For this very reason the male transvestites who are possessed with a female spirit or a female soul are more interesting than the female transvestite, possessed of a male soul. In normal men dressing is never a matter of great concern, neither is it with the transvestite endowed with a male mind. But the normal woman attributes a vast importance to feminine dress, and the male transvestite with the female soul excels her in dress-valuation.
[BH] This is the psychological explanation for woman’s love of histrionic spectacles. Almost two-thirds of all theatregoers are certainly women. Still so much demi-nude femininity is presented on the stage, presumably to amuse men and so few semi-nude men for the amusement of women. Why do so many women run to the theatres to see the nudity of their own sex? Men do not care for the sight of nude men? The reason is that feminine nudity is presented on the stage not for the amusement of the few men, but mostly for the amusement of the great throng of women.
The female body has a sexually stimulating effect upon woman (Colin Scott, Am. Jour. of Psych., Feb. 1895). The pride of the female, says Weininger (Sex and Character, p. 201), is something quite peculiar to herself, something foreign even to the most handsome man, an obsession of her own body, a pleasure which displays itself even in the least handsome girl, by admiring herself in the mirror, by stroking herself and by playing with her own hair, but which comes to its full measure only in the effect that her body has on man. Woman desires to feel that she is admired physically. The normal woman regards her body as made for the stimulation of the man’s sensations. This complex emotion forms the initial stage of her own pleasure. The female body has hence a greater exciting effect upon women than the male body has upon men. Female nudity produces a greater impression upon her than the male body ever does. Statues of female forms are more liable than those of male forms to have a stimulating effect upon woman.
The same emotions are evoked in woman at the sight of female clothes. Woman takes it for granted that her clothes, just as her body, have an erotic effect upon the male. Hence female clothes awaken in women a complex emotion akin to the sight of the female body. Woman becomes sexually excited by her own clothes. For this reason clothes are to woman of the greatest importance. The desire for beautiful clothes is an irradiation of the sex instinct. The purpose of dress is the attraction through covering. For the parts covered are rendered more conspicuous.
[BI] “And if a man lie with a beast he shall surely be put to death; and ye shall slay the beast. And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman and the beast.” (Levit. xx, 15-16.)
[BJ] Medical students who ought to know the sequels of venereal diseases are not chaster than other young men of the same age.
[BK] Such pamphlets as “What a young boy ought to know” or “What a young girl ought to know” show a touching naïveté. Young boys and girls, if of the age to understand such pamphlets, do not need to know anything, for the simple reason that they know everything, and in a more prurient way than their elders. It is the height of absurdity to give lectures on sex problems before classes in high schools or colleges, where a large percentage of the boys have already passed through all the stages of gonorrhoeal infection and a good many of the girls are addicted to the practice of autoeroticism. After such habits have been acquired, lectures will be of no avail. Nor are books, fit to be given into the hands of boys or girls, of any value. By the time a child is able to understand such books it knows more of sex than the book can teach.
[BL] It is questionable if physicians always appreciate the dangers of venereal diseases and of sexual irregularities. It may sound queer, but the author has met with many physicians who think no more of gonorrhoea than of a cold in the head, and who consider a chancre a huge joke. Such physicians—and their number is legion—have never acquired any proper knowledge of sex.
[BM] It is only the covering that gives to any part of the human anatomy a certain element of the obscene. The female arms are certainly more beautiful than the female legs. Still the bare feminine arms, because they are constantly seen everywhere, are seldom noticed by any healthy male; but let a woman bare her legs in public and she will shock the entire community by the strange, unusual sight.
[BN] The following lessons for boys and girls at the period of puberty should be given only if preceded by preventive measures during infancy and early childhood and by lessons in propagation of plants and of animals. If the children have never been instructed before, and there is the least suspicion that they have already tasted from the tree of knowledge, either in the form of masturbation or in that of illicit venery, such lessons are not only of no value, but they may even do more harm than good. The descriptions of the sequelae of masturbation and of venereal diseases may make the young people desperate and not seldom cause suicide or wanton recklessness.