Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/172

 Fathers and mothers should not wish to be spies and martinets. As for the parent's deputy, the school-teacher, governess, tutor or housemaster, whether in the family or at a boarding-school, he or she is even more hampered. One of the most mischievous skeletons in the family-closet and boarding-school dormitory, is the similisexual one. The pederastic tutor himself may be the enemy in the camp.

A vast proportion of active and passive onanism and masturbation both in schools and at home, is due to inborn similisexualism, not to merely a temporary and ignorant instinct. Sometimes the fraternal home-life of two lads, or of two sisters, fosters the sentiment and practices, from day to day. In Hungary a special paragraph of the law recognizes this fact.

Of course, the uranistic instinct often cannot be traced to hereditary sources. Its origin is too remote or too obscure. Perhaps some other current of nature has deflected the juvenile psychos. The instinct is communicated swiftly, not seldom ineradicably, from boy to boy, from girl to girl. But the question recurs if complete, rooted similisexuality is ever quite extraneously implanted in a man or woman.

The following example of early Uranianism is from the letter of an English professional man, written to the authour.

"It was not until I was past thirty, and had met some German literature on the topic, that I knew how early my homosexual nature had declared itself. The first matter that I recall was that as a very little boy I was never sensitive to the caresses of women, nor liked to be with them. On the other hand, I do not remember when