Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Ii Part 16

[125]

Thus, of the Duc d'Orleans, in the seventeenth century, as described in Bouchard's Confessions, one of my correspondents writes: "This prince was of the same mind as Campanella, who, in the Citta del Sole, laid it down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women for the avoidance of s.e.xual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the s.e.xual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman prelates." The h.o.m.os.e.xuality of youth was also well recognized among the Romans, but they adopted the contrary course and provided means to gratify it, as the existence of the concubinus, referred to by Catullus, clearly shows.

[126]

"Our Public Schools: their Methods and Morals." New Review, July, 1893.

[127]

Max Dessoir, "Zur Psychologie der Vita s.e.xualis," Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie, 1894, H. 5.

[128]

F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910, pp. 650-8.

[129]

Iwan Bloch, in The s.e.xual Life of Our Time, makes this distinction as between "h.o.m.os.e.xuality" (corresponding to inversion) and "pseudo-h.o.m.os.e.xuality." According to the terminology I have accepted, the term "pseudo-h.o.m.os.e.xuality" would be unnecessary and incorrect. More recently (Die Prost.i.tution, Bd. i, 1912, p. 103) Bloch has preferred, in place of pseudo-h.o.m.os.e.xuality, the more satisfactory term, "secondary h.o.m.os.e.xuality."

[130]

See, for instance, Hirschfeld's reasonable discussion of the matter, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, ch. xvii.

[131]

Alfred Fuchs, who edited Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia s.e.xualis after the latter's death, distinguishes between congenital h.o.m.os.e.xuality, manifesting itself from the first without external stimulation, and h.o.m.os.e.xuality on a basis of inborn disposition needing special external influences to arouse it (Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iv, 1902, p. 181).

[132]

Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber tardive h.o.m.os.e.xualitat," Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901, p. 7; Nacke, "Probleme auf den Gebiete der h.o.m.os.e.xualitat," Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie, 1902, p. 805; ib., "Ueber tardive h.o.m.os.e.xualitat," s.e.xual-Probleme, September, 1911. Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, January, 1913, p. 228) considers that r.e.t.a.r.ded cases should not be regarded as bis.e.xual, but as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheteros.e.xuality which at last falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period.

[133]

Moll, Untersuchungen uber die Libido s.e.xualis, 1897, pp, 458-8.

[134]

Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, ch. viii.

[135]

This was the term used in the earlier editions of the present Study. I willingly reject it in favor of the simpler and fairly clear term now more generally employed. It is true that by bis.e.xuality it is possible to understand not only the double direction of the s.e.xual instinct, but also the presence of both s.e.xes in the same individual, which in French is more accurately distinguished as "bis.e.xuation."

[136]

J. Van Biervliet, "L'Homme Droit et l'Homme Gauche," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the const.i.tution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is preponderant on the left side.

CHAPTER IV.-s.e.xUAL INVERSION IN WOMEN.

Prevalence of s.e.xual Inversion Among Women-Among Women of Ability-Among the Lower Races-Temporary h.o.m.os.e.xuality in Schools, etc.-Histories-Physical and Psychic Characteristics of Inverted Women-The Modern Development of h.o.m.os.e.xuality Among Women.

h.o.m.os.e.xuality is not less common in women than in men. In the seriocomic theory of s.e.x set forth by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, males and females are placed on a footing of complete equality, and, however fantastic, the theory suffices to indicate that to the Greek mind, so familiar with h.o.m.os.e.xuality, its manifestations seemed just as likely to occur in women as in men. That is undoubtedly the case. Like other anomalies, indeed, in its more p.r.o.nounced forms it may be less frequently met with in women; in its less p.r.o.nounced forms, almost certainly, it is more frequently found. A Catholic confessor, a friend tells me, informed him that for one man who acknowledges h.o.m.os.e.xual practices there are three women. For the most part feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality runs everywhere a parallel course to masculine h.o.m.os.e.xuality and is found under the same conditions. It is as common in girls as in boys; it has been found, under certain conditions, to abound among women in colleges and convents and prisons, as well as under the ordinary conditions of society. Perhaps the earliest case of h.o.m.os.e.xuality recorded in detail occurred in a woman,[137] and it was with the investigation of such a case in a woman that Westphal may be said to have inaugurated the scientific study of inversion.

