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 21/2 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]