The Repressed Lesbian

by Geno Damon and Lee Stuart

In February, 1958, a book entitled Call Girl, by Harold Greenwald, M.D., was published by Ballantine Books, Inc. This book is subtitled "A Social and Psychoanalytic Study." It attempts to analyze the primary reasons why over 20 attractive young women are highly paid prostitutes. The se women are far from the drab streetwalker stereotypes whose confessions appear only after they have reached the depths of degradation. They aro, for the most part, young, relatively healthy, and at least temporarily wealthy. Dr. Greenwald brings out in his book an oft hinted at and seldom discussed fact: That more than half of the women who prostitute themselves are either partially or wholly repressed Lesbians. Even in cases where there is no definite ovidence of attraction to women, there is found certain indefinite ideas in sex differentiation. Dr. Greenwald also notes a tendency among these repressed Lesbian cases to drink to excess. Conversely, no such alcoholism seems to be present in the few overt cases ho cites. In studying the background writing on this subject it becomes apparent that social condomnation of Lesbianism clearly contributes to the wanton and dograding life in which the so women be como enme shod.

Going back many years we find that Pierre Louys' heroine, Bilitis, was at one period of her life a courtesan and that she and her fellow courtesans were Lesbians.1 After they had consorted with men without any pleasure either physical or mental, they consoled one another. It is made abundantly clear that Bilitis and her friends vastly preferred women to men; but in that day and age men were an economic necessity.3 While man is certainly not an economic necessity today, the large number of latent homosexual women who are married (most often unhappily) shows that socially it still takes intestinal fortitude to go against the popular tide, 1.0., marriage, family, etc.

Dr. Benjamin Karpmen in his book, Alcoholic Women, closely analyzes the entire lives of three alcoholic women. In two

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