Moreover, inversion is as likely to be accompanied by high intellectual ability in a woman as in a man. The importance of a clear conception of inversion is indeed in some respects, under present social conditions, really even greater in the case of women than of men. For if, as has sometimes been said of our civilization, "this is a man's world," the large proportion of able women inverts, whose masculine qualities render it comparatively easy for them to adopt masculine avocations, becomes a highly significant fact.[138]

It has been noted of distinguished women in all ages and in all fields of activity that they have frequently displayed some masculine traits.[139] Even "the first great woman in history," as she has been called by a historian of Egypt, Queen Hatschepsu, was clearly of markedly virile temperament, and always had herself represented on her monuments in masculine costume, and even with a false beard.[140] Other famous queens have on more or less satisfactory grounds been suspected of a h.o.m.os.e.xual temperament, such as Catherine II of Russia, who appears to have been bis.e.xual, and Queen Christina of Sweden, whose very marked masculine traits and high intelligence seem to have been combined with a definitely h.o.m.os.e.xual or bis.e.xual temperament.[141]

Great religious and moral leaders, like Madame Blavatsky and Louise Michel, have been either h.o.m.os.e.xual or bis.e.xual or, at least, of p.r.o.nounced masculine temperament.[142] Great actresses from the eighteenth century onward have frequently been more or less correctly identified with h.o.m.os.e.xuality, as also many women distinguished in other arts.[143] Above all, Sappho, the greatest of women poets, the peer of the greatest poets of the other s.e.x in the supreme power of uniting art and pa.s.sion, has left a name which is permanently a.s.sociated with h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

It can scarcely be said that opinion is unanimous in regard to Sappho, and the reliable information about her, outside the evidence of the fragments of her poems which have reached us, is scanty. Her fame has always been great; in cla.s.sic times her name was coupled with Homer's. But even to antiquity she was somewhat of an enigma, and many legends grew up around her name, such as the familiar story that she threw herself into the sea for the love of Phaon. What remains clear is that she was regarded with great respect and admiration by her contemporaries, that she was of aristocratic family, that she was probably married and had a daughter, that at one time she had to take her part in political exile, and that she addressed her girl friends in precisely similar terms to those addressed by Alcaeus to youths. We know that in antiquity feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality was regarded as especially common in Sparta, Lesbos, and Miletus. Horace, who was able to read Sappho's complete poems, states that the objects of her love-plaints were the young girls of Lesbos, while Ovid, who played so considerable a part in weaving fantastic stories round Sappho's name, never claimed that they had any basis of truth. It was inevitable that the early Christians should eagerly attack so ambiguous a figure, and Tatian (Oratio ad Graecos, cap. 52) reproached the Greeks that they honored statues of the tribade Sappho, a prost.i.tute who had celebrated her own wantonness and infatuation. The result is that in modern times there have been some who placed Sappho's character in a very bad light and others who have gone to the opposite extreme in an attempt at "rehabilitation." Thus, W. Mure, in his History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (1854, vol. iii, pp. 272-326, 496-8), dealing very fully with Sappho, is disposed to accept many of the worst stories about her, though he has no p.r.o.nounced animus, and, as regards female h.o.m.os.e.xuality, which he considers to be "far more venial" than male h.o.m.os.e.xuality, he remarks that "in modern times it has numbered among its votaries females distinguished for refinement of manners and elegant accomplishments." Bascoul, on the other hand, will accept no statements about Sappho which conflict with modern ideals of complete respectability, and even seeks to rewrite her most famous ode in accordance with the colorless literary sense which he supposes that it originally bore (J. M. F. Bascoul, La Chaste Sappho et le Mouvement Feministe a Athenes, 1911). Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Sappho und Simonides, 1913) also represents the antiquated view, formerly championed by Welcker, according to which the attribution of h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a charge of "vice," to be repudiated with indignation. Most competent and reliable authorities today, however, while rejecting the accretions of legend around Sappho's name and not disputing her claim to respect, are not disposed to question the personal and h.o.m.os.e.xual character of her poems. "All ancient tradition and the character of her extant fragments," says Prof. J. A. Platt (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th. ed., art. "Sappho"), "show that her morality was what has ever since been known as 'Lesbian.'" What exactly that "Lesbian morality" involved, we cannot indeed exactly ascertain. "It is altogether idle," as A. Croiset remarks of Sappho (Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, vol. ii, ch. v), "to discuss the exact quality of this friendship or this love, or to seek to determine with precision the frontiers, which language itself often seems to seek to confuse, of a friendship more or less esthetic and sensual, of a love more or less Platonic." (See also J. M. Edmonds, Sappho in the Added Light of the New Fragments, 1912). Iwan Bloch similarly concludes (Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, 1911, p. 507) that Sappho probably combined, as modern investigation shows to be easily possible, lofty ideal feelings with pa.s.sionate sensuality, exactly as happens in normal love.

