Part 9

The treatment of sexual inversion by society and legislation follows the view taken of its origin and nature. Ever since the age of Justinian, it has been regarded as an unqualified crime against God, the order of the world, and the State. This opinion, which has been incorporated in the codes of all the Occidental races, sprang originally from the conviction that sterile passions are injurious to the tribe by checking propagation. Religion adopted this view, and, through the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah, taught that God was ready to punish whole nations with violent destruction if they practised the "unmentionable vice." Advancing civilisation, at the same time, sought in every way to limit and regulate the sexual appetite; and while doing so, it naturally excluded those forms which were not agreeable to the majority, which possessed no obvious utility, and which _prima facie_ seemed to violate the cardinal laws of human nature.

Social feeling, moulded by religion, by legislation, by civility, and by the persistent antipathies of the majority regards sexual inversion with immitigable abhorrence. It does not distinguish between the categories I have indicated, but includes all species under the common condemnation of crime.

Meanwhile, of late years, we have come to perceive that the phenomena presented by sexual inversion, cannot be so roughly dealt with. Two great nations, the French and the Italian, by the "Code Napoleon" and the "Codice Penale" of 1889, remove these phenomena from the category of crime into that of immorality at worst. That is to say, they place the intercourse of males with males upon the same legal ground as the normal sexual relation. They punish violence, protect minors, and provide for the maintenance of public decency. Within these limitations, they recognise the right of adults to deal as they choose with their persons.

The new school of anthropologists and psychological physicians study sexual inversion partly on the lines of historical evolution, and partly from the point of view of disease. Mixing up atavism and heredity with nervous malady in the individual, they wish to substitute medical treatment for punishment, life-long sequestration in asylums for terms of imprisonment differing in duration according to the offence.

Neither society nor science entertains the notion that those instincts which the laws of France and Italy tolerate, under certain restrictions, can be simply natural in a certain percentage of male persons. Up to the present time the Urning has not been considered as a sport of nature in her attempt to differentiate the sexes. Ulrichs is the only European who has maintained this view in a long series of polemical and imperfectly scientific works. Yet facts brought daily beneath the notice of open-eyed observers prove that Ulrichs is justified in his main contention. Society lies under the spell of ancient terrorism and coagulated errors. Science is either wilfully hypocritical or radically misinformed.

Walt Whitman, in America, regards what he calls "manly love" as destined to be a leading virtue of democratic nations, and the source of a new chivalry. But he does not define what he means by "manly love." And he emphatically disavows any "morbid inferences" from his doctrine as "damnable."

This is how the matter stands now. The one thing which seems clear is that sexual inversion is no subject for legislation, and that the example of France and Italy might well be followed by other nations. The problem ought to be left to the physician, the moralist, the educator, and finally to the operation of social opinion.

X.

SUGGESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF SEXUAL INVERSION IN RELATION TO LAW AND EDUCATION.

I.

The laws in force against what are called unnatural offences derive from an edict of Justinian, A.D. 538. The Emperor treated these offences as criminal, on the ground that they brought plagues, famines, earthquakes, and the destruction of whole cities, together with their inhabitants, upon the nations who tolerated them.

II.

A belief that sexual inversion is a crime against God, nature, and the State pervades all subsequent legislation on the subject. This belief rests on (1) theological conceptions derived from the Scriptures; (2) a dread of decreasing the population; (3) the antipathy of the majority for the tastes of the minority; (4) the vulgar error that antiphysical desires are invariably voluntary, and the result either of inordinate lust or of satiated appetites.

III.

Scientific investigation has proved in recent years that a very large proportion of persons in whom abnormal sexual inclinations are manifested possess them from their earliest childhood, that they cannot divert them into normal channels, and that they are powerless to get rid of them. In these cases, then, legislation is interfering with the liberty of individuals, under a certain misconception regarding the nature of their offence.

IV.

