Putting aside the age of the object desired, it must be said that there is a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to approach the feminine type, either in psychic disposition or physical constitution, or both.[205] I cannot say how far this is explained by the irritable nervous system and delicate health which are so often associated with inversion, though this is certainly an important factor.  Although the invert himself may stoutly affirm his masculinity, and although this femininity may not be very obvious, its wide prevalence may be asserted with considerable assurance, and by no means only among the small minority of inverts who take an exclusively passive role, though in these it is usually most marked.  In this I am confirmed by Q., who writes:  “In all, or certainly almost all, the cases of congenital male inverts (excluding psycho-sexual hermaphrodites) that I know there has been a remarkable sensitiveness and delicacy of sentiment, sympathy, and an intuitive habit of mind, such as we generally associate with the feminine sex, even though the body might be quite masculine in its form and habit."[206] When, however, a distinguished invert said to Moll:  “We are all women; that we do not deny,” he put the matter in too extreme a form.  The feminine traits of the homosexual are not usually of a conspicuous character.  “I believe that inverts of plainly feminine nature are rare exceptions,” wrote Naecke:[207] and that statement may be accepted even by those who emphasize the prevalence of feminine traits among inverts.

In inverted women some degree of masculinity or boyishness is equally prevalent, and it is not usually found in the women to whom they are attracted.  Even in inversion the need for a certain sexual opposition—­the longing for something which the lover himself does not possess—­still prevails.  It expresses itself sometimes in an attraction between persons of different race and color.  I am told that in American prisons for women Lesbian relationships are specially frequent between white and black women.[208] A similar affinity is found among the Arabs, says Kocher; and if an Arab woman has a Lesbian friend the latter is usually European.  In Cochin China, too, according to Lorion, while the Chinese are chiefly active pederasts, the Annamites are chiefly passive.

It must, however, be remembered that, in normal love, homogamy, the attraction of the like, prevails over heterogamy, the attraction of the unlike, which is chiefly confined to those features which belong to the sphere of the secondary sexual characters;[209] the same appears to be true in inversion, and the homosexual are probably, on the whole, more attracted by the traits which they seem to themselves to possess than by those which are foreign to themselves.[210]