The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women

by Edward Carpenter

Sexual Inversion	⎛ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎝
		Acquired	⎛ ⎢ ⎝	Persistent.
				Episodical.
		Congenital	⎛ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎝	Psychic Hermaphrodites.
				Urnings	⎛ ⎝	Male Habitus (Mannlings).
						Female Habitus (Weiblings).
				Androgyni.

And Symonds continues:—“What is the rational explanation of the facts presented to us by the analysis which I have formulated in this table, cannot as yet be thoroughly determined. We do not know enough about the law of sex in human beings to advance a theory. Krafft-Ebing and writers of his school are at present inclined to refer them all to diseases of the nervous centres, inherited, congenital, excited by early habits of self-abuse. The inadequacy of this method I have already attempted to set forth; and I have also called attention to the fact that it does not sufficiently account for the phenomena known to us through history and through every-day experience.” [It should be noted that in later editions of his book Krafft-Ebing considerably modifies the view that these sex-variations all indicate disease.]—“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 46.

Moll, speaking of the act so commonly credited to Urnings (sodomy), says:—“The common assumption is that the intercourse of Urnings consists in this. But it is a great error to suppose that this act is so frequent among them.”—A. Moll, op. cit., p. 139.

And Krafft-Ebing also speaks of it as rare among true Urnings, though not uncommon among old roués and debauchees of more normal temperament.—“Psychopathia Sexualis,” 7th edition, p. 258.

“The Urning denies not only the ‘unnaturalness’ of his leanings, but also their pathological character; he protests against comparison with the lame and the deaf. The occasional coincidence of sexual inversion with other really morbid conditions settles nothing, nor is the reminder that it is antagonistic to the purpose of race-propagation a proof; for who can assure us that Nature has intended all people for race-propagation? Even to the worker-bee Nature has not granted this function, although in her stunted female sex-organs there exists an undeniable indication or suggestion of sex-feeling.”—A. Moll, op. cit., p. 271. (From a letter by a sixty year old Urning.)

“Homosexuality, therefore, might be described as an abnormal variety of the sex-impulse, but hardly as a morbid variety. If you like, it might be termed an arrest of development or a kind of reversion. And this is quite in accord with the fact that the best experts in the subject have so far not discovered more psychic abnormalities among homosexuals than among heterosexuals—nor more degeneracy or signs of degeneracy.”—Consulting-Physician Dr. Paul Naecke, in Der Tag, 26th Oct., 1907.

“As a result of these considerations Ulrichs concludes that there is no real ground for the persecution of Urnings except such as may be found in the repugnance felt by the vast numerical majority for an insignificant minority. The majority encourages matrimony, condones seduction, sanctions prostitution, legalises divorce, in the interest of its own sexual proclivities. It makes temporary or permanent unions illegal for the minority whose inversion of instinct it abhors. And this persecution, in the popular mind at any rate, is justified, like many other inequitable acts of prejudice or ignorance, by theological assumptions and the so-called mandates of revelation.”—“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 83.

“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.…

“The feminine impress, in the case of homosexual men, is in general best indicated by the presence of greater sensitiveness and receptivity, also by the dominance of the emotional life, by a strong artistic sense, especially in the direction of music, often too by a tendency to mysticism, and by various inclinations and habits feminine in the good or less good sense of the word. This blending of temperament, however, does not make the homosexual as such a less worthy person. He is indeed not of the same nature as the heterosexual, but he is of equal worth.”—Dr M. Hirschfeld’s evidence as medical specialist in the Moltké-Harden trial.