[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]