signify whether we regard the sexual inversion of an Urning as morbid or
as natural. He has become what he is in the dawn and first emergence of
emotional existence. You may contend, that he derives perverted
instincts from his ancestry, that he is the subject of a psychical
disorder, that from the cradle he is predestined by atavism or disease
to misery. I maintain that he is one of nature's sports, a creature
healthy and well organised, evolved in her superb indifference to
aberrations from the normal type. We need not quarrel over our
solutions of the problem. The fact that he is there, among us, and that
he constitutes an ever-present factor in our social system, has to be
faced. How are we to deal with him? Has society the right to punish
individuals sent into the world with homosexual instincts? Putting the
question at its lowest point, admitting that these persons are the
victims of congenital morbidity, ought they to be treated as criminals?
It is established that their appetites, being innate, are _to them_ at
least natural and undepraved; the common appetites, being excluded from
their sexual scheme, are _to them_ unnatural and abhorrent. Ought not
such beings, instead of being hunted down and persecuted by legal
bloodhounds, to be regarded with pitying solicitude as among the most
unfortunate of human beings, doomed as they are to inextinguishable
longings and life-long deprivation of that which is the chief prize of
man's existence on this planet, a reciprocated love? As your laws at
present stand, you include all cases of sexual inversion under the one
domination of crime. You make exceptions in some special instances, and
treat the men involved as lunatics. But the Urning is neither criminal
nor insane. He is only less fortunate than you are, through an accident
of birth, which is at present obscure to our imperfect science of sexual
determination.
So far Ulrichs is justified in his pleading. When it has been admitted
that sexual inversion is usually a fact of congenital diathesis, the
criminal law stands in no logical relation to the phenomenon. It is
monstrous to punish people as wilfully wicked because, having been born
with the same organs and the same appetites as their neighbours, they
are doomed to suffer under the frightful disability of not being able to
use their organs or to gratify their appetites in the ordinary way.
But here arises a difficulty, which cannot be ignored, since upon it is
based the only valid excuse for the position taken up by society in
dealing with this matter. Not all men and women possessed by abnormal
sexual desires can claim that these are innate. It is certain that the
habits of sodomy are frequently acquired under conditions of exclusion
from the company of persons of the other sex--as in public schools,
barracks, prisons, convents, ships. In some cases they are deliberately
adopted by natures tired of normal sexual pleasure. They may even become
fashionable and epidemic. Lastly, it is probable that curiosity and
imitation communicate them to otherwise normal individuals at a
susceptible moment of development. Therefore society has the right to
say: Those who are the unfortunate subjects of inborn sexual inversion
shall not be allowed to indulge their passions, lest the mischief should
spread, and a vicious habit should contaminate our youth. From the
utilitarian point of view, society is justified in protecting itself
against a minority of exceptional beings whom it regards as pernicious
to the general welfare. From any point of view, the majority is strong
enough to coerce to inborn instincts and to trample on the anguish of a
few unfortunates. But, asks Ulrichs, is this consistent with humanity,
is it consistent with the august ideal of impartial equity? Are people,
sound in body, vigorous in mind, wholesome in habit, capable of generous
affections, good servants of the state, trustworthy in all the ordinary
relations of life, to be condemned at law as criminals because they
cannot feel sexually as the majority feel, because they find some
satisfaction for their inborn want in ways which the majority dislike?
Seeking a solution of the difficulty stated in the foregoing paragraph,
Ulrichs finds it in fact and history. His answer is that if society
leaves nature to take her course, with the abnormal as well as with the
normal subjects of sexual inclination, society will not suffer. In
countries where legal penalties have been removed from inverted
sexuality, where this is placed upon the same footing as the normal--in
France, Bavaria (?), the Netherlands (?)--no inconvenience has hitherto
arisen.[61] There has ensued no sudden and flagrant outburst of a
depraved habit, no dissemination of a spreading moral poison. On the
other hand, in countries where these penalties exist and are
enforced--in England, for example, and in the metropolis of England,
London--inverted sexuality runs riot, despite of legal prohibitions,
despite of threats of prison, dread of exposure, and the intolerable
pest of organised _chantage_. In the eyes of Ulrichs, society is engaged
in sitting on a safety-valve, which if nature were allowed to operate
unhindered would do society no harm, but rather good. The majority, he
thinks, are not going to become Urnings, for the simple reason that they
have not the unhappy constitution of the Urning. Cease to persecute
Urnings, accept them as inconsiderable, yet real, factors, in the social
commonwealth, leave them to themselves, and you will not be the worse
for it, and will also not carry on your conscience the burden of
intolerant vindictiveness.
