customed to a much greater familiarity
and intimacy between women than between men, and we are less apt to
suspect the existence of any abnormal passion. And, allied with this
cause, we have also to bear in mind the extreme ignorance and the extreme
reticence of women regarding any abnormal or even normal manifestation of
their sexual life. A woman may feel a high degree of sexual attraction for
another woman without realizing that her affection is sexual, and when she
does realize this, she is nearly always very unwilling to reveal the
nature of her intimate experience, even with the adoption of precautions,
and although the fact may be present to her that, by helping to reveal the
nature of her abnormality, she may be helping to lighten the burden of it
on other women. Among the numerous confessions voluntarily sent to
Krafft-Ebing there is not one by a woman. There is, again, the further
reason that well-marked and fully developed cases of inversion are
probably rarer in women, though a slighter degree may be more common; in
harmony with the greater affectability of the feminine organism to slight
stimuli, and its lesser liability to serious variation.[146]

The same aberrations that are found among men are, however, everywhere
found among women. Feminine inversion has sometimes been regarded as a
vice of modern refined civilization. Yet it was familiar to the
Anglo-Saxons, and Theodore's Penitential in the seventh century assigned a
penance of three years (considerably less than that assigned to men, or
for bestiality) to "a woman fornicating with a woman." Among the women of
savages in all parts of the world homosexuality is found, though it is
less frequently recorded than among men.[147]

In New Zealand it is stated on the authority of Moerenhout (though I have
not been able to find the reference) that the women practised Lesbianism.
In South America, where inversion is common among men, we find similar
phenomena in women. Among Brazilian tribes Gandavo[148] wrote:--

"There are certain women among these Indians who determine to be
chaste and know no man. These leave every womanly occupation and
imitate the men. They wear their hair the same way as the men;
they go to war with them or hunting, bearing their bows; they
continue always in the company of men, and each has a woman who
serves her and with whom she lives."

This has some analogy with the phenomena seen among North American men