"I thought that one day when I had money and opportunity I would
dress in men's clothes and go to another country, in order that I
might be unhampered by sex considerations and conventions. I
determined to live an honorable, upright, but simple life.

"I had no idea at first that homosexual attractions in women
existed; afterward observations on the lower animals put the idea
into my head. I made no preparation in my mind for any sexual
life, though I thought it would be a dreary business repressing
my body all my days.

"My relations with other women were entirely pure. My attitude
toward my sexual physical feelings was one of reserve and
repression, and I think the growing conviction of my radical
deficiency somewhere, would have made intimate affection for
anyone, with any demonstration in it, a kind of impropriety for
which I had no taste.

"However, between 21 and 24 other things happened to me.

"During these few years I saw plenty of men and plenty of women.
As regards the men I liked them very well, but I never thought
the man would turn up with whom I should care to live. Several
men were very friendly with me and three in particular used to
write me letters and give me much of their confidence. I invited
two of them to visit at my house. All these men talked to me with
freedom and even told me about their sexual ideas and doings. One
asked me to believe that he was leading a good life; the other
two owned that they were not. One discussed the question of
homosexuality with me; he has never married. I liked one of them
a good deal, being attracted by his softness and gentleness and
almost feminine voice. It was hoped that I would take to him and
he very cautiously made love to me. I allowed him to kiss me a
few times and wrote him a few responsive letters, wondering what
I liked in him. Someone then commented on the acquaintance and
said 'marriage,' and I woke up to the fact that I did not really
want him at all. I think he found the friendship too insipid and
was glad to be out of it. All these men were a trifle feminine in
characteristics, and two played no games. I thought it odd that
they should all express admiration for the very boyish qualities
in me that other people disliked. A fourth man, something of the
same type, told another friend that he always felt surprised at
how freely he was able to talk to me, but that he never could
feel that I was a woman. Two of these were brilliantly clever
men; two were artists.

"At the same period, or earlier, I made a number of women
friends, and of course saw more of them. I chose out some and
some chose me; I think I attracted them as much as, or even more
than, they attracted me. I do not quite remember if this was so,
though I can say for certain that it was so at school. There were
three or four bright, clever, young women whom I got to know then
with whom I was great friends. We were interested in books,
social theories, politics, art. Sometimes I visited them or we
went on exploring expeditions to many country places or towns.
They all in the end either had love affairs or married. I know
that in spite of all our free conversations they never talked to
me as they did to each other; we were always a little shy with
each other. But I got very fond of at least four of them. I
admired them and when I was tired and worried I often thought how
easily, if I had been a man, I could have married and settled
down with one or the other. I used to think it would be
delightful to have a woman to work for and take care of. My
attraction to these women was very strong, but I don't think they
knew it. I seldom even kissed them, but I should often have
cheerfully given them a good hugging and kissing if I had thought
it a right or proper thing to do. I never wanted them to kiss me
half so much as I wanted to kiss them. In these years I felt this
with every woman I admired.

"Occasionally, I experienced slight erections when close to other
women. I am sure that no deliberate thought of mine caused them,
and as I had them at other times too, when I was not expecting
them, I think it may have been accidental. What I felt with my
mind and what I felt with my body always at this time seemed
apart. I cannot accurately describe the interest and attraction
that women then were to me. I only know I never felt anything
like it for men. All my feelings of desire to do kindnesses, to
give presents, to be liked and respected and all such natural
small matters, referred to women, not to men, and at this time,
both openly and to myself, I said unhesitatingly that I liked
women best. It must be remembered that at this time a dislike for
men was being fostered in me by those who wanted me to marry, and
this must have counted for more than I now remember.

"As regards my physical sexual feelings, which were well
established during these few years, I don't think I often
indulged in any erotic imaginations worth estimating, but so far
as I did at all, I always imagined myself as a man loving a
woman. I cannot recall ever imagining the opposite, but I seldom
imagined anything at all, and I suppose ultimate sex sensations
know no sex.

"But as time went on and my physical and psychical feelings met,
at any rate in my own mind, I became fully aware of the meaning
of love and even, of homosexual possibilities.

"I should probably have thought more of this side of things
except that during this time I was so worried by the difficulty
of living in my home under the perpetual friction of comparison
with other people. My life was a sham; I was an actor never off
the boards. I had to play at being a something I was not front
morning till night, and I had no cessation of the long fatigue I
had had at school; in addition I had sex to deal with actively
and consciously.

