Sexual inversion (sexology)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Inversions, the first French gay journal is published between 1924 and 1926, it stopped publication after the French government charged the publishers with "Outrage aux bonnes mœurs". Its full title was Inversions ... in art, literature, philosophy and science. Sexual inversion was a term used by sexologists in the late 19th and early 20th century, to refer to homosexuality.

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Sexual inversion is a term used by sexologists, primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century, to refer to homosexuality. Sexual inversion was believed to be an inborn reversal of gender traits: male inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally female pursuits and dress and vice versa. The sexologist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing described female sexual inversion as "the masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom".

Initially confined to medical texts, the concept of sexual inversion was given wide currency by Radclyffe Hall's 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, which was written in part to popularize the sexologists' views. Published with a foreword by the sexologist Havelock Ellis, it consistently used the term "invert" to refer to its protagonist, who bore a strong resemblance to one of Krafft-Ebing's case studies.

See also

• Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2