visited her during a few years. Once she wrote to me that if I

could give her employment she would come and live with me. Once

when she was ill with neurasthenia her friends asked me to go to

the seaside with her, which I did. Here she behaved in an

extraordinary way, becoming violently jealous over me with

another elderly friend of mine who was there. I could hardly

believe my senses and was so astonished and disgusted that I

never went near her again. She also accused me of not being

'loyal' to her; to this day I have no idea what she meant. She

then wrote and asked me what was wrong between us, and I replied

that after the words she had had with me my confidence in her was

at an end. It gave me no particular pang as I had by this time

outgrown the simple gratitude of my childish days and not

replaced it by any stronger feeling. All my life I have had the

profoundest repugnance to having any 'words' with other women.

"I was much less interested in sex matters than other children of

my age. I was altogether less precocious, though I knew more, I

imagine, than other girls. Nevertheless, by the time I was 15

social matters had begun to interest me greatly. It is difficult

to say how this happened, as I was forbidden all books and

newspapers (except in my holidays when I had generally a reading

orgy, though not the books I needed or wanted). I had abundant

opportunities for speculation, but no materials for any

profitable thinking.

"Dreaming was forced upon me. I dreamed fairy-tales by night and

social dreams by day. In the nightdreams, sometimes in the

day-dreams, I was always the prince or the pirate, rescuing

beauty in distress, or killing the unworthy. I had one dream

which I dreamed over and over again and enjoyed and still

sometimes dream. In this I was always hunting and fighting, often

in the dark; there was usually a woman or a princess, whom I

admired, somewhere in the background, but I have never really

seen her. Sometimes I was a stowaway on board ship or an Indian

hunter or a backwoodsman making a log-cabin for my wife or rather

some companion. My daythoughts were not about the women round

about me, or even about the one who was so kind to me; they were

almost impersonal. I went on, at any rate, from myself to what I

thought the really ideal and built up a very beautiful vision of

solid human friendship in which there was everything that was

strong and wholesome on either side, but very little of sex. To

imagine this in its fullness I had to imagine all social, family,

and educational conditions vastly different from anything I had

come across. From this my thoughts ran largely on social matters.

In whatever direction my thoughts ran I always surveyed them from

the point of view of a boy. I was trying to wait patiently till I

could escape from slavery and starvation, and trying to keep the

open mind I have spoken of, though I never opened a book of

poetry, or a novel, or a history, but I slipped naturally back

into my non-girl's attitude and read it through my own eyes. All

my surface-life was a sham, and only through books, which were

few, did I ever see the world naturally. A consideration of

social matters led me to feel very sorry for women, whom I

regarded as made by a deliberate process of manufacture into the

fools I thought they were, and by the same process that I myself

was being made one. I felt more and more that men were to be

envied and women pitied. I lay stress on this for it started in

me a deliberate interest in women as women. I began to feel

protective and kindly toward women and children and to excuse

women from their responsibility for calamities such as my

school-career. I never imagined that men required, or would have

thanked me for, any sort of sympathy. But it came about in these

ways, and without the least help that I can trace, that by the

time I was 19 years of age I was keenly interested in all kinds

of questions: pity for downtrodden women, suffrage questions,

marriage laws, questions of liberty, freedom of thought, care of

the poor, views of Nature and Man and God. All these things

filled my mind to the exclusion of individual men and women. As

soon as I left school I made a headlong plunge into books where

these things were treated; I had the answers to everything to

find after a long period of enforced starvation. I had to work

for my knowledge. No books or ideas came near me but what I went

in search of. Another thing that helped me to take an expansive

view of life at this time was my intense love of Nature. All

birds and animals affected me by their beauty and grace, and I

have always kept a profound sympathy with them as well as some

subtle understanding which enables me to tame them, at times

remarkably. I not only loved all other creatures, but I believed

that men and women were the most beautiful things in the universe

and I would rather look at them (unclothed) than on any other

thing, as my greatest pleasure. I was prepared to like them

because they were beautiful. When the time came for me to leave

school I rather dreaded it, chiefly because I dreaded my life at

home. I had a great longing at this time to run away and try my

fortune anywhere; possibly if I had been stronger I might have

done so. But I was in very poor health through the physical

crushing I had had, and in very poor spirits through this and my

mental repression. I still knew myself a prisoner and I was

bitterly disappointed and ashamed at having no education. I

afterward had myself taught arithmetic and other things.

"The next period of my life which covered about six years was not

less important to my development, and was a time of extreme

misery to me. It found me, on leaving school, almost a child.

This time between 18 and 24 should, I think, count as my proper

period of puberty, which probably in most children occupies the

end years of their school-life.

"It was at this time that I began to make a good many friends of

my own and to become aware of psychical and sexual attractions. I

had never come across any theories on the subject, but I decided

that I must belong to a third sex of some kind. I used to wonder

if I was like the neuter bees! I knew physical and psychical sex

feeling and yet I seemed to know it quite otherwise from other

men and women. I asked myself if I could endure living a woman's

life, bearing children and doing my duty by them. I asked myself

what hiatus there could be between my bodily structure and my

feelings, and also what was the meaning of the strong physical

feelings which had me in their grip without choice of my own.

[Experience of physical sex sensations first began about 16 in

sleep; masturbation was accidentally discovered at the age of 19,

abandoned at 28, and then at 34 deliberately resumed as a method

of purely physical relief.] These three things simply would not

be reconciled and I said to myself that I must find a way of

living in which there was as little sex of any kind as possible.

There was something that I simply lacked; that I never doubted.

Curiously enough, I thought that the ultimate explanation might

be that there were men's minds in women's bodies, but I was more

concerned in finding a way of life than in asking riddles without

answers.

"I thought that one day when I had money and opportunity I would

dress in men's clothes and go to another country, in order that I

might be unhampered by sex considerations and conventions. I

determined to live an honorable, upright, but simple life.

"I had no idea at first that homosexual attractions in women

existed; afterward observations on the lower animals put the idea

into my head. I made no preparation in my mind for any sexual

life, though I thought it would be a dreary business repressing

my body all my days.

"My relations with other women were entirely pure. My attitude

toward my sexual physical feelings was one of reserve and

repression, and I think the growing conviction of my radical

deficiency somewhere, would have made intimate affection for

anyone, with any demonstration in it, a kind of impropriety for

which I had no taste.

"However, between 21 and 24 other things happened to me.

"During these few years I saw plenty of men and plenty of women.

As regards the men I liked them very well, but I never thought

the man would turn up with whom I should care to live. Several

men were very friendly with me and three in particular used to

write me letters and give me much of their confidence. I invited

two of them to visit at my house. All these men talked to me with

freedom and even told me about their sexual ideas and doings. One

asked me to believe that he was leading a good life; the other

two owned that they were not. One discussed the question of

homosexuality with me; he has never married. I liked one of them

a good deal, being attracted by his softness and gentleness and

almost feminine voice. It was hoped that I would take to him and

he very cautiously made love to me. I allowed him to kiss me a

few times and wrote him a few responsive letters, wondering what

I liked in him. Someone then commented on the acquaintance and

said 'marriage,' and I woke up to the fact that I did not really

want him at all. I think he found the friendship too insipid and

was glad to be out of it. All these men were a trifle feminine in

characteristics, and two played no games. I thought it odd that

they should all express admiration for the very boyish qualities

in me that other people disliked. A fourth man, something of the

same type, told another friend that he always felt surprised at

how freely he was able to talk to me, but that he never could

feel that I was a woman. Two of these were brilliantly clever

men; two were artists.

