Our first example is taken from the work of José de Letamendi, Professor of General Pathology and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Madrid. Author of Curso de Clínica General o Canon perpetuo de la práctica médica(1894), Letamendi is a curious figure in late nineteenth-century medical circles. At the time of the rise of positivist perceptions of life and nature, Letamendi defended a holistic and romantic conception akin to German Naturphilosophie. Letamendi occupied an in-between space in Spanish medicine, projecting what was essentially fast becoming an out-dated perception but from a prestigious chair in medicine. His ideas produced supporters and critics in the medi- cal reviews of the period.
The second volume of his Curso de Clínica General contained some 850 aphorisms, typical of the Hippocratic tradition but already outmoded by the 1890s, covering all aspects of medical practice. The fourth section of this volume is dedicated to the ‘Genetic Processes’ (where ‘genetic’ refers to the act of ‘genera- tion’ of new beings), and he covers both ‘physiological and aberrant’ sexual conduct. Letamendi believed that his work played an important part in literature of this type given ‘el lamentable vacío que los patologistas y los clínicos dejan en la enseñanza’ [the lamentable lacunae left by pathologists and
clinicians in their teaching], who had maintained a complete silence on these matters.69
The sources employed by Letamendi are not easily deter- mined. His aphoristic style does not allow for the mentioning of other works and his rhetoric, full of Latin phrases, Greek lexical items and neologisms of his own making, hardly aids the identifi- cation of his sources. For example, Letamendi speaks of the ‘sexual impulse’ as ‘aphrodism’. This is divided into ‘natural aphrodism’ and ‘para-aphrodism’, the category which includes ‘preternatural or aberrant’ sexuality. ‘Natural aphrodism’ follows the logics of attraction and repulsion, or sympathy and antipathy, and is itself composed of three categories: friendship (attraction for moral reasons); luxuriousness (attraction for sensual motives); and love (‘psycho-physical, integral attraction’).70
Most of the text is devoted to the discussion of the ‘para- aphrodisias’. These expressions of sexuality are explained as returns to atavism, to an original hermaphroditic state, to a lack of sexual differentiation characteristic of the lower species and the first stages of individual development. This atavistic origin would explain the universal presence of ‘erotic aberrations’ in the human species and amongst irrational beings.71
These innate ‘hermaphroditic remains’ inherent to human nature, the influence of which was expressed in practically invin- cible sexual aberrations, would, nevertheless, be broken down into several different categorizations.72 In accordance with the
degree of atavism present in these ‘erotic aberrations’ there would be: (1) innate conditions as a result of anatomical struc- ture; (2) innate conditions due to neurotic inheritance; (3) those due to spontaneous vice; (4) those resulting from bad example; (5) those due to pure necessity; and (6) those produced by auto-suggestion and caprice. Medicine, according to Letamendi, could only operate with any degree of success in the cases outlined in (3), (4) and (5).
In addition, five different types of aberrations are identified.73
These are: ‘pseudo-pornia’ (coition in an inappropriate vessel); ‘autoerastia’ (the ‘solitary vice’);74 ‘homoerastia o sodomía o
singenesia’ [homoerastia, sodomy or syngenesia] ‘amor al de igual sexo’ [love of those of the same sex]; ‘pederasty’ (‘love of children’); and ‘thesierastia’, the ‘sin of bestiality’.