Substantiating this position, Ulrichs demonstrates that acquired habits
of sexual inversion are almost invariably thrown off by normal natures.
Your boys at public schools, he says, behave as though they were
Urnings. In the lack of women, at the time when their passions are
predominant, they yield themselves up together to mutual indulgences
which would bring your laws down with terrible effect upon adults. You
are aware of this. You send your sons to Eton and to Harrow, and you
know very well what goes on there. Yet you remain untroubled in your
minds. And why? Because you feel convinced that they will return to
their congenital instincts.
When the school, the barrack, the prison, the ship has been abandoned,
the male reverts to the female. This is the truth about Dionings. The
large majority of men and women remain normal, simply because they were
made normal. They cannot find the satisfaction of their nature in those
inverted practices to which they yielded for a time through want of
normal outlet. Society risks little by the occasional caprice of the
school, the barrack, the prison, and the ship. Some genuine Urnings may,
indeed, discover their inborn inclination by means of the process to
which you subject them. But you are quite right in supposing that a
Dioning, though you have forced him to become for a time an Uraniaster,
will never in the long run appear as an Urning. The extensive experience
which English people possess regarding such matters, owing to the
notorious condition of their public schools, goes to confirm Ulrichs'
position. Headmasters know how many Uraniasters they have dealt with,
what excellent Dionings they become, and how comparatively rare, and yet
how incorrigibly steadfast, are the genuine Urnings in their flock.
The upshot of this matter is that we are continually forcing our young
men into conditions under which, if sexual inversion were an acquired
attribute, it would become stereotyped in their natures. Yet it does not
do so. Provisionally, because they are shut off from girls, because they
find no other outlet for their sex at the moment of its most imperious
claims, they turn toward males, and treat their younger school-fellows
in ways which would consign an adult to penal servitude. They are
Uraniasters by necessity and _faute de mieux_. But no sooner are they
let loose upon the world than the majority revert to normal channels.
They pick up women in the streets, and form connections, as the phrase
goes. Some undoubtedly, in this fiery furnace through which they have
been passed, discover their inborn sexual inversion. Then, when they
cannot resist the ply of their proclivity, you condemn them as criminals
in their later years. Is that just? Would it not be better to revert
from our civilisation to the manners of the savage man--to initiate
youths into the mysteries of sex, and to give each in his turn the
chance of developing a normal instinct by putting him during his time of
puberty freely and frankly to the female? If you abhor Urnings, as you
surely do, you are at least responsible for their mishap by the
extraordinary way in which you bring them up. At all events, when they
develop into the eccentric beings which they are, you are the last
people in the world who have any right to punish them with legal
penalties and social obloquy.
Considering the present state of the law in most countries to be
inequitable toward a respectable minority of citizens, Ulrichs proposes
that Urnings should be placed upon the same footing as other men. That
is to say, sexual relations between males and males should not be
treated as criminal, unless they be attended with violence (as in the
case of rape), or be carried on in such a way as to offend the public
sense of decency (in places of general resort or on the open street), or
thirdly be entertained between an adult and a boy under age (the
protected age to be decided as in the case of girls). What he demands is
that when an adult male, freely and of his own consent, complies with
the proposals of an adult person of his own sex, and their intercourse
takes place with due regard for public decency, neither party shall be
liable to prosecution and punishment at law. In fact he would be
satisfied with the same conditions as those prevalent in France, and
since June, 1889, in Italy.
