Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/15

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Introduction.
iii

Let us then first consider what Homosexuality is.

Homosexuality means sexual love for one of the same sex. Thus, if a male feels sexual desire for another male, or a female for another female, they are called sexually inverted or homosexual.

Freud claims that there is in every one an original bisexual tendency, which is also established anatomically.

Normal development leads from bisexuality to the primacy of the heterosexual instinct.

Thus inversion corresponds to a disturbance of development.

Whether one agrees with Freud, that homosexuality or inversion originates in every instance in early childhood, or whether one disagrees with him and takes the stand which I take, that some cases of homosexuality are congenital, that others are acquired in early childhood, while others again are the result of vice or sexual necessity, as among soldiers, sailors, or in schools; we must come to the conclusion, that laws which do not differentiate in the punishment of crimes against nature between those who are born inverts or whose inversion dates from early childhood and those whose homosexuality is due to vice or association and who amphogenously inverted or occasionally inverted use a sexual object belonging either to the same or the opposite sex, are inadequate, antiquated, not keeping step with the progress which has been made as to the subject, and should be changed.

The subject has been discussed not for tens, or hundreds, but for thousands of years.