"At the same period, or earlier, I made a number of women

friends, and of course saw more of them. I chose out some and

some chose me; I think I attracted them as much as, or even more

than, they attracted me. I do not quite remember if this was so,

though I can say for certain that it was so at school. There were

three or four bright, clever, young women whom I got to know then

with whom I was great friends. We were interested in books,

social theories, politics, art. Sometimes I visited them or we

went on exploring expeditions to many country places or towns.

They all in the end either had love affairs or married. I know

that in spite of all our free conversations they never talked to

me as they did to each other; we were always a little shy with

each other. But I got very fond of at least four of them. I

admired them and when I was tired and worried I often thought how

easily, if I had been a man, I could have married and settled

down with one or the other. I used to think it would be

delightful to have a woman to work for and take care of. My

attraction to these women was very strong, but I don't think they

knew it. I seldom even kissed them, but I should often have

cheerfully given them a good hugging and kissing if I had thought

it a right or proper thing to do. I never wanted them to kiss me

half so much as I wanted to kiss them. In these years I felt this

with every woman I admired.

"Occasionally, I experienced slight erections when close to other

women. I am sure that no deliberate thought of mine caused them,

and as I had them at other times too, when I was not expecting

them, I think it may have been accidental. What I felt with my

mind and what I felt with my body always at this time seemed

apart. I cannot accurately describe the interest and attraction

that women then were to me. I only know I never felt anything

like it for men. All my feelings of desire to do kindnesses, to

give presents, to be liked and respected and all such natural

small matters, referred to women, not to men, and at this time,

both openly and to myself, I said unhesitatingly that I liked

women best. It must be remembered that at this time a dislike for

men was being fostered in me by those who wanted me to marry, and

this must have counted for more than I now remember.

"As regards my physical sexual feelings, which were well

established during these few years, I don't think I often

indulged in any erotic imaginations worth estimating, but so far

as I did at all, I always imagined myself as a man loving a

woman. I cannot recall ever imagining the opposite, but I seldom

imagined anything at all, and I suppose ultimate sex sensations

know no sex.

"But as time went on and my physical and psychical feelings met,

at any rate in my own mind, I became fully aware of the meaning

of love and even, of homosexual possibilities.

"I should probably have thought more of this side of things

except that during this time I was so worried by the difficulty

of living in my home under the perpetual friction of comparison

with other people. My life was a sham; I was an actor never off

the boards. I had to play at being a something I was not from

morning till night, and I had no cessation of the long fatigue I

had had at school; in addition I had sex to deal with actively

and consciously.

"Looking back on these twenty-four years of my life I only look

back on a round of misery. The nervous strain was enormous and so

was the moral strain. Instead of a child I felt myself, whenever

I desired to please anyone else, a performing monkey. My

pleasures were stolen or I was snubbed for taking them. I was not

taught and was called a fool. My hand was against everybody's.

How it was that with my high spirits and vivid imagination I did

not grow up a moral imbecile full of perverted instincts I do not

know. I describe myself as a docile child, but I was full of

temptations to be otherwise. There were times when I was silent

before people, but if I had had a knife in my hand I could have

stuck it into them. If it had been desired to make me a

thoroughly perverted being I can imagine no better way than the

attempt to mould me by force into a particular pattern of girl.

"Looking at my instincts in my first childhood and my mental

confusion over myself, I do not believe the most sympathetic and

scientific treatment would have turned me into an average girl,

but I see no reason why proper physical conditions should not

have induced a better physical development and that in its turn

have led to tastes more approximate to those of the normal woman.

That I do not even now desire to be a normal woman is not to the

point.

"Instead of any such help, I suffered during the time that should

have been puberty from a profound mental and physical shock which

was extended over several years, and in addition I suffered from

the outrage of every fine and wholesome feeling I had. These

things by checking my physical development gave, I am perfectly

convinced, a traumatic impetus to my general abnormality, and

this was further kept up by demanding of me (at the dawn of my

real sexual activity, and when still practically a child) an

interest in men and marriage which I was no more capable of

feeling than any ordinary boy or girl of 15. If you had taken a

boy of 13 and given him all my conditions, bound him hand and

foot, when you became afraid of him petted him into docility, and

then placed him in the world and, while urging normal sexuality

upon him on the one hand, made him disgusted with it on the

other, what would have been the probable result?

"Looking back, I can only say I think, the results in my own case

were marvellously good, and that I was saved from worse by my own

innocence and by the physical backwardness which nature, probably

in mercy, bestowed upon me.

"I find it difficult to sum up the way in which I affect other

women and they me. I can only record my conviction that I do

affect a large number, whether abnormally or not I don't know,

but I attract them and it would be easy for some of them to

become very fond of me if I gave them a chance. They are also, I

am certain, more shy with me than they are with other women.

"I find it difficult also to sum up their effect on me. I only

know that some women attract me and some tempt me physically, and

have done ever since I was about 22 or 23. I know that

psychically I have always been more interested in women than in

men, but have not considered them the best companions or

confidants. I feel protective towards them, never feel jealous of

them, and hate having differences with them. And I feel always

that I am not one of them. If there had been any period in my

life when health, and temptation and money and opportunity had

made homosexual relations easy I cannot say how I should have

resisted. I think that I have never had any such relations simply

because I have in a way been safeguarded from them. For a long

time I thought I must do without all actual sexual relations and

acted up to that. If I had thought any relations right and

possible I think I should have striven for heterosexual

experiences because of the respect that I had cultivated, indeed

I think always had, for the normal and natural. If I had thought

it right to indulge any sort of gratification which was within my

reach I think I might probably have chosen the homosexual as

being perhaps more satisfying and more convenient. I always

wanted love and friendship first; later I should have been glad

of something to satisfy my sex hunger too, but by that time I

could have done without it, or I thought so."

At a period rather later than that dealt with in this narrative,

the subject of it became strongly attracted to a man who was of

somewhat feminine and abnormal disposition. But on consideration

she decided that it would not be wise to marry him.

The commonest characteristic of the sexually inverted woman is a certain

degree of masculinity or boyishness. As I have already pointed out,

transvestism in either women or men by no means necessarily involves

inversion. In the volume of _Women Adventurers_, edited by Mrs. Norman for

the Adventure Series, there is no trace of inversion; in most of these

cases, indeed, love for a man was precisely the motive for adopting male

garments and manners. Again, Colley Cibber's daughter, Charlotte Charke, a

boyish and vivacious woman, who spent much of her life in men's clothes,

and ultimately wrote a lively volume of memoirs, appears never to have

been attracted to women, though women were often attracted to her,

believing her to be a man; it is, indeed, noteworthy that women seem, with

special frequency, to fall in love with disguised persons of their own

sex.[166] There is, however, a very pronounced tendency among sexually

inverted women to adopt male attire when practicable. In such cases male

garments are not usually regarded as desirable chiefly on account of

practical convenience, nor even in order to make an impression on other

women, but because the wearer feels more at home in them. Thus, Moll

mentions the case of a young governess of 16 who, while still unconscious

of her sexual perversion, used to find pleasure, when everyone was out of

the house, in putting on the clothes of a youth belonging to the family.

Cases have been recorded of inverted women who spent the greater

part of their lives in men's clothing and been generally regarded

as men. I may cite the case of Lucy Ann Slater, _alias_ the Rev.