"Looking back on these twenty-four years of my life I only look
back on a round of misery. The nervous strain was enormous and so
was the moral strain. Instead of a child I felt myself, whenever
I desired to please anyone else, a performing monkey. My
pleasures were stolen or I was snubbed for taking them. I was not
taught and was called a fool. My hand was against everybody's.
How it was that with my high spirits and vivid imagination I did
not grow up a moral imbecile full of perverted instincts I do not
know. I describe myself as a docile child, but I was full of
temptations to be otherwise. There were times when I was silent
before people, but if I had had a knife in my hand I could have
stuck it into them. If it had been desired to make me a
thoroughly perverted being I can imagine no better way than the
attempt to mould me by force into a particular pattern of girl.

"Looking at my instincts in my first childhood and my mental
confusion over myself, I do not believe the most sympathetic and
scientific treatment would have turned me into an average girl,
but I see no reason why proper physical conditions should not
have induced a better physical development and that in its turn
have led to tastes more approximate to those of the normal woman.
That I do not even now desire to be a normal woman is not to the
point.

"Instead of any such help, I suffered during the time that should
have been puberty from a profound mental and physical shock which
was extended over several years, and in addition I suffered from
the outrage of every fine and wholesome feeling I had. These
things by checking my physical development gave, I am perfectly
convinced, a traumatic impetus to my general abnormality, and
this was further kept up by demanding of me (at the dawn of my
real sexual activity, and when still practically a child) an
interest in men and marriage which I was no more capable of
feeling than any ordinary boy or girl of 15. If you had taken a
boy of 13 and given him all my conditions, bound him hand and
foot, when you became afraid of him petted him into docility, and
then placed him in the world and, while urging normal sexuality
upon him on the one hand, made him disgusted with it on the
other, what would have been the probable result?

"Looking back, I can only say I think, the results in my own case
were marvellously good, and that I was saved from worse by my own
innocence and by the physical backwardness which nature, probably
in mercy, bestowed upon me.

"I find it difficult to sum up the way in which I affect other
women and they me. I can only record my conviction that I do
affect a large number, whether abnormally or not I don't know,
but I attract them and it would be easy for some of them to
become very fond of me if I gave them a chance. They are also, I
am certain, more shy with me than they are with other women.

"I find it difficult also to sum up their effect on me. I only
know that some women attract me and some tempt me physically, and
have done ever since I was about 22 or 23. I know that
psychically I have always been more interested in women than in
men, but have not considered them the best companions or
confidants. I feel protective towards them, never feel jealous of
them, and hate having differences with them. And I feel always
that I am not one of them. If there had been any period in my
life when health, and temptation and money and opportunity had
made homosexual relations easy I cannot say how I should have
resisted. I think that I have never had any such relations simply
because I have in a way been safeguarded from them. For a long
time I thought I must do without all actual sexual relations and
acted up to that. If I had thought any relations right and
possible I think I should have striven for heterosexual
experiences because of the respect that I had cultivated, indeed
I think always had, for the normal and natural. If I had thought
it right to indulge any sort of gratification which was within my
reach I think I might probably have chosen the homosexual as
being perhaps more satisfying and more convenient. I always
wanted love and friendship first; later I should have been glad
of something to satisfy my sex hunger too, but by that time I
could have done without it, or I thought so."

At a period rather later than that dealt with in this narrative,
the subject of it became strongly attracted to a man who was of
somewhat feminine and abnormal disposition. But on consideration
she decided that it would not be wise to marry him.

The commonest characteristic of the sexually inverted woman is a certain
degree of masculinity or boyishness. As I have already pointed out,
transvestism in either women or men by no means necessarily involves
inversion. In the volume of _Women Adventurers_, edited by Mrs. Norman for
the Adventure Series, there is no trace of inversion; in most of these
cases, indeed, love for a man was precisely the motive for adopting male
garments and manners. Again, Colley Cibber's daughter, Charlotte Charke, a
boyish and vivacious woman, who spent much of her life in men's clothes,
and ultimately wrote a lively volume of memoirs, appears never to have
been attracted to women, though women were often attracted to her,
believing her to be a man; it is, indeed, noteworthy that women seem, with
special frequency, to fall in love with disguised persons of their own
sex.[166] There is, however, a very pronounced tendency among sexually
inverted women to adopt male attire when practicable. In such cases male
garments are not usually regarded as desirable chiefly on account of
practical convenience, nor even in order to make an impression on other
women, but because the wearer feels more at home in them. Thus, Moll
mentions the case of a young governess of 16 who, while still unconscious
of her sexual perversion, used to find pleasure, when everyone was out of
the house, in putting on the clothes of a youth belonging to the family.

