Homo sexuality

“ When we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be achieved along this line. [129] We have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined homosexuality,—a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same sex,—in addition to the more specific sexual inversion. ”

“ Nevertheless, psychologists have noted that this tendency towards the more elevated forms of homo-sexual feeling is still to be found, more or less developed, amongst religious leaders and other persons with strong ethical instincts. ”

“ At any rate, it can be shown that, relatively speaking, heterosexuals prove greater cynics about sexual matters than the homosexuals. Also that other degenerative signs upon the field of sexuality, such as sadism, masochism, fetichism, etc., are much more commonly found among the former.... ”

“ If the youth has been reared in a healthy, constructive environment, conducive to proper sublimation of his primitive sexual tendencies, and particularly if his libido is not excessive, he may scarcely be conscious of his homosexual impulses. On the other hand, if he is endowed with an unusually strong hereditary sexual constitution, or if the repression and sublimation have been faulty in his upbringing, the homosexual tendencies may reflect themselves in various ways in his conscious attitudes. ”

“ Let us then first consider what Homosexuality is.
Homosexuality means sexual love for one of the same sex. Thus, if a male feels sexual desire for another male, or a female for another female, they are called sexually inverted or homosexual. ”

“ The average homosexual applies his erotism to male friendships and his sexuality he places in the service of heterosexual love; the progress of culture consists therein that heterosexual love is also gradually sublimated, that is, turned more and more into erotism. The homosexual, for instance, turns his erotism towards women, and applies his sexuality in his relation with men. But at times he may turn his whole erotism into the homosexual channel and suppress his whole sexuality. ”

“ They will in due course be outgrown and replaced by other manifestations of sexual interest, unless unwise methods of repression are used.
HOMOSEXUALITY means a state in which one is sexually attracted toward members of the same sex. This is normally a primitive characteristic of childhood, which prevails up to the time of adolescence, but which may persist in adult life. Some degree of it does normally hold over in every adult, but it remains in the background of the unconscious, and is sublimated along social lines. ”

“ The sexual ideal of the invert includes not only traits of former female and male sexual objectives, but also features of one's own beloved self.
(d) Being brought up in surroundings exclusively feminine—the father does not count in such circumstances—fosters homosexuality in the male as well as in the female, for reasons that are not sufficiently clear as yet. Moreover, the urning is usually an only child. ”

“ Not only is the particular sex-act, popularly associated with this subject, an extremely rare occurence, even as among the physical sex-expressions of this temperament, but probably a vast majority of homosexuals [Pg 71] are deliberately celibate. Homosexuality is a romantic cult rather than a physical vice. Nine-tenths of its energy is directed purely in the realm of ideals. The old misconception of sex as a rather disreputable physical function again dogs our steps. But sex is almost entirely emotional; sex-love, and especially homosexual love, is not lust. ”

“ We enter the realm of pure conjecture if we attempt to inquire the purpose for which this type has been deliberately created. And I can only record my own entirely unproveable, but definite opinion, that the human race, in the far ages ahead, will return, by a spiral process, to the bisexual species from which I believe it has come. If this is so, the homosexual is apparently a prototype, a preliminary attempt of nature to combine both sex-natures in one individual. ”

“ Now obviously the field of homosexual literature is going to place a certain emphasis on the sexual problems of humanity which will be quantitatively greater than that of—say—the Western novel, or the detective story. Sex alone has not been made an excuse for consigning any novel to the trashbin. ”

“ Homosexual men who have started in our times an energetic action against the legal limitations of their sexual activity are fond of representing themselves through theoretical spokesmen as evincing a sexual variation, which may be distinguished from the very beginning, as an intermediate stage of sex or as “a third sex.” ”

“ On the other hand, it is possible that esthetic and ethical sympathy with persons of the opposite sex may favor the development of hetero-sexual desires. Thus it happens that the individual, according to the predominance of favorable or unfavorable influences, experiences now hetero-sexual, now homo-sexual, feeling. ”

“ The congenital nature of homosexuality is displayed, not by the primary appearance of this mode of sensibility, but by the fact that when the puberal development takes place, the homosexual sentiments persist, and are not replaced by heterosexuality. ”

“ It is undoubtedly true that their special temperament may sometimes cause them difficulty in regard to their sexual relations. But then, all types have more or less difficulty in making sexual adjustments—so while the homosexual has some special problems to meet in this respect—the heterosexual also has his problems which not infrequently lead to dire results. ”

“ It is also doubtful whether such an acquaintanceship would greatly help me, for I have a very peculiar conception of homosexuality. As you will see, I have little more in common with what are called pæderasts than sexual indifference to the female sex, and I often ask myself: 'Does any other man in the whole world feel like you? Are you alone in the earth with your morbid desires? Are you a pariah of pariahs, or is there, perhaps, another soul with similar longings living near you? ”

