[48] Buret, La syphilis aujourd’hui et chez les anciens, p. 197 sqq. Catullus, Carmina, lxi. (‘In Nuptias Juliæ et Manlii’), 128 sqq. Cf. Martial, Epigrammata, viii. 44. 16 sq.
[49] Juvenal, Satiræ, ii. 117 sqq. Martial, op. cit. xii. 42.
[50] Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, v. 32. 7. Aristotle, Politica, ii. 9, p. 1269 b.
[51] ‘Spuren von Konträrsexualität bei den alten Skandinaviern,’ in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iv. 244 sqq.
Of late years a voluminous and constantly increasing literature on homosexuality[52] has revealed its frequency in modern Europe. No country and no class of society is free from it. In certain parts of Albania it even exists as a popular custom, the young men from the age of sixteen upwards regularly having boy favourites of between twelve and seventeen.[53]
[52] See infra, [Additional Notes].
[53] Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 168.
The above statements chiefly refer to homosexual practices between men, but similar practices also occur between women.[54] Among the American aborigines there are not only men who behave like women, but women who behave like men. Thus in certain Brazilian tribes women are found who abstain from every womanly occupation and imitate the men in everything, who wear their hair in a masculine fashion, who go to war with a bow and arrows, who hunt together with the men, and who would rather allow themselves to be killed than have sexual intercourse with a man. “Each of these women has a woman who serves her and with whom she says she is married; they live together as husband and wife.”[55] So also there are among the Eastern Eskimo some women who refuse to accept husbands, preferring to adopt masculine manners, following the deer on the mountains, trapping and fishing for themselves.[56] Homosexual practices are said to be common among Hottentot[57] and Herero[58] women. In Zanzibar there are women who wear men’s clothes in private, show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclination, or else among normal women who are won over by presents or other means.[59] In Egyptian harems every woman is said to have a “friend.”[60] In Bali homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is exercised more secretly;[61] and the same seems to be the case in India.[62] From Greek antiquity we hear of “Lesbian” love. The fact that homosexuality has been much more frequently noticed in men than in women does not imply that the latter are less addicted to it. For various reasons the sexual abnormalities of women have attracted much less attention,[63] and moral opinion has generally taken little notice of them.
[54] Karsch, in Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iii. 85 sqq. Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, i. 517 sqq. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, p. 278 sqq. Moll, Die Conträre Sexualempfindung, p. 247 sqq. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 118 sqq.
[55] Magalhanes de Gandavo, Histoire de la Province de Sancta-Cruz, p. 116 sq.