Joseph Lobdell, recorded by Wise (_Alienist and Neurologist_,

1883). She was masculine in character, features, and attire. In

early life she married and had a child, but had no affection for

her husband, who eventually left her. As usual in such cases, her

masculine habits appeared in early childhood. She was expert with

the rifle, lived the life of a trapper and hunter among the

Indians, and was known as the "Female Hunter of Long Eddy." She

published a book regarding those experiences. I have not been

able to see it, but it is said to be quaint and well written. She

regarded herself as practically a man, and became attached to a

young woman of good education, who had also been deserted by her

husband. The affection was strong and emotional, and, of course,

without deception. It was interrupted by her recognition and

imprisonment as a vagabond, but on the petition of her "wife" she

was released. "I may be a woman in one sense," she said, "but I

have peculiar organs which make me more a man than a woman." She

alluded to an enlarged clitoris which she could erect, she said,

as a turtle protrudes its head, but there was no question of its

use in coitus. She was ultimately brought to the asylum with

paroxysmal attacks of exaltation and erotomania (without

self-abuse apparently) and corresponding periods of depression,

and she died with progressive dementia. I may also mention the

case (briefly recorded in the _Lancet_, February 22, 1884) of a

person called John Coulter, who was employed for twelve years as

a laborer by the Belfast Harbor Commissioners. When death

resulted from injuries caused in falling down stairs, it was

found that this person was a woman. She was fifty years of age,

and had apparently spent the greater part of her life as a man.

When employed in early life as a manservant on a farm, she had

married her mistress's daughter. The pair were married for

twenty-nine years, but during the last six years lived apart,

owing to the "husband's" dissipated habits. No one ever suspected

her sex. She was of masculine appearance and good muscular

development. The "wife" took charge of the body and buried it.

A more recent case of the same kind is that of "Murray Hall," who

died in New York in 1901. Her real name was Mary Anderson, and

she was born at Govan, in Scotland. Early left an orphan, on the

death of her only brother she put on his clothes and went to

Edinburgh, working as a man. Her secret was discovered during an

illness, and she finally went to America, where she lived as a

man for thirty years, making money, and becoming somewhat

notorious as a Tammany politician, a rather riotous "man about

town." The secret was not discovered till her death, when it was

a complete revelation, even to her adopted daughter. She married

twice; the first marriage ended in separation, but the second

marriage seemed to have been happy, for it lasted twenty years,

when the "wife" died. She associated much with pretty girls, and

was very jealous of them. She seems to have been slight and not

very masculine in general build, with a squeaky voice, but her

ways, attitude, and habits were all essentially masculine. She

associated with politicians, drank somewhat to excess, though not

heavily, swore a great deal, smoked and chewed tobacco, sang

ribald songs; could run, dance, and fight like a man, and had

divested herself of every trace of feminine daintiness. She wore

clothes that were always rather too large in order to hide her

form, baggy trousers, and an overcoat even in summer. She is said

to have died of cancer of the breast. (I quote from an account,

which appears to be reliable, contained in the _Weekly

Scotsman_, February 9, 1901.)

Another case, described in the London papers, is that of

Catharine Coome, who for forty years successfully personated a

man and adopted masculine habits generally. She married a lady's

maid, with whom she lived for fourteen years. Having latterly

adopted a life of fraud, her case gained publicity as that of the

"man-woman."

In 1901 the death on board ship was recorded of Miss Caroline

Hall, of Boston, a water-color painter who had long resided in

Milan. Three years previously she discarded female dress and

lived as "husband" to a young Italian lady, also an artist, whom

she had already known for seven years. She called herself "Mr.

Hall" and appeared to be a thoroughly normal young man, able to

shoot with a rifle and fond of manly sports. The officers of the

ship stated that she smoked and drank heartily, joked with the

other male passengers, and was hail-fellow-well-met with

everyone. Death was due to advanced tuberculosis of the lungs,

hastened by excessive drinking and smoking.

Ellen Glenn, _alias_ Ellis Glenn, a notorious swindler, who came

prominently before the public in Chicago during 1905, was another

"man-woman," of large and masculine type. She preferred to dress

as a man and had many love escapades with women. "She can fiddle

as well as anyone in the State," said a man who knew her, "can

box like a pugilist, and can dance and play cards."

In Seville, a few years ago, an elderly policeman, who had been

in attendance on successive governors of that city for thirty

years, was badly injured in a street accident. He was taken to

the hospital and the doctor there discovered that the "policeman"

was a woman. She went by the name of Fernando Mackenzie and

during the whole of her long service no suspicion whatever was

aroused as to her sex. She was French by birth, born in Paris in

1836, but her father was English and her mother Spanish. She

assumed her male disguise when she was a girl and served her

time in the French army, then emigrated to Spain, at the age of

35, and contrived to enter the Madrid police force disguised as a

man. She married there and pretended that her wife's child was

her own son. She removed to Seville, still serving as a

policeman, and was engaged there as cook and orderly at the

governor's palace. She served seven successive governors. In

consequence of the discovery of her sex she has been discharged

from the police without the pension due to her; her wife had died

two years previously, and "Fernando" spent all she possessed on

the woman's funeral. Mackenzie had a soft voice, a refined face

with delicate features, and was neatly dressed in male attire.

When asked how she escaped detection so long, she replied that

she always lived quietly in her own house with her wife and did

her duty by her employers so that no one meddled with her.

In Chicago in 1906 much attention was attracted to the case of

"Nicholai de Raylan," confidential secretary to the Russian

Consul, who at death (of tuberculosis) at the age of 33 was found

to be a woman. She was born in Russia and was in many respects

very feminine, small and slight in build, but was regarded as a

man, and even as very "manly," by both men and women who knew her

intimately. She was always very neat in dress, fastidious in

regard to shirts and ties, and wore a long-waisted coat to

disguise the lines of her figure. She was married twice in

America, being divorced by the first wife, after a union lasting

ten years, on the ground of cruelty and misconduct with chorus

girls. The second wife, a chorus girl who had been previously

married and had a child, was devoted to her "husband." Both wives

were firmly convinced that their husband was a man and ridiculed

the idea that "he" could be a woman. I am informed that De Raylan

wore a very elaborately constructed artificial penis. In her will

she made careful arrangements to prevent detection of sex after

death, but these were frustrated, as she died in a hospital.

In St. Louis, in 1909, the case was brought forward of a young

woman of 22, who had posed as a man for nine years. Her masculine

career began at the age of 13 after the Galveston flood which

swept away all her family. She was saved and left Texas dressed

as a boy. She worked in livery stables, in a plough factory, and

as a bill-poster. At one time she was the adopted son of the

family in which she lived and had no difficulty in deceiving her

sisters by adoption as to her sex. On coming to St. Louis in 1902

she made chairs and baskets at the American Rattan Works,

associating with fellow-workmen on a footing of masculine

equality. One day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and

dexterity of her hands. "Gee, Bill, you should have been a girl."

"How do you know I'm not?" she retorted. In such ways her ready

wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. She

shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are

told, and never avoided the severest tests. "She drank, she

swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard as her fellows, she

fished and camped; she told stories with the best of them, and

she did not flinch when the talk grew strong. She even chewed

tobacco." Girls began to fall in love with the good-looking boy

at an early period, and she frequently boasted of her feminine

conquests; with one girl who worshipped her there was a question

of marriage. On account of lack of education she was restricted

to manual labor, and she often chose hard work. At one time she

became a boiler-maker's apprentice, wielding a hammer and driving

in hot rivets. Here she was very popular and became local

secretary of the International Brotherhood of Boiler-makers. In

physical development she was now somewhat of an athlete. "She

could outrun any of her friends on a sprint; she could kick

higher, play baseball, and throw the ball overhand like a man,

and she was fond of football. As a wrestler she could throw most

of the club members." The physician who examined her for an

insurance policy remarked: "You are a fine specimen of physical

manhood, young fellow. Take good care of yourself." Finally, in a

moment of weakness, she admitted her sex and returned to the

garments of womanhood.