With respect to the classification of ‘pseudo-pornia’, Leta- mendi believed that it was practised by many women as ‘sodomiti- cal pseudo-pornia’ in order to avoid pregnancy and as a concession to their libidinous tendencies. Those who practised ‘autoerastia’ did so because of the lack of an appropriate object of the other sex, a ‘recurso supletorio’ [alternative resort] or because of hermaphroditic atavism. The latter would include those who engaged in ‘rectal autoerastia’.75
Amongst homoerastic subjects there are those who ‘are natu- rally so’ and those who are ‘so through passion and those occasional’. Those who can effectively choose respond to ‘second- ary atavism or incomplete hermaphroditism (crossed para- aphrodism)’.76In this way, Letamendi coincided with the modern
notion of ‘inversion’ as ‘psychic hermaphroditism’, divorced from any anatomical abnormality. He argued that homoerastia in males could be accompanied by an external virile countenance and that ‘viraginity’ (homoerastia among women) could be found among females whose appearance was entirely feminine. ‘Viraginity’, Letamendi pointed out, ‘es condición encefálica y general, no cutánea’ [is a cephalic and general condition, not a cutaneous one].77
However, amongst homoerasts and viraginists, whether innate, temporary or occasional, certain ‘feminine sodomites’ can be identified who like to reveal their desires and ‘se gozan en revelarse tomando a honor su propia infamia’ [enjoy displaying themselves, projecting their infamy as something honourable]. These individuals would combine the worst of both sexes, even though they were capable of, in contrast to ‘virile sodomites’, ‘una asombrosa resistencia orgánica al libertinaje’ [an astonishing degree of organic resistance to libertinage], that is, they restrained themselves sexually. Breaking with tradition, Leta- mendi distinguished ‘homoerastia’ from ‘pederasty’, the attrac- tion to children. In the latter, in any case, ‘los niños no siempre son víctimas por concepto de violencia’ [children are not always the victims of violence].78
Theoretically, the work of Letamendi is both innovative and incoherent. As already noted, he combined conceptual frame- works of extremely diverse origins. For example, together with the Lombrosian reference to atavism and the interruption of normal developmental patterns as a cause of anomalies (a notion that goes back to the Teratology of Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire)79there
is mention of Ernst Haeckel’s analogy of the relationship between ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, current at the time,80
and discussion of the theory of hermaphroditism and lack of sexual differentiation, taken from Darwin and the nascent school of sexology.81
The reliance of Letamendi on some of the principles of GermanNaturphilosophiein order to explain sexual attraction (in terms of sympathy and antipathy) constitutes a refusal to take positivism on board. To complete this eclectic picture, Letamendi discussed the notion of the invert as a male body with a female soul, as first expounded by Karl H. Ulrichs and disseminated by psychiatrists and sexologists such as Westphal, Magnan, Krafft- Ebing and Moll. The Spanish pathologist understands this gender deviance (as hermaphroditic atavism) and sexual deviance (as ‘homoerastia’) as a kind of personality, an innate special form of psyche. In the last analysis, all the ‘erotic aberrations’ would reside, according to Letamendi, in the transgression of gendered spheres; in all of them there is a return to the undifferentiated organism or original hermaphrodite.
Letamendi tried to harmonize these new medical and anthro- pological insights with archaic conceptual frameworks. He main- tained the great divide between the natural and the unnatural by defining the erotic ‘aberrations’ as ‘preternatural’. Furthermore, even though he distinguished between ‘homoerastia’ and ‘peder- astia’, he maintained the distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ roles. He also, despite first not defining those acts included in ‘para-aphrodisia’ as abominable or monstrous, evoked the moral condemnation of previous periods, referring as he did to vice, libertinage and luxury.82
Our second example of the truncated nature of the medicali- zation of same-sex sexuality in Spain at the turn of the century is taken from the field of criminal anthropology, a buoyant disci- pline in the country at the time. Criminal anthropology was given added impetus by the arrival and criticism of Lombrosian theories and by the perceived need to govern deviance in the city.83 Like
the naturalist and realist novel, criminal anthropology illumi- nated a demimonde created by urban overcrowding and poverty and it was keen to show how dangerous such elements were for the health of the nation. The three great names of this period, the three ‘little Lombrosos’ as Trinidad Fernández described them,84
Dorado Montero and Constancio Bernaldo de Quirós. Bernaldo de Quirós, together with J. M. Llanas Aguilaniedo, published the remarkable La Mala Vida en Madrid. Estudio psicosociológico con dibujos y fotografías del naturalin 1901.85
This text was written between 1899 and 1901. It was the fruit of a long process of research based on a variety of literatures, statistics and oral interviews, photographs and anthropometric studies carried out in a Madrid prison. At the same time, Salillas pioneered his Laboratory of Criminality, assiduously attended by the authors ofLa Mala Vida en Madrid.86The book was published
as part of a broader late nineteenth-century genre about the ‘low life’ of several cities in Europe and Latin America. The subjects of the criminologists’ inquiries were the city’s criminals, prostitutes and beggars.
