Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/17

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Introduction.
v

Any sexual penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the crime specified in the last section.


Our discussion has nothing to do with bestiality or sexual violation of the dead or unnatural practices between persons of different sex.

And here I wish to state that homosexuality between females, or so-called Lesbian or Sapphic love, has, to my knowledge, never been punished in the United States, although the statute seems broad enough to cover certain sexual practices, as for example cunnilingus, between females, while tribadism, in which there is no penetration, and whose devotees according to Yanez, are called in Spain vulgarly "tortilleras," according to the New York Code can not be punished, as there is no penetration. Yanez, in his Medicina Legal, published in Madrid in 1884, gives an excellent description of homosexuality and describes also the general appearance of those male homosexualists whose ways and manners resemble those of the female sex, and who in common parlance in the United States are called "Fairies."

Tidy, in his Legal Medicine, not only refers, in discussing homosexuality, to Romans, I, 26, but gives some historical references, and cites a number of English cases.

In speaking of "sodomites," he says: "Sodomites are persons of all ages, but they usually present a somewhat feminine appearance, or strive to appear like women. To this end they commonly conceal or destroy, as far as practicable, such virile appendages as beard, whiskers, or moustache, wearing a profusion of jewelry, paint and