Note 124 — Chapter VI · OF TRIBADS

To make yourselves quite sure about what the author means by androgynic loves, look at the passage as a whole: “Come, you man of the new age, you lawgiver of unknown amours, if you open out new ways to the lubricity of men, you may grant to the women equal license. Let them cohabit together as the men do; let woman lie with woman, and simulate with their lascivious organs conjunctions, sterile though they be, as man lies with man! Let the word one hears so very rarely, and which I am ashamed to pronounce, let the lubricity of our tribads triumph without blushing.” Observe in the first place how tribads were seldom spoken of, and that they kept themselves in the dark; in the second place how the immoderate clitoris of the tribad is said to simulate lascivious organs in conjunction. Seneca, Controversia Secunda, in a similar sense, calls such a monstrosity *****, an artificial man; lastly the epithet “sterile” is applied to the clitoris, and points to the dry unproductiveness of the tribadic coitus.