Women show similar phobias and more especially morbid anxieties often centering around servant girls. Women who change servant girls continually, who worry themselves over the servant problem or quarrel with the girls, or feel impelled to touch them (acts which really take the place of sexual deeds) are frequently homosexual. Similarly, various forms of fetichism may be a cover for homosexuality.
It is plainly obvious that the study of sexual masks promises to further immensely our knowledge about matters of sex. At the same time it is clear that the opposition of many circles to the new studies must remain a tremendous one. Possibly a great deal of the opposition to the new psychology has its roots in this very peculiarity of human nature. Their basic bisexual predisposition is precisely what men are least disposed to recognise.
These general statements I now propose to prove on the basis of various observations from my practice illustrating the great role played by the homosexual components in the love life of average men and women. This will show clearly why I never use such terms as “contrary,” or “inverted” sexual feeling, and why I never speak of “inversion,” or of “perversion,” when I discuss homosexuality. The very purpose of this work is to bring out the homosexual components in the life of every person and to bring out the normal feature of that state. For normal is everything that is natural; and from the standpoint of nature we are never monosexual and always bisexual.
I regret that I must contradict so worthy an investigator as Hirschfeld. But I fail to understand the need of setting up, besides the hetero- and homosexuals, a third group, the so-called transvestites.[16] Among the transvestites (personifiers) we find the most pronounced examples of masked homosexuality and stressed bisexuality. This is a designation proposed by Hirschfeld for men who—obeying an overwhelming inner impulse—wear women’s apparel and for women who similarly attire themselves in things belonging to a man’s wardrobe. In the course of an extensive review (Zentrbl. f. Psychoanalyse, vol. I, p. 55.) I pointed out that it is unnecessary to consider the transvestites as a distinct sexual species, but that they are merely bisexual persons with strong homosexual leanings. Hirschfeld lays great emphasis upon the fact that the transvestites experience normal sexual feelings, being subject only to the impulsion to change their clothing for that of the opposite sex. Unfortunately here he takes into consideration only the conscious sexual manifestations. He considers merely the facts as they appear upon the surface neglecting the important mechanisms of repression and masking,—the tendency to play before, and with, one’s self. The data obtained upon superficial examination must be subjected to careful analysis; then the results are most surprising. Analysis invariably reveals that there is no such thing as monosexuality and that the transvestites, like the homosexuals, have their repressions. The homosexual represses his heterosexuality, the transvestite his homosexuality. In his phantasy the man is a woman (the woman fancies herself the reverse) and thus he combines the two components of his libido. It were nothing less than doing violence to facts to attempt to distinguish the transvestites from the homosexuals.
As one reads carefully the cases published by Hirschfeld, with an eye for signs of homosexuality, one cannot fail to note characteristic traits of homosexuality in every one of the cases. For instance, one of them carries out succubus in coitu, which is clearly a symptom of latent homosexuality; if he appears as a woman, the men who follow him cause him nausea. Another was able to carry out the heterosexual act only under the influence of alcohol, and when going out in women’s clothes was fond of eating in the company of men and coquetting with them. A third is repelled by the thought of homosexual relations, but dreams of pregnancy, plays succubus in coitu, and fancies that his wife is a man. The fourth hugs his wife tightly, sinks his nails into her ears, etc., so as to gain the illusion of being overpowered through sheer force by some man.
Then, most interesting of all, case 12: A man who during four years of married life has carried out coitus only once. This subject actually betrays an open inclination towards homosexuality, which Hirschfeld declares is only apparent.... How is one to determine between an apparent and a real homosexual trend? In order to succeed in that one must purposely overlook the phenomenon of human bisexuality and be anxious to hold on at all costs to the notion that homosexuality is inborn and irreducible.
The transvestite last mentioned relates concerning his homosexuality: “About homosexuality I learned for the first time through reading the book: Die Enterbten des Liebesgluecks. Some passages gripped me powerfully, even more so than the works on masochism, of which I also had read a large number. As I had to renounce my womanly ideal (for reasons mentioned previously), it occurred to me to seek a man as the complement to my yearnings. For even the strongest woman wants to be beneath man during love. But I felt I needed a partner who should overpower and conquer me with some display of force. So I said to myself that such a role can be filled properly only by a man. A great deal of what I read in books about homosexuality confirmed me in this view.”
If this is not a tell-tale rationalization of homosexuality—what may we designate as homosexuality?
Comments are hardly needed in this connection. On all sides and from all directions homosexuality is proven in the history of the case. But Hirschfeld finds that the tendency to homosexuality is only apparent and that the whole foundation of the subject’s libido consists of transvestism. The homosexuality he looks upon as an incidental manifestation. But there are no ‘incidental’ manifestations in our vita sexualis. A dream, which has also been reported, shows conclusively that M., the subject, was all along actuated by the thought: I wish I were a woman. But there are passages in this case history showing how highly the subject esteems the male and proving that this wish is an infantile attitude and due to a feeling of inferiority. What else should we conclude from the statement: “For the genuine man, who belongs to the proudest specimens of his sex, sexual gratification is merely a hygienic requirement, a form of physical release; beyond that his wonderful creative spirit dwells in higher realms ... etc.”
In the chapter devoted to masochism I explain the meaning of a case like the above more fully. The man wants to be a woman and to be overpowered. He is able to have relations with women, if they assume the aggressive role. His mind insists upon the fictive notion: I am a woman and I am forced to carry out this part. Naturally he shifts towards homosexual acts. The male trait in him tolerates no submissiveness. The female trait lends itself readily to coercion. The neurosis consists in this suppression of the male components of the sexual instinct.