ABSTRACT
The concept of women with inborn masculine character traits, however, became part of the mapping out of sexual difference with which the contemporary phenomenon of the woman student was conceptualized. This chapter examines the various and changing ideas of sexologists about female inversion and explore how these theorists interpreted the question of women’s higher education and professional work. It addresses the fact that while the theory of gender inversion was influential in sexological ideas about homosexuality, it was not a theory that was accepted by the entire homosexual rights movement. The chapter explores how members of the women’s movement engaged with sexological ideas. Sexual inversion and other ‘perversions’ came to be regarded as part of a wider spectrum of hereditary pathologies. The conceptualization of homosexuality as a symptom of degeneration, however, was increasingly challenged at the end of the nineteenth century.