“ This peculiarity already indicates a judgment-attitude in sexual matters. Sexuality is perceived as degrading, as compelling a return to the first aspects of “natural” life. The attitude is further complicated by the homosexual’s overemphasis of one or the other sex during his acts. If he is an active homosexual he preserves his individuality, identifying his selfhood with some male ideal, the father, the brother, the teacher, etc. On the other hand, if he plays a passive rôle, he identifies himself with a woman, the mother, or her polar obverse, the prostitute. ”

“ Sexual parts and genital glands cannot determine homosexuality in those possessing typical normal male genitalia and testicles; neither can the brain itself be the determining factor in genuine homosexuality, because homosexuality cannot be rooted out by the strongest conscious and unconscious heterosexual influences brought to bear upon thought and phantasy,—the condition developing in spite of such influences. ”

“ Thus, in the case of a boy of fourteen, who is continually affected with homosexual imaginings, we shall find it far more difficult to repress sexual manifestations altogether, than to divert the homosexual sensibility into heterosexual channels. ”

“ We understand by ‘homosexual’ a person who feels himself drawn to individuals of the same sex by feelings of real love. Whether or not he acts in accordance with this homosexual feeling is, from the scientific standpoint, beside the question. Just as there are normal folk who live chastely, so there are homosexual persons whose love bears a distinctly psychic, ideal and ‘platonic’ character.... ”

“ Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the greatest of contemporary authorities on the sex question in all its phases, is convinced that homosexuality is a normal state, and that genuine homosexuality is always an inborn condition. ”

“ This then is my contention, that homosexuality is either an acquired vice, that is to say a habit, or an acquired mental aberration, that is to say, insanity, or congenital; and then it is that a human being is born with a body with sexual organs all those of the male, yet most likely with a body which shows certain earmarks of the female, and with a soul nearly all female, but certainly entirely female in regard to the sex question. Such a person is a homosexualist, because he feels like a woman and to him all male persons belong to the opposite sex. ”

“ It is, however, probable that here, in spite of powerful sensual libido, the feeling and inclination for the opposite sex are weak ab origine, especially in a spiritual and æsthetic sense.
2. The homo-sexual instinct, as long as inversio sexualis has not taken place, is looked upon, by the individual affected, as vicious and abnormal, and yielded to only faute de mieux.
3. The hetero-sexual instinct long remains predominant, and the impossibility of its satisfaction gives pain. It weakens in proportion as the homo-sexual feeling gains in strength. ”

“ I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact, that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. ”

“ It is possible that with proper bringing up the development of any homosexual traits will be prevented. It should be borne in mind that long sexual repression is favorable to the development of homosexuality. ”

“ As to “sexual orientation”, I adopt the following definition put forward by Cameron:
“... sexual orientation is defined by reference to erotic attraction: in the case of heterosexuals, to members of the opposite sex; in the case of gays and lesbians, to members of the same sex. Potentially a homosexual or gay or lesbian person can therefore be anyone who is erotically attracted to members of his or her own sex.” ”

“ The whole love instinct of man rebels against growing old and fosters the utilization to the utmost of the opportunities during the few remaining years. The milder the sexual life in the past, the greater and more stormy becomes the need of making up for lost opportunities “while there is time.”
But the significance of homosexuality during this critical period is a matter which most investigators [Pg 89] have overlooked. It may be that the involution of the sexual glands brings the opposite sex into stronger relief at this period. ”

“ I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. All that I have read in books or heard spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, lifelong devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be easily matched by my own experiences in the homosexual form ”

“ Both men and women who have always been of pronounced heterosexual tendency, without a trace of inversion, are liable to rare homosexual dreams, not necessarily involving orgasm or even definite sexual excitement, and sometimes accompanied by a feeling of repugnance. ”

“ What is new in my view is that according to it homosexuality cannot be regarded as an atavism or as due to arrested embryonic development, or to incomplete differentiation of sex; it cannot be regarded as an anomaly of rare occurrence interpolating itself in customary complete separation of the sexes. Homosexuality is merely the sexual condition of those intermediate sexual forms that stretch from one ideal sexual condition to the other ideal sexual condition. ”

“ All the drawing and painting in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the face of a pretty girl.
In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other. The unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the same sex. I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman. In our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of auto-eroticism. ”

“ Analysis invariably reveals that there is no such thing as monosexuality and that the transvestites, like the homosexuals, have their repressions. The homosexual represses his heterosexuality, the transvestite his homosexuality. In his phantasy the man is a woman (the woman fancies herself the reverse) and thus he combines the two components of his libido. ”

“ Those who call themselves homosexualists are the conscious and manifest inverts, but their number is as nothing before the latent homosexualists. We are forced to regard the desire for an object of one's own sex as a universal aberration of erotic life and to cede increasing importance to it. ”

“ The most extreme deviation of sexual type approaching the opposite sex, such as hypertrophy of the clitoris and full facial hair growth in the female, or hypospadia penis-scrotalis and gynecomasty in the male are found linked with heterosexuality more often than with homosexuality. ”

“ The social pressure, urging all persons into the normal sexual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of heterosexuality as homosexual persons may possess, and so to render them bisexual. In the majority of adult bisexual persons it would seem that the homosexual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heterosexual tendency. ”