Cases have been recorded of inverted women who spent the greater
part of their lives in men's clothing and been generally regarded
as men. I may cite the case of Lucy Ann Slater, _alias_ the Rev.
Joseph Lobdell, recorded by Wise (_Alienist and Neurologist_,
1883). She was masculine in character, features, and attire. In
early life she married and had a child, but had no affection for
her husband, who eventually left her. As usual in such cases, her
masculine habits appeared in early childhood. She was expert with
the rifle, lived the life of a trapper and hunter among the
Indians, and was known as the "Female Hunter of Long Eddy." She
published a book regarding those experiences. I have not been
able to see it, but it is said to be quaint and well written. She
regarded herself as practically a man, and became attached to a
young woman of good education, who had also been deserted by her
husband. The affection was strong and emotional, and, of course,
without deception. It was interrupted by her recognition and
imprisonment as a vagabond, but on the petition of her "wife" she
was released. "I may be a woman in one sense," she said, "but I
have peculiar organs which make me more a man than a woman." She
alluded to an enlarged clitoris which she could erect, she said,
as a turtle protrudes its head, but there was no question of its
use in coitus. She was ultimately brought to the asylum with
paroxysmal attacks of exaltation and erotomania (without
self-abuse apparently) and corresponding periods of depression,
and she died with progressive dementia. I may also mention the
case (briefly recorded in the _Lancet_, February 22, 1884) of a
person called John Coulter, who was employed for twelve years as
a laborer by the Belfast Harbor Commissioners. When death
resulted from injuries caused in falling down stairs, it was
found that this person was a woman. She was fifty years of age,
and had apparently spent the greater part of her life as a man.
When employed in early life as a manservant on a farm, she had
married her mistress's daughter. The pair were married for
twenty-nine years, but during the last six years lived apart,
owing to the "husband's" dissipated habits. No one ever suspected
her sex. She was of masculine appearance and good muscular
development. The "wife" took charge of the body and buried it.

A more recent case of the same kind is that of "Murray Hall," who
died in New York in 1901. Her real name was Mary Anderson, and
she was born at Govan, in Scotland. Early left an orphan, on the
death of her only brother she put on his clothes and went to
Edinburgh, working as a man. Her secret was discovered during an
illness, and she finally went to America, where she lived as a
man for thirty years, making money, and becoming somewhat
notorious as a Tammany politician, a rather riotous "man about
town." The secret was not discovered till her death, when it was
a complete revelation, even to her adopted daughter. She married
twice; the first marriage ended in separation, but the second
marriage seemed to have been happy, for it lasted twenty years,
when the "wife" died. She associated much with pretty girls, and
was very jealous of them. She seems to have been slight and not
very masculine in general build, with a squeaky voice, but her
ways, attitude, and habits were all essentially masculine. She
associated with politicians, drank somewhat to excess, though not
heavily, swore a great deal, smoked and chewed tobacco, sang
ribald songs; could run, dance, and fight like a man, and had
divested herself of every trace of feminine daintiness. She wore
clothes that were always rather too large in order to hide her
form, baggy trousers, and an overcoat even in summer. She is said
to have died of cancer of the breast. (I quote from an account,
which appears to be reliable, contained in the _Weekly
Scotsman_, February 9, 1901.)

Another case, described in the London papers, is that of
Catharine Coome, who for forty years successfully personated a
man and adopted masculine habits generally. She married a lady's
maid, with whom she lived for fourteen years. Having latterly
adopted a life of fraud, her case gained publicity as that of the
"man-woman."

In 1901 the death on board ship was recorded of Miss Caroline
Hall, of Boston, a water-color painter who had long resided in
Milan. Three years previously she discarded female dress and
lived as "husband" to a young Italian lady, also an artist, whom
she had already known for seven years. She called herself "Mr.
Hall" and appeared to be a thoroughly normal young man, able to
shoot with a rifle and fond of manly sports. The officers of the
ship stated that she smoked and drank heartily, joked with the
other male passengers, and was hail-fellow-well-met with
everyone. Death was due to advanced tuberculosis of the lungs,
hastened by excessive drinking and smoking.

Ellen Glenn, _alias_ Ellis Glenn, a notorious swindler, who came
prominently before the public in Chicago during 1905, was another
"man-woman," of large and masculine type. She preferred to dress
as a man and had many love escapades with women. "She can fiddle
as well as anyone in the State," said a man who knew her, "can
box like a pugilist, and can dance and play cards."

