1. What does the literature say about the development of same-sex and opposite sex bodily modesty in males and females?

 Bodily modesty, the desire to cover one's body, or to conceal one's bodily functions, varies from culture to culture, and from one period of history to another. The adult women of the Moslem world cover their faces while the adult women of numerous tribes in warm climates go almost completely unclothed without embarrassment. Even within Western countries there is considerable variation in the sense of modesty, and this variation is reflected in the attitudes of our children (Lewis, et al, 1988).

 Goldman et al (1981) did a cross-cultural study of childrens' development of a sense of modesty. Children from Australia, England, Sweden, the USA, and Canada were asked: "Suppose we all lived in a nice warm place or climate, should we need to wear clothes?" Their answers indicated that the North American children were the most modest and the Swedish children least. Nevertheless, by thirteen years old, most children (53%) answered that children in warm countries should wear clothes.

 When cultures are scaled as to prudishness, North Americans generally appear among the more prudish of Western countries (Smith, 1980, Weinberg, 1964).

 But a hundred years ago (during the Victorian period) the North American culture was more prudish still, even startling so by today's standards (Walters, 1974, Rugoff, 1971). Women wore their dresses to the floor. Exposure of an ankle could be scandalous. The imporance of modesty in that era is spelled out in a book (Malcho, 1923) of such continuing popularity that it went through 22 editions between 1907 and 1921. This author informed parents that:
 
 

 The Victorian standards of modesty faded with the change of fashion. During the twenties and thirties of this century, the so called flapper period, young women shocked their mothers by cutting off their long dresses above their knees and kicking up their heels in public in the new dance craze, the Charlston. Clearly, bodily modesty is partly a matter of fashion.

 But it is more than simply fashion, at least at certain and in certain places. During the Victorian period, it was a deeply held and psychologically rooted value that did much to shape the culture and people's lives. This prudishness exists in at least a vestigal form in many households today. A person indoctrinated with particular modesty standards, such as those regarding privacy in the bathroom, for example, can become mortified in situations in which these standards must be violated, as in the hospital or military, or in the locker room or in the community swimnming pool. Then they either adapt to a new standard and overcome their modesty, or they try to protect theier modesty standards and feel somewhat alienated and different from others who are more comfortable with less privacy and more self-exposure (Gross, 1964, Jesser, 1969).

 Yet although an individual might cope with the anxiety of loss of privacy in a particular setting by accommodating to the new standards imposed by the situation, such an adaptation is often situation specific. Adapting to the modesty standards in a hospital, for instance, doesn't change one's sense of appropriateness on the city street (cf. Goffman, 1965, Gross, 1964).

 Within a given culture, however, each person is somewhat protected from embarrassment by the standardization of modesty in their social group or community. Children raised according to diverse standards in their homes grow to accept the public standards of their communities. A person who regularly left the bathroom door open at home would typically know to shut it in a public building.

 Women may vary in their modesty standards at home, but they generally know not to lift a dress and examine undergarmets in a restaurant, and men know it is unconventional to change pants in a hotel lobby. There are even laws against people exposing their bodies in a way that violates these standards, although there are considerable controversies about the laws.

 Within any era and cultural context, children must be taught these public and private standards. The infant is not embarrassed to have its diaper changed in a public place, but somewhere between infancy and adulthood, the feeling of modesty develops.

 In our culture, modesty standards appear to develop in little girls between four and six, and little boys become modest between five and 8 (Rosenfeld et al, 1984, also see Buss et al, 1979). According to one study, between ages 2 and 5, the bathroom door is closed 64% of the time. It is closed 86% by age group 6 to 9, 96% of the time by children 10 to 13, and virtually 100% of the time by children 14 to 17. Other measures of privacy, such as how often a sibbling is denied access to the restroom when the sibbling knocks, progresses similarly over age. Whereas 28% of 2 to 5 year olds deny their siblings entry, 58% of 14 to 17 year olds deny entry (Parke, 1979) These developmental trends appear to be gender specific. These changes appear partly influenced by parents, but also by other family members and by schools and peer influences (Rosenfeld et al, 1984) Boys and girls do not appear to differ markedly in modesty once it begins to develop, and for both boys and girls, modesty increases each year at least up to age ten (Rosenfeld et al, 1984, and Parke, 1979).

