As regards the sexual organs it seems possible, so far as my observations go, to speak more definitely of inverted women than of inverted men. In all three of the cases concerning whom I have precise information, among those whose histories are recorded in the present chapter, there is more or less arrested development and infantilism. In one a somewhat small vagina and prominent nymphæ, with local sensitiveness, are associated with oligotrichosis. In another the sexual parts are in some respects rather small, while there is no trace of ovary on one side. In the third case, together with hypertrichosis, the nates are small, the nymphæ large, the clitoris deeply hooded, the hymen thick, and the vagina probably small. These observations, though few, are significant, and they accord with those of other observers.[[170]] Krafft-Ebing well described a case which I should be inclined to regard as typical of many: sexual organs feminine in character, but remaining at the infantile stage of a girl of 10; small clitoris, prominent cockscomb-like nymphæ, small vagina scarcely permitting normal intercourse and very sensitive. Hirschfeld agrees in finding common an approach to the type described by Krafft-Ebing; atrophic anomalies he regards as more common than hypertrophic, and he refers to thickness of hymen and a tendency to notably small uterus and ovaries. The clitoris is more usually small than large; women with a large clitoris (as Parent-Duchâtelet long since remarked) seem rarely to be of masculine type.
Notwithstanding these tendencies, however, sexual inversion in a woman is, as a rule, not more obvious than in a man. At the same time, the inverted woman is not usually attractive to men. She herself generally feels the greatest indifference to men, and often, cannot understand why a woman should love a man, though she easily understands why a man should love a woman. She shows, therefore, nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men. The man who is passionately attracted to an inverted woman is usually of rather a feminine type. For instance, in one case present to my mind he was of somewhat neurotic heredity, of slight physical development, not sexually attractive to women, and very domesticated in his manner of living; in short, a man who might easily have been passionately attracted to his own sex.
While the inverted woman is cold, or, at most, comradely in her bearing toward men, she may become shy and confused in the presence of attractive persons of her own sex, even unable to undress in their presence, and full of tender ardor for the woman whom she loves.[[171]]
Homosexual passion in women finds more or less complete expression in kissing, sleeping together, and close embraces, as in what is sometimes called "lying spoons," when one woman lies on her side with her back turned to her friend and embraces her from behind, fitting her thighs into the bend of her companion's legs, so that her mons veneris is in dose contact with the other's buttocks, and slight movement then produces mild erethism. One may also lie on the other's body, or there may be mutual masturbation. Mutual contact and friction of the sexual parts seem to be comparatively rare, but it seems to have been common in antiquity, for we owe to it the term "tribadism" which is sometimes used as a synonym of feminine homosexuality, and this method is said to be practised today by the southern Slav women of the Balkans.[[172]] The extreme gratification is cunnilinctus, or oral stimulation of the feminine sexual organs, not usually mutual, but practised by the more active and masculine partner; this act is sometimes termed, by no means satisfactorily, "Sapphism," and "Lesbianism."[[173]]
An enlarged clitoris is but rarely found in inversion and plays a very small part in the gratification of feminine homosexuality. Kiernan refers; to a case, occurring in America, in which an inverted woman, married and a mother, possessed a clitoris which measured 2½ inches when erect. Casanova described an inverted Swiss, woman, otherwise feminine in development, whose clitoris in excitement was longer than his little finger, and capable of penetration.[[174]] The older literature contains many similar cases. In most such cases, however, we are probably concerned with some form of pseudohermaphroditism, and the "clitoris" may more properly be regarded as a penis; there is thus no inversion involved.[[175]]
While the use of the clitoris is rare in homosexuality, the use of an artificial penis is by no means uncommon and very widespread. In several of the modern cases in which inverted women have married women (such as those of Sarolta Vay and De Raylan) the belief of the wife in the masculinity of the "husband" has been due to an appliance of this kind used in intercourse. The artificial penis (the olisbos, or baubon) was well known to the Greeks and is described by Herondas. Its invention was ascribed by Suidas to the Milesian women, and Miletus, according to Aristophanes in the Lysistrata, was the chief place of its manufacture.[[176]] It was still known in medieval times, and in the twelfth century Bishop Burchard, of Worms, speaks of its use as a thing "which some women are accustomed to do." In the early eighteenth century, Margaretha Lincken, again in Germany, married another woman with the aid of an artificial male organ.[[177]] The artificial penis is also used by homosexual women in various parts of the world. Thus we find it mentioned in legends of the North American Indians and it is employed in Zanzibar and Madagascar.[[178]]