In Seville, a few years ago, an elderly policeman, who had been
in attendance on successive governors of that city for thirty
years, was badly injured in a street accident. He was taken to
the hospital and the doctor there discovered that the "policeman"
was a woman. She went by the name of Fernando Mackenzie and
during the whole of her long service no suspicion whatever was
aroused as to her sex. She was French by birth, born in Paris in
1836, but her father was English and her mother Spanish. She
assumed her male disguise when she was a girl and served her
time in the French army, then emigrated to Spain, at the age of
35, and contrived to enter the Madrid police force disguised as a
man. She married there and pretended that her wife's child was
her own son. She removed to Seville, still serving as a
policeman, and was engaged there as cook and orderly at the
governor's palace. She served seven successive governors. In
consequence of the discovery of her sex she has been discharged
from the police without the pension due to her; her wife had died
two years previously, and "Fernando" spent all she possessed on
the woman's funeral. Mackenzie had a soft voice, a refined face
with delicate features, and was neatly dressed in male attire.
When asked how she escaped detection so long, she replied that
she always lived quietly in her own house with her wife and did
her duty by her employers so that no one meddled with her.

In Chicago in 1906 much attention was attracted to the case of
"Nicholai de Raylan," confidential secretary to the Russian
Consul, who at death (of tuberculosis) at the age of 33 was found
to be a woman. She was born in Russia and was in many respects
very feminine, small and slight in build, but was regarded as a
man, and even as very "manly," by both men and women who knew her
intimately. She was always very neat in dress, fastidious in
regard to shirts and ties, and wore a long-waisted coat to
disguise the lines of her figure. She was married twice in
America, being divorced by the first wife, after a union lasting
ten years, on the ground of cruelty and misconduct with chorus
girls. The second wife, a chorus girl who had been previously
married and had a child, was devoted to her "husband." Both wives
were firmly convinced that their husband was a man and ridiculed
the idea that "he" could be a woman. I am informed that De Raylan
wore a very elaborately constructed artificial penis. In her will
she made careful arrangements to prevent detection of sex after
death, but these were frustrated, as she died in a hospital.

In St. Louis, in 1909, the case was brought forward of a young
woman of 22, who had posed as a man for nine years. Her masculine
career began at the age of 13 after the Galveston flood which
swept away all her family. She was saved and left Texas dressed
as a boy. She worked in livery stables, in a plough factory, and
as a bill-poster. At one time she was the adopted son of the
family in which she lived and had no difficulty in deceiving her
sisters by adoption as to her sex. On coming to St. Louis in 1902
she made chairs and baskets at the American Rattan Works,
associating with fellow-workmen on a footing of masculine
equality. One day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and
dexterity of her hands. "Gee, Bill, you should have been a girl."
"How do you know I'm not?" she retorted. In such ways her ready
wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. She
shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are
told, and never avoided the severest tests. "She drank, she
swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard as her fellows, she
fished and camped; she told stories with the best of them, and
she did not flinch when the talk grew strong. She even chewed
tobacco." Girls began to fall in love with the good-looking boy
at an early period, and she frequently boasted of her feminine
conquests; with one girl who worshipped her there was a question
of marriage. On account of lack of education she was restricted
to manual labor, and she often chose hard work. At one time she
became a boiler-maker's apprentice, wielding a hammer and driving
in hot rivets. Here she was very popular and became local
secretary of the International Brotherhood of Boiler-makers. In
physical development she was now somewhat of an athlete. "She
could outrun any of her friends on a sprint; she could kick
higher, play baseball, and throw the ball overhand like a man,
and she was fond of football. As a wrestler she could throw most
of the club members." The physician who examined her for an
insurance policy remarked: "You are a fine specimen of physical
manhood, young fellow. Take good care of yourself." Finally, in a
moment of weakness, she admitted her sex and returned to the
garments of womanhood.

In London, in 1912, a servant-girl of 23 was charged in the Acton
Police Court with being "disorderly and masquerading," having
assumed man's clothes and living with another girl, taller and
more handsome than herself, as husband and wife. She had had
slight brain trouble as a child, and was very intelligent, with a
too active brain; in her spare time she had written stories for
magazines. The two girls became attached through doing Christian
social work together in their spare time, and resolved to live as
husband and wife to prevent any young man from coming forward.
The "husband" became a plumber's mate, and displayed some skill
at fisticuffs when at length discovered by the "wife's" brother.
Hence her appearance in the Police Court. Both girls were sent
back to their friends, and situations found for them as
day-servants. But as they remained devoted to each other
arrangements were made for them to live together.

Another case that may be mentioned is that of Cora Anderson, "the
man-woman of Milwaukee," who posed for thirteen years as a man,
and during that period lived with two women as her wives without
her disguise being penetrated. (Her "Confessions" were published
in the _Day Book_ of Chicago during May, 1914.)

