“Womanish men often know how to treat women better than manly men do. Manly men, except in most rare cases, learn how to deal with women only after long experience, and even then most imperfectly.”—O. Weininger, “Sex and Character,” ch. v.
“Is it really the case that all women and men are marked off sharply from each other, the women on the one hand alike in all points, the men on the other?… There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals, between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds.… The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.”—Weininger, Ibid, introduction, p. 2.
“Upon this, Chéron made a rather strange observation. ‘We have,’ she said, ‘with regard to sexual distinctions, notions that were not dreamed of by the primitive simplicity of the people of the age now gone by. From the fact that there are two sexes, and only two, they for a long time drew false inferences. They concluded that a woman is simply a woman, and a man simply a man. In reality this is not so; there are women who are very much women, and women who are very little so. Such differences, concealed in former times by costume and mode of life, and masked by prejudice, stand out clearly in our society. And not only so, but they become more accentuated and apparent in each generation.’”—Anatole France, “Sur la Pierre Blanche,” p. 301.
“In every human being there are present both male and female elements, only in normal persons (according to their sex) the one set of elements is more greatly developed than the other. The chief difference in the case of homosexual persons is that in them the male and female elements are more equalized; so that when, in addition, the general development is of a high grade, we find among this class the most perfect types of humanity.”—Dr. Arduin, “Die Frauenfrage,” in Jahrbuch der Sexuellen Zwischenstufen, vol. ii., p. 217. Leipzig, 1900.
“The notion that human beings were originally hermaphroditic is both ancient and widespread. We find it in the book of Genesis, unless indeed there be a confusion here between two separate theories of creation. God is said to have first made man in His image, male and female in one body, and to have bidden them multiply. Later on He created the woman out of part of this primitive man.” (See also the myth related by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium.)—Havelock Ellis, “Sexual Inversion,” p. 229.
“When the sexual instinct first appears in early youth, it seems to be much less specialised than normally it becomes later. Not only is it, at the outset, less definitely directed to a specific sexual end, but even the sex of its object is sometimes uncertain.”—Ibid, p. 44.
“In me the homosexual nature is singularly complete, and is undoubtedly congenital. The most intense delight of my childhood (even when a tiny boy in my nurse’s charge) was to watch acrobats and riders at the circus. This was not so much for the skilful feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even then I cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful fellows. People told me that circus actors were wicked and would steal little boys, and so I came to look on my favorites as half-devil and half-angel. When I was older and could go about alone, I would often hang around the tents of travelling shows in hope of catching a glimpse of the actors. I longed to see them naked, without their tights, and used to lie awake at night, thinking of them and longing to be embraced and loved by them.”—Ibid, “case” ix., p. 62.
“I was fifteen years and ten-and-a-half months old when the first erotic dream announced the arrival of puberty. I had had no previous experience of sex-satisfaction, either in the Urning direction or in any other. This occurrence therefore came about quite normally. From a much earlier time, however, I had been subject partly to tender yearnings and partly to sensual longing without definite form and purpose—the two emotions being always separate from each other and never experienced for one and the same young man. These aimless sensual longings plagued me often in hours of solitude; and I could not overcome them. They showed themselves first, during my fifteenth year, when I was at school at Detmold, in the following two ways:—First, they were awakened by a drawing in Normand’s “Saülen-ordnungen,” of the figure of a Greek god or hero, standing there in naked beauty. This image, a hundred times put away, came again a hundred times before my mind. (I need not say it did not cause the Urning temperament in me; it merely awoke what was slumbering there already—a thing that any other circumstance might have done.) Secondly, when studying in my little room, or when I lay upon my bed before going to sleep, the thought used suddenly and irresistibly to rise up in my mind—“If only a soldier would clamber through the window and come into my room!” Then my imagination painted me a splendid soldier-figure of twenty to twenty-two years old; and I was, as it were, all on fire. And yet my thoughts were quite vague, and undirected to any definite satisfaction; nor had I ever spoken a word with a real soldier.”—K. H. Ulrichs, “Memnon,” §77. Leipzig, 1898. See also “A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 73.
“The friendships of this kind which I formed at School were two in number—I shall never forget the absorbing depth and intensity of them. I never talked about them to anyone else, they were much too sacred and serious for that, nor—strange as it may seem—did I ever speak of them to the boys themselves, or indeed, show any signs of affection towards them. If they had been told that I was devoted to their welfare, and willing to sacrifice myself and all I had to it (which was indeed the fact) they would have been simply astonished; more especially as they were both young boys not yet arrived at puberty.
“I am at present somewhat bitterly conscious that in these cases one of the strongest influences for good that ever came into my life was nine-tenths wasted. How much better it all might have been under more favourable surroundings it is impossible to imagine. Still, it was not without its good influence on me, though (owing to their complete ignorance of my feelings) it could have had none whatever on the boys. I was conscious of a bracing and inspiring effect on my whole nature, a confirmed health of body, and most of all, of a greatly increased capacity for work. And doubtless all this might have been intensified a thousand fold if I had been ever so little guided and encouraged by public opinion sanctioning these friendships.