Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/12

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HOMO-SEXUAL LIFE

noted for his flogging proclivities, and so forth. Children, more especially boys, are observed to have an instinct of cruelty; for example, they pull the wings off flies. The sport of the chase or of fishing serves to gratify the instinct in adults.

Prominent in the classification of adolescent homosexual attraction are the school-friendships of girls, which are known variously as "crushes," "flames," and "raves." Elaborate romances are sometimes bound up in these attachments, with their love at first-sight, courtship, love letters, jealousy, and other manifestations of erotic affection. Havelock Ellis states that while these alliances are sometimes sexual, they are often not so—but are full of "psychic erethism."