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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"

30, 1909): "It is a fair presumption that
some examples of sexual frigidity and sex perversion may be
explained by the possibility that the individuals concerned may
possess sexual glands opposite in character to those indicated by
the external configuration of their bodies." Looking at the
matter more broadly and fundamentally in its normal aspects,
Heape declares (_Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical
Society_, vol. xiv, part ii, 1907) that "there is no such thing
as a pure male or female animal, but that all contain a dominant
and recessive sex, except those hermaphrodites in which both
sexes are equally represented.... There seems to me ample
evidence for the conclusion that there is no such thing as a pure
male or female." F.H.A. Marshall, again, in his standard manual,
_The Physiology of Reproduction_ (1910, p. 655 et seq.), is
inclined to accept the same view. "If it be true," he remarks,
"that all individuals are potentially bisexual and that changed
circumstances, leading to a changed metabolism, may, in
exceptional circumstances, even in adult life, cause the
development of the recessive characters, it would seem extremely
probable that the dominance of one set of sexual characters over
the other may be determined in some cases at an early stage of
development in response to a stimulus which may be either
internal or external.


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