Sexual inversion

“ If, in the case of a man, the images are those of women, it is simply a case of compensatory masturbation; but if the images are masculine, it is a case of sexual inversion. If masturbation is not accompanied by any images, the question remains doubtful. In young children this is explained by the fact that the psycho-sexual irradiations are not yet developed; but after puberty the absence of images as an object of eroticism suggests a certain anomaly and sometimes depends on a latent tendency to inversion. ”

“ Unfortunately, however, the travellers and others on whose records we are dependent have been so shy of touching these subjects, and so ignorant of the main points for investigation, that it is very difficult to discover sexual inversion in the proper sense in any lower race. Travellers have spoken vaguely of crimes against nature without defining the precise relationship involved nor inquiring how far any congenital impulse could be distinguished. ”

“ It is the common belief that all subjects of sexual inversion have originally loved women, but that, through monstrous debauchery and superfluity of naughtiness, tiring of normal pleasure, they have wilfully turned their appetites into other channels. This is true about a certain number. But the sequel of this Essay will prove that it does not meet by far the larger proportion of cases, in whom such instincts are inborn, and a considerable percentage in whom they are also inconvertible. Medical jurists and physicians have recently agreed to accept this as a fact. ”

“ It is of interest to emphasize this congenital element of foot symbolism, because more than any other forms of sexual perversion the fetichisms are those which are most vaguely conditioned by inborn states of the organism and most definitely aroused by seemingly accidental associations or shocks in early life. Inversion is sometimes so fundamentally ingrained in the individual's constitution that it arises and develops in spite of the very strongest influence in a contrary direction. ”

“ It may here be remarked that the more easily the subject learns to overcome by force of will his instinctive predilection for men, the more does his aversion to woman diminish, and in many cases of young men with congenital sexual perversion, observed by us, we found that at the age of from 25 to 30 years they became capable of having intercourse with women, of marrying and of having children. ”

“ Nurses sometimes stroke or tickle a child's genitals in order to put an end to a screaming fit. But in some cases--and these are more numerous than is commonly supposed--nursemaids do this under the impulse of their own lustful feelings. Such actions are not necessarily the outcome of a perverse sexual impulse, although they may be due to such an impulse in the form of paedophilia, as I shall have to explain in detail when I come to describe that perversion. Frequently the offenders are not in the least aware of the danger of what they are doing, and do it merely in sport. ”

“ Finally, perverse sexual impulse must be mentioned as a possible cause of sterility. This may be an acquired perversion, due to the fact that at the epoch of the menarche, the commencement of puberty, owing to the strength of sexual desire whilst intercourse is an impossibility, or simply from evil example, the girl has become a confirmed onanist, and continues the habit even after marriage. ”

“ Their erotic needs, which could not be gratified in normal fashion, led to this sexual perversion—a tendency observable especially in persons with neuropathic predisposition, or with a liability to hysteria or to epilepsy. Sometimes such girls, even before puberty, show an inclination to wear boys’ clothes, to avoid all feminine manual occupations, and to examine and to handle the genital organs of their playmates. ”

“ Such competent studies as have been made do conclude that so complex and numerous are the causes of sexual vice that it is impossible to assert with any assurance that 'obscenity' represents a ponderable causal factor in sexually deviant behavior. ”

“ Thus it comes that so often, side by side with a rapid progress of civilization, an increase of sexual aberration may be observed. Depravity, which formerly was almost exclu- sively adduced to account for sexual perversion, now combines with the rapid growth of culture, and for the same reasons, and on account of the rapid progress of intellectual development, unavoidably brings along with
145
it an increase of mental and nervous disease. ”

“ Yet, in many cases, boys avoid those of their own sex, and seek the companionship of girls, not for the reason just alleged, but solely because these boys thus early experience erotic stimulation when associating with girls. In any case, we must carefully avoid over-estimating the importance of what may appear to be contrary sexual phenomena during childhood, and we must not be too ready to accept the occurrence of such phenomena as a proof that sexual perversion had manifested itself already during childhood. ”

“ The following is another example of a further degree of development of sexual perversion in the same direction :
A young man, 24 years of age, entices a little girl, 12 years old, into a wood, where he first violates and then murders her, drinks her blood, cuts out her sexual parts and her heart, which last he devours. ”

“ Shameless prostitution may result, even in married women. In cases of a milder type, the sexual impulse is exhibited in the form of onanism, nude perambulations about the room, wearing of male attire, etc. In cases of hysterical mental disorder, the morbidly excited sexual life may manifest itself in the form of maniacal jealousy, baseless complaints against men of indecent assault, hallucinations of coitus, etc. Sometimes there may be frigidity, with lack of sexual pleasure, commonly due to genital anæsthesia. ”

“ Parents would often refrain, on the plea that innocence must not be disturbed, from teaching their children anything about sex. So impure and evil a subject must not be referred to. Such unpleasant problems as venereal disease must be hidden out of sight, although prostitution and venereal disease continue to flourish. The Victorian, in fact, carried out the Puritan doctrine that all sex is evil, by outwardly pretending that, unless married, he possessed no sexual instinct. ”