 Another factor affecting modesty responses is the age, familiarity, and sex of the observer. In western culture, modesty is generally more severe around nonfamily members, and especially around nonfamily adults. (Rosenfeld et al, 1984). Children appear about half as modest in the presence of a self-sex sibling when compared to an opposite sex sibling (Parke, 1979). Yet even within the North American community there is much variation. Some children, for instance, grow up used to parental nudity, and others never catch glimpse of their parents unclothed bodies (Lewis, et al, 1988).

 2. Is bodily modesty best understood as an attitude or as a habit?

 Our attitudes are our inclinations to view certain kinds of things, or certain kinds of people, favorably or unfavorably. Thus we have attitudes about certain religious groups like Jews or Catholics, and we have attitudes towards certain economies, like capitalism or socialism. These attitudes tell us what kind of people or action or policy we think is good, whether a Catholic should be allowed public office, whether certain laws should be enacted to limit corporate power. Generally, we can tell people what is good or bad about these things because our attitudes are rooted in concepts and persuasive arguments about what is good or bad. By definition, we are happy with our attitudes and we endorse behaviors that reflect our attitudes. (Sherif et al, 1965)

 Habits on the other hand are often devoid of reason, and we are often unhappy with our habits. The person who has developed a habit, say, of clearing his throat, or tapping his fingers, is not prepared to tell you why it is good to do these things, and may even feel that they are bad.

 Attitudes change when people acquire new, relevant information and new beliefs about what is good and bad. Habits, although unresponsive to reason, can change suddenly in new contexts. The person who has a habit of answering the phone in one context will sit contentedly in another while the phone rings on, but the person who has a negative attitude toward captitalism in one context will carry that attitude into other contexts undisturbed. (Keisler et al, 1969)

 Just a century ago, during Victorian times, Western culture placed a high value on having delicate sensibilities concerning sex and self-exposure, and imaginatively developed restrictive concepts of proper conduct. Pillars of the Victorian society put pinafores around tables and chairs to hide the legs (all legs were obscene) and placed books by male and female authors on different shelves (Muir, 1983). Women were sometimes lauded for not going to a gynecologist on the grounds that this meant they were more modest (Rugoff, 1971, p.107). Women became accepted in the medical profession so that women patients would not have to be exposed to male doctors (Ewell, 1817; Donegan, 1972, Gregory, 1850), and a whole women's hospital was created and staffed only by women in order to protect women patients' modesty (Drachman, 19XX). Literature from Shakespeare to the bible was routinely purged of all 'indecent language' (Perin, 1969) and marriage manuals taught that married people should engage in sexual intercourse only occasionally and only to promote conception (Wilcox, 1900). Similar attitudes are enforced today in many Muslim cultures where the religion holds that it is immodest for a woman to appear on the streets with her face, hair, ankles or arms exposed, or to be alone in any circumstances with an adult male who is not a member of her family (Antoun, 1968; Crawley, 1965). On the other hand, there are cultures and tribes throughout the world that are more or less oblivious to concerns of modesty (Felding, 1942).

 The Victorian and Muslim ideas of what is proper modest behavior are probably best understood as attitudes. In contrast to these modesty concerns that are dictated by a society's conceptions of what is right but may not be part of each individual's felt responses in particular situations, individual's feelings of bodily modesty in our culture are probably better understood as habits rather than as attitudes. The person who feels embarrassed undressing for the doctor is not saying that he endorses this prudishness as an attitude. He does not feel that people should refrain from exposing their bodies to doctors. More than likely he just finds it strangely unnerving in a way he doesn't like. He is embarrassed because he is used to keeping his clothes on and hasn't adjusted his habits to accommodate this particular situation. If he forces himself to act as he thinks he should, the chances are that his habits will adjust and his embarrassment will soon fade -- for habits change more through experience with the new situation than by persuasive arguments.

