"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 s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.x sensations know no s.e.x.
"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 h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 front morning till night, and I had no cessation of the long fatigue I had had at school; in addition I had s.e.x 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 p.u.b.erty 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xuality 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 s.e.xual relations and acted up to that. If I had thought any relations right and possible I think I should have striven for heteros.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.xually 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 s.e.x.[166] There is, however, a very p.r.o.nounced tendency among s.e.xually 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 s.e.xual 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 pet.i.tion 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 c.l.i.toris 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 s.e.x. 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 a.s.sociated 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, att.i.tude, and habits were all essentially masculine. She a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 s.e.x. She was French by birth, born in Paris in 1836, but her father was English and her mother Spanish. She a.s.sumed 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 s.e.x 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 p.e.n.i.s. In her will she made careful arrangements to prevent detection of s.e.x 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 s.e.x. On coming to St. Louis in 1902 she made chairs and baskets at the American Rattan Works, a.s.sociating 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 s.e.x. 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 s.e.x 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 a.s.sumed 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 att.i.tude of the arms, the direct speech, the inflexions of the voice, the masculine straightforwardness and sense of honor, and especially the att.i.tude 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 p.r.o.nounced 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-cla.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 158), "is more full of life, of enterprise, of practical energy, more aggressive, more heroic, more apt for adventure, than either the heteros.e.xual woman or the h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 bis.e.xual than in h.o.m.os.e.xual women, just as extreme masculinity is much more likely to be found in bis.e.xual than in h.o.m.os.e.xual men.
While inverted women frequently, though not always, convey an impression of mannishness or boyishness, there are no invariable anatomical characteristics a.s.sociated 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency. "Bearded women," as Hirschfeld remarks, are scarcely ever inverted, and it would seem that the strongest reversals of secondary s.e.xual characters less often accompany h.o.m.os.e.xuality than slighter modifications of these characters.[167] A faint moustache and other slight manifestations of hypertrichosis also by no means necessarily indicate h.o.m.os.e.xuality. 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality, 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 fur 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 fur 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 Dupre 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 a.s.sociated 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 fur Ethnologie, 1891, Heft 4, p. 469). A typical example of slight hypertrichosis in a woman a.s.sociated with general masculine traits is furnished by a description and figure of the body of a woman of 56 in an anatomical inst.i.tute, furnished by C. Strauch (Zeitschrift fur 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 p.u.b.es 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 ma.s.sive, the limbs long, the joints powerful, the hands and feet large, the thorax well developed, the lower jaw ma.s.sive; there was an absence of feminine curves on the body and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 p.u.b.es, 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 p.u.b.es and in the axillae (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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociated with inversion in women. But we are now beginning to see that this arrested development may be definitely a.s.sociated with anomalies in the internal secretions, and even with special chemical defects in these secretions. Virile strength has always been a.s.sociated 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 cla.s.ses according to the amount of hair on body, the first cla.s.s, with least hair, have the smallest circ.u.mference of t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, the fewest number of men with glans p.e.n.i.s uncovered, the largest number of infantile voices, the largest proportion of blue eyes and fair hair, the smallest average height, weight, and chest circ.u.mference, 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 s.e.xual development. Thus Hegar (Beitrage zur Geburtshulfe und Gynakologie, 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 p.u.b.es and abdomen; menstruation was scanty, b.r.e.a.s.t.s atrophic; the hair was of lanugo type; we see here how in women infantile and masculine characteristics are a.s.sociated with, and both probably dependent on, defects in the s.e.xual glands. Plant (Centralblatt fur Gynakologie, No. 9, 1896) described another girl with very small ovaries, rudimentary uterus, small v.a.g.i.n.a, and prominent nymphae, 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 s.e.xual glands; and the thyroid, as Gautier has shown (Academie de Medecine, July 24, 1900) elaborates a.r.s.enic 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 (Prager 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 Levi (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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 a.s.sociates 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 s.e.xual 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 v.a.g.i.n.a and prominent nymphae, with local sensitiveness, are a.s.sociated with oligotrichosis. In another the s.e.xual 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 nymphae large, the c.l.i.toris deeply hooded, the hymen thick, and the v.a.g.i.n.a 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: s.e.xual organs feminine in character, but remaining at the infantile stage of a girl of 10; small c.l.i.toris, prominent c.o.c.ks...o...b..like nymphae, small v.a.g.i.n.a 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 c.l.i.toris is more usually small than large; women with a large c.l.i.toris (as Parent-Duchatelet long since remarked) seem rarely to be of masculine type.