Those who support the present laws are therefore bound to prove that the coercion, punishment, and defamation of such persons are justified either (1) by any injury which these persons suffer in health of body or mind, or (2) by any serious danger arising from them to the social organism.

V.

Experience, confirmed by scientific observation, proves that the temperate indulgence of abnormal sexuality is no more injurious to the individual than a similar indulgence of normal sexuality.

VI.

In the present state of over-population, it is not to be apprehended that a small minority of men exercising sterile and abnormal sexual inclinations should seriously injure society by limiting the increase of the human race.

VII.

Legislation does not interfere with various forms of sterile intercourse between men and women: (1) prostitution, (2) cohabitation in marriage during the period of pregnancy, (3) artificial precautions against impregnation, and (4) some abnormal modes of congress with the consent of the female. It is therefore in an illogical position, when it interferes with the action of those who are naturally sterile, on the ground of maintaining the numerical standard of the population.

VIII.

The danger that unnatural vices, if tolerated by the law, would increase until whole nations acquired them, does not seem to be formidable. The position of women in our civilisation renders sexual relations among us occidentals different from those of any country--ancient Greece and Rome, modern Turkey and Persia--where antiphysical habits have hitherto become endemic.

IX.

In modern France, since the promulgation of the Code Napoleon, sexual inversion has been tolerated under the same restrictions as normal sexuality. That is to say, violence and outrages to public decency are punished, and minors are protected, but adults are allowed to dispose as they like of their own persons. The experience of nearly a century shows that in France, where sexual inversion is not criminal _per se_, there has been no extension of it through society. Competent observers, like agents of police, declare that London, in spite of our penal legislation, is no less notorious for abnormal vice than Paris.

X.

Italy, by the Penal Code of 1889, adopted the principles of the Code Napoleon on this point. It would be interesting to know what led to this alteration of the Italian law. But it cannot be supposed that the results of the Code Napoleon in France were not fully considered.

XI.

The severity of the English statutes render them almost incapable of being put in force. In consequence of this the law is not unfrequently evaded, and crimes are winked at.

XII.

At the same time our laws encourage blackmailing upon false accusation; and the presumed evasion of their execution places from time to time a vile weapon in the hands of unscrupulous politicians, to attack the Government in office. Examples: the Dublin Castle Scandals of 1884, the Cleveland Street Scandals of 1889.

XIII.

Those who hold that our penal laws are required by the interests of society must turn their attention to the higher education. This still rests on the study of the Greek and Latin classics, a literature impregnated with pæderastia. It is carried on at public schools, where young men are kept apart from females, and where homosexual vices are frequent. The best minds of our youth are therefore exposed to the influences of a pæderastic literature at the same time that they acquire the knowledge and experience of unnatural practices. Nor is any trouble taken to correct these adverse influences by physiological instruction in the laws of sex.

XIV.

The points suggested for consideration are whether England is still justified in restricting the freedom of adult persons, and rendering certain abnormal forms of sexuality criminal, by any real dangers to society: after it has been shown (1) that abnormal inclinations are congenital, natural, and ineradicable in a large percentage of individuals; (2) that we tolerate sterile intercourse of various types between the two sexes; (3) that our legislation has not suppressed the immorality in question; (4) that the operation of the Code Napoleon for nearly a century has not increased this immorality in France; (5) that Italy, with the experience of the Code Napoleon to guide her, adopted its principles in 1889; (6) that the English penalties are rarely inflicted to their full extent; (7) that their existence encourages blackmailing, and their non-enforcement gives occasion for base political agitation; (8) that our higher education is in open contradiction to the spirit of our laws.[80]

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Vindices Flammæ.