 Today, our habits of bodily modesty change with the fashion (Goffman, 1965). The Muslim (or Victorian) woman feels it is wrong to expose her knee in public regardless of whether it is on the city streets or on the beach. But for the modern western mind, bodily modesty is more a matter of fashion (how short or long skirts are this year), and how much 'modesty' is required depends on whether you are at the gym, the office, or the beach.

 Although our bodily modesty may be, today, largely a matter of habit, it can have two other hidden components: 1) anxiety about being seen negatively by an observer because of physical flaws, and 2) anxiety about experiencing or revealing sexual excitement.

 The first kind of anxiety involves a fear about exposing one's physical deficiencies. Our habits of covering our bodies in almost all contexts means that we do not know if people will react negatively to our naked bodies, and until we get used to the experience of being accepted in this way, this can be quite anxiety provoking (cf. Weinberg, 1966). The data suggests that this adaptation takes place fairly rapidly. (Firestone, et al, 1980; Vivona & Gomillion, 1972, Millstein, et al, 1984)

 Since nakedness is uncommon in our culture except in sexual situations, people sometimes imagine that nakedness always evokes erotic feelings. However, with experience, most people learn quickly that nakedness need not be at all erotic. Nevertheless, it is possible for very shy people to eroticize this experience in a neurotic way that makes undressing or toileting in the presence of others difficult without working through these issues therapeutically (Soloman & Soloman, 1971).

 3. How resistant to change are attitudes and any other components that may be involved in bodily modesty?

 People with a high degree of bodily modesty are generally able to adapt and modify this trait. The evidence for the adaptiveness of modesty concerns in the literature falls into 5 categories: 1) helping people overcome parusesis, a crippling degree of modesty that prevents being able to urinate in public restrooms, 2) women learning to relax in a gynecological office, 3) adaptation to open restrooms without doors, 4) adaptation to nude models in art classes. 5) adaptation of visitors and new members to nudity in nudist colonys.

 Paruresis is a difficulty in urinating in the presence of another person. It is an easily measured expression of bodily modesty with the measurement generally consisting either of the fact of whether a person can or cannot urinate in a public setting, or the length of delay before the flow of urine.

 About 20 to 40 percent of both sexes experience the problem to a troublesome degree (Williams, 1954, Reid & Novak, 1975), however, the vast majority of people seem to experience paruresis in at least a slight degree and it is made worse by the amount of exposure a person feels subject to, and by the proximity of other people in the lavatory (Middlemist, 1976). People manage mild versions of the problem by avoiding toileting until most people have left the restroom, or, more simply, routinely choosing a urinal far from other people (Reid & Novak, 1975).

 There is evidence that the problem is more severe in people with pronounced sexual problems (Wahl & Golden, 1963) or for people with a history of sexual abuse (Williams, and Johnson, 1956; Chapman, 1959).

 This inconvient form of bodily modesty, however, is surely one of the most treatable psychological problems in the literature with almost a 100% success rate in from 5 to 20 brief treatment sessions for unusually severe cases (Elliot, 1967; Lamontagne & Marks, 1973; Anderson, 1977; Orwin, 1974; Zgourides, 1987.) The usual treatment of choice is a desensitization procedure in which the the patient might, for example, be asked to visualize urinating in a pubic setting, and then urinating while people are in the next room, and then at some distance in the same room and finally in close promximity.

 Paruesis is more frequently studied than other forms of bathroom modesty because paruresis can be so disabling. However, the evidence suggests that even when paruesis is not the object of study, but merely reported embarrassment, bodily modesty adapts quickly with experience (Vivona & Gormillion, 1972).