It must also be said that in literature h.o.m.os.e.xuality in women has furnished a much more frequent motive to the artist than h.o.m.os.e.xuality in men. Among the Greeks, indeed, h.o.m.os.e.xuality in women seldom receives literary consecration, and in the revival of the cla.s.sical spirit at the Renaissance it was still chiefly in male adolescents, as we see, for instance, in Marino's Adone, that the h.o.m.os.e.xual ideal found expression. After that date male inversion was for a long period rarely touched in literature, save briefly and satirically, while inversion in women becomes a subject which might be treated in detail and even with complacence. Many poets and novelists, especially in France, might be cited in evidence.

Ariosto, it has been pointed out, has described the h.o.m.os.e.xual attractions of women. Diderot's famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Ch.e.l.les, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. Diderot's narrative has been described as a faithful description of the h.o.m.os.e.xual phenomena liable to occur in convents. Feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality, especially in convents, was often touched on less seriously in the eighteenth century. Thus we find a h.o.m.os.e.xual scene in Les Plaisirs du Cloitre, a play written in 1773 (Le Theatre d'Amour an XVIIIe Siecle, 1910.) Balzac, who treated so many psychological aspects of love in a more or less veiled manner, has touched on this in La Fille aux Yeux d'Or, in a vague and extravagantly romantic fashion. Gautier made the adventures of a woman who was predisposed to h.o.m.os.e.xuality, and slowly realizes the fact, the central motive of his wonderful romance, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). He approached the subject purely as an artist and poet, but his handling of it shows remarkable insight. Gautier based his romance to some extent on the life of Madame Maupin or, as she preferred to call herself, Mademoiselle Maupin, who was born in 1673 (her father's name being d'Aubigny), dressed as a man, and became famous as a teacher of fencing, afterward as an opera singer. She was apparently of bis.e.xual temperament, and her devotion to women led her into various adventures. She ultimately entered a convent, and died, at the age of 34, with a reputation for sanct.i.ty. (E. C. Clayton, Queens of Song, vol. i, pp, 52-61; F. Karsch, "Mademoiselle Maupin," Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, pp. 694-706.) A still greater writer, Flaubert, in Salammbo (1862) made his heroine h.o.m.os.e.xual. Zola has described s.e.xual inversion in Nona and elsewhere. Some thirty years ago a popular novelist, A. Belot, published a novel called Mademoiselle Giraud, ma Femme, which was much read; the novelist took the att.i.tude of a moralist who is bound to treat frankly, but with all decorous propriety, a subject of increasing social gravity. The story is that of a man whose bride will not allow his approach on account of her own liaison with a female friend continued after marriage. This book appears to have given origin to a large number of novels, some of which touched the question with considerable less affectation of propriety. Among other novelists who have dealt with the matter may be mentioned Guy de Maupa.s.sant (La Femme de Paul), Bourget (Crime d'Amour), Catulle Mendes (Mephistophela), and w.i.l.l.y in the Claudine series.

