and desirable makes for tolerance of female homosexual pairs by society. 4. Tolerance of the pair of older women, in this country at least, probably developed when it was socially unacceptable for a single woman to live alone and it was therefore taken for granted that two single women should set up house together. This tolerance was probably reinforced in this century by the long period following World War I when there was a large surplus of women.

5. It should be emphasised that two women have often lived together in a companionship which replaces many aspects of the companionship of married life and yet in which few if any.caresses are exchanged-probably true of some male partnerships as well. It is recognized that such partnerships between older women, with or without physical expression, can form a useful unit in society, each partner pursuing her avocations the better for the strength of the companionship and tenderness she finds at home, and the pair together able to offer a generous and welcome hospitality.

This is the positive side. Before considering the effect which a comparably more tolerant åttitude in society would have on male homosexual relationships, it is necessary to examine the negative, and to see whether what is harmful and regrettable in female homosexuality has the same form or is similar in origin to what is harmful in homosexuality among men.

The first and most conspicuous feature is that female homosexuality is often associated with deep unhappiness. In the young girl unhappiness is probably at the minimum when the object of adoration is remote, but may even then become deeply disturbing if the emotion is so dominant that it throws life entirely out of proportion. An adolescent girl is probably more likely to be subject to this kind of disturbance than is a boy, since her emotions have often developed faster than her intellect, and she has no other dominant interest to distract her such as sport, engine-spotting or the constant care of a bicycle.

When in early adult life the relationship is more intimate, many of the features already noted as harmfully characteristic of male homosexuals may again be present: we find again the restless jealousy, possessiveness, and the torments of changing partnerships. These are often associated with an overt or unacknowledged sense of guilt or of resentment at being involved in what can never give true satisfaction. This fact is probably far more important than would ever be acknowledged by the partners and, while some homosexuals are accurate when they say they do not want heterosexual relationships, many more, in their determined proclamations of this, are in fact doing violence to fuller impulses, which they are unable to perceive. The sense of guilt may at times be stronger in a young girl than in a man because she cannot, if she is at all feminine, escape the feeling of frustration at thus avoiding motherhood.

The same tensions and frustrations occur in unhappy partnerships of later life. The emotional strains, the deep bitterness arising from a continued search to find in another woman the satisfaction that only a man could give, produce the twisted embittered woman, only too familiar to psychiatrists. The women involved may become cut off from society by their own self-absorption, for in such a partnership self-absorption is dominant. They are a menace to their friends and

mattachine REVIEW

colleagues and spread unhappiness wherever they go. Society is rightly critical and wrongly unsympathetic-yet sympathy is hard to give for it is demanded on false grounds and the truth on which it could be founded often fiercely rejected.

This is the picture, then, of the positive and negative in female homosexuality. What can be deduced from it as to the possible course of male homosexuality if legal restrictions were removed and moral ostracism diminished? The most conspicuous feature that appears to be missing altogether from female homosexuality, even with the freedom which society allows it, is the brief contact of a purely or almost purely physical nature which is so characteristic of a certain section of male homosexual society. This is probably inherent in the different nature of the physical sexual responses of a man and a woman. It seems easier for most men than for most women to have physical relations without emotional involvement with the partner. The experience is thus phallus-centred and produces excitement without deep commitment. In heterosexual life a man may have fleeting affairs with other women without of necessity betraying his emotional fidelity towards his wife; in homosexual relationships he may forever be changing the partner. Women, on the other hand, are more often committed with the whole of their being; they are less likely to be genital-centred in their physical experience, but can achieve sexual satisfaction from various parts of the body. They are more personally involved, and more dependent on the partnership apart from physical contact. Women, therefore, will often try to work towards a lasting partnership, whether in marriage, in extra-marital love or in homosexual friendship.

It is important for society to recognize that young men need tenderness and affection just as much as do young girls and that an expression of these is no more to be wondered at or deplored in the one than in the other. Were this recognized, above all by the young men themselves, then many could pass through a homosexual phase of affection without a sense of guilt, and without believing that their need for this affection was evidence that they could not have normal heterosexual relationships. An easier attitude towards relationships of affection between young men, however expressed, far from spreading permanent homosexuality; would help to make it more transient. Unless the balance in numbers between the sexes becomes seriously upset, giving a preponderance of males, it is unlikely that pairs of older men will ever be as familiar a sight in society as pairs of older women will continue to be for several decades; but is there any reason to doubt that a permanent and loyal companionship, with the strength and security of mutual trust and affection, could be as tolerable and even valuable to society as the corresponding partnership between two women?

Constructive Thinking

There now comes the difficult matter of a Christian attitude to homosexual problems. On 16th September 1962, in his sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, the Bishop of Woolwich appealed for reform of "our utterly mediaeval treatment of homosexuals" and went on to say "as with capital punishment, one more determined push will see