 Another situation in which people experience bodily modesty that is frequently researched in the literature is the woman, especially the young and inexperienced woman, undergoing a gynecological exam. While most women experience anxiety due to bodily modesty in this setting, almost all adapt with experience (Haar et al, 1977; Millstein et al, 1984). Interestingly, there is a tendency for women to be less embarrassed with women examiners (Haar et al, 1975; Alexander & McCullough, 1981;) especially those who have experienced women examiners (Seymore et al, 1986). This is so in spite of the homosexual taboo about having people of the same sex see and touch one's genitals.

 There are a number of other situations which evoke the experience of bodily modesty. In a wide array of situations, the the modest experience seems easily modifiable (Casler, 1971; Weinberg, 1966; Firestone et al, 1980; Jesser & Donovan, 1969).

 In general, people's attitudes towards nudity and openness about toileting appear related to the degree of openness in their parents' homes (Shelley, 1981; Lewis & Janda, 1988). Nevertheless, most people feel more modest in some situations as compared to others (Gross & Stone, 1964; Goffman, 1965. Thus modesty is probably best thought of as a habit rather than as an attitude.

 There is some tendency of people who experience greater physical openness in most situations to describe themselves as better sexually adjusted (Lewis & Janda, 1988; Solomon & Solomon, 1971). But regardless of the person's modesty background, and even when the modest person is incapacited by neurotic bodily modesty (as with severe cases of paruresis) the problem seems fairly easily resolved with experience. There is even some evidence that the forced experience of nudity can help resolve certain sexual problems (Bryan, 1972).

 4. What measures would be required to change attitudes and any other components involved in bodily modesty?

 Bodily modesty, for most people in the western world, is an easily modifiable habit. Still, there is considerable variation in the individual modesty habits of people of our era, and the more inhibited pass their bodily embarrassment on to their children, so that they are more modest than their peers (Shelley; 1981; Lewis & Janda, 1988).

 Even so, bodily modesty inhibitions in a Westerner are also a function of the extent to which that person has experienced and therefore acclimated to the situation of being observed undressed. The evidence suggests that most people, who initially experience modesty embarrassment, acclimate to routinized observation quickly (Jesser 1969; Gross, 1964; Goffman, 1984; Weinberg, 19??; Casler, 1971; Haar et al, 1977). In 1980, when women officers were new in the California prison system for men, 50% of the male prisoners said that they felt the presence of the female guards in the housing units was an invasion of their privacy. Just one year later, this percentage was reduced to 31.1% (Holeman & Krepps-Hess, 1983). Vivona and Gormillion studied the way young girls with high modesty training adapted to a college dormitory that had a large shared bathroom with no doors protecting them while they bathed or used the toilet. Adaptation was rapid (Vivona & Gormillion, 1972). Modesty inhibition can also be reduced by routinizing procedures that are otherwise embarrassing (Shawver & Kurdys, 1987).

 Higher education in general seems to reduce embarrassment with bodily exposure (Emenike, 1988). Sex education courses seem to reduce embarrassment about nudity most when the students judged their parents' modesty to have been moderate (Shelley, 1981). And so, groups of people who experienced more severe forms of embarrassment might profit from classes that helped them understand the nature of embarrassment, and encouraged to adapt to a new policy of more leniency with regard to states of undress.

 Those who do not adapt as quickly require more specialized help from a professional, but even these people generally require little professional help (Orwin, 1974; Anderson, 1977; Williams et al, 1954; Lamontagne & Marks, 1973; Elliott, 1967) and there is some evidence, however, that these sorts of modesty sensibilities decrease with advancing age (Shields et al, 1990).

 In addition to modifying the inner sensibility of bodily modesty and its accompanying habits, there are 2 additional ways that modesty concerns can be abated: 1) modifying the amount of physical exposure required required in a situation, 2) training people to avoid looking at each other in ways the observed find embarrassing.

