the varying views as to the genesis of homosexualism, which i have attempted to summarise in the preceding chapter, can be easily reconciled.
doubts as to one's "completeness" and a craving for safety may, even at an early age, cause the gonads to remain undeveloped or to develop in the wrong direction. craig's pigeons were as completely "perverted" by the wrong environment as steinach's rats by surgical operations.
hirschfeld's intermediate sex, in its concealed forms, that is, when the individual, upon gross examination, appears normal, may well be produced by the environment. freud's oedipus situation is not incompatible with adler's theory of the neurotic constitution.
gonads are not different from any other glands. thyroid involvement may produce fear or, at least, a picture of fear (exophthalmic goitre), but fear also[pg 175] produces many forms of thyroid involvement (goitre and exophthalmic goitre were alarmingly frequent in french towns submitted to bombardment during the world war). a study of psychic impotence in men and frigidity in women has proved that impotence was mainly a refusal to be a potent man, frigidity a refusal to be woman in intercourse. in certain cases, exaggerated cravings for impotence or frigidity may modify the gonads so completely that they present the condition hirschfeld has called typical of the intermediate sex.
homosexualism can be best understood when viewed as a neurotic phenomenon, not as a neurosis in itself, but as a detail of the neurotic attitude to life outlined by adler. homosexualism is, in its last analysis, an organic striving away from life's normal goals.
a denial of life. homosexualism cannot be understood unless we associate it with a denial of life and all its duties. nor could love be understood if we tried to dissociate it from its primary sexual goal which is the acceptance of life with its duties, symbolised by the procreation of life and the creation of new duties by the individual, duties which he considers as a source of joy.
[pg 176]
homosexualism is love, negative love, quite as involuntary and as obsessive as normal, heterosexual, positive love.
a homosexual teacher wrote to plazek: "a glance at the literature and art produced by homosexuals as well as insight into actual conditions, reveals that abnormal love can conjure up the same emotional display as normal love. longing, faithfulness, devotion, self sacrifice, blossom forth in abnormal love as well as in normal love.
"in both, complete communion may be the goal and climax of feelings which are perhaps among the deepest and finest which mankind can experience."
their love letters. the absolute similarity of heterosexual and homosexual love in their written expression can be judged by perusing the sonnets which michael angelo wrote to young tommaso dei cavalieri and which could very well have been addressed to a woman.
a sober scientist like winckelman was carried away by his homosexual love for frederick von berg to the point of writing the following epistle which might emanate from a lovelorn highschool boy:
"all the names i might call you are not sweet enough and do not do justice to my love. all the[pg 177] things i might say to you sound too weak to give voice to my heart and my soul. i love you, my dearest, more than the whole world and neither time nor circumstances nor age could ever cause my love to diminish."
deeds of violence. homosexual love has led to as many deeds of violence on the part of disappointed lovers as heterosexual love. the papers frequently publish without comments stories of the shooting of a woman by another woman, caused by the fact that the victim was "too attentive to another woman."
psychiatrists who can read between the lines recognise in those murders the result of homosexual jealousy and infidelity.
in that respect the behavior of the two sexes seems slightly different.
"it is well known," remarks havelock ellis, "that the part taken by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes of violence, is small as compared with men. in the homosexual 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[pg 178] their feminine emotionality combined with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy, present a favorable soil for the seeds of passional crime, under those conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter the invert's life."
a homosexual tragedy. in a recent case in chicago a homosexual woman shot her former roommate and then seriously wounded herself. they had roomed together and last fall the victim broke off the life together because the invert "was too affectionate." the victim went to her parents' house in the south to get rid of the invert. on her return to chicago two months later she was bothered by the invert who insisted that she room with her. on april 22d she received a letter from the invert containing a bullet and a threat. alarmed, she had the invert arrested, but the invert was discharged on promise she would not annoy the girl. the invert had a number of swagger sticks, one of which she carried each day. there is no account of her masculinity of attire. she wrote poems to her victim and made her presents including a diamond ring and a diamond studded watch, all of which were returned. there had been several threats[pg 179] of killing the victim, before the letter came, if she ended the friendship.
