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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"

Finally, embryologists, physiologists of sex and
biologists generally, not only accept the conception of bisexuality, but
admit that it probably helps to account for homosexuality. In this way the
idea may be said to have passed into current thought. We cannot assert
that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it
enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious
riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only
of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies
in the same group. The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are:
(1) physical hermaphroditism in its various stages; (2) gynandromorphism,
or eunuchoidism, in which men possess characters resembling those of males
who have been early castrated and women possess similarly masculine
characters; (3) sexo-esthetic inversion, or Eonism (Hirschfeld's
transvestism or cross-dressing), in which, outside the specifically sexual
emotions, men possess the tastes of women and women those of men.
Hirschfeld has discussed these intermediate sexual stages in
various works, especially in _Geschlechtsuebergaenge_ (1905), _Die
Transvestiten_ (1910), and ch.


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