Readers' Mail: Sexual Deviance

This letter reached us some time ago, and in it is all its writer's perplexity and questioning about a delicate psychological subject. We thought it best to pass it on to Dr. Georges Hanna, the women's physician and the learned expert in these matters, that he might give the gracious reader the answers to her questions... We print below the letter and its answer... and we thank Dr. Georges Hanna for his kindness in replying...

The letter:

Madam:

I hesitated long before writing to you, out of a natural modesty; but once I became certain that it had to be done, I overcame all shyness, and here I am writing to you:

Two days ago I saw my dear friend looking sad, and asked her what was wrong; whereupon, after some hesitation, she told me a story that disturbed me. My friend said: "You know W..., our common classmate? She is afflicted with an illness... I do not know what to call it. In short, she loves girls, and she has loved me. As for me, I knew nothing of her deviance; I thought she loved my company and my friendship, so I went along with her in this and kept company with her for a time, until she had nearly become my friend. But word has now come to me, from a trusted source that leaves no room for doubt, that she is as I told you. So now I am perplexed: should I be disgusted with her, and withdraw and keep away? Should I pity her, or feel shame for her, or despise her? For God's sake, help me solve this riddle."

I promised her I would; but I found myself unable to do it, so I have written to you, hoping you will tell me about this deviance, which I had thought existed only in books: is it an illness, and what is its origin? Is the girl afflicted with it half a man? And finally, how ought my friend to treat her classmate... and is there any hope that W... may be cured of it?

We, Madam, are in an upper class at school — that is, we are young women. I beg you, Madam, to explain in the pages of the magazine "The Woman's Voice" what so perplexes me. You would thereby render us a service never to be forgotten.

With my deepest thanks,

Lubna

Dr. Georges Hanna's answer:

Madam:

Sexual deviance is an illness that truly exists, and it is a psychological and social illness more than an organic one.

Its most important cause — though not its only one, as will appear — is sexual repression.

In the human being there is a sexual instinct that cannot possibly be denied. This instinct demands satisfaction. And this satisfaction comes about through the instinct's attraction between the two sexes, male and female, even if the attraction be only partial.

Attraction in sexual matters is like attraction in electrical phenomena, if the comparison holds: it occurs naturally between two opposite poles, one positive and the other negative. If this natural attraction of opposites is prevented by repression — even when the person is in a healthy condition unmarred by any defect — this instinct may revolt and be stricken with deviance in its various manifestations, one of which is the stealing of satisfaction by way of sexual relations between man and man, or woman and woman.

It is worth pointing out — and it confirms the theory just stated — that this kind of sexual deviance spreads most in those circles where repression grows severest. It is frequent among men who live far from women's society, such as soldiers. And if I am asked the reason for its prevalence in certain European countries despite the existence of intercourse between the sexes there, I answer that it arises from the exclusion of such intercourse during the repeated wars waged by the states of the Western lands, which fixes the habit in the soldiers, who then carry it back to their societies and inoculate them with it. As for its spread in certain Eastern lands where no wars have taken place, its source is likewise the exclusion of intercourse between the sexes, for religious and traditional considerations and the like.

There is no more important cause of sexual deviance in woman than this very cause — I mean the repression imposed upon her by social and traditional considerations, which attempt to bridle what cannot be bridled: the sexual nature, which in woman differs in nothing from what it is in man. The instinct then revolts blindly, and deviance pulls it this way and that.

In the way of proving this theory, it is worth observing that sexual deviance is positively nonexistent in the animal world, because the animal falls under no repression of this kind.

There are, however, cases of sexual deviance whose source is not repression. These cases are the deviance of deviance itself. They

go back to a psychological, temperamental condition in the person which lies beyond the knowledge of the psychiatrist — like many ailments whose causes remain unknown to the scientist himself, at least to this day. Yet it would be a mistake to lay the responsibility for sexual deviance upon the unknown alone.

As for the answer to the question whether the girl afflicted with this deviance ought to be despised and scorned, it is a categorical no. For if the afflicted girl is treated in this way, she may grow yet weaker in the face of this ailment, and her weakness and wretchedness may carry her still deeper into it. It is better, then, that she be drawn away from her ailment by companionable, friendly society, which may turn her aside from remaining the prey of her abnormal ailment. A psychological ailment must be treated with a psychological cure, at the hands of physicians who are not always physicians furnished with the diploma of a medical institute.