Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

HOMOSEXUALITYknown person who exhibited the anomaly in a typicalform, the Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont (1728-1810), aBurgundian of good family, employed as a French diplomaticagent under Louis XV and finally dying in Londonwhere he was generally regarded as a woman, though theautopsy revealed him as a normal male. A less known personage,also French, the Abb de Choisy (1644-1724),andalso of aristocratic family, is in some aspects an even moretypical example of Eonism, and he wrote his ownmemoirs, which reveal him, as from other sources he isalso known, as a man of urbane and sociable temper, generallypopular in spite of his anomaly, refined, amiable,and rather feminine, a devoted admirer of women, withrather less than the average degree of sexual passion butthe father of at least one child,a man of genuine intellectualability,the esteemed friend of manyof the bestpeople of his day. He became a distinguished ecclesiastic,the historian of the Church, and the Doyen of the FrenchAcademy. Among notable women of analogous temperamenthave been Lady Hester Stanhope, and also JamesBarry, who spent a long' and distinguished life in masculinegarments and became Senior Inspector-General ofthe English Army Medical Department. There is no reasonto suppose that either of these women was homosexual.Eonism is a remarkably common anomaly; in my ownexperience it comes next in frequency to homosexuality'among sexual deviations. In ordinary life the subjects presentno startlingly unusual traits and may seem quiteordinarily masculine, but sometimes sensitive and reserved,often devoted to their wives, but seldom of vigoroussexual temperament. Their secret ideals are usuallyunsuspected, even by those nearest to them. Not all ofthem desire to adopt cross-dressingEdward (as Carpenter