Raffalovich, Uranism. $*3 



no matter whom, they struggled against their propensities per- 

 haps, then they abandoned themselves to them. 



All those who have read the works devoted especially to 

 inversion will recognize the histories to which I allude. It 

 seems to me that we ought not to lay too much weight upon 

 these autobiographies nor to attach too much importance to 

 them. If one were to collect the autobiographies of adulterous 

 women, he would be struck with the resemblance, — the same 

 logic, the same lack of logic, the same fierce egotism, the same 

 remorse, the same apologies. And yet scholars do not ask us 

 to exculpate and pity adulterous women from the fact that they 

 are adulterous. 



So I protest that we should not make a practice of pitying 

 the inverts as inverts. The enthusiastic uranists do not wish to 

 change. With whom should they ? The true homosexuals, 

 those who have the passion of similarity, if they were women 

 would love women ; so also the true homosexual if he were a 

 man would love a man. Let us pity humanity as a whole if 

 we wish ; let us pity it bitterly if we have no religion ; — but let 

 us not pick out the inverts for the our utmost pity. I cannot 

 repeat this admonition too often. The abject or enthusiastic 

 inverts do not think that they are by any means to be 

 pitied. The superior inverts are no more to be pitied 

 than superior heterosexuals. As for the inverts who moan 

 and lament and who beset writers with their stories, they are 

 usually persons who would have moaned and lamented if they 

 had been heterosexual. No one finds easily a person of the 

 opposite sex who satisfies at the same time sex, the soul and so- 

 ciety and the family. Why shonld the invert have that which 

 the heterosexual finds with so great difficulty? How many 

 heterosexuols are unhappy by reason of their sexual life ? 

 Syphilis, nervous disorders, disrepute, the dissolution of many 

 bonds, as well as many other things, pursue the heterosexual 

 who is unfortunate or devoid of character. 



The individual who is neither chaste nor sober nor vigor- 

 ous nor reasonable nor very courageous nor very enlightened nor 

 very pious is always to be pitied whether he be invert or hetero- 



