any other reason, is denied the normal functioning of the love life in
marriage, is forced to find some other expression for her erotic
emotions, and it is only natural that she should find it in an affection
for other women. Again, the voluntary celibacy of a large class of
modern women, who prefer to retain their economic independence rather
than to enter into family life, also necessitates finding vicarious
emotional activities. Whenever their work throws a number of these women
into constant association, it is almost inevitable that homosexual
attachments will spring up.

We meet all these types of homosexual fixations in daily life. The
college girl who is isolated from men for four years has her sworn
comrade among the girls, and is sure that she will never marry but will
love her chum always. Very often it is some time after she leaves
college before she begins to take an interest in male companionship. The
young professional woman looks up to the older woman in her line of work
with the same admiration for her courage and brilliancy that used to be
reserved for the husband alone in the days when women were permitted
only a strictly feminine education and occupation. The business woman
refuses to give up her high salaried position for marriage, and consoles
herself with her feminine friends. These are the common manifestations
characteristic of female homosexuality. As has been suggested, the term
is loosely applied to such cases as these, but the tendency of recent
psychological literature is to consider them as highly sublimated
expressions of this tendency.

As has been intimated, the modern woman who has entered into the
economic competition is often reluctant to abandon this activity for the
responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood, which involve a withdrawal
from the business world. Just as the materialistic rewards of economic
activities often prove more attractive than the emotional satisfactions
of family life, so, too, the intellectual ambitions of the professional
woman may deter her from the exercise of her reproductive functions.
Thus the egoistic and individualistic tendencies which modern social
organization fosters in the personality of its feminine members makes
them unwilling to sacrifice their ambitious plans in the performance of
their natural biological functions.

In the present speeding up of competition, the entrance upon family life
becomes almost as burdensome to man as to woman, a