Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 588 pages of information about Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 588 pages of information about Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2.
It is not found in the estimates which have reached Hirschfeld that the French groups show a smaller proportion of homosexual persons than the German groups, and a Japanese group comes out near to the general average for the whole.  Various authorities, especially Germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common in France as in Germany.[107] Saint-Paul ("Dr. Laupts"), on the other hand, is unable to accept this view.  As an army surgeon who has long served in Africa he can (as also Rebierre in his Joyeux et demifous) bear witness to the frequency of homosexuality among the African battalions of the French army, especially in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the French army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general population.[108] Naecke is also inclined to believe that homosexuality is rarer in Celtic lands, and in the Latin countries generally, than in Teutonic and Slavonic lands, and believes that it may be a question of race.[109] The question is still undecided.  It is possible that the undoubted fact that homosexuality is less conspicuous in France and the other Latin countries than in Teutonic lands, may be due not to the occurrence of a smaller proportion of congenital inverts in the former lands, but mainly to general difference in temperament and in the social reaction.[110] The French idealize and emphasize the place of women to a much greater degree than the Germans, while at the same time inverts in France have much less occasion than in Germany to proclaim their legal grievances.  Apart from such considerations as these it seems very doubtful whether inborn inversion is in any considerable degree rarer in France than in Germany.

As to the frequency of homosexuality in England[111] and the United States there is much evidence.  In England its manifestations are well marked for those whose eyes have once been opened.  The manifestations are of the same character as those in Germany, modified by social and national differences, and especially by the greater reserve, Puritanism, and prudery of England.[112] In the United States these same influences exert a still greater effect in restraining the outward manifestations of homosexuality.  Hirschfeld, though so acute and experienced in the investigation of homosexuality, states that when visiting Philadelphia and Boston he could scarcely detect any evidence of homosexuality, though he was afterward assured by those acquainted with local conditions that its extension in both cities is “colossal.”  There have been numerous criminal cases and scandals in the United States in which homosexuality has come to the surface, and the very frequently occurring cases of transvestism or cross-dressing in the States seem to be in a large proportion associated with homosexuality.

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Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.