Her early sexual play with another little girl is perfectly normal. Not all children indulge in this kind of play, but many do, and unless it continues into adolescence it is generally harmless.
The reasons behind this delusion of homosexuality are complex. They lie in an early confusion of the clitoris with the male penis, as I will illustrate later. But you may be certain of one thing—you are not going to discover that your problem is based on homosexuality as it appears in the difficulty called “lesbianism.” To hold onto such mistaken conceptions is to frighten oneself with self-told ghost stories after the fashion of young children.
I wish here to cover just one more attribute of the woman whose sexual feelings have become fixed on her clitoris, one which, if she is forewarned, she will and should be suspicious of. It is the tendency to look for solutions for her problem in directions where no solutions lie.
I have treated women who have tried everything under the sun in their search for an easy resolution of their clitoridal problem—drugs, surgery, even yoga. One of the most widely used evasions can be found (and how often it is!) in the many popular manuals written, ostensibly, to tell one how to achieve a happy marriage. Such books, for the most part published in all good faith, almost invariably counsel married partners to diversify their sexual positions during intercourse. Many of these books contain illustrations to drive their lesson home.
There is nothing wrong with this advice in and of itself. Anybody with a modicum of experience knows that variety is one of the finest spices of love. The books generally, if not always, neglect to say, however, that such variety is only relevant to a sex life in which the partners have no deep-seated sexual problem to start with. By omitting that piece of information these books give the strong tacit impression that variety of sexual position will solve an already well-established sexual difficulty.
The desperate woman will seize upon these implications as upon a panacea for her ills. I must state here that all of the innumerable positions of love described in the Hindu Kamasutra (from which so many of our marriage manuals, incidentally, derive much of their information) will not undo a clitoral fixation. A woman is asking for just one more emotional defeat if she insists that a solution lies in this direction.
We have now seen the three things that make frigidity possible in women. I will repeat them briefly so that you’ll remember them later.
The first is the fact that the female orgasm is not a biological necessity in woman as it is in man. The race can and does go on if women fail to have full sexual satisfaction. This strongly suggests why the female orgasm is so susceptible to psychological influences of an adverse kind.
The second is the fact that motherhood calls for tremendous psychological and sometimes physical sacrifices; it means that a woman has to reverse the natural law of self-preservation and put her children’s welfare ahead of her own. This is deeply frightening to some women and, unless they are properly educated, can cause them to fear their feminine sexual impulses to the point where they are unable to enjoy love-making.