Interview: Martha Vicinus

Homosocial networks are relatively few - indeed, even the Girl Guides organization is more frightened by homosexuality than by heterosexuality. In the US, all the scouts' organizations have become coeducational. To me this is a very conscious effort to stop these relations. I don't want to sound nostalgic, but schooling in the late nineteenth century can be seen as a historical period in which homosocial bonds could flourish in a very simplified world - and we will never return to that anymore!

source: Article 'Interview: Martha Vicinus' by Marjan Sax & Sjuul Deckwitz; Vicinus is Professor of English Literature and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and is an editor of Feminist Studies; Paidika - The Journal of Paedophilia; Special Women's Issue; Volume 2, Number 4, Issue 8; Amsterdam; Winter 1992