Among poets who have used the motive of h.o.m.os.e.xuality in women with more or less boldness may be found Lamartine (Regina), Swinburne (first series of Poems and Ballads), Verlaine (Parallelement), and Pierre Louys (Chansons de Bilitis). The last-named book, a collection of h.o.m.os.e.xual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered Oriental Greek poetess; Bilitis (more usually Beltis) is the Syrian name for Aphrodite. Les Chansons de Bilitis are not without charm, but have been severely dealt with by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Sappho und Simonides, 1913, p. 63 et seq.) as "a travesty of h.e.l.lenism," betraying inadequate knowledge of Greek antiquity.

More interesting, as the work of a woman who was not only highly gifted, but herself of h.o.m.os.e.xual temperament, are the various volumes of poems published by "Renee Vivien." This lady, whose real name was Pauline Tarn, was born in 1877; her father was of Scotch descent, and her mother an American lady from Honolulu. As a child she was taken to Paris, and was brought up as a French girl. She travelled much and at one time took a house at Mitylene, the chief city of ancient Lesbos. She had a love of solitude, hated publicity, and was devoted to her women friends, especially to one whose early death about 1900 was the great sorrow of Pauline Tarn's life. She is described as very beautiful, very simple and sweet-natured, and highly accomplished in many directions. She suffered, however, from nervous overtension and incurable melancholy. Toward the close of her life she was converted to Catholicism and died in 1909, at the age of 32. She is buried in the cemetery at Pa.s.sy. Her best verse is by some considered among the finest in the French language. (Charles Brun, "Pauline Tarn," Notes and Queries, 22 Aug., 1914; the same writer, who knew her well, has also written a pamphlet, Renee Vivien, Sansot, Paris, 1911.) Her chief volumes of poems are Etudes et Preludes (1901), Cendres et Poussieres (1902), Evocations (1903). A novel, Une Femme M'Apparut (1904), is said to be to some extent autobiographical. "Renee Vivien" also wrote a volume on Sappho with translations, and a further volume of poems, Les Kitharedes, suggested by the fragments which remain of the minor women poets of Greece, followers of Sappho.

It is, moreover, noteworthy that a remarkably large proportion of the cases in which h.o.m.os.e.xuality has led to crimes of violence, or otherwise come under medico-legal observation, has been among women. It is well know that the part taken by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes of violence, is small as compared with men.[144] In the h.o.m.os.e.xual field, as we might have antic.i.p.ated, the conditions are to some extent reversed. Inverted men, in whom a more or less feminine temperament is so often found, are rarely impelled to acts of aggressive violence, though they frequently commit suicide. Inverted women, who may retain their feminine emotionality combined with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy, present a favorable soil for the seeds of pa.s.sional crime, under those conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter into the invert's life.

The first conspicuous example of this tendency in recent times is the Memphis case (1892) in the United States. (Arthur Macdonald, "Observation de s.e.xualite Pathologique Feminine," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, May, 1895; see also Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Eng. trans, of 10th ed., p. 550.) In this case a congenital s.e.xual invert, Alice Mitch.e.l.l, planned a marriage with Freda Ward, taking a male-name and costume. This scheme was frustrated by Freda's sister, and Alice Mitch.e.l.l then cut Freda's throat. There is no reason to suppose that she was insane at the time of the murder. She was a typical invert of a very p.r.o.nounced kind. Her mother had been insane and had homicidal impulses. She herself was considered unbalanced, and was masculine in her habits from her earliest years. Her face was obviously unsymmetrical and she had an appearance of youthfulness below her age. She was not vicious, and had little knowledge of s.e.xual matters, but when she kissed Freda she was ashamed of being seen, while Freda could see no reason for being ashamed. She was adjudged insane.

