Among the numerous confessions voluntarily sent to
Krafft-Ebing there is not one by a woman. There is, again, the further
reason that well-marked and fully developed cases of inversion are
probably rarer in women, though a slighter degree may be more common; in
harmony with the greater affectability of the feminine organism to slight
stimuli, and its lesser liability to serious variation.[146]
The same aberrations that are found among men are, however, everywhere
found among women. Feminine inversion has sometimes been regarded as a
vice of modern refined civilization. Yet it was familiar to the
Anglo-Saxons, and Theodore's Penitential in the seventh century assigned a
penance of three years (considerably less than that assigned to men, or
for bestiality) to "a woman fornicating with a woman." Among the women of
savages in all parts of the world homosexuality is found, though it is
less frequently recorded than among men.[147]
In New Zealand it is stated on the authority of Moerenhout (though I have
not been able to find the reference) that the women practised Lesbianism.
In South America, where inversion is common among men, we find similar
phenomena in women.
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