If so much were conceded by the majority of normal people to the
abnormal minority, continues Ulrichs, an immense amount of misery and
furtive vice would be at once abolished. And it is difficult to conceive
what evil results would follow. A defender of the present laws of
England, Prussia, &c., might indeed reply: "This is opening a free way
to the seduction and corruption of young men." But young men are surely
at least as capable of defending themselves against seduction and
corruption as young women are. Nay, they are far more able, not merely
because they are stronger, but because they are not usually weakened by
an overpowering sexual instinct on which the seducer plays. Yet the
seduction and corruption of young women is tolerated, in spite of the
attendant consequences of illegitimate childbirth, and all which that
involves. This toleration of the seduction of women by men springs from
the assumption that only the normal sexual appetite is natural. The
seduction of a man by a male passes for criminal, because the inverted
sexual instinct is regarded as unnatural, depraved, and wilfully
perverse. On the hypothesis that individuals subject to perverted
instincts can suppress them at pleasure or convert them into normal
appetite, it is argued that they must be punished. But when the real
facts come to be studied, it will be found: first, that these instincts
are inborn in Urnings, and are therefore in their case natural;
secondly, that the suppression of them is tantamount to life-long
abstinence under the constant torture of sexual solicitation; thirdly,
that the conversion of them into normal channels is in a large
percentage of cases totally impossible, in nearly all where it has been
attempted is only partially successful, and where marriage ensues has
generally ended in misery for both parties. Ulrichs, it will be noticed,
does not distinguish between Urnings, in whom the inversion is admitted
to be congenital, and Uraniasters, in whom it has been acquired or
deliberately adopted. And it would be very difficult to frame laws which
should take cognisance of these two classes. The Code Napoleon
legalises the position of both, theoretically at any rate. The English
code treats both as criminal, doing thereby, it must be admitted, marked
injustice to recognised Urnings, who at the worst are morbid or insane,
or sexually deformed, through no fault of their own.
In the present state of things, adds Ulrichs, the men who yield their
bodies to abnormal lovers, do not merely do so out of compliance,
sympathy, or the desire for reasonable reward. Too often they speculate
upon the illegality of the connection, and have their main object in the
extortion of money by threats of exposure. Thus the very basest of all
trades, that of _chantage_, is encouraged by the law. Alter the law, and
instead of increasing vice, you will diminish it; for a man who should
then meet the advances of an Urning, would do so out of compliance, or,
as is the case with female prostitutes, upon the expectation of a
reasonable gain. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession with the
object of extorting money would be removed. Moreover, as regards
individuals alike abnormally constituted, voluntary and mutually
satisfying relations, free from degrading risks, and possibly permanent,
might be formed between responsible agents. Finally, if it be feared
that the removal of legal disabilities would turn the whole male
population into Urnings, consider whether London is now so much purer in
this respect than Paris?
One serious objection to recognising and tolerating sexual inversion has
always been that it tends to check the population. This was a sound
political and social argument in the time of Moses, when a small and
militant tribe needed to multiply to the full extent of its procreative
capacity. It is by no means so valid in our age, when the habitable
portions of the globe are rapidly becoming overcrowded.[62] Moreover, we
must bear in mind that society, under the existing order, sanctions
female prostitution, whereby men and women, the normally procreative,
are sterilised to an indefinite extent. Logic, in these circumstances,
renders it equitable and ridiculous to deny a sterile exercise of sex to
abnormal men and women, who are by instinct and congenital diathesis
non-procreative.
As the result of these considerations, Ulrichs concludes that there is
no real ground for the persecution of Urnings except as may be found in
the repugnance by the vast numerical majority for an insignificant
minority. The majority encourages matrimony, condones seduction,
sanctions prostitution, legalises divorce in the interests of its own
sexual proclivities. It makes temporary or permanent unions illegal for
the minority whose inversion of instinct it abhors. And this
persecution, in the popular mind at any rate, is justified, like many
other inequitable acts of prejudice or ignorance, by theological
assumptions and the so-called mandates of revelation.
