BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

FORD

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THE HOMOSEXUAL SOCIETY by Richard Hauser, The Bodley House, London, 1962, 167 pages.

One of the persistent problems in the sexual field to which considerable thought has been given in recent years is that of determining the extent to which there exists a homosexual society or culture distinctive in itself and capable of definition. The title of the present volume leads one to expect some light on this problem.

A society and a culture are not synonymous, but they are closely related. A society is a group of persons who are integrated into a system which, beginning in the "consciousness of kind" (Giddings), gradually develops certain characteristics which have a relative consistency and permanence, although the individual members of the group come and go. These common characteristics include particular ways of doing things, consensus of beliefs and sentiments, and a degree of integration which makes the society perceptible within a larger setting.

A culture group is more specifically defined in what is termed "a pattern of culture" and may include a series of categories: language; a group of material activities covering food, shelter, clothing, transportation and communication, tools, weapons, occupations, etc,; the arts; myth and scientific knowledge; religion; family

organization; property and exchange; government and laws; recreation; and war and intergroup relations. The anthropologists, such, for example, as Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, have found these categories practically universal, although the content of each one differs widely within ethnic groups.

The problem of the homosexual is then: to what extent is there an integrated society among them and a distinctive attitude or practice with reference to the cultural categories? As to the existence of a society of homosexuals, there is just now in our own times a beginning of a recognition of the "consciousness of kind" in the formation of organizations and the the development of communication through periodical literature. As revealed in many letters to ONE, it has come as almost a shock to those who have suffered loneliness and isolation that they are members of a group which is widespread and historically of long duration. To call homosexuals a society is as yet premature.

The question of a distinct culture is still an open one and is occupying the thought of a number of serious minds, but the present weight of opinion seems to be on the side of the negative, finding sexual preference the only deviation from the cultural pattern of the ethnic or national group to which the individual belongs.

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