At the
International Conference of Medical Women (New York, 1919) it was stated
that homosexual fixations among women are a frequent cause of female
celibacy and divorce. This view was upheld by such authorities as Dr.
Constance Long of England, and other prominent women physicians.
Although a certain percentage of female homosexuality is congenital, it
is probable that by far the largest part is due to a conditioning of the
sexual impulse by the substitution of members of the same sex as the
erotic stimulus in place of the normal response to the opposite sex.
This substitution is facilitated by certain facts in the social life of
women. The frequent lack of opportunity to be with men during adolescent
school days, and a certain amount of taboo on male society for the
unmarried woman, are in direct favour of the establishment of homosexual
reactions. There is also an increasing sex antagonism, growing out of
woman's long struggle for the privilege of participating in activities
and sharing prerogatives formerly limited to men, which acts as an
inhibitory force to prevent the transference of the sexual emotion to
its normal object in the opposite sex. Moreover, the entrance of woman
into a manner of living and lines of activity which have heretofore been
exclusively masculine, has brought out certain character traits which in
other times would have been repressed as incompatible with the social
standards of feminine conduct, but which are conducive to the formation
of homosexual attachments, since the qualities admired in men can now be
found also in women.
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