It would be easy to bring forward other cases. A few instances of
marriage between women will be found in the _Alienist and
Neurologist_, Nov., 1902, p. 497. In all such cases more or less
fraud has been exercised. I know of one case, probably unique, in
which the ceremony was gone through without any deception on any
side: a congenitally inverted Englishwoman of distinguished
intellectual ability, now dead, was attached to the wife of a
clergyman, who, in full cognizance of all the facts of the case,
privately married the two ladies in his own church.

When they still retain female garments, these usually show some traits of
masculine simplicity, and there is nearly always a disdain for the petty
feminine artifices of the toilet. Even when this is not obvious, there are
all sorts of instinctive gestures and habits which may suggest to female
acquaintances the remark that such a person "ought to have been a man."
The brusque, energetic movements, the attitude of the arms, the direct
speech, the inflexions of the voice, the masculine straightforwardness and
sense of honor, and especially the attitude toward men, free from any
suggestion either of shyness or audacity, will often suggest the
underlying psychic abnormality to a keen observer.

In the habits not only is there frequently a pronounced taste for smoking
cigarettes, often found in quite feminine women, but also a decided taste
and toleration for cigars. There is also a dislike and sometimes
incapacity for needlework and other domestic occupations, while there is
often some capacity for athletics.

As regards the general bearing of the inverted woman, in its most
marked and undisguised form, I may quote an admirable description
by Prof. Zuccarelli, of Naples, of an unmarried middle-class
woman of 35: "While retaining feminine garments, her bearing is
as nearly as possible a man's. She wears her thin hair thrown
carelessly back _alla Umberto_, and fastened in a simple knot at
the back of her head. The breasts are little developed, and
compressed beneath a high corset; her gown is narrow without the
expansion demanded by fashion. Her straw hat with broad plaits is
perhaps adorned by a feather, or she wears a small hat like a
boy's. She does not carry an umbrella or sunshade, and walks out
alone, refusing the company of men; or she is accompanied by a
woman, as she prefers, offering her arm and carrying the other
hand at her waist, with the air of a fine gentleman. In a
carriage her bearing is peculiar and unlike that habitual with
women. Seated in the middle of the double seat, her knees being
crossed or else the legs well separated, with a virile air and
careless easy movements she turns her head in every direction,
finding an acquaintance here and there with her eye, saluting men
and women with a large gesture of the hand as a business man
would. In conversation her pose is similar; she gesticulates
much, is vivacious in speech, with much power of mimicry, and
while talking she arches the inner angles of her eyebrow, making
vertical wrinkles at the center of her forehead. Her laugh is
open and explosive and uncovers her white rows of teeth. With men
she is on terms of careless equality." ("Inversione congenita
dell'istinto sessuale in una donna," _L'Anomalo_, February,
1889.)

"The inverted woman," Hirschfeld truly remarks (_Die
Homosexualität_, p. 158), "is more full of life, of enterprise,
of practical energy, more aggressive, more heroic, more apt for
adventure, than either the heterosexual woman or the homosexual
man." Sometimes, he adds, her mannishness may approach reckless
brutality, and her courage becomes rashness. This author
observes, however, in another place (p. 272) that, in addition to
this group of inverted women with masculine traits there is
another group, "not less large," of equally inverted women who
are outwardly as thoroughly feminine as are normal women. This is
not an observation which I am able to confirm. It appears to me
that the great majority of inverted women possess some masculine
or boyish traits, even though only as slight as those which may
occasionally be revealed by normal women. Extreme femininity, in
my observation, is much more likely to be found in bisexual than
in homosexual women, just as extreme masculinity is much more
likely to be found in bisexual than in homosexual men.

While inverted women frequently, though not always, convey an impression
of mannishness or boyishness, there are no invariable anatomical
characteristics associated with this impression. There is, for instance,
no uniform tendency to a masculine distribution of hair. Nor must it be
supposed that the presence of a beard in a woman indicates a homosexual
tendency. "Bearded women," as Hirschfeld remarks, are scarcely ever
inverted, and it would seem that the strongest reversals of secondary
sexual characters less often accompany homosexuality than slighter
modifications of these characters.[167] A faint moustache and other slight
manifestations of hypertrichosis also by no means necessarily indicate
homosexuality. To some extent it is a matter of race; thus in the Pera
district of Constantinople, Weissenberg, among nearly seven hundred women
between about 18 and 50 years of age, noted that 10 per cent, showed hair
on the upper lip; they were most often Armenians, the Greeks coming
next.[168]

There has been some dispute as to whether, apart from
homosexuality, hypertrichosis in a woman can be regarded as an
indication of a general masculinity. This is denied by Max
Bartels (in his elaborate study, "Ueber abnorme Behaarung beim
Menschen," _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1876, p. 127; 1881, p.
219) and, as regards insanity, by L. Harris-Liston ("Cases of
Bearded Women," _British Medical Journal_, June 2, 1894). On the
other hand, J.H. Claiborne ("Hypertrichosis in Women," _New York
Medical Journal_, June 13, 1914) believes that hair on the face
and body in a woman is a sign of masculinity; "women with
hypertrichosis possess masculine traits."

