From pp.221-222 of
Goldfinger
, a novel published in 1959 and written by Ian Fleming, a man born in 1908:
Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterson was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits -- barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.
For comparison, note
this 2009 work by John C. Wright, born 1961. And what's all this about progress, anyway?
1 comment:
And what's all this about progress, anyway?
Well, when Fleming wrote that he was reflecting the mainstream opinion -- indeed, possibly the more tolerant edge of it -- of the day, among those who acknowledged that homosexuality even existed. When Wright writes today, he represents a minority mindset (Prop 8 in California notwithstanding) that is shrinking steadily as demographics, and the "arc of the moral universe" that Martin Luther King spoke of, take their toll on it.
So yes, progress. Just not completion, yet.
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