[2] Stieber, "Practisches Lehrbuch der Criminal-Polizei," 1860, cap. 19, quoted by Ulrichs, "Araxes," p. 9. It is not necessary to multiply evidences upon a point so patent to every man of the world. But I will nevertheless translate a striking passage from Mantegazza (_op. cit._, p. 148). "Nor is this infamous abomination confined to the vilest classes of our society. It soars into the highest spheres of wealth and intelligence. Within the narrow range of my own experience I have known among the most scandalous sodomites a French journalist, a German poet, an Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist; all of these men of exquisite taste and profound culture!" It would not be difficult to draw up a list of English kings, bishops, deans, nobles of the highest rank, poets, historians, dramatists, officers in the army and navy, civil servants, schoolmasters in the most fashionable schools, physicians, members of Parliament, journalists, barristers, who in their lifetime were, as Dante says, "d'un medesmo peccato al mondo lerci." Many belonging to the past are notorious; and no good could come of mentioning the names of the living.

[3] This accusation against men who feel a sexual inclination for males loses some of its significance when we consider how common the practice of _Venus aversa_ is among libertines who love women. Parent-Duchatelet asserts that no prostitute after a certain age has escaped it. Coffignon, in his book on, "La Corruption à Paris" (p. 324), says: "Chaque année, il passe en traîtement a l'hôpital de Lourcine une centaine de femmes sodomistes.... Je suis persuadé qu'à l'hôpital de St. Lazare la proportion des sodomistes est encore beaucoup plus grande.... Les maîtresses de maison, professant cet odieux principe que la clientèle doit être satisfaite, ne permettent pas à une fille de se refuser à une acte de sodomie." Tardieu (Attentats, &c., p. 198) observes: "Chose singulière! c'est principalement des rapports conjugaux que se sont produits les faits de cette nature."

[4] See Casper-Liman, vol. i., p. 182, at the end of Case 71.

[5] While studying what Germans call the _Casuistik_ of this question in medical, forensic, and anthropological works, we often meet with cases where inverted sexuality exhibits extraordinary symptoms of apparent craziness--strange partialities for particular kinds of dress, occupations in the beloved object, nastinesses, and so forth. But it must be remarked first that the same symptoms are exhibited by sexually normal natures (Krafft-Ebing, Observations 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, and the cases recorded in footnote to page 90); and, secondly, that if they should appear to be more frequent in the abnormal, this can in a great measure be ascribed to the fact that these latter cases only come under the observation of medical men and judges when the patients have already for many years been suffering from all the pangs of a coerced and defrauded instinct. There is nothing in the copious history of Greece and Rome upon this subject to lead us to suppose that in a society which tolerated sexual inversion, its subjects were more conspicuous for filthy and degrading or insane proclivities than ordinary men and women were. Those who can bring themselves to enquire into such matters may convince themselves by reading Forberg's annotations to "Hermaphroditus," Rosenbaum's "Lustseuche," the pseudo-Meursius, and the pornographical dialogues of Aretino. It will appear conclusively that both in ancient and in modern times the normal sexual instinct has been subject to the wildest freaks and aberrations; not in actually diseased persons, but simply in lustful wantons and the epicures of new sensations. The curious things we know about flagellation and cruelty in connection with the ordinary appetite should also be remembered. As a final note on this topic, I will refer to a passage quoted by Tarnowsky from a work of Taxil, describing a peculiarly repulsive class of fashionable libertines in Paris called "les stercoraires" (_op. cit._, p. 70). Compare what Mantegazza reports of a "gentile ufficiale francese" (Gli amore degli uomini, vol. i. p. 117).

[6] See upon this point Tardieu, "Attentats aux Moeurs," Rosenbaum, "Die Lustseuche."

[7] Ancient literature abounds in prose and poetry which are both of them concerned with homosexual love. Only a portion of this can be called pornographic: among the Greeks, the [Greek: Mousa Paidikê], parts of Lucian, and occasional hints in Athenæus and Aristophanes perhaps deserve the name; among the Romans, the Priapeia, the Satyricon of Petronius, some elegies and satires, certainly do so. Italian literature can show the Rime Burlesche, Beccadelli's Hermaphroditus, the Canti Carnascialeschi, the maccaronic poems of Fidentius, and the remarkably outspoken romance entitled "Alcibiade fanciullo a scolla." Balzac has treated the theme, but with reserve and delicacy. Mirabeau's "Erotika Biblion" is a kind of classic on the subject. In English literature, if we except Shakespeare's Sonnets, George Barnfield's Poems, parts of Marlowe, "Roderick Random," Churchill's Satire "The Times," homosexual passions have been rarely handled, and none of these works are pornographic. In Germany, Count von Platen, Heine's victim, was certainly an Urning; but his homosexual imitations of Persian poetry are pure, though passionate. I am not acquainted with more than the titles of some distinctly pornographic German books. The following appears to be of this sort: "Mannesliebe, oder drei Jahre aus dem Leben eines jungen Mannes."