In London, in 1912, a servant-girl of 23 was charged in the Acton

Police Court with being "disorderly and masquerading," having

assumed man's clothes and living with another girl, taller and

more handsome than herself, as husband and wife. She had had

slight brain trouble as a child, and was very intelligent, with a

too active brain; in her spare time she had written stories for

magazines. The two girls became attached through doing Christian

social work together in their spare time, and resolved to live as

husband and wife to prevent any young man from coming forward.

The "husband" became a plumber's mate, and displayed some skill

at fisticuffs when at length discovered by the "wife's" brother.

Hence her appearance in the Police Court. Both girls were sent

back to their friends, and situations found for them as

day-servants. But as they remained devoted to each other

arrangements were made for them to live together.

Another case that may be mentioned is that of Cora Anderson, "the

man-woman of Milwaukee," who posed for thirteen years as a man,

and during that period lived with two women as her wives without

her disguise being penetrated. (Her "Confessions" were published

in the _Day Book_ of Chicago during May, 1914.)

It would be easy to bring forward other cases. A few instances of

marriage between women will be found in the _Alienist and

Neurologist_, Nov., 1902, p. 497. In all such cases more or less

fraud has been exercised. I know of one case, probably unique, in

which the ceremony was gone through without any deception on any

side: a congenitally inverted Englishwoman of distinguished

intellectual ability, now dead, was attached to the wife of a

clergyman, who, in full cognizance of all the facts of the case,

privately married the two ladies in his own church.

When they still retain female garments, these usually show some traits of

masculine simplicity, and there is nearly always a disdain for the petty

feminine artifices of the toilet. Even when this is not obvious, there are

all sorts of instinctive gestures and habits which may suggest to female

acquaintances the remark that such a person "ought to have been a man."

The brusque, energetic movements, the attitude of the arms, the direct

speech, the inflexions of the voice, the masculine straightforwardness and

sense of honor, and especially the attitude toward men, free from any

suggestion either of shyness or audacity, will often suggest the

underlying psychic abnormality to a keen observer.

In the habits not only is there frequently a pronounced taste for smoking

cigarettes, often found in quite feminine women, but also a decided taste

and toleration for cigars. There is also a dislike and sometimes

incapacity for needlework and other domestic occupations, while there is

often some capacity for athletics.

As regards the general bearing of the inverted woman, in its most

marked and undisguised form, I may quote an admirable description

by Prof. Zuccarelli, of Naples, of an unmarried middle-class

woman of 35: "While retaining feminine garments, her bearing is

as nearly as possible a man's. She wears her thin hair thrown

carelessly back _alla Umberto_, and fastened in a simple knot at

the back of her head. The breasts are little developed, and

compressed beneath a high corset; her gown is narrow without the

expansion demanded by fashion. Her straw hat with broad plaits is

perhaps adorned by a feather, or she wears a small hat like a

boy's. She does not carry an umbrella or sunshade, and walks out

alone, refusing the company of men; or she is accompanied by a

woman, as she prefers, offering her arm and carrying the other

hand at her waist, with the air of a fine gentleman. In a

carriage her bearing is peculiar and unlike that habitual with

women. Seated in the middle of the double seat, her knees being

crossed or else the legs well separated, with a virile air and

careless easy movements she turns her head in every direction,

finding an acquaintance here and there with her eye, saluting men

and women with a large gesture of the hand as a business man

would. In conversation her pose is similar; she gesticulates

much, is vivacious in speech, with much power of mimicry, and

while talking she arches the inner angles of her eyebrow, making

vertical wrinkles at the center of her forehead. Her laugh is

open and explosive and uncovers her white rows of teeth. With men

she is on terms of careless equality." ("Inversione congenita

dell'istinto sessuale in una donna," _L'Anomalo_, February,

1889.)

"The inverted woman," Hirschfeld truly remarks (_Die

Homosexualität_, p. 158), "is more full of life, of enterprise,

of practical energy, more aggressive, more heroic, more apt for

adventure, than either the heterosexual woman or the homosexual

man." Sometimes, he adds, her mannishness may approach reckless

brutality, and her courage becomes rashness. This author

observes, however, in another place (p. 272) that, in addition to

this group of inverted women with masculine traits there is

another group, "not less large," of equally inverted women who

are outwardly as thoroughly feminine as are normal women. This is

not an observation which I am able to confirm. It appears to me

that the great majority of inverted women possess some masculine

or boyish traits, even though only as slight as those which may

occasionally be revealed by normal women. Extreme femininity, in

my observation, is much more likely to be found in bisexual than

in homosexual women, just as extreme masculinity is much more

likely to be found in bisexual than in homosexual men.

While inverted women frequently, though not always, convey an impression

of mannishness or boyishness, there are no invariable anatomical

characteristics associated with this impression. There is, for instance,

no uniform tendency to a masculine distribution of hair. Nor must it be

supposed that the presence of a beard in a woman indicates a homosexual

tendency. "Bearded women," as Hirschfeld remarks, are scarcely ever

inverted, and it would seem that the strongest reversals of secondary

sexual characters less often accompany homosexuality than slighter

modifications of these characters.[167] A faint moustache and other slight

manifestations of hypertrichosis also by no means necessarily indicate

homosexuality. To some extent it is a matter of race; thus in the Pera

district of Constantinople, Weissenberg, among nearly seven hundred women

between about 18 and 50 years of age, noted that 10 per cent, showed hair

on the upper lip; they were most often Armenians, the Greeks coming

next.[168]

There has been some dispute as to whether, apart from

homosexuality, hypertrichosis in a woman can be regarded as an

indication of a general masculinity. This is denied by Max

Bartels (in his elaborate study, "Ueber abnorme Behaarung beim

Menschen," _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1876, p. 127; 1881, p.

219) and, as regards insanity, by L. Harris-Liston ("Cases of

Bearded Women," _British Medical Journal_, June 2, 1894). On the

other hand, J.H. Claiborne ("Hypertrichosis in Women," _New York

Medical Journal_, June 13, 1914) believes that hair on the face

and body in a woman is a sign of masculinity; "women with

hypertrichosis possess masculine traits."

There seems to be very little doubt that fully developed "bearded

women" are in most, possibly not all, cases decidedly feminine in

all other respects. A typical instance is furnished by Annie

Jones, the "Esau Lady" of Virginia. She belonged to a large and

entirely normal family, but herself possessed a full beard with

thick whiskers and moustache of an entirely masculine type; she

also showed short, dark hair on arms and hands resembling a man.

Apart from this heterogeny, she was entirely normal and feminine.

At the age of 26, when examined in Berlin, the hair of the head

was very long, the expression of the face entirely feminine, the

voice also feminine, the figure elegant, the hands and feet

entirely of feminine type, the external and internal genitalia

altogether feminine. Annie Jones was married. Max Bartels, who

studied Annie Jones and published her portrait (_Zeitschrift für

Ethnologie_, 1891, Heft 3, p. 243), remarks that in these

respects Annie Jones resembles other "bearded women"; they marry,

have children, and are able to suckle them. A beard in women

seems, as Dupré and Duflos believe (_Revue Neurologique_, Aug.

30, 1901), to be more closely correlated with neuropathy than

with masculinity; comparing a thousand sane women with a thousand

insane women in Paris, they found unusual degree of hair or down

on the face in 23 per cent. of the former and 50 per cent. of the

latter; but even the sane bearded women frequently belonged to

neuropathic families.