women more homosexual than men. remembering how the mother's fetishes affect us in the choice of a sexual mate we may expect to find more homosexualism in woman than in man. the facts bear up our theory. while the gross forms of homosexualism are less frequent among women, a thousand mild forms of it are observable in the behavior of even apparently very normal women.
the sentimental attachments of school girls for certain teachers, the pleasure which they derive from spending nights with some friend on whom they have a "crush," the thousand and one bodily caresses female friends shower on each other, the curiosity they manifest about each other's physical condition, their frequent bed room or bathroom conferences, are manifestations of a mild homosexualism, which, however, do not always lead to overt acts.
boastfulness. many homosexuals compensate for the scorn meted out to them by normal individuals with a certain proud boastfulness.
"we are supermen," one hears them say when they find a sympathetic listener, "we have reached beyond the usual, boresome, bourgeois form of gratifica[pg 180]tion. our intellect is nauseated by woman's silliness."
and the females say in their turn: "we are super-women, we have conquered the fear of man and we are tired of man's boorish ways."
some of the male homosexuals who are bisexual, that is, can also be attracted by women, pride themselves over the mentality of the women they love. "men have accustomed us to a higher intellectual level and to a more intelligent form of conversation," a homosexual said to me.
this is naturally a defence mechanism. by demanding extremely high qualification from the women, homosexuals have a ready excuse for consorting with men exclusively.
famous homosexuals. homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the greek philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, julius c?sar, alexander the great, michael angelo, leonardo da vinci, frederick of prussia, shakespeare, oscar wilde, nietzsche, etc.
the nietzsche-wagner feud should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's point of view. wagner was to young nietzsche an attractive, heroic, father-image. the philosopher never had any real affair[pg 181] of the heart with a woman. he only indulged in very ephemeral relationships which, by their disastrous results, drove him further away from women. (dr. w. h. white of washington received the assurance while in europe that nietzsche died of syphilis.) nietzsche made himself obnoxious to wagner by trying to be his press agent. as wagner, however, a shrewd business man in his old days, objected to nietzsche's agnosticism and to his friendship with certain jews, nietzsche, disappointed in his love, abandoned wagner and hated him fiercely. he attacked him on every occasion, his hatred being made the fiercer by the fact that he himself considered himself as a greater composer, one line in nietzsche's letters throws a strange light upon the poor paretic's feelings. wagner's "feminine traits" he wrote, finally disgusted him.
shall perverse love be recognized? efforts are being made in various directions at the present day to have homosexual love legally recognised and given perfect equality with heterosexual love. in germany, a number of writers, von kupfer, friedlander and others have boldly championed that futile attempt.
a cinema film was produced last year (1921) in berlin depicting the plight of the homosexual who[pg 182] is unable to control his cravings and falls a victim to the wiles of a blackmailer. dr. magnus hirschfeld agreed to impersonate in that production the scientist who attempts to enlighten the public as to the nature of homosexualism, so as to bring about a modification of the statute punishing perverts.
man's emancipation. in 1900, elizar von kupfer called upon the men to proclaim their "independence" from women. "the man who lives in bondage to women," he wrote, "and who humors her whims, has lost his manhood. since woman is emancipating herself, why should not men follow the same road?"
illogically enough, von kupfer defends the mothers and wives, "flowers who should not be rooted out of the garden of love." in schopenhauer's silly outbursts against woman, however, von kupfer sees "a test of manhood revolting against man's humiliation" and he adds that "it is only from the closest relation of man to man, adolescent to man, and adolescent to adolescent, that government and civilisation will derive real power."
blüher considers homosexualism as an "essential human trait which must be granted an outlet with[pg 183] certain restrictions (setting the age of consent at fourteen and forbidding the use of violence)."
benedikt friedlander, in his "renaissance des eros uranios" suggests "bringing ancient and modern culture into harmony with each other by reviving the greek eros and overthrowing the monopoly which woman has, of being loved and beautiful."
