This substitution is facilitated by certain facts in the social life of women.  The frequent lack of opportunity to be with men during adolescent school days, and a certain amount of taboo on male society for the unmarried woman, are in direct favour of the establishment of homosexual reactions.  There is also an increasing sex antagonism, growing out of woman’s long struggle for the privilege of participating in activities and sharing prerogatives formerly limited to men, which acts as an inhibitory force to prevent the transference of the sexual emotion to its normal object in the opposite sex.  Moreover, the entrance of woman into a manner of living and lines of activity which have heretofore been exclusively masculine, has brought out certain character traits which in other times would have been repressed as incompatible with the social standards of feminine conduct, but which are conducive to the formation of homosexual attachments, since the qualities admired in men can now be found also in women.

In this connection the term homosexuality is used very loosely to denote any type of emotional fixation upon members of the same sex which is strong enough to prevent a normal love life with some individual of the opposite sex.  Among American women, at least, this tendency is seldom expressed by any gross physical manifestations, but often becomes an idealized and lofty sentiment of friendship.  It is abnormal, however, when it becomes so strong as to prevent a happy married life.

The tendency of emotions to seek a vicarious outlet must also be considered in any inclusive attempt to explain the homosexual attachment of women.  The woman who, on account of lack of attraction for men or for 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.