There have been numerous cases in America more recently. One case (for some details concerning which I am indebted to Dr. J. G. Kiernan, of Chicago) is that of the "Tiller Sisters," two quintroons, who for many years had acted together under that name in cheap theaters. One, who was an invert, with a horror of men dating from early girlhood, was s.e.xually attached to the other, who was without inborn inversion, and was eventually induced by a man to leave the invert. The latter, overcome by jealousy, broke into the apartment of the couple and shot the man dead. She was tried, and sent to prison for life. A defense of insanity was made, but for this there was no evidence. In another case, also occurring in Chicago (reported in Medicine, June, 1899, and Alienist and Neurologist, October, 1899), a trained nurse lived for fourteen years with a young woman who left her on four different occasions, but was each time induced to return; finally, however, she left and married, whereupon the nurse shot the husband, who was not, however, fatally wounded. The culprit in this case had been twice married, but had not lived with either of her husbands; it was stated that her mother had died in an asylum, and that her brother had committed suicide. She was charged with disorderly conduct, and subjected to a fine.

In another later case in Chicago a Russian girl of 22, named Anna Rubinowitch, shot from motives of jealousy another Russian girl to whom she had been devoted from childhood, and then fatally shot herself. The relations between the two girls had been very intimate. "Our love affair is one purely of the soul," Anna Rubinowitch was accustomed to say; "we love each other on a higher plane than that of earth." (I am informed that there were in fact physical relationships; the s.e.xual organs were normal.) This continued, with great devotion on each side, until Anna's "sweetheart" began to show herself susceptible to the advances of a male wooer. This aroused uncontrollable jealousy in Anna, whose father, it may be noted, had committed suicide by shooting some years previously.

h.o.m.os.e.xual relationships are also a cause of suicide among women. Such a case was reported in Ma.s.sachusetts early in 1901. A girl of 21 had been tended during a period of nervous prostration, apparently of hysterical nature, by a friend and neighbor, fourteen years her senior, married and having children. An intimate friendship grew up, equally ardent on both sides. The mother of the younger woman and the husband of the other took measures to put a stop to the intimacy, and the girl was sent away to a distant city; stolen interviews, however, still occurred. Finally, when the obstacles became insurmountable, the younger woman bought a revolver and deliberately shot herself in the temple, in presence of her mother, dying immediately. Though sometimes thought to act rather strangely, she was a great favorite with all, handsome, very athletic, fond of all outdoor sports, an energetic religious worker, possessing a fine voice, and was an active member of many clubs and societies. The older woman belonged to an aristocratic family and was loved and respected by all. In another case in New York in 1905 a retired sailor, "Captain John Weed," who had commanded transatlantic vessels for many years, was admitted to a Home for old sailors and shortly after became ill and despondent, and cut his throat. It was then found that "Captain Weed" was really a woman. I am informed that the old sailor's despondency and suicide were due to enforced separation from a female companion.

The infatuation of young girls for actresses and other prominent women may occasionally lead to suicide. Thus in Philadelphia, a few years ago, a girl of 19, belonging to a very wealthy family, beautiful and highly educated, acquired an absorbing infatuation for Miss Mary Garden, the prima donna, with whom she had no personal acquaintance. The young girl would kneel in worship before the singer's portrait, and studied hairdressing and manicuring in the hope of becoming Miss Garden's maid. When she realized that her dream was hopeless she shot herself with a revolver. (Cases more or less resembling those here brought forward occur from time to time in all parts of the civilized world. Reports, mostly from current newspapers, of such cases, as well as of simple transvestism, or Eonism, in both women and men, will be found in the publications of the Berlin Wissenschaftlich-humanitaren Komitee: the Monatsberichte up to 1909, then in the Vierteljahrsberichte, and from 1913 onward in the Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen.)

Yet, until recently, comparatively little has been known of s.e.xual inversion in women. Even so lately as 1901 (after the publication of the first edition of the present Study), Krafft-Ebing wrote that scarcely fifty cases had been recorded. The chief monographs devoted but little s.p.a.ce to women.

Krafft-Ebing himself, in the earlier editions of Psychopathia s.e.xualis, gave little special attention to inversion in women, although he published a few cases. Moll, however, included a valuable chapter on the subject in his Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, narrating numerous cases, and inversion in women also received special attention in the present Study. Hirschfeld, however, in his h.o.m.os.e.xualitat (1914) is the first authority who has been able to deal with feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality as completely co-ordinate with masculine h.o.m.os.e.xuality. The two manifestations, masculine and feminine, are placed on the same basis and treated together throughout the work.

