Homosexual perversity.—Homosexual practices have various reasons. From the outset we have to differentiate between perversity and perversion. It is of great importance to have a clear conception of what constitutes an anomaly. What is abnormal, says Ellis, does not, of necessity, mean pathological. Genius and criminality are anomalies, but they are not, for that matter, diseases. Virchow says that an anomaly may constitute a disposition to a disease, but it is not always the disease itself. The study of anomalies, i. e., pathology, is not the same as the study of diseases, nosology.
In the study of homosexuality we must hence distinguish between perversity and perversion. In perversity the anomaly is not congenital. It develops by degrees at a certain age, sometimes after normal intercourse. It is, furthermore, not permanent or absolute. Affection may return to normal channels at any time. Lastly, perversity is not attended by anything that is irresistible and impulsive, as is the case in perversion.
Homosexual feeling, therefore, means the feeling for the same sex, not the sexual acts with it. The mere homosexual act does not constitute a perversion. It may be called a perverted instinct, for it is directed outside of the limits within which it is capable of serving its natural purpose; but so is masturbation, which is never considered a perversion. An untainted boy or girl, seduced at the beginning of puberty by persons of the same sex to homosexual practices, may continue them later on for want of opportunity for normal intercourse with the opposite sex. But neither the boy nor the girl will become sexually inverted, although it cannot be denied that there are exceptions to the rule. It may happen that a boy chooses a girlish-looking boy and seduces him to homosexual practices, or that a girl selects a mannish-looking female for her friend and suffers herself ut constupretur ab ea. This practice may become deeply rooted in them, and the result may be the incapability of finding gratification in concarnatione. Yet such cases are exceptions. Generally, as soon as the extrinsic influences cease, the seduced individuals return to normal sexual functions.
Necessity.—In the majority of cases men and women resort to the homosexual mode of gratification for “faute de mieux.” For that reason homosexuality flourishes chiefly in places where great numbers of males or females are segregated. Among the peasants and shepherds in Switzerland, who live for months segregated in the mountains with no opportunity for natural sex activity, homosexuality is very common.
For the same reason homosexual relationships are very prevalent in boarding-schools, academies and in convents for young girls. In the great majority of cases the tender and demonstrative attachments between two boys or between two girls are of a sensual nature, although they seldom arouse the suspicion of educators or parents.
The boys, as a rule, practise stuprum mutuum, but not seldom they are also given to “insertio fascini in rectum,” or the real act of paederastia. The stronger boy generally plays the active part, the younger boy is the pathicus; or they often change rôles during the same sitting. Among girls the rule is that the girl of weak sexual instinct is, in these attachments, satisfied with kissing and hugging her female friend, and induces in this way orgasm and even ejaculation. Those girls of a strong sexual impulse are given to stuprum mutuum and cunnilingus, and when the clitoris allows it, resort ad imitationem commixtionis.
Next to boarding-schools and convents, prisons and factories are hot-beds for the practice of paederastia, respectively lesbianism. The young men, respectively the young women, form relationships and satisfy their sexual desires as soon as opportunity offers. Their passions are exalted and they experience all the sufferings of jealousy as in normal love.
All such attachments are dissolved as soon as opportunity for the exercise of normal sexual activity is offered, as the following case of the author shows:
A man thirty years old, healthy, strong, sensual, began se stuprare early in life, when only twelve years old. At the age of fifteen he was seduced by a friend ad stuprum mutuum manu. At this occasion he had his first ejaculation. Since this time he has practised with his school friends not only stuprum mutuum manu but also paedicatio. At the age of nineteen he began to associate with puellae publicae and gave at once up all unnatural practices.
Fear.—Apart from necessity, one of the main causes for perverted homosexual practices among normal boys is the fear of venereal infection. In girls is added to the fear of infection the dread of pregnancy. The majority of such girls eschew men because they fear the shame and the consequences of an accidental pregnancy. An unmarried girl in possession of all her normal sexual desires is, nevertheless, afraid to indulge in normal love affairs as male bachelors do. Hence she looks for a friend of her own sex where no consequences are to be feared.