Notwithstanding these tendencies, however, s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual shyness and engaging air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men. The man who is pa.s.sionately 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 s.e.xually attractive to women, and very domesticated in his manner of living; in short, a man who might easily have been pa.s.sionately attracted to his own s.e.x.
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 s.e.x, even unable to undress in their presence, and full of tender ardor for the woman whom she loves.[171]
h.o.m.os.e.xual pa.s.sion 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 b.u.t.tocks, 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 s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality, 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 s.e.xual 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 c.l.i.toris is but rarely found in inversion and plays a very small part in the gratification of feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality. Kiernan refers; to a case, occurring in America, in which an inverted woman, married and a mother, possessed a c.l.i.toris which measured 2 inches when erect. Casanova described an inverted Swiss, woman, otherwise feminine in development, whose c.l.i.toris 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 "c.l.i.toris" may more properly be regarded as a p.e.n.i.s; there is thus no inversion involved.[175]
While the use of the c.l.i.toris is rare in h.o.m.os.e.xuality, the use of an artificial p.e.n.i.s 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 p.e.n.i.s (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 p.e.n.i.s is also used by h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 p.r.o.nounced form. Moll, however, narrates a case (Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, 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 s.e.x, 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 m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic rather than s.a.d.i.s.tic. Many h.o.m.os.e.xual women, however, display s.a.d.i.s.tic 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 s.a.d.i.s.tic 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.lity 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 s.a.d.i.s.ts 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 s.a.d.i.s.tic pa.s.sion 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, l.a.b.i.a, and c.l.i.toris. 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 s.e.xual emotion is but faintly tinged by esthetic feeling. In her s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual women are more often apt to love faithfully and lastingly than h.o.m.os.e.xual men. Hirschfeld remarks that inverted women are not usually attracted in girlhood by the autoerotic and h.o.m.os.e.xual vices of school-life,[179] and nearly all the women whose histories I have recorded in this chapter felt a p.r.o.nounced 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 circ.u.mstances can retain a certain pa.s.sivity. In other cases there is some degree of bis.e.xuality, although, as among inverted men, the h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality is increasing among women.[180] There are many influences in our civilization today which encourage such manifestations.[181] The modern movement of emanc.i.p.ation-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 s.e.xual 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 a.s.sociation of the s.e.xes in the lecture-room or the laboratory or the hospital is discouraged in England and in America. While men are allowed freedom, the s.e.xual field of women is becoming restricted to trivial flirtation with the opposite s.e.x, and to intimacy with their own s.e.x; 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 s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xuality (see, e.g., I. Bloch, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, 1902, vol. i, p. 248). Various "feminine Strindbergs of the woman movement," as they have been termed, displayed marked hostility to men. Anna Ruling claims that many leaders of the movement, from the outset until today, have been inverted. Hirschfeld, however (Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 500), after giving special attention to the matter, concludes that, alike among English suffragettes and in the German Verein fur Frauenstimmrecht, the percentage of inverts is less than 10 per cent.
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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. Muller, "Ein weiterer Fall von contrarer s.e.xualempfindung," Friedrich"s Blatter fur Gerichtliche Medizin, Heft 4, 1891). The most fully investigated case of s.e.xual inversion in a woman in modern times is that of Countess Sarolta Vay (Friedrich"s Blatter, Heft, 1, 1891; also Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia s.e.xualis, 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 s.e.x of her "husband." She was acquitted and allowed to return home and continue dressing as a man.
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