There seems to be very little doubt that fully developed "bearded
women" are in most, possibly not all, cases decidedly feminine in
all other respects. A typical instance is furnished by Annie
Jones, the "Esau Lady" of Virginia. She belonged to a large and
entirely normal family, but herself possessed a full beard with
thick whiskers and moustache of an entirely masculine type; she
also showed short, dark hair on arms and hands resembling a man.
Apart from this heterogeny, she was entirely normal and feminine.
At the age of 26, when examined in Berlin, the hair of the head
was very long, the expression of the face entirely feminine, the
voice also feminine, the figure elegant, the hands and feet
entirely of feminine type, the external and internal genitalia
altogether feminine. Annie Jones was married. Max Bartels, who
studied Annie Jones and published her portrait (_Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1891, Heft 3, p. 243), remarks that in these
respects Annie Jones resembles other "bearded women"; they marry,
have children, and are able to suckle them. A beard in women
seems, as Dupré and Duflos believe (_Revue Neurologique_, Aug.
30, 1901), to be more closely correlated with neuropathy than
with masculinity; comparing a thousand sane women with a thousand
insane women in Paris, they found unusual degree of hair or down
on the face in 23 per cent. of the former and 50 per cent. of the
latter; but even the sane bearded women frequently belonged to
neuropathic families.

A tendency to slight widely diffused hypertrichosis of the body
generally, not localized or highly developed on the face, seems
much more likely than a beard to be associated with masculinity,
even when it occurs in little girls. Thus Virchow once presented
to the Berlin Anthropological Society a little girl of 5 of this
type who also possessed a deep and rough voice (_Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1891, Heft 4, p. 469). A typical example of slight
hypertrichosis in a woman associated with general masculine
traits is furnished by a description and figure of the body of a
woman of 56 in an anatomical institute, furnished by C. Strauch
(_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1901, Heft 6, p. 534). In this
case there was a growth of hair around both nipples and a line of
hair extended from the pubes to the navel; both these two
dispositions of hair are very rare in women. (In Vienna among
nearly 700 women Coe only found a tendency to hair distribution
toward the navel in about 1 per cent.). While the hair in this
subject was otherwise fairly normal, there were many
approximations to the masculine type in other respects: the
muscles were strongly developed, the bones massive, the limbs
long, the joints powerful, the hands and feet large, the thorax
well developed, the lower jaw massive; there was an absence of
feminine curves on the body and the breasts were scarcely
perceptible. At the same time the genital organs were normal and
there had been childbirth. It was further notable that this woman
had committed suicide by self-strangulation, a rare method which
requires great resolution and strength of will, as at any moment
of the process the pressure can be removed.

There seems little doubt that inverted women frequently tend to show minor
anomalies of the piliferous system, and especially slight hypertrichosis
and a masculine distribution of hair. Thus in a very typical case of
inversion in an Italian girl of 19 who dressed as a man and ran away from
home, the down on the arms and legs was marked to an unusual extent, and
there was very abundant hair in the armpits and on the pubes, with a
tendency to the masculine distribution.[169] Of the three cases described
in this chapter which I am best acquainted with, one possesses an
unusually small amount of hair on the pubes and in the axillæ
(oligotrichosis terminalis), approximating to the infantile type, while
another presents a complex and very rare piliferous heterogeny. There is
marked dark down on the upper lip; the pubic hair is thick, and there is
hair on toes and feet and legs to umbilicus; there are also a few hairs
around the nipples. A woman physician in the United States who knows many
female inverts similarly tells me that she has observed the tendency to
growth of hair on the legs. If, as is not improbable, inversion is
associated with some abnormal balance in the internal secretions, it is
not difficult to understand this tendency to piliferous anomalies; and we
know that the thyroid secretion, for instance, and much more the
testicular and ovarian secretions, have a powerful influence on the hair.

