Hellenic culture was decidedly masculine, women being solely tools of lust, or beasts of burden, or means of proliferation. As I will show in another chapter, one really modern woman can give to the modern man what Demosthenes sought in three kinds of women, a prostitute, a concubine and a wife, not to count a male mistress.
What is Really Needed is a better understanding of homosexualism by the public and by the homosexuals. After which, homosexuals, no longer despised and punished for their obsessive cravings, and no longer proud of their condition, will be given sympathy and treatment, voluntary or compulsory. Psychoanalysts will remove their complexes and lead them toward a positive goal; surgeons, performing on them some of Steinach's operations, may raise their heterosexual potency to the point at which no doubt will obsess them any longer.
Those things will avail little, however, until parents watch their offspring carefully to discover in them the first symptoms of a homosexual trend and adopt ways and means to prevent the growth of the neurosis.
We may for convenience quote Hirschfeld's description of the homosexual child, a very superficial one, indeed, sufficient, however, to cause the average parent to seek psychological and medical advice before it is too late and before mental and physical habits have compromised, perhaps hopelessly, the love life of their children.
"The homosexual boy prefers girls' games, shuns boys' games, is girlish in disposition and behavior, if not in appearance. People often say that he is like a girl. He is happy in the company of girls. He has a psychic fixation on his mother. He is reserved and embarrassed before other boys. He often becomes unduly attached to a male teacher or a schoolmate.
"The homosexual girl prefers boys' games, does not care for sewing or other feminine occupations, is boyish in her disposition, her motions, often in her appearance. People call her a tomboy. She likes to romp with boys. She is overattached to her father. She shows embarrassment in the presence of other girls. She often falls madly in love with a female teacher or some older woman."