[132] Krafft-Ebing, “Ueber tardive Homosexualitaet,” Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901, p. 7; Naecke, “Probleme auf den Gebiete der Homosexualitaet,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie, 1902, p. 805; ib., “Ueber tardive Homosexualitaet,” Sexual-Probleme, September, 1911.  Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, January, 1913, p. 228) considers that retarded cases should not be regarded as bisexual, but as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheterosexuality which at last falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period.

[133] Moll, Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis, 1897, pp, 458-8.

[134] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitaet, 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.