Ballantyne, some years ago, in discussing congenital
hypertrichosis (_Manual of Antenatal Pathology_, 1902, pp. 321-6)
concluded that the theory of arrested development is best
supported by the facts; persistence of lanugo is such an arrest,
and hypertrichosis may largely be considered a persistence of
lanugo. Such a conclusion is still tenable,--though it encounters
some difficulties and inconsistencies,--and it largely agrees
with what we know of the condition as associated with inversion
in women. But we are now beginning to see that this arrested
development may be definitely associated with anomalies in the
internal secretions, and even with special chemical defects in
these secretions. Virile strength has always been associated with
hair, as the story of Samson bears witness. Ammon found among
Baden conscripts (_L'Anthropologie_, 1896, p. 285) that when the
men were divided into classes according to the amount of hair on
body, the first class, with least hair, have the smallest
circumference of testicle, the fewest number of men with glans
penis uncovered, the largest number of infantile voices, the
largest proportion of blue eyes and fair hair, the smallest
average height, weight, and chest circumference, while in all
these respects the men with hairy bodies were at the other
extreme. It has been known from antiquity that in men early
castration affects the growth of hair. It is now known that in
women the presence or absence of the ovary and, other glands
affects the hair, as well as sexual development. Thus Hegar
(_Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie_, vol. i, p. 111,
1898) described a girl with pelvis of infantile type and uterine
malformation who had been unusually hairy on face and body from
infancy, with masculine arrangement of hair on pubes and abdomen;
menstruation was scanty, breasts atrophic; the hair was of lanugo
type; we see here how in women infantile and masculine
characteristics are associated with, and both probably dependent
on, defects in the sexual glands. Plant (_Centralblatt für
Gynäkologie_, No. 9, 1896) described another girl with very small
ovaries, rudimentary uterus, small vagina, and prominent nymphæ,
in whom menstruation was absent, hair on head long and strong,
but hair absent in armpits and scanty on mons veneris. These two
cases seem inconsistent as regards hair, and we should now wish
to know the condition of the other internal glands. The thyroid,
for instance, it is now known, controls the hair, as well as do
the sexual glands; and the thyroid, as Gautier has shown
(Académie de Médecine, July 24, 1900) elaborates arsenic and
iodine, which nourish the skin and hair; he found that the
administration of sodium cacodylate to young women produced
abundant growth of hair on head. Again, the kidneys, and
especially the adrenal glands, influence the hair. It has long
been known that in girls with congenital renal tumors there is an
abnormally early growth of axillary and pubic hair; Goldschwend
(_Präger medizinische Wochenschrift_, Nos. 37 and 38, 1910) has
described the case of a woman of 39, with small ovaries and
adrenal tumor, in whom hair began to grow on chin and cheeks.
(See also C.T. Ewart, _Lancet_, May 19, 1915.) Once more, the
glans hypophysis also affects hair growth and it has been found
by Lévi (quoted in _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_,
August-September, 1912, p. 711) that the administration of
hypophysis extract to an infantile, hairless woman of 27, without
sexual feeling, produced a general tendency to growth of hair.
Such facts not only help to explain the anomalies of hair
development, but also indicate the direction in which we may find
an explanation of the anomalies of the sexual impulse.

Apart from the complicated problem presented by the hair, there are
genuine approximations to the masculine type. The muscles tend to be
everywhere firm, with a comparative absence of soft connective tissue; so
that an inverted woman may give an unfeminine impression to the sense of
touch. A certain tonicity of the muscles has indeed often been observed in
homosexual women. Hirschfeld found that two-thirds of inverted women are
more muscular than normal women, while, on the other hand, he found that
among inverted men the musculature was often weak.

Not only is the tone of the voice often different, but there is reason to
suppose that this rests on a basis, of anatomical modification. At Moll's
suggestion, Flatau examined the larynx in a large number of inverted
women, and found in several a very decidedly masculine type of larynx, or
an approach to it, especially in cases of distinctly congenital origin.
Hirschfeld has confirmed Flatau's observations on this point. It may be
added that inverted women are very often good whistlers; Hirschfeld even
knows two who are public performers in whistling. It is scarcely necessary
to remark that while the old proverb associates whistling in a woman with
crowing in a hen, whistling in a woman is no evidence of any general
physical or psychic inversion.

