Homosexualism and the War. Homosexualism has been on the increase since the war. Stekel reports many gruesome cases of husbands who, until they went to the barracks and the trenches, where their unconscious homosexualism found an unusual stimulation, were normal in their attitude to their wives, and who returned after the armistice absolutely inverted and unable to give or receive normal gratification.
The bobbed hair craze has many good excuses. Bobbed hair is kept tidy more easily than long tresses and can be dried quicker after a shampoo. At the same time, when we consider that the boyish type of women became fashionable about the same time when short hair did, and that soon after the war, advertising boards were covered with the praise of devices enabling women to conceal their natural curves, we must consider both fashions as symptomatic of an increase in homosexualism.
We might also mention another fashion detail: while dressmakers were trying their best to obliterate their customers breasts, they would bare entirely their backs. Anyone familiar with the symbolism and dreams of homosexuals will understand the import of that style of dresses.
Is Homosexualism Necessary? Dr. Otto Gross, without openly countenancing homosexualism, holds that a certain proportion of it is necessary in man's makeup for a mutual understanding of both sexes.
"We can only understand," he writes, "what we have experienced. Unless a man has a decided feminine trend, he is not likely to understand a woman, or to live with her harmoniously and vice versa."
A consideration of the purely physical side of love lends a slight plausibility to that view. Unless a man can clearly imagine love's pleasure as experienced by a woman, he may not be able to vouchsafe her complete gratification.
The progress of civilisation certainly demands that men become less masculine (translate: boorish) and women less feminine (meaning: silly).
We could not tolerate, however, what Friedländer called a Renaissance of Eros Uranios, leading to the conditions which obtained in Greece where men, while consorting with other men, were also potent with women.
No parallel can be drawn between Greek culture and modern culture.