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Homosexuality and Lesbianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

D. J. West
D. J. West*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT
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Abstract

Definitions

Homosexual behaviour often occurs among persons who do not have a settled homosexual orientation. Sometimes, as among prisoners, it can be the direct result of lack of contact with the opposite sex. Around puberty, especially among males, it may represent the easiest way of testing sexual performance. In Kinsey's great survey of American white males, 37 per cent had had at least some overt homosexual experience to the point of orgasm since adolescence, 10 per cent had been more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between ages 16 and 55, but only 4 per cent remained so all their lives. Kinsey regarded sexual preference as potentially changeable and a matter of degree, not the clear, permanent dichotomy that had been popularly supposed.

Type
Symposium on Sexual Deviation
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 143 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 221 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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