As regards the sexual organs it seems possible, so far as my observations
go, to speak more definitely of inverted women than of inverted men. In
all three of the cases concerning whom I have precise information, among
those whose histories are recorded in the present chapter, there is more
or less arrested development and infantilism. In one a somewhat small
vagina and prominent nymphæ, with local sensitiveness, are associated with
oligotrichosis. In another the sexual parts are in some respects rather
small, while there is no trace of ovary on one side. In the third case,
together with hypertrichosis, the nates are small, the nymphæ large, the
clitoris deeply hooded, the hymen thick, and the vagina probably small.
These observations, though few, are significant, and they accord with
those of other observers.[170] Krafft-Ebing well described a case which I
should be inclined to regard as typical of many: sexual organs feminine in
character, but remaining at the infantile stage of a girl of 10; small
clitoris, prominent cockscomb-like nymphæ, small vagina scarcely
permitting normal intercourse and very sensitive. Hirschfeld agrees in
finding common an approach to the type described by Krafft-Ebing; atrophic
anomalies he regards as more common than hypertrophic, and he refers to
thickness of hymen and a tendency to notably small uterus and ovaries. The
clitoris is more usually small than large; women with a large clitoris (as
Parent-Duchâtelet long since remarked) seem rarely to be of masculine
type.

Notwithstanding these tendencies, however, sexual inversion in a woman is,
as a rule, not more obvious than in a man. At the same time, the inverted
woman is not usually attractive to men. She herself generally feels the
greatest indifference to men, and often, cannot understand why a woman
should love a man, though she easily understands why a man should love a
woman. She shows, therefore, nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging
air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men. The man who
is passionately attracted to an inverted woman is usually of rather a
feminine type. For instance, in one case present to my mind he was of
somewhat neurotic heredity, of slight physical development, not sexually
attractive to women, and very domesticated in his manner of living; in
short, a man who might easily have been passionately attracted to his own
sex.

While the inverted woman is cold, or, at most, comradely in her bearing
toward men, she may become shy and confused in the presence of attractive
persons of her own sex, even unable to undress in their presence, and full
of tender ardor for the woman whom she loves.[171]

Homosexual passion in women finds more or less complete expression in
kissing, sleeping together, and close embraces, as in what is sometimes
called "lying spoons," when one woman lies on her side with her back
turned to her friend and embraces her from behind, fitting her thighs into
the bend of her companion's legs, so that her mons veneris is in dose
contact with the other's buttocks, and slight movement then produces mild
erethism. One may also lie on the other's body, or there may be mutual
masturbation. Mutual contact and friction of the sexual parts seem to be
comparatively rare, but it seems to have been common in antiquity, for we
owe to it the term "tribadism" which is sometimes used as a synonym of
feminine homosexuality, and this method is said to be practised today by
the southern Slav women of the Balkans.[172] The extreme gratification is
_cunnilinctus_, or oral stimulation of the feminine sexual organs, not
usually mutual, but practised by the more active and masculine partner;
this act is sometimes termed, by no means satisfactorily, "Sapphism," and
"Lesbianism."[173]

An enlarged clitoris is but rarely found in inversion and plays a very
small part in the gratification of feminine homosexuality. Kiernan refers;
to a case, occurring in America, in which an inverted woman, married and a
mother, possessed a clitoris which measured 2½ inches when erect. Casanova
described an inverted Swiss, woman, otherwise feminine in development,
whose clitoris in excitement was longer than his little finger, and
capable of penetration.[174] The older literature contains many similar
cases. In most such cases, however, we are probably concerned with some
form of pseudohermaphroditism, and the "clitoris" may more properly be
regarded as a penis; there is thus no inversion involved.[175]

While the use of the clitoris is rare in homosexuality, the use of an
artificial penis is by no means uncommon and very widespread. In several
of the modern cases in which inverted women have married women (such as
those of Sarolta Vay and De Raylan) the belief of the wife in the
masculinity of the "husband" has been due to an appliance of this kind
used in intercourse. The artificial penis (the olisbos, or baubon) was
well known to the Greeks and is described by Herondas. Its invention was
ascribed by Suidas to the Milesian women, and Miletus, according to
Aristophanes in the _Lysistrata_, was the chief place of its
manufacture.[176] It was still known in medieval times, and in the twelfth
century Bishop Burchard, of Worms, speaks of its use as a thing "which
some women are accustomed to do." In the early eighteenth century,
Margaretha Lincken, again in Germany, married another woman with the aid
of an artificial male organ.[177] The artificial penis is also used by
homosexual women in various parts of the world. Thus we find it mentioned
in legends of the North American Indians and it is employed in Zanzibar
and Madagascar.[178]

The various phenomena of sadism, masochism, and fetichism which
are liable to arise, spontaneously or by suggestion, in the
relationships of normal lovers, as well as of male inverts, may
also arise in the same way among inverted women, though,
probably, not often in a very pronounced form. Moll, however,
narrates a case (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, 1899, pp. 565-70)
in which various minor but very definite perversions were