A tendency to slight widely diffused hypertrichosis of the body

generally, not localized or highly developed on the face, seems

much more likely than a beard to be associated with masculinity,

even when it occurs in little girls. Thus Virchow once presented

to the Berlin Anthropological Society a little girl of 5 of this

type who also possessed a deep and rough voice (_Zeitschrift für

Ethnologie_, 1891, Heft 4, p. 469). A typical example of slight

hypertrichosis in a woman associated with general masculine

traits is furnished by a description and figure of the body of a

woman of 56 in an anatomical institute, furnished by C. Strauch

(_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1901, Heft 6, p. 534). In this

case there was a growth of hair around both nipples and a line of

hair extended from the pubes to the navel; both these two

dispositions of hair are very rare in women. (In Vienna among

nearly 700 women Coe only found a tendency to hair distribution

toward the navel in about 1 per cent.). While the hair in this

subject was otherwise fairly normal, there were many

approximations to the masculine type in other respects: the

muscles were strongly developed, the bones massive, the limbs

long, the joints powerful, the hands and feet large, the thorax

well developed, the lower jaw massive; there was an absence of

feminine curves on the body and the breasts were scarcely

perceptible. At the same time the genital organs were normal and

there had been childbirth. It was further notable that this woman

had committed suicide by self-strangulation, a rare method which

requires great resolution and strength of will, as at any moment

of the process the pressure can be removed.

There seems little doubt that inverted women frequently tend to show minor

anomalies of the piliferous system, and especially slight hypertrichosis

and a masculine distribution of hair. Thus in a very typical case of

inversion in an Italian girl of 19 who dressed as a man and ran away from

home, the down on the arms and legs was marked to an unusual extent, and

there was very abundant hair in the armpits and on the pubes, with a

tendency to the masculine distribution.[169] Of the three cases described

in this chapter which I am best acquainted with, one possesses an

unusually small amount of hair on the pubes and in the axillæ

(oligotrichosis terminalis), approximating to the infantile type, while

another presents a complex and very rare piliferous heterogeny. There is

marked dark down on the upper lip; the pubic hair is thick, and there is

hair on toes and feet and legs to umbilicus; there are also a few hairs

around the nipples. A woman physician in the United States who knows many

female inverts similarly tells me that she has observed the tendency to

growth of hair on the legs. If, as is not improbable, inversion is

associated with some abnormal balance in the internal secretions, it is

not difficult to understand this tendency to piliferous anomalies; and we

know that the thyroid secretion, for instance, and much more the

testicular and ovarian secretions, have a powerful influence on the hair.

Ballantyne, some years ago, in discussing congenital

hypertrichosis (_Manual of Antenatal Pathology_, 1902, pp. 321-6)

concluded that the theory of arrested development is best

supported by the facts; persistence of lanugo is such an arrest,

and hypertrichosis may largely be considered a persistence of

lanugo. Such a conclusion is still tenable,--though it encounters

some difficulties and inconsistencies,--and it largely agrees

with what we know of the condition as associated with inversion

in women. But we are now beginning to see that this arrested

development may be definitely associated with anomalies in the

internal secretions, and even with special chemical defects in

these secretions. Virile strength has always been associated with

hair, as the story of Samson bears witness. Ammon found among

Baden conscripts (_L'Anthropologie_, 1896, p. 285) that when the

men were divided into classes according to the amount of hair on

body, the first class, with least hair, have the smallest

circumference of testicle, the fewest number of men with glans

penis uncovered, the largest number of infantile voices, the

largest proportion of blue eyes and fair hair, the smallest

average height, weight, and chest circumference, while in all

these respects the men with hairy bodies were at the other

extreme. It has been known from antiquity that in men early

castration affects the growth of hair. It is now known that in

women the presence or absence of the ovary and, other glands

affects the hair, as well as sexual development. Thus Hegar

(_Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie_, vol. i, p. 111,

1898) described a girl with pelvis of infantile type and uterine

malformation who had been unusually hairy on face and body from

infancy, with masculine arrangement of hair on pubes and abdomen;

menstruation was scanty, breasts atrophic; the hair was of lanugo

type; we see here how in women infantile and masculine

characteristics are associated with, and both probably dependent

on, defects in the sexual glands. Plant (_Centralblatt für

Gynäkologie_, No. 9, 1896) described another girl with very small

ovaries, rudimentary uterus, small vagina, and prominent nymphæ,

in whom menstruation was absent, hair on head long and strong,

but hair absent in armpits and scanty on mons veneris. These two

cases seem inconsistent as regards hair, and we should now wish

to know the condition of the other internal glands. The thyroid,

for instance, it is now known, controls the hair, as well as do

the sexual glands; and the thyroid, as Gautier has shown

(Académie de Médecine, July 24, 1900) elaborates arsenic and

iodine, which nourish the skin and hair; he found that the

administration of sodium cacodylate to young women produced

abundant growth of hair on head. Again, the kidneys, and

especially the adrenal glands, influence the hair. It has long

been known that in girls with congenital renal tumors there is an

abnormally early growth of axillary and pubic hair; Goldschwend

(_Präger medizinische Wochenschrift_, Nos. 37 and 38, 1910) has

described the case of a woman of 39, with small ovaries and

adrenal tumor, in whom hair began to grow on chin and cheeks.

(See also C.T. Ewart, _Lancet_, May 19, 1915.) Once more, the

glans hypophysis also affects hair growth and it has been found

by Lévi (quoted in _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_,

August-September, 1912, p. 711) that the administration of

hypophysis extract to an infantile, hairless woman of 27, without

sexual feeling, produced a general tendency to growth of hair.

Such facts not only help to explain the anomalies of hair

development, but also indicate the direction in which we may find

an explanation of the anomalies of the sexual impulse.

Apart from the complicated problem presented by the hair, there are

genuine approximations to the masculine type. The muscles tend to be

everywhere firm, with a comparative absence of soft connective tissue; so

that an inverted woman may give an unfeminine impression to the sense of

touch. A certain tonicity of the muscles has indeed often been observed in

homosexual women. Hirschfeld found that two-thirds of inverted women are

more muscular than normal women, while, on the other hand, he found that

among inverted men the musculature was often weak.

Not only is the tone of the voice often different, but there is reason to

suppose that this rests on a basis, of anatomical modification. At Moll's

suggestion, Flatau examined the larynx in a large number of inverted

women, and found in several a very decidedly masculine type of larynx, or

an approach to it, especially in cases of distinctly congenital origin.

Hirschfeld has confirmed Flatau's observations on this point. It may be

added that inverted women are very often good whistlers; Hirschfeld even

knows two who are public performers in whistling. It is scarcely necessary

to remark that while the old proverb associates whistling in a woman with

crowing in a hen, whistling in a woman is no evidence of any general

physical or psychic inversion.

As regards the sexual organs it seems possible, so far as my observations

go, to speak more definitely of inverted women than of inverted men. In

all three of the cases concerning whom I have precise information, among

those whose histories are recorded in the present chapter, there is more

or less arrested development and infantilism. In one a somewhat small

vagina and prominent nymphæ, with local sensitiveness, are associated with

oligotrichosis. In another the sexual parts are in some respects rather

small, while there is no trace of ovary on one side. In the third case,

together with hypertrichosis, the nates are small, the nymphæ large, the

clitoris deeply hooded, the hymen thick, and the vagina probably small.