“ She did this so secretly, that by mishandling the genital organs of her two little brothers, both younger than herself, she slowly brought one to his death, and in the other caused serious injury to the bladder and urethra. With an older boy, she was accustomed to have actual sexual intercourse in the woods. I could not, in this case, gain any definite information regarding hereditary taint. Such persons commonly become criminals in later life, or at least indulge in the most shameless masturbation or give themselves up to prostitution. ”

“ The child born with congenital sexual perversion grows up and develops to all appearance quite regularly in every way. The genesic sense alone generally awakens unusually early and, as the period of sexual maturity approaches, a whole series of abnormal morbid manifestations show themselves. The first of these symptoms is an expression of shame, not before girls or women, but in presence of grown-up men. ”

“ In such instances we must, indeed, bear in mind the possibility of sexual perversion, especially in view of the fact that sexually perverse adults are often able to trace back into childhood the memory of sexual dreams characteristic of their peculiar type of perversion. Occasionally the feelings of anxiety of which we have spoken above may, even in dreams, lead to the occurrence of involuntary ejaculations. ”

“ A loathsome abuse of the sexual organs, not usually recognized by the fastidious, exists, in which one of the individuals, taking a part in this abnormal sexual act, uses the mouth as a vagina. Some of these benighted creatures are males, others females. Houses of prostitution of the present day are so accommodating to their patrons that they keep females who serve degraded males in this manner. I am credibly informed that they prefer this method; that the erotic desire has been transferred from the genitals to the tongue. ”

“ The delicate brain, which is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the mother which are the most intense. One of the most certain effects of sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual instinct in the child. Here is the key to the origin of much of the sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. Sensuality is born in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. What wonder that prostitution flourishes in spite of Christianity and civil law? ”

“ The man who, for some reason or another, cannot obtain normal coitus should content himself with nocturnal emissions, and the woman with voluptuous dreams, and should both abstain from active and voluntary excitations. For my part, I consider prostitution, or "love" which is bought, as a variety of compensatory masturbation, and not as normal copulation. Coitus with a prostitute, generally infected with venereal disease, who receives new clients continually, has as little affinity with love as with the normal object of the sexual appetite—reproduction ”

“ At other times he felt no pederastic desires and liked the society of women, notwithstanding which he would, not without a certain amount of wit, defend the form of sexual perversion which occupies our attention. ”

“ All sensation and all activity in such unhappy beings ultimately concentrates itself in the act of copulation, or in some other form of sexual gratification, the greatest perversities of sexual practice frequently arising, masturbation, tribadism, and, for the most part, prostitution, even in the case of married women.
The nymphomaniacal woman, says von Krafft-Ebing, endeavors to allure men by means of exposure of the genital organs or indecent gestures; the sight of man produces intense sexual excitement, which is gratified by masturbation or by stimulatory movements of the pelvis. ”

“ Often, and especially at first, the depraver of children merely seeks opportunities for seeing children; then he wants to touch the children with his hands, and often to handle their genital organs; and while attempting this, or while doing it, he has ejaculation. In other cases he presses the child more and more closely into contact with himself, and especially against his own genital organs. Finally, we may have more complete sexual acts; and, especially when the child is a girl, there may be attempts at intercourse, and even defloration ”

“ Boys of a vigorous habit of body are not inclined to play with their genitals; on the contrary, are often markedly disgusted at an attempt of a schoolboy to instruct them in the vice. They are therefore not easily made victims of, and commonly grow up free from, this vice; but they are the most willing participants in prostitutional debauch, in a more natural way. With the irritated and excited condition of the tissues of the genitals at puberty, then passing the first sexual crisis, what an opportunity [85] for local and general injury must necessarily be present! ”

“ Women who have been married for many years, who have had many children, and who have suckled these children, pass through the changes of the climacteric much more easily than old maids, than women who have lived for many years in continent widowhood, or than women who have had very few children or none at all. The practice of prohibitive coitus, i. e., the use during intercourse of methods of preventing the occurrence of conception, a form of sexual immorality which has become extraordinarily common during the last few decades, has an unfavourable influence upon the course of the climacteric. ”

“ A love for the opposite sex that is weak and purely mental, too, often has its basis in weakness of the genitals due to long-continued masturbation; and, under the guise of virtuous admiration of a beloved person, great lasciviousness and sexual perversion are often concealed. Episodically, especially in women, violent sexual excitement may occur as a nymphomania. ”

“ According to Ricardi, many frigid prostitutes practice with pleasure clitoris-masturbation, cunnilictio, and, especially, sapphism, preferring these perversions to the normal sexual act. Moreover, among prostitutes and female criminals there is no lack of lovers of martyrization, of flagellation, even to the drawing of blood, of tyrannical treatment, and of the initiation of children into the mysteries of sex. ”

“ The majority of them suffer with genital neuroses. At least, in these cases, there are the stages of transition to acquired pathological contrary sexual instinct. The responsibility of these individuals, who are certainly much lower than the women who prostitute themselves, in general cannot be questioned. ”

“ This is the principal cause of the almost invariable sterility of prostitutes, in whom, however, we must also take into consideration the influence of the absence of voluptuous sensation in an act which to them has become a mere matter of business. The investigations of Bandl in the post mortem room show that residues of perimetritic and parametritic inflammation are to be found in the bodies of 58.4% of parous women, and 33.3% of the bodies of women (married or unmarried) who have had experience of sexual intercourse but have never had a child. ”