Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/548



At least five important errors as to similisexual propensities are found to be so universal, are still so encouraged by unprogressive physicians and jurists, as by superficial observers of homosexualism, that they merit to be pointed out with pains—especially in the present chapter. Some we have already specialized. They are—that the Uranian must be physically abnormal; that he is always degenerate morally; that he is always a sodomist (in the technical sense of that term) especially as to wishing sexual satisfactions only with physical effeminates and young boys; that he is never married—at least not consenting in his heart to it; and that he is to be "cured" of his intersexual nature by systematic sexual intercourse with women. These are notions fixed in every-day popular ignorance of the topic, even among classes otherwise profoundly learned. That an Uranian in vain can try his best, for instance, to find sexual satisfactions and his "cure" by frequenting female prostitutes, by keeping a mistress, or by an apparently most happy marriage,—this is not in the popular creed.

We meet an error even graver, as to intercourse with women by Uranians, when we touch on the relations of the similisexual to matrimonial life, as legal husband and anon as father. By no means seldom Uranians—as do Uraniads—commit themselves to normal wedlock; and have all the responsibilities to fulfil that belong to the normal married state and to paternity. We are not