It is, no doubt, not difficult to account for this r.e.t.a.r.dation in the investigation of s.e.xual inversion in women. Notwithstanding the severity with which h.o.m.os.e.xuality in women has been visited in a few cases, for the most part men seem to have been indifferent toward it; when it has been made a crime or a cause for divorce in men, it has usually been considered as no offense at all in women.[145] Another reason is that it is less easy to detect in women; we are accustomed to a much greater familiarity and intimacy between women than between men, and we are less apt to suspect the existence of any abnormal pa.s.sion. And, allied with this cause, we have also to bear in mind the extreme ignorance and the extreme reticence of women regarding any abnormal or even normal manifestation of their s.e.xual life. A woman may feel a high degree of s.e.xual attraction for another woman without realizing that her affection is s.e.xual, and when she does realize this, she is nearly always very unwilling to reveal the nature of her intimate experience, even with the adoption of precautions, and although the fact may be present to her that, by helping to reveal the nature of her abnormality, she may be helping to lighten the burden of it on other women. Among the numerous confessions voluntarily sent to Krafft-Ebing there is not one by a woman. There is, again, the further reason that well-marked and fully developed cases of inversion are probably rarer in women, though a slighter degree may be more common; in harmony with the greater affectability of the feminine organism to slight stimuli, and its lesser liability to serious variation.[146]

The same aberrations that are found among men are, however, everywhere found among women. Feminine inversion has sometimes been regarded as a vice of modern refined civilization. Yet it was familiar to the Anglo-Saxons, and Theodore's Penitential in the seventh century a.s.signed a penance of three years (considerably less than that a.s.signed to men, or for b.e.s.t.i.a.lity) to "a woman fornicating with a woman." Among the women of savages in all parts of the world h.o.m.os.e.xuality is found, though it is less frequently recorded than among men.[147]

In New Zealand it is stated on the authority of Moerenhout (though I have not been able to find the reference) that the women practised Lesbianism. In South America, where inversion is common among men, we find similar phenomena in women. Among Brazilian tribes Gandavo[148] wrote:-

"There are certain women among these Indians who determine to be chaste and know no man. These leave every womanly occupation and imitate the men. They wear their hair the same way as the men; they go to war with them or hunting, bearing their bows; they continue always in the company of men, and each has a woman who serves her and with whom she lives."

This has some a.n.a.logy with the phenomena seen among North American men. Dr. Holder, who has carefully studied the bote, tells me that he has met no corresponding phenomena in women.

There is no doubt, however, that h.o.m.os.e.xuality among women is well known to the American Indians in various regions. Thus the Salish Indians of British Columbia have a myth of an old woman who had intercourse with a young woman by means of a horn used as a p.e.n.i.s.[149] In the mythology of the a.s.siniboine Indians (of Canada and Montana) and the Fox Indians (of Iowa) there are also legends of feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality, supposed to have been derived from the Algonkin Cree Indians, who were closely connected with both.[150]

According to the a.s.siniboine legend, a man's wife fell in love with his sister and eloped with her, a boneless child being the result of the union; the husband pursued the couple, and killed his wife as well as the child; no one cared to avenge her death. The Fox legend, ent.i.tled "Two Maidens who Played the Harlot with Each Other," runs as follows: "It is said that once on a time long ago there were two young women who were friends together. It is told that there were also two youths who tried to woo the two maidens, but they were not able even so much as to talk with them. After awhile the youths began to suspect something wrong. So once during the summer, when the two maidens started away to peel off bark, the youths followed, staying just far enough behind to keep them in sight. While the girls were peeling the bark, the youths kept themselves hidden. After awhile they no longer heard the sound of the maidens at work. Whereupon they began to creep up to where they were. When they drew nigh, behold, the maidens were in the act of taking off their clothes. The first to disrobe flung herself down on the ground and lay there. 'Pray, what are these girls going to do?' was the feeling in the hearts of the youths. And to their amazement the girls began to lie with each other. Thereupon the youths ran to where the girls were. She who was lying on top instantly fell over backward. Her c.l.i.toris was standing out and had a queer shape; it was like a turtle's p.e.n.i.s. Thereupon the maidens began to plead with the youths: 'Oh, don't tell on us!' they said. 'Truly it is not of our own free desire that we have done this thing We have done it under the influence of some unknown being.' It is said that afterward one of the maidens became big with child. In the course of time, she gave birth, and the child was like a soft-sh.e.l.l turtle."