The various phenomena of sadism, masochism, and fetichism which are liable to arise, spontaneously or by suggestion, in the relationships of normal lovers, as well as of male inverts, may also arise in the same way among inverted women, though, probably, not often in a very pronounced form. Moll, however, narrates a case (Konträre Sexualempfindung, 1899, pp. 565-70) in which various minor but very definite perversions were combined with inversion. A young lady of 26, of good heredity, from the age of 6 had only been attracted to her own sex, and even in childhood had practised mutual cunnilinctus. She was extremely intelligent, and of generous and good-natured disposition, with various masculine tastes, but, on the whole, of feminine build and with completely feminine larynx. During seven years she lived exclusively with one woman. She found complete satisfaction in active cunnilinctus. During the course of this relationship various other methods of excitement and gratification arose—it seems, for the most part, spontaneously. She found much pleasure in urolagnic and coprolagnic practices. In addition to these and similar perversions, the subject liked being bitten, especially in the lobule of the ear, and she was highly excited when whipped by her friend, who should, if possible, be naked at the time; only the nates must be whipped and only a birch rod be used, or the effect would not be obtained. These practices would not be possible to her in the absence of extreme intimacy and mutual understanding, and they only took place with the one friend. In this case the perverse phenomena were masochistic rather than sadistic. Many homosexual women, however, display sadistic tendencies in a more or less degree. Thus Dr. Kiernan tells me of an American case, with which he was professionally concerned with Dr. Moyer (see also paper by Kiernan and Moyer in Alienist and Neurologist, May, 1907), of a sadistic inverted woman in a small Illinois city, married and with two young children. She was of undoubted neuropathic stock and there was a history of pre-marital masturbation and bestiality with a dog. She was a prominent club woman in her city and a leader in religious and social matters; as is often the case with sadists she was pruriently prudish, and there was strong testimony to her chaste and modest character by clergymen, club women, and local magnates. The victim of her sadistic passion was a girl she had adopted from a Home, but whom she half starved. On this girl she inflicted over three hundred wounds. Many of these wounds were stabs with forks and scissors which merely penetrated the skin. This was especially the case with those inflicted on the breasts, labia, and clitoris. During the infliction of these she experienced intense excitement, but this excitement was under control, and when she heard anyone approaching she instantly desisted. She was found sane and responsible at the time of these actions, but the jury also found that she had since become insane and she was sent to an Insane Hospital, after recovery to serve a sentence of two years in prison. The alleged insanity, Dr. Kiernan adds, was of the dubious manic and depressive variety, and perhaps chiefly due to wounded pride.
The inverted woman is an enthusiastic admirer of feminine beauty, especially of the statuesque beauty of the body, unlike, in this, the normal woman, whose sexual emotion is but faintly tinged by esthetic feeling. In her sexual habits we perhaps less often find the degree of promiscuity which is not uncommon among inverted men, and we may perhaps agree with Moll that homosexual women are more often apt to love faithfully and lastingly than homosexual men. Hirschfeld remarks that inverted women are not usually attracted in girlhood by the autoerotic and homosexual vices of school-life,[[179]] and nearly all the women whose histories I have recorded in this chapter felt a pronounced repugnance to such manifestations and cherished lofty ideals of love.
Inverted women are not rarely married. Moll, from various confidences which he has received, believes that inverted women have not the same horror of normal coitus as inverted, men; this is probably due to the fact that the woman under such circumstances can retain a certain passivity. In other cases there is some degree of bisexuality, although, as among inverted men, the homosexual instinct seems usually to give the greater relief and gratification.
It has been stated by many observers—in America, in France, in Germany, and in England—that homosexuality is increasing among women.[[180]] There are many influences in our civilization today which encourage such manifestations.[[181]] The modern movement of emancipation—the movement to obtain the same rights and duties as men, the same freedom and responsibility, the same education and the same work—must be regarded as, on the whole, a wholesome and inevitable movement. But it carries with it certain disadvantages.[[182]] Women are, very justly, coming to look upon knowledge and experience generally as their right as much as their brothers' right. But when this doctrine is applied to the sexual sphere it finds certain limitations. Intimacies of any kind between young men and young women are as much discouraged socially now as ever they were; as regards higher education, the mere association of the sexes in the lecture-room or the laboratory or the hospital is discouraged in England and in America. While men are allowed freedom, the sexual field of women is becoming restricted to trivial flirtation with the opposite sex, and to intimacy with their own sex; having been taught independence of men and disdain for the old theory which placed women in the moated grange of the home to sigh for a man who never comes, a tendency develops for women to carry this independence still farther and to find love where they find work. These unquestionable influences of modern movements cannot directly cause sexual inversion, but they develop the germs of it, and they probably cause a spurious imitation. This spurious imitation is due to the fact that the congenital anomaly occurs with special frequency in women of high intelligence who, voluntarily or involuntarily, influence others.