These observations, though few, are significant, and they accord with

those of other observers.[170] Krafft-Ebing well described a case which I

should be inclined to regard as typical of many: sexual organs feminine in

character, but remaining at the infantile stage of a girl of 10; small

clitoris, prominent cockscomb-like nymphæ, small vagina scarcely

permitting normal intercourse and very sensitive. Hirschfeld agrees in

finding common an approach to the type described by Krafft-Ebing; atrophic

anomalies he regards as more common than hypertrophic, and he refers to

thickness of hymen and a tendency to notably small uterus and ovaries. The

clitoris is more usually small than large; women with a large clitoris (as

Parent-Duchâtelet long since remarked) seem rarely to be of masculine

type.

Notwithstanding these tendencies, however, sexual inversion in a woman is,

as a rule, not more obvious than in a man. At the same time, the inverted

woman is not usually attractive to men. She herself generally feels the

greatest indifference to men, and often, cannot understand why a woman

should love a man, though she easily understands why a man should love a

woman. She shows, therefore, nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging

air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men. The man who

is passionately attracted to an inverted woman is usually of rather a

feminine type. For instance, in one case present to my mind he was of

somewhat neurotic heredity, of slight physical development, not sexually

attractive to women, and very domesticated in his manner of living; in

short, a man who might easily have been passionately attracted to his own

sex.

While the inverted woman is cold, or, at most, comradely in her bearing

toward men, she may become shy and confused in the presence of attractive

persons of her own sex, even unable to undress in their presence, and full

of tender ardor for the woman whom she loves.[171]

Homosexual passion in women finds more or less complete expression in

kissing, sleeping together, and close embraces, as in what is sometimes

called "lying spoons," when one woman lies on her side with her back

turned to her friend and embraces her from behind, fitting her thighs into

the bend of her companion's legs, so that her mons veneris is in dose

contact with the other's buttocks, and slight movement then produces mild

erethism. One may also lie on the other's body, or there may be mutual

masturbation. Mutual contact and friction of the sexual parts seem to be

comparatively rare, but it seems to have been common in antiquity, for we

owe to it the term "tribadism" which is sometimes used as a synonym of

feminine homosexuality, and this method is said to be practised today by

the southern Slav women of the Balkans.[172] The extreme gratification is

_cunnilinctus_, or oral stimulation of the feminine sexual organs, not

usually mutual, but practised by the more active and masculine partner;

this act is sometimes termed, by no means satisfactorily, "Sapphism," and

"Lesbianism."[173]

An enlarged clitoris is but rarely found in inversion and plays a very

small part in the gratification of feminine homosexuality. Kiernan refers;

to a case, occurring in America, in which an inverted woman, married and a

mother, possessed a clitoris which measured 2½ inches when erect. Casanova

described an inverted Swiss, woman, otherwise feminine in development,

whose clitoris in excitement was longer than his little finger, and

capable of penetration.[174] The older literature contains many similar

cases. In most such cases, however, we are probably concerned with some

form of pseudohermaphroditism, and the "clitoris" may more properly be

regarded as a penis; there is thus no inversion involved.[175]

While the use of the clitoris is rare in homosexuality, the use of an

artificial penis is by no means uncommon and very widespread. In several

of the modern cases in which inverted women have married women (such as

those of Sarolta Vay and De Raylan) the belief of the wife in the

masculinity of the "husband" has been due to an appliance of this kind

used in intercourse. The artificial penis (the olisbos, or baubon) was

well known to the Greeks and is described by Herondas. Its invention was

ascribed by Suidas to the Milesian women, and Miletus, according to

Aristophanes in the _Lysistrata_, was the chief place of its

manufacture.[176] It was still known in medieval times, and in the twelfth

century Bishop Burchard, of Worms, speaks of its use as a thing "which

some women are accustomed to do." In the early eighteenth century,

Margaretha Lincken, again in Germany, married another woman with the aid

of an artificial male organ.[177] The artificial penis is also used by

homosexual women in various parts of the world. Thus we find it mentioned

in legends of the North American Indians and it is employed in Zanzibar

and Madagascar.[178]

The various phenomena of sadism, masochism, and fetichism which

are liable to arise, spontaneously or by suggestion, in the

relationships of normal lovers, as well as of male inverts, may

also arise in the same way among inverted women, though,

probably, not often in a very pronounced form. Moll, however,

narrates a case (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, 1899, pp. 565-70)

in which various minor but very definite perversions were

combined with inversion. A young lady of 26, of good heredity,

from the age of 6 had only been attracted to her own sex, and

even in childhood had practised mutual _cunnilinctus_. She was

extremely intelligent, and of generous and good-natured

disposition, with various masculine tastes, but, on the whole, of

feminine build and with completely feminine larynx. During seven

years she lived exclusively with one woman. She found complete

satisfaction in active _cunnilinctus_. During the course of this

relationship various other methods of excitement and

gratification arose--it seems, for the most part, spontaneously.

She found much pleasure in urolagnic and coprolagnic practices.

In addition to these and similar perversions, the subject liked

being bitten, especially in the lobule of the ear, and she was

highly excited when whipped by her friend, who should, if

possible, be naked at the time; only the nates must be whipped

and only a birch rod be used, or the effect would not be

obtained. These practices would not be possible to her in the

absence of extreme intimacy and mutual understanding, and they

only took place with the one friend. In this case the perverse

phenomena were masochistic rather than sadistic. Many homosexual

women, however, display sadistic tendencies in a more or less

degree. Thus Dr. Kiernan tells me of an American case, with which

he was professionally concerned with Dr. Moyer (see also paper by

Kiernan and Moyer in _Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1907), of a

sadistic inverted woman in a small Illinois city, married and

with two young children. She was of undoubted neuropathic stock

and there was a history of pre-marital masturbation and

bestiality with a dog. She was a prominent club woman in her city

and a leader in religious and social matters; as is often the

case with sadists she was pruriently prudish, and there was

strong testimony to her chaste and modest character by clergymen,

club women, and local magnates. The victim of her sadistic

passion was a girl she had adopted from a Home, but whom she half

starved. On this girl she inflicted over three hundred wounds.

Many of these wounds were stabs with forks and scissors which

merely penetrated the skin. This was especially the case with

those inflicted on the breasts, labia, and clitoris. During the

infliction of these she experienced intense excitement, but this

excitement was under control, and when she heard anyone

approaching she instantly desisted. She was found sane and

responsible at the time of these actions, but the jury also found

that she had since become insane and she was sent to an Insane

Hospital, after recovery to serve a sentence of two years in

prison. The alleged insanity, Dr. Kiernan adds, was of the

dubious manic and depressive variety, and perhaps chiefly due to

wounded pride.

The inverted woman is an enthusiastic admirer of feminine beauty,

especially of the statuesque beauty of the body, unlike, in this, the

normal woman, whose sexual emotion is but faintly tinged by esthetic

feeling. In her sexual habits we perhaps less often find the degree of

promiscuity which is not uncommon among inverted men, and we may perhaps

agree with Moll that homosexual women are more often apt to love

faithfully and lastingly than homosexual men. Hirschfeld remarks that

inverted women are not usually attracted in girlhood by the autoerotic and

homosexual vices of school-life,[179] and nearly all the women whose

histories I have recorded in this chapter felt a pronounced repugnance to

such manifestations and cherished lofty ideals of love.

Inverted women are not rarely married. Moll, from various confidences

which he has received, believes that inverted women have not the same

horror of normal coitus as inverted, men; this is probably due to the fact

that the woman under such circumstances can retain a certain passivity. In

other cases there is some degree of bisexuality, although, as among

inverted men, the homosexual instinct seems usually to give the greater

relief and gratification.