In Bali, according to Jacobs (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels), h.o.m.os.e.xuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is more secretly exercised; the methods of gratification adopted are either digital or lingual, or else by bringing the parts together (tribadism).

Baumann, who noted inversion among the male negro population of Zanzibar, finds that it is also not rare among women. Although Oriental manners render it impossible for such women to wear men's clothes openly, they do so in private, and are recognized by other women by their man-like bearing, as also by the fact that women's garments do not suit them. They show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek s.e.xual satisfaction among women who have the same inclinations, or else among normal women, who are won over by presents or other means. In addition to tribadism or cunnilinctus, they sometimes use an ebony or ivory phallus, with a kind of glans at one end, or sometimes at both ends; in the latter case it can be used by two women at once, and sometimes it has a hole bored through it by which warm water can be injected; it is regarded as an Arab invention, and is sometimes used by normal women shut up in harems, and practically deprived of s.e.xual satisfaction.[151]

Among the Arab women, according to Kocher, h.o.m.os.e.xual practices are rare, though very common among Arab men. In Egypt, however, according to G.o.dard, Kocher, and others, it is almost fashionable, and every woman in the harem has a "friend." In Turkey h.o.m.os.e.xuality is sometimes said to be rare among women. But it would appear to be found in the harems and women's baths of Turkey, as well as of Islam generally. Brantome in the sixteenth century referred to the Lesbianism of Turkish women at the baths, and Leo Africa.n.u.s in the same century mentioned the tribadism of Moorish women and the formal organization of tribadic prost.i.tution in Fez. There was an Osmanli Sapphic poetess, Mihiri, whose grave is at Amasia, and Vambery and Achestorides agree as to the prevalence of feminine h.o.m.os.e.xuality in Turkey.[152] Among the negroes and mulattoes of French creole countries, according to Corre, h.o.m.os.e.xuality is very common. "I know a lady of great beauty," he remarks, "a stranger in Guadalupe and the mother of a family, who is obliged to stay away from the markets and certain shops because of the excessive admiration of mulatto women and negresses, and the impudent invitations which they dare to address to her."[153] He refers to several cases of more or less violent s.e.xual attempts by women on young colored girls of 12 or 14, and observes that such attempts by men on children of their own s.e.x are much rarer.

In China (according to Matignon) and in Cochin China (according to Lorion) h.o.m.os.e.xuality does not appear to be common among women. In India, however, it is probably as prevalent among women as it certainly is among men.

In the first edition of this Study I quoted the opinion of Dr. Buchanan, then Superintendant of the Central Gaol of Bengal at Bhagalpur, who informed me that he had never come across a case and that his head-gaoler had never heard of such a thing in twenty-five years' experience. Another officer in the Indian Medical Service a.s.sures me, however, that there cannot be the least doubt as to the frequency of h.o.m.os.e.xuality among women in India, either inside or outside gaols. I am indebted to him for the following notes on this point:-

"That h.o.m.os.e.xual relationships are common enough among Indian women is evidenced by the fact that the Hindustani language has five words to denote the tribade: (1) dugana, (2) zanakhe, (3) sa'tar, (4) chapathai, and (5) chapatbaz. The modus operandi is generally what Martial calls geminos committere cunnos, but sometimes a phallus, called saburah, is employed. The act itself is called chapat or chapti, and the Hindustani poets, n.a.z.ir, Rangin, Jan S'aheb, treat of Lesbian love very extensively and sometimes very crudely. Jan S'aheb, a woman poet, sings to the effect that intercourse with a woman by means of a phallus is to be preferred to the satisfaction offered by a male lover. The common euphemism employed when speaking of two tribades who live together is that they 'live apart.' So much for the literary evidence as to the prevalence of what, mirable dictu, Dr. Buchanan's gaoler was ignorant of.