removing the legal penalties which punish overt homosexual acts is one thing. recognising homosexualism is an entirely different proposition. punishing a typhoid fever patient would be absurd, but typhoid fever sufferers should not be allowed to remain at large without treatment. homosexualism is a neurotic trait which should be eradicated, if possible, by analytic treatment. hopeless cases, on the other hand should be protected against their instincts by a form of confinement which would be neither punitive nor more humiliating than the confinement imposed upon sufferers from contagious diseases.
homosexualism and the war. homosexualism has been on the increase since the war. stekel reports many gruesome cases of husbands who, until they went to the barracks and the trenches, where[pg 184] their unconscious homosexualism found an unusual stimulation, were normal in their attitude to their wives, and who returned after the armistice absolutely inverted and unable to give or receive normal gratification.
the bobbed hair craze has many good excuses. bobbed hair is kept tidy more easily than long tresses and can be dried quicker after a shampoo. at the same time, when we consider that the boyish type of women became fashionable about the same time when short hair did, and that soon after the war, advertising boards were covered with the praise of devices enabling women to conceal their natural curves, we must consider both fashions as symptomatic of an increase in homosexualism.
we might also mention another fashion detail: while dressmakers were trying their best to obliterate their customers breasts, they would bare entirely their backs. anyone familiar with the symbolism and dreams of homosexuals will understand the import of that style of dresses.
is homosexualism necessary? dr. otto gross, without openly countenancing homosexualism, holds that a certain proportion of it is necessary in man's makeup for a mutual understanding of both sexes.
[pg 185]
"we can only understand," he writes, "what we have experienced. unless a man has a decided feminine trend, he is not likely to understand a woman, or to live with her harmoniously and vice versa."
a consideration of the purely physical side of love lends a slight plausibility to that view. unless a man can clearly imagine love's pleasure as experienced by a woman, he may not be able to vouchsafe her complete gratification.
the progress of civilisation certainly demands that men become less masculine (translate: boorish) and women less feminine (meaning: silly).
we could not tolerate, however, what friedl?nder called a renaissance of eros uranios, leading to the conditions which obtained in greece where men, while consorting with other men, were also potent with women.
no parallel can be drawn between greek culture and modern culture.
hellenic culture was decidedly masculine, women being solely tools of lust, or beasts of burden, or means of proliferation. as i will show in another chapter, one really modern woman can give to the modern man what demosthenes sought in three[pg 186] kinds of women, a prostitute, a concubine and a wife, not to count a male mistress.
what is really needed is a better understanding of homosexualism by the public and by the homosexuals. after which, homosexuals, no longer despised and punished for their obsessive cravings, and no longer proud of their condition, will be given sympathy and treatment, voluntary or compulsory. psychoanalysts will remove their complexes and lead them toward a positive goal; surgeons, performing on them some of steinach's operations, may raise their heterosexual potency to the point at which no doubt will obsess them any longer.
those things will avail little, however, until parents watch their offspring carefully to discover in them the first symptoms of a homosexual trend and adopt ways and means to prevent the growth of the neurosis.
we may for convenience quote hirschfeld's description of the homosexual child, a very superficial one, indeed, sufficient, however, to cause the average parent to seek psychological and medical advice before it is too late and before mental and physical habits have compromised, perhaps hopelessly, the love life of their children.
[pg 187]
"the homosexual boy prefers girls' games, shuns boys' games, is girlish in disposition and behavior, if not in appearance. people often say that he is like a girl. he is happy in the company of girls. he has a psychic fixation on his mother. he is reserved and embarrassed before other boys. he often becomes unduly attached to a male teacher or a schoolmate.
"the homosexual girl prefers boys' games, does not care for sewing or other feminine occupations, is boyish in her disposition, her motions, often in her appearance. people call her a tomboy. she likes to romp with boys. she is overattached to her father. she shows embarrassment in the presence of other girls. she often falls madly in love with a female teacher or some older woman."