In the next place it is objected that inversed sexuality is demoralising
to the manhood of a nation, that it degrades the dignity of a man, and
that it is incapable of moral elevation. Each of these points may be
taken separately. They are all of them at once and together contradicted
by the history of ancient Greece. There the most warlike sections of the
race, the Dorians of Crete and Sparta, and the Thebans, organised the
love of male for male because of the social and military advantages they
found in it. Their annals abound in eminent instances of heroic
enthusiasm, patriotic devotion, and high living, inspired by homosexual
passion. The fighting peoples of the world, Kelts in ancient story,
Normans, Turks, Afghans, Albanians, Tartars, have been distinguished by
the frequency among them of what popular prejudice regards as an
effeminate vice.
With regard to the dignity of man, is there, asks Ulrichs, anything more
degrading to humanity in sexual acts performed between male and male
than in similar acts performed between male and female. In a certain
sense all sex has an element of grossness which inspires repugnance. The
gods, says Swinburne,
"Have strewed one marriage-bed with tears and fire,
For extreme loathing and supreme desire."
It would not be easy to maintain that a curate begetting his fourteenth
baby on the body of a worn-out wife is a more elevating object of
mental contemplation than Harmodius in the embrace of Aristogeiton, or
that a young man sleeping with a prostitute picked up in the Haymarket
is cleaner than his brother sleeping with a soldier picked up in the
Park. Much of this talk about the dignity of man, says Ulrichs, proceeds
from a vulgar misconception as to the nature of inverted sexual desire.
People assume that Urnings seek their pleasure only or mainly in an act
of unmentionable indecency. The exact opposite, he assures them, is the
truth. The act in question is no commoner between men and men than it is
between men and women. Ulrichs, upon this point, may be suspected,
perhaps, as an untrustworthy witness. His testimony, however, is
confirmed by Krafft-Ebing, who, as we have seen, has studied sexual
inversion long and minutely from the point of view of psychical
pathology. "As regards the nature of their sexual gratification," he
writes, "it must be established at the outset that the majority of them
are contented with reciprocal embraces; the act commonly ascribed to
them they generally abhor as much as normal men do; and, inasmuch as
they always prefer adults, they are in no sense specially dangerous to
boys."[63] This author proceeds to draw a distinction between Urnings in
whom sexual inversion is congenital, and old debauchees or half-idiotic
individuals, who are in the habit of misusing boys. The vulgar have
confounded two different classes; and everybody who studies the
psychology of Urnings is aware that this involves a grave injustice to
the latter.
"But, after all," continues the objector, "you cannot show that inverted
sexuality is capable of any moral elevation." Without appealing to
antiquity, the records of which confute this objection overwhelmingly,
one might refer to the numerous passages in Ulrich's writings where he
relates the fidelity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and romantic enthusiasm
which frequently accompany such loves, and raises them above baseness.
But, since here again he may be considered a suspicious witness, it will
suffice, as before, to translate a brief passage from Krafft-Ebing. "The
Urning loves, idolizes his friend, quite as much as the normal man loves
and idolizes his girl. He is capable of making for him the greatest
sacrifices. He suffers the pangs of unhappy, often unreturned,
affection; feels jealousy, mourns under the fear of his friend's
infidelity."[64] When the time comes for speaking about Walt Whitman's
treatment of this topic, it will appear that the passion of a man for
his comrade has been idealised in fact and deed, as well as in poetry.
For the present it is enough to remark that a kind of love, however
spontaneous and powerful, which is scouted, despised, tabooed, banned,
punished, relegated to holes and corners, cannot be expected to show its
best side to the world. The sense of sin and crime and danger, the
humiliation and repression and distress to which the unfortunate pariahs
of inverted sexuality are daily and hourly exposed must inevitably
deteriorate the nobler elements in their emotion. Give abnormal love
the same chance as normal love, subject it to the wholesome control of
public opinion, allow it to be self-respecting, draw it from dark slums
into the light of day, strike off its chains and set it free--and I am
confident says Ulrichs, that it will exhibit analogous virtues,
checkered, of course, by analogous vices, to those with which you are
familiar in the mutual love of male and female. The slave has of
necessity a slavish soul. The way to elevate is to emancipate him.