The section of the book devoted to sexual inversion appeared in the chapter on prostitution. Amongst the many interesting aspects of this text are the taxonomical resources employed by the authors (such as Uranism and tribadism) and their theorization of same-sex practices. Like Letamendi, the authors displayed a marked degree of eclecticism, relying on the degenerationist models espoused by Garnier, Raffalovitch, Benjamin Ball, Dalle- magne and Roux. But they also drew upon emerging sexological works such as those of Krafft-Ebing (e.g.Psychopathia Sexualis) and on the volume on sexual inverts co-written by Havelock Ellis and John A. Symonds. There are also, as is to be expected, references to Spanish authors such as Letamendi himself and to Italian criminal anthropologists such as Ferri.
This extremely diverse theoretical arsenal gave rise to a tax- onomy which, despite its sophistication, nevertheless reflects older conceptual frameworks. Inverts are classed in four main groups: ‘pure inverts’; ‘pseudo-inverts’; ‘unisexuales dimorfos’ [dimorphic unisexuals]; and ‘polysexuals’. In each variety the characteristics of males and females are identified. ‘Pure inverts’ tended in an irresistible manner ‘comportarse como individuos del sexo contrario’ [to behave like individuals of the opposite sex]. They were divided into those ‘platonic’, in whom passion manifested itself as a form of erotomania, seen in poets, artists and admirers of strength, superiority and toughness;87the second
group of ‘pure inverts’ were the sexual variety. Here were placed all those who in addition to adopting the role of the opposite gender (‘maricas’ and ‘marimachos’) also tended to adopt the
corresponding role in the sexual act – subordinate in males and dominant in females. In the case of men, this submission con- verted them, the authors continued, into ‘masturbators’, ‘succubi’ or the ‘effeminates of Krafft-Ebing’ and even combinations of these.88A third class of ‘pure inverts’ comprised those capable of
alternating the ‘pure’ role and the ‘sexual’ role according to circumstance.
‘Pseudo-inverts’, who popularly went by the name ofbujarrones, conserved the gender role of their sex for outside appearances but could vary this gender role according to the sexual practice engaged in. Thus, according to Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo, pseudo-invert males were capable of adopting pas- sive or active roles but pseudo-invert women could adopt the passive role only. This whole class of inverts could be divided in turn into platonic, sexual and alternate inverts.
The class of ‘dimorphic unisexuals’ ordígamosare ‘homosexu- ales de bodas dobles’ [homosexuals of two marriages]. By this the authors meant that they could act as pseudo-inverts or inverts according to circumstances. Finally, the ‘polysexuals’ were those that combined the traits of the three classes mentioned above with the practice of heterosexual relations.
