M.N. writes:  “To me it appears that the female element must, of necessity, exist in the body that desires the male, and that nature keeps her law in the spirit, though she breaks it in the form.  The rest is all a matter of individual temperament and environment.  The female nature of the invert, hampered though it is by its disguise of flesh, is still able to exert an extraordinary influence, and calls insistently upon the male.  This influence seems called into action most violently in the presence of males possessed of strong sexual magnetism of their own.  Such men are generally more or less conscious of the influence, and the result is either a vague appreciation, which will make the male wonder why he gets on so well with the invert, or else the influence will be realized to be something incongruous and unnatural, and will be resented accordingly.  Sometimes, indeed, the reciprocated feeling (circumstance and opportunity permitting) will prove strong enough to induce sexual relations.  Reason will then generally overpower instinct, and the feeling, aroused unaware, will probably be changed into repulsion.  Further, the influence reacts in the same way on women, who, particularly if they are strongly sexual, experience involuntary sensations of dislike or antagonism on association with inverts.  There is, however, one terrible reality for the invert to face, no matter how much he may wish to avoid it and seek to deceive himself.  There exists for him an almost absolute lack of any genuine satisfaction either in the way of the affections or desires.  His whole life is passed in vainly seeking and desiring the male, the antithesis of his nature, and in consorting with inverts he must perforce be content with the male in form only, the shadow without the substance.  Indeed, one invert necessarily regards another as being of the same undesired female sex as himself, and for this reason it will be found that, while friendships between inverts frequently exist (and these are characteristically feminine, unstable, and liable to betrayal), love-attachments are less common, and when they occur must naturally be based upon considerable self-deception.  Venal gratifications are always, of course, as possible as they are unsatisfactory, and here perhaps some of the peculiarities of taste accompanying inversion may admit of elucidation.  In considering the peculiar predilection shown by inverts for youths of inferior social position, for the wearers of uniforms, and for extreme physical development and virility not necessarily accompanied by intellectuality, regard must be had to the probable conduct of women placed in a position of complete irresponsibility combined with absolute freedom of action and every opportunity for promiscuity.  It seems to me that the importance of recognizing the underlying female element in inversion cannot be too strongly insisted upon.”

“The majority” [of inverts], writes “Z,” “differ in no detail