"All that may be true," replies the objector: "it is even possible that
society will take the hard case of your Urnings into consideration, and
listen to their bitter cry. But, in the meanwhile, supposing these
inverted instincts to be inborn, supposing them to be irrepressible and
inconvertible, supposing them to be less dirty and nasty than they are
commonly considered, is it not the plain duty of the individual to
suppress them, so long as the law of his country condemns them?" No,
rejoins Ulrichs, a thousand times no! It is only the ignorant antipathy
of the majority which renders such law as you speak of possible. Go to
the best books of medical jurisprudence, go to the best authorities on
psychical deviations from the normal type. You will find that these
support me in my main contention. These, though hostile in their
sentiments and chilled by natural repugnance, have a respect for
science, and they agree with me in saying that the Urning came into this
world an Urning, and must remain till the end of his life an Urning
still. To deal with him according to your code is no less monstrous than
if you were to punish the colour-blind, or the deaf and dumb, or
albinoes, or crooked-back cripples. "Very well," answers the objector:
"But I will quote the words of an eloquent living writer, and appeal to
your generous instincts and your patriotism. Professor Dowden observes
that 'self-surrender is at times sternly enjoined, and if the egoistic
desires are brought into conflict with social duties, the individual
life and joy within us, at whatever cost of personal suffering, must be
sacrificed to the just claims of our fellows.'[65] What have you to say
to that?" In the first place, replies Ulrichs, I demur in this case to
the phrases _egoistic desires_, _social duties_, _just claims of our
fellows_. I maintain that in trying to rehabilitate men of my own stamp
and to justify their natural right to toleration I am not egoistic. It
is begging the question to stigmatise their inborn desire as selfish.
The social duties of which you speak are not duties, but compliances to
law framed in blindness and prejudice. The claims of our fellows, to
which you appeal, are not just, but cruelly inequitous. My insurgence
against all these things makes me act indeed as an innovator; and I may
be condemned, as a consequence of my rashness, to persecution, exile,
defamation, proscription. But let me remind you that Christ was
crucified, and that he is now regarded as a benefactor. "Stop," breaks
in the objector: "We need not bring most sacred names into this
discussion. I admit that innovators have done the greatest service to
society. But you have not proved that you are working for the salvation
of humanity at large. Would it not be better to remain quiet, and to
sacrifice your life and joy, the life and joy of an avowed minority, for
the sake of the immense majority who cannot tolerate you, and who dread
your innovation? The Catholic priesthood is vowed to celibacy; and
unquestionably there are some adult men in that order who have trampled
out the imperious appetite of the male for the female. What they do for
the sake of their vow will not you accomplish, when you have so much of
good to gain, of evil to escape?" What good, what evil? rejoins Ulrichs.
You are again begging the question; and now you are making appeals to my
selfishness, my personal desire for tranquillity, my wish to avoid
persecution and shame. I have taken no vow of celibacy. If I have taken
any vow at all, it is to fight for the rights of an innocent, harmless,
downtrodden group of outraged personalities. The cross of a Crusade is
sewn upon the sleeve of my right arm. To expect from me and from my
fellows the renouncement voluntarily undertaken by a Catholic priest is
an absurdity, when we join no order, have no faith to uphold, no
ecclesiastical system to support. We maintain that we have the right to
exist after the fashion in which nature made us. And if we cannot alter
your laws, we shall go on breaking them. You may condemn us to infamy,
exile, prison--as you formerly burned witches. You may degrade our
emotional instincts and drive us into vice and misery. But you will not
eradicate inverted sexuality. Expel nature with a fork, and you know
what happens. "That is enough," says the objector: "We had better close
this conversation. I am sorry for you, sorry that you will not yield to
sense and force. The Urning must be punished."
VIII.
LITERATURE--IDEALISTIC.