According to the two authors, this schema exhausted all possi- bilities in the terrain of sexual inversion and it was applied systematically to all the subjects observed in the study. These consisted of nineteen case studies some of which we will examine below. Despite this extensive schema, which is bound by tradi- tional concepts of gender and sex, there may be, the authors admit, some types which have escaped their attention.89
As was the case of the typology constructed by Letamendi, the one employed by the two authors of La Mala Vida was equally ambivalent. On the one hand, they coincided with contemporary sexological criteria with respect to the supposed link between physical inversion (eunuchoid genital anatomy, effeminacy in men, a large clitoris in women and masculine appearance) and inversion of the sexual instinct. The authors admitted that ‘no siempre, en efecto, coincide la inversión de los caracteres sexuales físicos con la inversión del instinto sexual’ [not always, in fact, does inversion of the physical characters coincide with inversion of the sexual instinct].90Inversion of the sexual instinct was to be
found in Uranians and tribades that possessed peculiar personali- ties rather than anatomical types. On the other hand, the two
authors insisted that ‘sodomy’ was not the only sexual practice that inverts engaged in: ‘la masturbación recíproca, el coito bucal, etc, son manifestaciones uranistas corrientes’ [mutual masturba- tion, oral coition, etc., are common Uranian practices].91
From schemas such as this, we can deduce that the long- standing separation between active and passive sexuality charac- teristic of Mediterranean sexual codes drove the modern category of the invert in Spain. For this reason, those males that practised the insertive role, including ‘pederasts’ and those ‘impassioned by children’ were not real inverts but pseudo-inverts and their practices were more the result of vice than of their specific nature.92A similar understanding is afforded of thedígamosand
the polysexuals. Their desires stem from ‘curiosidad malsana, vicio, voluptuosidad, deseo de lucro, etc’ [unhealthy curiosity, vice, voluptuousness, desire for monetary gain, etc].93This divide
between natural and apparent or artificial inverts draws on an old but increasingly outdated distinction between the natural and the anti-natural.
To speak of ‘incubi through vice’, ‘unhealthy curiosity’ and ‘unfortunate aberrations’ is obviously to adopt a moral tone. This tone coexists uncomfortably with the attempt to craft an ‘objec- tive’ typology or labelling technique. Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo also refer to the smells of some Uranians, in whom ‘a la perversión del instinto sexual se asocia la perversión del instinto olfativo’ [the perversion of the sexual instinct is associated to the perversion of the olfactory instinct] and many ‘perfúmanse con olores repugnantes’ [perfume themselves with repugnant odours].94 This association between perverted sexual
and olfactory instincts had already made its appearance in the work of Tardieu, Mata and Yáñez and it appears to have some- thing in common with the sulphurous smells supposedly accom- panying Satan and devils.95Indeed, the identification of sodomy
with a plague, vice or pestilence, all referred to inLa Mala Vida, goes back at least to the beginnings of modernity in Spain.96The
ambivalent discourse of this unequal process of medicalization would possess as a constant feature the homophobia of yester- year.97
In addition, it is worth mentioning briefly the work of the Catalan pedagogue Max Bembo, whoseLa Mala Vida en Barcelona
followed shortly after the work authored by Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo in 1912.98 This work, discussed more
extensively in Chapter Six, devoted a large amount of space to inversion and eliminated the condemnatory tones seen in many other studies. The theoretical framework offered by Bembo coin- cides broadly with that of the authors of La Mala Vida en Madrid
and degenerationist proponents such as Magnan, Lacassagne and Binet are hailed over and above the more deterministic somatic theories of Lombroso. Combined with this is a large swathe of sexological theories taken from Moll, Raffalovitch, Westphal and Krafft-Ebing.
Although Bembo admits that sexual inversion could be a natural phenomenon, he coincides with Moll and Raffalovitch in arguing that it is a phenomenon which arises from a ‘predisposi- tion’ rooted in morbid inheritance.99Inversion is not an instinct,
he argues, but the degeneration of an instinct. His discussion of the ‘naturalness’ or otherwise of sexual inversion draws, once more, on the old antithesis between natural and anti-natural, seen above. Inversion becomes a disease that is at the heart of all other deviations of the sexual instinct. The presence of sexual inversion in an individual should be seen, Bembo argues, as the result of both a biological trait and of environmental factors which may include certain types of food, literature, and various kinds of psychic disturbance.100 An innovative feature of Max Bembo’s
account of Barcelona is his admission that there may not be such a rigid divide between hetero and homo sexuality. Bisexuality might be a middle course or a transition stage. Anomalous and degenerate admittedly, the invert is no longer a strange monster, an ‘unexplainable’ freak of nature.