[8] Les Deux Prostitutions, par F. Carlier, Ancien Chef du Service actif des Moeurs à la Préfecture de Police. Paris. Dentu. 1889.

[9] Paris, Brossier, 1889.

[10] In the recently published military novel "Sous Offs." (by Lucien Descaves, Paris, Tresse et Stock, 1890) some details are given regarding establishments of this nature. See pp. 322, 412, 417, for a description of the drinking-shop called "Aux Amis de l'Armée," where a few maids were kept for show, and also of its frequenters, including in particular the adjutant Laprévotte (cp. 44).

[11] On the morals of the Foreign Legions, see Ulrichs, Ara Spei, p. 20; Memnon, p. 27. Also General Brossier's report, quoted by Burton, Arabian Nights, vol. x. p. 251

[12] P. 459.

[13] Tardieu, _op. cit._, pp. 213-255.

[14] In dealing with Tardieu, Casper-Liman, and Tarnowsky, I have directed the reader to passages in the works of the three medical authorities who have spoken most decidedly upon this topic. After comparing their evidence, the case seems to me to stand thus. Both male and female prostitutes are exposed to considerable risks of physical deformation in the exercise of their illicit trade. But males and females, if they keep their vicious propensities within the bounds of temperance, offer no physical deformations to observation. Only those men who for years have practised promiscuous prostitution earn epithets like the Greek slang [Greek: euryprôktos], or the Italian _culo rotto_.

[15] Casper-Liman, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 164.

[16] Casper-Liman, _op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 174-181.

[17] _Op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 164-166.

[18] Having criticised Tardieu for his use of the phrase _pæderast_, Casper and Liman can find no better.

[19] Westphal: Die Conträre Sexualempfindung. Archiv für Psychatrie, vol. ii. I.

[20] The Standard of Sanity, Br. Med. Journal, Nov. 28, 1885.

[21] See Tarnowsky about the opinion of the lower classes in St. Petersburg, _op. cit._, p. 99. "Ueberhaupt verhalten sich die gemeinen ungebildeten Leute, dem Ausspruch aller mir bekannten Päderasten gemäss, äusserat nachsichtig gegen unzüchtige Anträge--'herrschaft-liche Spielerei,' wie sie es nennen." This is true not only of Russia, but of countries where we should least expect to find the compliance in question.

[22] P. 73. The italics are the translator's. The adjective _homosexual_, though ill-compounded of a Greek and a Latin word, is useful, and has been adopted by medical writers on this topic. _Unisexual_ would perhaps be better.

