The person concerned was an extremely effeminate and neurasthenic member of a spiritualistic club, who in his normal condition felt sensual attraction neither to woman nor to man, but who in the trance state felt himself to be an Indian woman, and then became inspired with an ardent passion for one of his fellow-members.
Also in chronic intoxications, especially in alcoholism, pseudo-homosexuality may make its appearance, in some cases as an enduring and in others as a transient condition.
An important category of pseudo-homosexuality is constituted by persons in whom it arises owing to insufficient opportunity for sexual intercourse with members of the opposite sex—as, for example, in the absence of women on board ship, in monasteries, in prisons for men, in the French foreign legion; and as regards lack of men in nunneries, and in the case of unmarried or unhappily married women, who supply a large contingent to pseudo-tribadism.[571] An account of pæderasty in prisons is given by Charles Perrier, “La Pédérastie en Prison” (Lyons, 1900).
In this category we must also mention the “debauchee pæderasts” for which truly existent kind of pseudo-homosexuals I propose the name of “anal masturbators.” These are heterosexual individuals in whom either primarily the anus plays the part of an erogenic zone, or in whom this region becomes erogenic in consequence of the exhaustion of all other varieties of sexual stimulus. Hammond, von Schrenck-Notzing, and Taxil have proved the existence of these anal masturbators and the frequent occurrence in them of pseudo-homosexual tendencies.[572]
An interesting phenomenon is the pseudo-homosexuality of female prostitutes. We certainly encounter among prostitutes a number of genuine tribades, who owe their adoption of professional prostitution to the existence of this original tendency to homosexual love, because in their relations with men the heart plays, and can play, no part (see above, [p. 434]). Prostitutes who are heterosexual by nature may become homosexual for two reasons: first, by intercourse with, and owing to the influence of, truly Lesbian associates, in whom the inward sense of solidarity possessed by all prostitutes is especially strong; in the second place, in consequence of the antipathy to intercourse with men, created by their experience of life, and striking always deeper roots, for they learn to know man only in his brutal sexual coarseness. The continuous compulsion to which they are subjected to satisfy the animal sensuality of worn-out roués by the most disgusting procedures ultimately produces in them the most unconquerable antipathy to the male sex, so that all the delicate sensibility of which they are capable is directed towards their own sex. The homosexual union appears to them, as Eulenburg rightly points out (“Sexual Neuropathy,” pp. 143, 144), to be something “higher, purer, and comparatively blameless.” They regard it in a more ideal light than sexual intercourse with men. Women owners of brothels also favour tribadistic love, because thereby they safeguard the prostitutes in their houses from the influence of souteneurs.[573]
As J. de Vaudère describes in his “Demi-Sexes,” pseudo-tribadism is especially diffused in Paris as a fashionable practice, and manifests itself here in the form described by Martineau,[574] of a temporary homosexuality, which is subserved by an extensive prostitution, and which clearly exhibits its pseudo-homosexual characteristics by its intermittent appearance in the form of spiritual epidemics.
Unquestionably we have to do with pseudo-homosexuality also in all those cases in which homosexual love makes its appearance as a national custom among a percentage widely exceeding the usual percentage of ordinary homosexuality. The typical example of this kind is the love of boys of ancient Greece—“pæderasty,” in the better sense of the word. Since in this work I am discussing the sexual life of the present day, I do not propose here to deal at length with this interesting topic, and must refer the reader to the second volume (in course of preparation) of my work on “The Origin of Syphilis,” in which I have discussed the subject at considerable length.
Since the Hellenic love of boys was a widely diffused custom, the origin of which may be directly referred to Crete, indirectly to the Orient, it is evident that only a fraction of the pæderasts can have been true homosexuals. The majority were pseudo-homosexuals. It is possible that the custom was first introduced by original homosexuals, and also that it was subsequently maintained by these. But soon it became a general practice for a man to regard his wife simply as a “procreative machine,” and to seek for true spiritual love from a youth. Since to the men of antiquity woman had no soul and no individuality, the love of boys appeared to them something natural and morally justifiable. It would, however, be completely unnatural if for the heterosexual community of our own time we wished to reintroduce the antique love of boys, since we modern men have learned that woman also has a soul; that she also has the same justification as man for the development of her human nature; that she can be, and ought to be, the object of individual, spiritual, profound love. I rejoice, that those who are fighting for the rights of the genuine congenital homosexuals, that men like Magnus Hirschfeld, Numa Prætorius, and other investigators, have recently expressed themselves in energetic terms as opposed to those whose aim is a sort of propaganda for the diffusion of the love of men among heterosexuals—whose endeavour it is, in fact, to introduce a formal cult of uranism. This movement can do nothing but harm to the just cause of homosexuals.
No one can prize more highly than I do myself a noble friendship between men, which at the present day is far too little practised;[575] no one can wish more heartily than I do that men could speak to one another of love, without being exposed to the suspicion of homosexuality.[576] In a certain sense I am in thorough agreement with the beautiful demonstrations of Heinrich Schurtz and Benedict Friedländer on masculine friendship as a normal fundamental impulse of humanity and as the foundation of social intercourse.[577] But this friendship between heterosexual men, based upon natural sympathy and community of occupation, has not the least sexual admixture, whereas only in the beautiful dialogues of Plato can the Greek love of boys, which some advocate at the present day, be ascribed to the spiritual Eros.[578] In reality, however, the Greek love of boys degenerated into the grossest sensuality, since the youth stimulated sexual desire like a woman, and was used as such,[579] so that the originally ideal character of the relationship disappeared.
In the Oriental love of boys[580] this ideal element was probably never present, and sensual relationships played the principal part from the very first. The boys’ brothels of the Mohammedan East were visited by heterosexual men just as much as by homosexuals. The same men derived pleasure from intercourse both with women and with boys. Bisexuality was in this case put into practice as a matter of course.