According to Lombroso, even at the present day, the inmates of licensed brothels frequently hold exhibitions, for admission to which a fee is charged, of tribadistic couples in poses plastiques, and of another prostitute in coitus caninus.
In his widely-celebrated work on Psychopathia Sexualis, von Krafft-Ebing discusses these morbid sexual processes in women. We select certain data from his exposition. Regarding the congenital morbid phenomenon of the lack of sexual feeling in women, as contrasted with perversion of sexual feeling, and the sexual impulse toward an individual of the same sex (antipathic sexual feeling), von Krafft-Ebing writes: “The woman-loving woman feels herself sexually to be a man, she rejoices in the exhibition of courage, of masculine sentiments, since these characteristics make the man desirable to the woman. The female urning,[35] therefore, likes to have her hair cut short and her clothes of a masculine cut; and one of her greatest pleasures is when opportunity offers to appear in male attire. Her ideals are notable feminine personalities, distinguished by spirituality and energy; in the theatre and in the circus, it is only the female performers that attract her interest; and in the same way, in collections of pictures and statues, it is only the representations of women that awaken her æsthetic sense and her sensibility.” Von Krafft-Ebing insists that in nearly all cases of antipathic sexual feeling in which a family history was attainable, that history was found to exhibit instances of neuroses, psychoses, stigmata of degeneration, etc. In hysteria, according to this author, the sexual life is especially often abnormal; in cases with neuropathic inheritance, one may say always: “All possible anomalies of the sexual functions occur in such cases, with the utmost variety and the strangest commingling, based upon hereditary degenerative processes, and accompanied by moral imbecility in its most perverse manifestations. * * *. Frequently, in hysterical subjects, the sexual life is morbidly excitable. This excitement may be intermittent (? menstrual). Shameless prostitution may result, even in married women. In cases of a milder type, the sexual impulse is exhibited in the form of onanism, nude perambulations about the room, wearing of male attire, etc. In cases of hysterical mental disorder, the morbidly excited sexual life may manifest itself in the form of maniacal jealousy, baseless complaints against men of indecent assault, hallucinations of coitus, etc. Sometimes there may be frigidity, with lack of sexual pleasure, commonly due to genital anæsthesia.”
Incest in women, dependent upon psychopathic causes, is also alluded to by von Krafft-Ebing; it occurs in those in whom a partial imbecility that leaves the sense of modesty undeveloped is combined with eroticism. Thus, a case reported by Schürmayer is mentioned, in which a mother had, or attempted, intercourse with her son, aged five and one-half years; and again a case reported by Lafarque, in which a girl of seventeen laid her thirteen-year-old brother on herself for the gratification conjunctionis membrorum, while simultaneously masturbating her brother; Magnan’s case, an unmarried woman twenty-nine years of age, who could hardly resist the impulse toward copulation with her nephews as long as they were quite young; Legrand’s cases, in one of which a girl fifteen years of age seduced her brother to the performance of all possible sexual excesses on her body; another, a married woman aged thirty-five, who committed incest with her eighteen-year-old brother; and a third, a mother aged thirty-nine, who committed incest with her son.
According to Moll, women who suffer from antipathic sexual sensation are, in many cases, married; it appears, however, that for the most part they have no inclination to marry. In isolated cases there may exist a psychical hermaphroditism, the woman thus affected having sexual inclination both towards men and towards women. In the case of homosexual women, normal intercourse appears not to furnish complete satisfaction. As regards fetichistic, masochistic, and sadistic inclinations on the part of women with antipathic sexual sensation, Moll was unable to obtain any trustworthy information. Sometimes in women the perverse sexual impulse appears periodically, being then often associated with the appearance of other psychical abnormalities. In some women the perverse impulse is especially active at the menstrual periods; whilst at other times these subjects, even though not quite sexually normal, are still very much quieter. Antipathic sexual sensation in women may depend upon inherited predisposition, and may often be traced back to a very early age. In many cases an exciting cause may be demonstrated.
Mantegazza, who relates that homosexual practices are common among the inmates of harems, believes that antipathic sexual feeling is readily curable in women soon after marriage, but that later a cure is rare.
A perverse form of sexual gratification sometimes met with in women is flagellation. By chastisement with birches, straps, or whips on the bare buttocks, the nerves of the sexual apparatus are stimulated, and these organs become congested, with an effect resembling that of onanism. Such flagellation was practiced by the wanton ladies of ancient Rome. In the Middle Ages, hysterical women derived great pleasure from the stimulatory effect of whippings. It is reported of Catharine de Medici, that she had herself whipped, and that she delighted in seeing the ladies of her court undergoing similar treatment. In the present day many women derive intense sexual pleasure from being birched by their lovers on bared portions of their bodies. In Paris and other large towns there are special places of resort for those who pursue this form of perverse sexual gratification. Sometimes such women are only the active fouetteuses for worn-out, perversely-feeling men.
Among the Greeks, a woman who had remained barren during the early years of marriage would visit the temple of Juno, in order to receive from a priest of Pan the gift of fertility. She stripped naked, and, while thus exposed to the flagellant priests, she received all over the back of her body numerous blows inflicted with thongs of a he-goat’s hide—this process being supposed to induce fertility. The object of this form of flagellation would appear to be to induce an increase of sexual desire.
Sexual neurasthenia is defined by Eulenburg as a neuropsychosis of chronic course, manifesting itself chiefly in the form of excessive irritability of the sensory and psychosensory neuron-systems, in association with excessive tendency to exhaustion of the motor and psychomotor neuron-systems. This exhaustion occurs especially in relation to the genital system, in which we see exhibited the phenomena of irritable weakness, of increased excitability combined with increased tendency to fatigue of the genital nerve apparatus—such chronic morbid disturbances are, according to this author, comparatively rare in women, that is to say, the developed typical picture of the disease does not occur in women, or occurs very rarely. Among 168 patients suffering from sexual neurasthenia, only six were women. Two of these latter were addicted to masturbation, and in the anatomical sense both were still virgins; the rest were married women, not receiving sufficient sexual gratification in their married life, two of these were probably also addicted to masturbation, two indulged in homosexual practices.
Onanism, according to Eulenburg, is the cause of sexual neurasthenia in women as well as in men. If, however, among the relatively very large number of women addicted to masturbation, there appears to be such a very small proportion of instances of sexual neurasthenia, this depends on the fact that from the nature of onanism in women the physical and also as a rule the psychical consequences are as a whole apt to be much less severe than those arising from similar practices in men; but it depends also on the circumstances that neuromental abnormalities of other kinds and denoted by other names, such as dyspareunia, vaginismus, sexual hysteria, nymphomania, feminine sadism, and tribadism, are apt to arise in consequence of onanism. As regards onanism, so also may it be in regard to sexual excesses and aberrations in general; they may be on the one hand causes, but on the other symptoms and sequelæ, of sexual neurasthenia. Early-acquired or inherited homosexual tendencies and habits may, as Eulenburg further points out, lead to sexual neurasthenia only, but then very easily, when such individuals have allowed themselves, against their nature but in obedience to conventional points of view and to the advice of the relatives, to be persuaded into marriage. That sexual abstinence alone is competent to induce sexual neurasthenia must be dismissed as a fable.