The Origin of Italian Sexological Studies: Female Sexual Inversion, ca. 1870–1900

Abstract

Before the term “sexual inversion” entered the vocabulary of the Italian medical community with the forensic physician Arrigo Tamassia’s case history of a male sexual invert in 1878, there already existed notions of female same-sex desires. These ideas linked female homosexuality to excessive sexual longing, virility, and specific women-only environments. This framework of understanding returned in later studies of female “sexual inversion,” but it assumed a more sophisticated conceptual form. The aim of this article is to map the debates around female same-sex desires that took place as Italian sexology developed by the end of the nineteenth century.

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