It has been stated by many observers--in America, in France, in Germany,

and in England--that homosexuality is increasing among women.[180] There

are many influences in our civilization today which encourage such

manifestations.[181] The modern movement of emancipation--the movement to

obtain the same rights and duties as men, the same freedom and

responsibility, the same education and the same work--must be regarded as,

on the whole, a wholesome and inevitable movement. But it carries with it

certain disadvantages.[182] Women are, very justly, coming to look upon

knowledge and experience generally as their right as much as their

brothers' right. But when this doctrine is applied to the sexual sphere it

finds certain limitations. Intimacies of any kind between young men and

young women are as much discouraged socially now as ever they were; as

regards higher education, the mere association of the sexes in the

lecture-room or the laboratory or the hospital is discouraged in England

and in America. While men are allowed freedom, the sexual field of women

is becoming restricted to trivial flirtation with the opposite sex, and to

intimacy with their own sex; having been taught independence of men and

disdain for the old theory which placed women in the moated grange of the

home to sigh for a man who never comes, a tendency develops for women to

carry this independence still farther and to find love where they find

work. These unquestionable influences of modern movements cannot directly

cause sexual inversion, but they develop the germs of it, and they

probably cause a spurious imitation. This spurious imitation is due to the

fact that the congenital anomaly occurs with special frequency in women of

high intelligence who, voluntarily or involuntarily, influence others.

Kurella, Bloch, and others believe that the woman movement has

helped to develop homosexuality (see, e.g., I. Bloch, _Beiträge

zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, 1902, vol. i, p. 248).

Various "feminine Strindbergs of the woman movement," as they

have been termed, displayed marked hostility to men. Anna Rüling

claims that many leaders of the movement, from the outset until

today, have been inverted. Hirschfeld, however (_Die

Homosexualität_, p. 500), after giving special attention to the

matter, concludes that, alike among English suffragettes and in

the German Verein für Frauenstimmrecht, the percentage of inverts

is less than 10 per cent.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] Catharina Margaretha Lincken, who married another woman, somewhat

after the manner of the Hungarian Countess Sarolta Vay (i.e., with the aid

of an artificial male organ), was condemned to death for sodomy, and

executed in 1721 at the age of 27 (F.C. Müller, "Ein weiterer Fall von

conträrer Sexualempfindung," _Friedrich's Blätter für Gerichtliche

Medizin_, Heft 4, 1891). The most fully investigated case of sexual

inversion in a woman in modern times is that of Countess Sarolta Vay

(_Friedrich's Blätter_, Heft, 1, 1891; also Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia

Sexualis_, Eng. trans. of 10th. ed., 416-427; also summarized in Appendix

E of earlier editions of the present Study). Sarolta always dressed as a

man, and went through a pseudo-marriage with a girl who was ignorant of

the real sex of her "husband." She was acquitted and allowed to return

home and continue dressing as a man.

[138] Anna Rüling has some remarks on this point, _Jahrbuch für sexuelle

Zwischenstufen_, vol. vii, 1905, p. 141 et seq.

[139] This, of course, by no means necessarily indicates the existence of

sexual inversion, any more than the presence of feminine traits in

distinguished men. I have elsewhere pointed out (e.g., _Man and Woman_,

5th ed., 1915, p. 488) that genius in either sex frequently involves the

coexistence of masculine, feminine, and infantile traits.

[140] Various references to Queen Hatschepsu are given by Hirschfeld (_Die

Homosexualität_, p. 739). Hirschfeld's not severely critical list of

distinguished homosexual persons includes 18 women. It would not be

difficult to add others.

[141] Sophie Hochstetter, in a study of Queen Christina in the _Jahrbuch

für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_ (vol. ix, 1908, p. 168 et seq.), regards

her as bisexual, while H.J. Schouten (_Monatsschrift für

Kriminalanthropologie_, 1912, Heft 6) concludes that she was homosexual,

and believes that it was Monaldeschi's knowledge on this point which led

her to instigate his murder.

[142] Cf. Hans Freimark, _Helena Petrovna Blavatsky_; Levetzow, "Louise

Michel," _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, vol. vii, 1905, p. 307 et

seq.

[143] Rosa Bonheur, the painter, is a specially conspicuous example of

pronounced masculinity in, a woman of genius. She frequently dressed as a

man, and when dressed as a woman her masculine air occasionally attracted

the attention of the police. See Theodore Stanton's biography.

[144] There is some difference of opinion as to whether there is less real

delinquency among women (see Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, 6th ed.,

1915, p. 469), but we are here concerned with judicial criminality.

[145] This apparently widespread opinion is represented by the remark of a

young man in the eighteenth century (concerning the Lesbian friend of the

woman he wishes to marry), quoted in the Comte de Tilly's _Souvenirs_: "I

confess that that is a kind of rivalry which causes me no annoyance; on

the contrary it amuses me, and I am immoral enough to laugh at it." That

attitude of the educated and refined was not probably shared by the

populace. Madame de Lamballe, who was guillotined at the Revolution, was

popularly regarded as a tribade, and it was said that on this account her

charming head received the special insults of the mob.

[146] Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, 5th ed., 1915, especially chapters

xiii and xv.

[147] Karsch (_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, 1901, pp.

85-9) brings together some passages concerning homosexuality in women

among various peoples.

[148] Gandavo, quoted by Lomaeco, _Archivio per l'Antropologia_, 1889,

fasc. 1.

[149] _Journal Anthropological Institute_, July-Dec., 1904, p. 342.

[150] G.H. Lowie, "The Assiniboine," Am. Museum of Nat. Hist.,

_Anthropological Papers_, New York, 1909, vol. xiv, p. 223; W. Jones, "Fox

Texts," _Publications of Am. Ethnological Soc._, Leyden, 1907, vol. i, p.

151; quoted by D.C. McMurtrie, "A Legend of Lesbian Love Among the North

American Indians," _Urologic Review_, April, 1914.

[151] _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Heft 6, 1899, p. 669.

[152] I. Bloch, _Die Prostitution_, vol. i, pp. 180, 181.

[153] Corre, _Crime en Pays Creoles_, 1889.

[154] In a Spanish prison, some years ago, when a new governor endeavored

to reform the homosexual manners of the women, the latter made his post so

uncomfortable that he was compelled to resign. Salillas (_Vida Penal en

España_) asserts that all the evidence shows the extraordinary expansion

of Lesbian love in prisons. The _mujeres hombrunas_ receive masculine

names--Pepe, Chulo, Bernardo, Valiente; new-comers are surrounded in the

court-yard by a crowd of lascivious women, who overwhelm them with honeyed

compliments and gallantries and promises of protection, the most robust

virago having most successes; a single day and night complete the

initiation.

[155] Even among Arab prostitutes it is found, according to Kocher, though

among Arab women generally it is rare.

[156] _Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten_, Nov., 1905; in his _Tribadie

Berlins_, he states that among 3000 prostitutes at least ten per cent.

were homosexual. See also Parent-Duchâtelet, _De la Prostitution_, 3d ed.,

vol. i, pp. 159, 169; Martineau, _Les Déformations vulvaires et anales_;

and Iwan Bloch, _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, 1902,

vol. i, p. 244.

[157] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 330.

[158] Eulenburg, _Sexuelle Neuropathie_, p. 144.

[159] See vol. vi of these _Studies_, "Sex in Relation to Society," ch.

vii.

[160] The prostitute has sometimes been regarded as a special type,

analogous to the instinctive criminal. This point of view has been

specially emphasized by Lombroso and Ferrero, _La Donna Delinquente_.

