Sexual inversion is a theory ofhomosexuality popular primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century.[a] Sexual inversion was believed to be an inborn reversal ofgender traits: male inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally female pursuits and dress and vice versa; along withgay men, male sexual inversion also encompassed those assigned male at birth we today know astransfeminine, though limited only to thoseattracted to men orboth sexes, but never women on their own, since attraction to men for male inverts was a central part of the theory.[2] The sexologistRichard von Krafft-Ebing described female sexual inversion as "the masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom".[3]
Initially confined to medical texts, the concept of sexual inversion was given wide currency byRadclyffe Hall's 1928lesbian novelThe Well of Loneliness, which was written in part to popularize the sexologists' views. Published with a foreword by the sexologistHavelock 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.[4]
In 19th century Europe, where the theory of sexual inversion emerged, homosexuality was a criminal offense in most jurisdictions. The emergence of the theory of sexual inversion marked aturn in the conceptualization of same-sex sexual behavior fromvice to congenital disposition.[5]
In 1869, the same year thatKarl-Maria Kertbeny coined "homosexuality",Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal wrote a paper reporting on several cases of what he called "conträre Sexualempfindung", translated into English as contrary sexual feeling or contrary sexual instinct. This paper was published in theArchiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankeiten in 1870, under the title "Die conträre Sexualempfindung, Symptom eines neuropathischen (psychopathischen) Zustandes".[6] Arrigo Tamassia introduced the theory into Italian as inversion of the sexual instinct with the article "Sull’inversione dell’istinto sessuale" in 1878.[7]Jean-Martin Charcot and Victor Magnan introduced the theory into French as inversion of the genital orientation with the article "Inversion du sens génital et autres perversions sexuelles" in 1882.[8]John Addington Symonds used the phrase "sexual inversion" in "A Problem in Greek Ethics", which he wrote in 1873 and published privately in 1883.[9]
The theory of sexual inversion understands same-sex attraction as a form ofgender variance. A sexual invert is someone who is attracted to their own sex, and the theory makes limited distinction between same-sex attracted people who are gender conforming apart from their attractions and same-sex attracted people who transgress assigned sex roles in other ways, such as crossdressing or cross-sex identification.
According to this theory,gay men andlesbians were sexual "inverts", people who appeared physically male or female on the outside respectively, but felt internally that they were of the "opposite"anatomical sex (according to thebinary view of gender). Therefore, same-sex desires and attraction were explained as "latent heterosexuality", and bisexual desire was known aspsychosexual hermaphroditism – in other words, gay men and lesbians were really justheterosexuals who were "born in the wrong body", and "bisexuals" were what modern-day sexologists would callintersex people (formerlyhermaphrodites) by this theory (the bisexual person's "male" part supposedly has attractions towards females, and the "female" part has attractions towards males).[10]
