[134] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. viii.
[135] This was the term used in the earlier editions of the present Study. I willingly reject it in favor of the simpler and fairly clear term now more generally employed. It is true that by bisexuality it is possible to understand not only the double direction of the sexual instinct, but also the presence of both sexes in the same individual, which in French is more accurately distinguished as "bisexuation."
[136] J. Van Biervliet, "L'Homme Droit et l'Homme Gauche," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the constitution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is preponderant on the left side.
CHAPTER IV.—SEXUAL INVERSION IN WOMEN.
Prevalence of Sexual Inversion Among Women—Among Women of Ability—Among the Lower Races—Temporary Homosexuality in Schools, etc.—Histories—Physical and Psychic Characteristics of Inverted Women—The Modern Development of Homosexuality Among Women.
Homosexuality is not less common in women than in men. In the seriocomic theory of sex set forth by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, males and females are placed on a footing of complete equality, and, however fantastic, the theory suffices to indicate that to the Greek mind, so familiar with homosexuality, its manifestations seemed just as likely to occur in women as in men. That is undoubtedly the case. Like other anomalies, indeed, in its more pronounced forms it may be less frequently met with in women; in its less pronounced forms, almost certainly, it is more frequently found. A Catholic confessor, a friend tells me, informed him that for one man who acknowledges homosexual practices there are three women. For the most part feminine homosexuality runs everywhere a parallel course to masculine homosexuality and is found under the same conditions. It is as common in girls as in boys; it has been found, under certain conditions, to abound among women in colleges and convents and prisons, as well as under the ordinary conditions of society. Perhaps the earliest case of homosexuality recorded in detail occurred in a woman,[[137]] and it was with the investigation of such a case in a woman that Westphal may be said to have inaugurated the scientific study of inversion.
Moreover, inversion is as likely to be accompanied by high intellectual ability in a woman as in a man. The importance of a clear conception of inversion is indeed in some respects, under present social conditions, really even greater in the case of women than of men. For if, as has sometimes been said of our civilization, "this is a man's world," the large proportion of able women inverts, whose masculine qualities render it comparatively easy for them to adopt masculine avocations, becomes a highly significant fact.[[138]]
It has been noted of distinguished women in all ages and in all fields of activity that they have frequently displayed some masculine traits.[[139]] Even "the first great woman in history," as she has been called by a historian of Egypt, Queen Hatschepsu, was clearly of markedly virile temperament, and always had herself represented on her monuments in masculine costume, and even with a false beard.[[140]] Other famous queens have on more or less satisfactory grounds been suspected of a homosexual temperament, such as Catherine II of Russia, who appears to have been bisexual, and Queen Christina of Sweden, whose very marked masculine traits and high intelligence seem to have been combined with a definitely homosexual or bisexual temperament.[[141]]
Great religious and moral leaders, like Madame Blavatsky and Louise Michel, have been either homosexual or bisexual or, at least, of pronounced masculine temperament.[[142]] Great actresses from the eighteenth century onward have frequently been more or less correctly identified with homosexuality, as also many women distinguished in other arts.[[143]] Above all, Sappho, the greatest of women poets, the peer of the greatest poets of the other sex in the supreme power of uniting art and passion, has left a name which is permanently associated with homosexuality.