Frank Caprio's Female Homosexuality mentions situations resembling Karen's, although seldom with the anal component. The desire to be hurt is frequently encountered among submissive lesbians, and usually takes the form of flagellation. Karen, as noted, discovered a fondness for the latter, perhaps because it fulfilled the earlier desire when she witnessed another child being punished. In Karen's case, anal eroticism is combined with masochism and homosexuality. The latter impulses were aroused by the prostitute in London, the former by a spanking incident when she was very young.
Several reasons probably account for her anal-ism. In the Introduction, several of her anal experiences were noted; her submission to sodomy with her cousin, and the stimulus from enemas. Unquestionably, she is very sensitive in the anal zone. Her lack of interest in vaginal stimulus, indeed, her repugnance toward it, is interesting. Karen has reversed the usual attitudes. To most people, and women in particular, everything connected with the anus is repulsive and unpleasant. Normally speaking, there is disgust, especially in our culture, because the anus is associated with feces, unpleasant odors, and waste. To Karen, however, her anus is clean. She does not think of feces at all; as with nearly all anal erotics, there is no coprophilia. Instead, she is repelled by the vagina because of menstruation which disgusts her and also the normal secretions from the mucous membranes. Karen does not regard her vagina as a primary erogenous zone; indeed, to her, it is scarcely an erogenous zone at all.
What is most important, however, is Karen's homosexuality. During early puberty she was bisexual, a common enough feature in young girls. But her development was toward homosexuality rather than away from it. These tendencies were not conscious but subliminal. They recurred in dreams, which, in turn, triggered the desire for homosexual anal assault, and which led to the important episode in London when she submitted to anal penetration by the prostitute.
This incident, more pleasurable in reality than she had anticipated, confirmed her anal homosexuality and put her clearly in that camp. Previous experiences were experimental and were not necessarily deviate since it was not clear that she preferred them to genital heterosexual intercourse. The incident in London produced deviation. After it, she was no longer bisexual, which is really modified homosexuality, but entirely homosexual. She did not desire the attentions of men after that experience but wanted to assume the submissive role with a dominant woman.
Her homosexuality created problems. For one thing, it took some time for Karen to accept it, to identify herself as a homosexual without excessive pangs of guilt. She remained somewhat uncommitted on this score when she placed the ad. She tried to convince herself that her real motivation was loneliness, and she did not make her homosexual desires explicit. She continued to regard homosexuality as a shameful thing, even more so than her analism. Some of this is no doubt because homosexuality is the most common deviation and homosexuals are subject to considerable social disapproval whereas analism by itself is comparatively uncommon and receives little public attention. In her case, however, there were no religious or moral conflicts. Karen does not disapprove of sexual deviation, believes in permissiveness, and follows the approach of others in her generation who subscribe to the philosophy of Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn and moral individualism in the realm of sex. She believes that everybody should do their own thing. Since she held this position intellectually, it was easy for her to adjust to being a homosexual, and to admit this fact to herself without undue guilt feelings. Karen does not have a guilt complex.
The experiment with the ad proved very successful. Through it Karen was fortunate enough to find another girl who was both congenial and dominant. What was established, in consequence, was a kind of pair bond, an unofficial marriage. The two girls approached each other cautiously, as though they were man and woman, and, after suitable preliminaries, indulged in what amounts to sexual intercourse. The fact that the physical aspects of their sexual union became anal and involved the use of the dildoe and other instruments is really of very little importance. It was intercourse, and it involved love, the union of two persons physically and psychically.
According to Frederick Redlich and Daniel Freedman's Theory and Practice of Psychiatry, abnormal behavior can be classified into four broad categories: neurosis, psychosis, psychopathy, and deviation. Deviates are not necessarily neurotic, or, if they are, their neuroses might be based on very different grounds than their abnormal sex problems. Karen is an excellent example of this. She is an effective person, intelligent, competent, able to relate to other people, and quite capable of warmth in her affective life. She is really a fairly normal person who happens to be an anally erotic homosexual.
This raises an important point. Should a deviate necessarily be classified as abnormal? There is considerable disagreement on this score. Some authorities consider deviates in general, and homosexuals in-particular, to be sick and recommend therapy. There is a small but growing group, however, who question the use of the term “deviation” altogether and consider so-called “deviates” to be perfectly normal, well-functioning persons who have certain preferences and tastes in the sexual area which are not shared by the majority of people.
There is much to be said on both sides of this argument. On the one hand, because deviation is not socially acceptable, except among minority groups such as the youth counterculture, persons who deviate sexually are subject to disapproval, are obliged to be secretive, and are made to feel guilty on account of their deviation. On the other hand, it can be argued that it is society itself that is sick, as Fromm insists in his Sane Society, and it is perhaps even healthier for deviates to practice their perversions than to attempt to conform. Added to this argument is the fact that overpopulation is now a major world problem and that human procreation is no longer desirable, even in the more advanced Western nations. The deviate may be actually making a worthy contribution to the human race by the diversion of his sexuality into nonprocreative channels. One can even conceive of a future world in which the mores are reversed and in which heterosexual genital sex is deviant and homosexuality and other deviations normal. In such a situation secretiveness and fear of social disapproval would cause people now considered normal to behave neurotically.
Karen's is the kind of case that refutes absolutism in the realm of sexual behavior and mores. She is a deviant, but she is not a disturbed person, being like any normal but lonely person who suffered pangs of unfulfilled yearning until she found a mate. Having found a soul mate, she was then able to enter into a normal and happy lesbian marriage.
The one major problem here, however, is how long the marriage can be expected to last. Caprio notes the frequency of homosexual pair bonds, but also suggests that very few of these last more than a year. The record is not as good as in the case of common-law marriages between men and women, which frequently are unusually stable. Unless Karen is able to maintain a more or less permanent relationship, she may be in difficulty. Her middle and later years may be lonely. Also, as frequently occurs, her later years may be plagued with regrets and self-depreciation.
“I stayed with Eileen after that. I wish there was some way that two lesbians who love each other could marry, but, in a way, I guess, we did. We went down to a church and pledged our love to each other and made vows to each other. That's a kind of marriage, I guess. It's as much a marriage as people have who live common law with each other.
“We decided that I would quit my job and move in with Eileen, and that her apartment would be our home. Money was absolutely no problem, as I said, because Eileen has an independent income and doesn't have to work. She likes to work, though, and she is very keen on her career. I like to take care of a house and all that, so it was easy for us to decide that she would be sort of the 'man' of the house, bring in the bacon, make all the decisions about money and all that, while I'd take care of the apartment, do the shopping, and everything else that a regular wife does.