Apart from this, these authors regard homosexuality among prostitutes as

due to the following causes (p. 410 et seq.): (_a_) excessive and often

unnatural venery; (_b_) confinement in a prison, with separation from men;

(_c_) close association with the same sex, such as is common in brothels;

(_d_) maturity and old age, inverting the secondary sexual characters and

predisposing to sexual inversion; (_e_) disgust of men produced by a

prostitute's profession, combined with the longing for love. For cases of

homosexuality in American prostitutes, see D. McMurtrie, _Lancet-Clinic_,

Nov. 2, 1912.

[161] Thus Casanova, who knew several nuns intimately, refers to

homosexuality as a childish sin so common in convents that confessors

imposed no penance for it (_Mémoires_, ed. Garnier, vol. iv, p. 517).

Homosexuality in convent schools has been studied by Mercante, _Archivos

di Psiquiatria_, 1905, pp. 22-30.

[162] I quote the following from a private letter written in Switzerland:

"An English resident has told me that his wife has lately had to send away

her parlor-maid (a pretty girl) because she was always taking in strange

women to sleep with her. I asked if she had been taken from hotel service,

and found, as I expected, that she had. But neither my friend nor his wife

suspected the real cause of these nocturnal visits."

[163] For a series of cases of affection of girls for girls, in apparently

normal subjects in the United States, see, e.g., Lancaster, "The

Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence," _Pedagogical Seminary_, July,

1897, p. 88; also, for school friendships between girls, exactly

resembling those between boys and girls, Theodate L. Smith, "Types of

Adolescent Affection," ib., June, 1904, pp. 193, 195.

[164] Obici and Marchesini, _Le "Amicizie" di Collegio_, Rome, 1898.

[165] See Appendix B, in which I have briefly summarized the result of the

investigation by Obici and Marchesini, and also brought forward

observations concerning English colleges.

[166] An interesting ancient example of a woman with an irresistible

impulse to adopt men's clothing and lead a man's life, but who did not, so

far as is known, possess any sexual impulses, is that of Mary Frith,

commonly called Moll Cutpurse, who lived in London at the beginning of the

seventeenth century. _The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith_ appeared in

1662; Middleton and Rowley also made her the heroine of their delightful

comedy, _The Roaring Girl (Mermaid Series, Middleton's Plays_, volume ii),

somewhat idealizing her, however. She seems to have belonged to a neurotic

and eccentric stock; "each of the family," her biographer says, "had his

peculiar freak." As a child she only cared for boys' games, and could

never adapt herself to any woman's avocations. "She had a natural

abhorrence to the tending of children." Her disposition was altogether

masculine; "she was not for mincing obscenity, but would talk freely,

whatever came uppermost." She never had any children, and was not taxed

with debauchery: "No man can say or affirm that ever she had a sweetheart

or any such fond thing to dally with her;" a mastiff was the only living

thing she cared for. Her life was not altogether honest, but not so much

from any organic tendency to crime, it seems, as because her abnormal

nature and restlessness made her an outcast. She was too fond of drink,

and is said to have been the first woman who smoked tobacco. Nothing is

said or suggested of any homosexual practices, but we see clearly here

what may be termed the homosexual diathesis.

[167] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 137.

[168] S. Weissenberg, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1892, Heft 4, p. 280.

[169] This case was described by Gasparini, _Archivio di Psichiatria_,

1908, fasc. 1-2.

[170] Bringing together ten cases of inverted women from various sources

(including the three original cases mentioned above), in only four were

the sexual organs normal; in the others they were more or less

undeveloped.

[171] Homosexual persons generally, male and female, unlike the

heterosexual, are apt to feel more modesty with persons of the same sex

than with those of the opposite sex. See, e.g., Hirschfeld, _Die

Homosexualität_, p. 76.

[172] Kryptadia, vol. vi, p. 197.

[173] The term "cunnilinctus" was suggested to me by the late Dr. J.

Bonus, and I have ever since used it; the Latin authors commonly used

"cunnilingus" for the actor, but had no corresponding term for the action.

Hirschfeld has lately used the term "cunnilinctio" in the same sense, but

such a formation is quite inadmissible. For information on the classic

terms for this perversion, see, e.g., Iwan Bloch, _Ursprung der Syphilis_,

vol. ii, p. 612 et seq.

[174] Casanova, _Mémoires_, ed. Gamier, vol. iv, p. 597.

[175] Hirschfeld deals in a full and authoritative manner with the

differential diagnosis of inversion and the other groups of transitional

sexuality in _Die Homosexualität_, ch. ii; also in his fully illustrated

book _Geschlechtsübergänge_, 1905.

[176] Havelock Ellis, "Auto-erotism," in vol. i of these _Studies_; Iwan

Bloch, _Ursprung der Syphilis_, vol. ii, p. 589; ib., _Die Prostitution_,

vol, i, pp. 385-6; for early references, Crusius, _Untersuchungen zu den

Mimiamben der Herondas_, pp. 129-30.

[177] I have found a notice of a similar case in France, during the

sixteenth century, in Montaigne's _Journal du Voyage en Italie en_ 1850

(written by his secretary); it took place near Vitry le François. Seven or

eight girls belonging to Chaumont, we are told, resolved to dress and to

work as men; one of these came to Vitry to work as a weaver, and was

looked upon as a well-conditioned young man, and liked by everyone. At

Vitry she became betrothed to a woman, but, a quarrel arising, no marriage

took place. Afterward "she fell in love with a woman whom she married, and

with whom she lived for four or five months, to the wife's great

contentment, it is said; but, having been recognized by some one from

Chaumont, and brought to justice, she was condemned to be hanged. She said

she would even prefer this to living again as a girl, and was hanged for

using illicit inventions to supply the defects of her sex" (_Journal_, ed.

by d'Ancona, 1889, p. 11).

[178] Roux, _Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie_, 1905, No. 3. Roux knew a

Comarian woman who, at the age of 50, after her husband's death, became

homosexual and made herself an artificial penis which she used with

younger women.

[179] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 47.

[180] There are few traces of feminine homosexuality in English social

history of the past. In Charles the Second's Court, the _Mémoires de

Ghrammont_ tell us, Miss Hobart was credited with Lesbian tendencies.

"Soon the rumor, true or false, of this singularity spread through the

court. They were gross enough there never to have heard of that refinement

of ancient Greece in the tastes of tenderness, and the idea came into

their heads that the illustrious Hobart, who seemed so affectionate to

pretty women, must be different from what she appeared." This passage is

interesting because it shows us how rare was the exception. A century

later, however, homosexuality among English women seems to have been

regarded by the French as common, and Bacchaumont, on January 1, 1773,

when recording that Mlle. Heinel of the Opera was settling in England,

added: "Her taste for women will there find attractive satisfaction, for

though Paris furnishes many tribades it is said that London is herein

superior."

[181] "I believe," writes a well-informed American correspondent, "that

sexual inversion is increasing among Americans--both men and women--and

the obvious reasons are: first, the growing independence of the women,

their lessening need for marriage; secondly, the nervous strain that

business competition has brought upon the whole nation. In a word, the

rapidly increasing masculinity in women and the unhealthy nervous systems

of the men offer the ideal factors for the production of sexual inversion

in their children."

[182] Homosexual women, like homosexual men, now insert advertisements in

the newspapers, seeking a "friend." Näcke ("Zeitungsannoncen von

weiblichen Homosexuellen," _Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1902, p.

225) brought together from Munich newspapers a collection of such

advertisements, most of which were fairly unambiguous: "Actress with

modern ideas desires to know rich lady with similar views, for the sake of

friendly relations, etc.;" "Young lady of 19, a pretty blonde, seeks

another like herself for walks, theatre, etc.," and so on.