Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/202



Especially contrary to the notion that the man-loving man is always effeminate in body and temper, stands the fact that in scarcely any other profession—in no other walk of practical life—has the full sexualism of Uranistic passion been more general than in the ranks of soldiers and sailors. We might say that in no other one is it so large. In the army and the marine we find the Uranian in enormous proportion. Here, too, he is met in the full display of his bodily vigour, his force of character, his activity of mind, his virile. courage, pugnacity, indifference to troublesome luxury, and his generous comradeship. In short the "race" is here seen being and doing "all that may become a man", save preferring womanly embraces to those of some brother-in-arms, or comrade of the watch. The fire of similisexualism nowhere smoulders, or burns up, more ardently than in casernes and forecastles, in the officer's mess or on the quarterdeck. From the first days of armies and argosies, uranian comrades have marched and sailed and fought together as friends and—lovers.

With the instance of the sailor his homosexualism seems in a considerable degree, a cultivated—, unconsciously cultivated—condition. In the course of sea-life come the long voyages, where