The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM
redefine or reject when they adopted the ideology of the male
sexologists.
Browne’s paper ‘The Sexual Variety and Variability among
Women’ is described by Sheila Rowbotham as having a ‘very
modern relevance in what she says about love and women’s sexual
feelings’. 32 Her discussion of lesbianism is described as ‘dated’
and much to be expected in its ‘specific historical context’. In fact
the promotion of heterosex to women in which Browne was
involved required the denigration of lesbianism. The two cannot
be separated and both emerged from a ‘specific historical context’.
Then, as now, the construction of compulsory heterosexuality
for women has been based upon the stigmatising of lesbianism.
Browne distinguished between pseudohomosexuality and real
lesbianism: ‘Artificial or substitute homosexuality—as distinct
from true inversion—is very widely diffused among women, as a
result of the repression of normal gratification and the segregation
of the sexes, which still largely obtains.’ 33 She further distinguished
between pseudohomosexuality, which she went so far as to say
might be ‘entirely platonic’, and ‘true affectionate friendship’
between women: ‘Sometimes its only direct manifestations are
quite noncommittal and platonic but even this incomplete and
timid homosexuality can always be distinguished from true
affectionate friendship between women, by its jealous, exacting
and extravagant tone.’ 34 Browne gives women a clue about how
to classify the nature of their feelings for other women. Homosexual
love is ‘jealous, exacting and extravagant’, i.e. unpleasant. She
offers no clearer distinction and it would not be surprising if
women remained confused. The dividing line between friendship
and pseudohomosexuality is clearly artificial given that
pseudohomosexuality can be ‘platonic’ anyway. She compounds
the confusion by saying that women need not doubt their
heterosexuality even if they experience no attraction towards
men until late in life and have felt devotion and intense desire for
women friends:
Also many women of quite normally directed [heterosexual]
inclinations, realise in mature life, when they have
experienced passion, that the devoted admiration and
friendship they felt for certain girl friends, had a real, though
perfectly unconscious, spark of desire in its exaltation and
intensity; an unmistakable, indefinable note, which was
absolutely lacking in many equally sincere and lasting
friendships. 35
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