[23] A note upon this subject has to be written; and it may be introduced here as well as elsewhere. Balzac, in _Une dernière incarnation de Vautrin_, describes the morals of the French _bagnes_. Dostoieffsky, in _Prison Life in Siberia_, touches on the same topic. See his portrait of Sirotkin, p. 52, _et seq._, p. 120 (edn. J. & R. Maxwell, London). We may compare Carlier, _op. cit._, pp. 300, 301, for an account of the violence of homosexual passions in French prisons. The initiated are familiar with the facts in English prisons. There is a military prison on the Lido at Venice, where incorrigible lovers of their own sex, amongst other culprits, are confined. A man here said: "All our loves in this place are breech-loaders." Bouchard, in his _Confessions_ (Paris, Liseux, 1881), describes the convict station at Marseilles in 1630. The men used to be allowed to bring women on board the galleys. At that epoch they "les besognoient avant tout le monde, les couchant sous le banc sur leur 'capot. Mais depuis quelques années en ca, le general a defendu entrée aux femmes. De sorte qu'il ne se pêche plus maintenant là-dedans qu'en sodomie, mollesse, irrumation, et autres pareilles tendresses" (p. 151). The same Frenchman, speaking of the Duc d'Orléans' pages at Paris, says that this was a "cour extrèmemen impie et débauchée, surtout pour les garçons, M. d'Orléans deffendoit à ses pages de se besogner ni branler la pique; leur donnant au reste congé de voir les femmes tant qu'ils voudroient, et quelquefois venant de nuict heurter à la porte de leur chambre, avec cinq ou six garses, qu'il enfermoit avec eux une heure à deux" (p. 88). This prince was of the same mind as Campanella, who, in the _Città del Sole_, laid it down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women, for the avoidance of sexual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the sexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman prelates. As regards military service, the facts related by Ulrichs about the French Foreign Legion in Algeria, on the testimony of a credible witness, who had been a pathic in his regiment, deserve attention (_Ara Spei_, p. 20; _Memnon_, p. 27). This man, who was a German, told Ulrichs that the Spanish, French, and Italian soldiers were the lovers, the Swiss and German their beloved. See General Brossier, cited above, p. 19. Ulrichs reports that in the Austrian army lectures on homosexual vices are regularly given to cadets and conscripts (_Memnon_, p. 20).

[24] See above, p. 33, my criticism of Moreau upon this point, with special reference to Greece.

[25] Prometheus, pp. 20-26, _et seq._

[26] Without having recourse to Ulrichs, it may be demonstrated from Krafft-Ebing's own cases of genuine Urnings that early onanism is by no means more frequent among them than among normal males. Five marked specimens showed no inclination for self-abuse. The first (p. 128) says: "As I never masturbated and felt no inclination for it, I sometimes had a nocturnal pollution." The second (p. 155): "You will be surprised to hear that before my twenty-eighth year I never had any ejaculation of semen, either by nocturnal emissions, or by masturbation, or by contact with a man." The third (p. 172): "Onanism is a miserable makeshift, and pernicious, whereas homosexual love elevates the moral and strengthens the physical nature." The fourth (p. 163): "I had an internal horror of onanism, although from the very first appearance of puberty I was sensually very excitable and troubled with persistent erections." The fifth (p. 142) is not so clear; but it is obvious from his remarks that the first ejaculation of semen which happened to him did so at the sight of a handsome soldier: "feeling my parts moistened, I was horribly frightened and thought it was a hæmorrhage." Some of the cases do not mention the subject at all. A good many seem to have begun to masturbate early; but the proportion is not excessive to the whole number. One Urning explains the _faute de mieux_ system (p. 115): "If we have no friend, whose sexual company has become needful to the preservation of our health, and if we abandon ourselves at last to masturbation alone with our imagination, then indeed do we become ill." Another speaks as follows (p. 151): "Homosexual indulgence with a man gave me enjoyment and a consequent feeling of well-being, whereas onanism _faute de mieux_ produced an opposite result."

[27] P. 82. Herodotus called it "the female disease."

[28] P. 86, _et seq._

[29] P. 88, _et seq._

[30] Henceforward we may use the word Urning without apology; for however the jurists and men of science repudiate Ulrichs' doctrine, they have adopted his designation for a puzzling and still unclassified member of the human race. A Dr. Kaserer, of Vienna, is said to have invented the term Urning.

[31] This is a hit at Westphal, Krafft-Ebing's predecessor, who laid down the doctrine that Urnings are conscious of their own morbidity. Of course, both authorities are equally right. Approach an Urning with terrors of social opinion and law; and he will confess his dreadful apprehensions. Approach him from the point of view of science; and he will declare that, within four closed walls, he has no thought of guilt.

[32] Pp. 97-106.