Page:B20442294.djvu/75

Rh None the less, it is not generally recognised that sexual inverts may be otherwise perfectly healthy, and with regard to other social matters quite normal. When they have been asked it they would have wished matters to be different with them in this respect, almost invariably they answer in the negative.

It is due to the erroneous conceptions that I have mentioned that homo-sexuality has not been considered in relation with other facts. Let those who regard sexual inversion as pathological, as a hideous anomaly of mental development (the view accepted by the populace), or believe it to be an acquired vice, the result of an execrable seduction, remember that there exist all transitional stages reaching from the most masculine male to the most effeminate male and so on to the sexual invert, the false and true hermaphrodite; and then, on the other side, successively through the sapphist to the virago and so on until the most feminine virgin is reached. In the interpretation of this volume, sexual inverts of both sexes are to be defined as individuals in whom the factor &alpha; (see page 8, chap. i.) is very nearly 0.5 and so is practically equal to &alpha;&prime;; in other words, individuals in whom there is as much maleness as femaleness, or indeed who, although reckoned as men, may contain an excess of femaleness, or as women and yet be more male than female. Because of the want of uniformity in the sexual characters of the body, it is fairly certain that many individuals have their sex assigned them on account of the existence of the primary male sexual characteristic, even although there may be delayed descensus testiculorum, or epi- or hypo-spadism, or, later on, absence of active spermatozoa, or even, in the case of assignment of the female sex, absence of the vagina, and thus male avocations (such as compulsory military service) may come to be assigned to those in whom &alpha; is less than 0.5 and &alpha;&prime; greater than 0.5. The sexual complement of such individuals really is to be found on their own side of the sexual line, that is to say, on the side on which they are reckoned, although in reality they may belong to the other.