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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"


Though having several female friends, whose society I like and to
whom I am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or
cohabitation with any such has always been odious to me.
"As a boy I was attracted in general by boys rather older than
myself; after leaving school I still fell in love, in a romantic
vein, with comrades of my own standing. Now,--at the age of
37,--my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my
own age or rather younger--preferably of the working class.
Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially
intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too
glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the
cheap intellectual style, repels me very decisively.
"I have never had to do with actual pederasty, so called. My
chief desire in love is bodily nearness or contact, as to sleep
naked with a naked friend; the specially sexual, though urgent
enough, seems a secondary matter. Pederasty, either active or
passive, might seem in place to me with one I loved very
devotedly and who also loved me to that degree; but I think not
otherwise.


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