After puberty, if not before, there is another form in which the art of love is largely experimented and practised, especially in England and America, the form of flirtation.  In its elementary manifestations flirting is entirely natural and normal; we may trace it even in animals; it is simply the beginning of courtship, at the early stage when courtship may yet, if desired, be broken off.  Under modern civilized conditions, however, flirtation is often more than this.  These conditions make marriage difficult; they make love and its engagements too serious a matter to be entered on lightly; they make actual sexual intercourse dangerous as well as disreputable.  Flirtation adapts itself to these conditions.  Instead of being merely the preliminary stage of normal courtship, it is developed into a form of sexual gratification as complete as due observation of the conditions already mentioned will allow.  In Germany, and especially in France where it is held in great abhorrence, this is the only form of flirtation known; it is regarded as an exportation from the United States and is denominated “flirtage.”  Its practical outcome is held to be the “demi-vierge,” who knows and has experienced the joys of sex while yet retaining her hymen intact.

This degenerate form of flirtation, cultivated not as a part of courtship, but for its own sake, has been well described by Forel (Die Sexuelle Frage, pp. 97-101).  He defines it as including “all those expressions of the sexual instinct of one individual towards another individual which excite the other’s sexual instinct, coitus being always excepted.”  In the beginning it may be merely a provocative look or a simple apparently unintentional touch or contact; and by slight gradations it may pass on to caresses, kisses, embraces, and even extend to pressure or friction of the sexual parts, sometimes leading to orgasm.  Thus, Forel mentions, a sensuous woman by the pressure of her garments in dancing can produce ejaculation in her partner.  Most usually the process is that voluptuous contact and revery which, in English slang, is called “spooning.”  From first to last there need not be any explicit explanations, proposals, or declarations on either side, and neither party is committed to any relationship with the other beyond the period devoted to flirtage.  In one form, however, flirtage consists entirely in the excitement of a conversation devoted to erotic and indecorous topics.  Either the man or the woman may take the active part in flirtage, but in a woman more refinement and skill is required to play the active part without repelling the man or injuring her reputation.  Indeed, much the same is true of men also, for women, while they often like flirting, usually prefer its more refined forms.  There are infinite forms of flirtage, and while as a preliminary part of courtship, it has its normal place and justification, Forel concludes that “as an end in itself, and never passing beyond itself, it is a phenomenon of degeneration.”