 Regarding the first of these methods, modifying the amount of physical exposure required: Note that the modesty embarrassment people experiences at any given moment is a function of how much of their body is being exposed and in what posture or during what function (e.g., toileting). A person whose body is partly or completely shielded by a modesty wall, or a drape, is less embarassed in that moment than when more exposed. When an institution provides such shields, or allows them and recognizes them as legitimate, it communicates a respect for bodily modesty that, in and of itself, can protect sensibilities.

 This means that bodily modesty concerns can be managed by providing soldiers with modesty shields and by allowing and respecting the use of towells and other makeshift shilds to protect modesty whenever possible. Courts have mandated the availability of modesty screens in prisons to protect male prisoners from the embarrassment of being casually observed by female guards (United States ex rel. v. Levi, 1977; Forts v. Ward, 1980). And the evidence suggests that, if left to their own devices, men will construct situations to minimize bodily exposure. For example, men in public restrooms tend to use the toilets further away from those in use (Reid & Novak, 1975.) Modification of the military policy of having recruits stand naked while they wait for an exam would reduce unnecesarry embarrassment.

 Modesty embarrassment is also a function of the way the subject is being observed. For example, a person standing naked in a line will feel more embarrassed if his or her genitals are being stared at, or if derisive comments are made about the observed person. Nurses and doctors have made a study of how to make their observations of an undressed patient less embarrassing (Domar 1985-6; Emerson, 1970). Averting the eyes is a standard way of diminishing embarrassment (Endleman, 1982), as is decreasing one's sense of self-concern through the use of training techniques (Edelman & McCusker, 1986).

 This means that bodily modesty concerns could be managed by training staff and other soldiers not to stare or call attention to states of undress or people engaged in bodily functions.

 The American sense of modesty can be seen as a luxury (Kira, 1970) that is not available to people in more crowded cultures (Traver; 1984), and, in fact, it was only during the Victorian time (nineteenth century and early 20th century), that bodily modesty became important in the American culture (Laslett, 1973; Shils, 1966). Today, some members of the Western community have become more emancipated from the Victorian sense of modesty than others. Nevertheless, although our concern with bodily modesty has greatly abated over the last century, it is still a standard that is generally endorsed in some degree, and violations of this standard generally result in some level of embarrassment.

 In summary, although the modesty habit is becoming increasingly diluted and uncommon, those who experience it in an uncomfortable way can generally be helped or protected by: 1) Directly reducing the inclination to embarrassment by allowing bodily exposure 2) modifying the environment to provide modesty screens or allowing and approving of the use of personal techniques to hide one's body from view or minimize viewing, 3) training people in techniques of minimizing embarrassment by, for example, avoiding staring.

 5. Is there any evidence in the literature that bodily modesty relates to or gives rise to discomfort in being observed by homosexuals?

 In our culture, all but the most eccentric grow up feeling and expressing some degree of bodily modesty. Such modesty feelings have their origin in early childhood, between the ages of 4 to 6 for girls and 5 to 7 for boys (Parke, 1984).

 This childhood modesty is somewhat gender specific, with boys and girls being about half as modest with self-sex peers as with opposite sex peers (Parke, 1984). With adults we might think such gender specific modesty serves to protect people from sexual situations with the opposite sex, or from the appearance of sexual situations. But it is far fetched to imagine that the the modesty of four to seven year olds are intended to help them protect against sexual situations, or even the appearance of sexual situations, with the opposite sex.

 A more credible explanation for the origins of the gender specific modesty in our culture, is that children are more modest with the opposite sex, because they see that adults have gender specific modesty and expectations. Every parent that has been in public with a young opposite sex child has experienced the frustration of needing to take that child to the restroom. Should the father of a four year old little girl on the verge of wetting her pants ask a strange woman entering a restroom if she would mind taking his daughter and watching over her? Or should he let her wander in by herself to dawdle forever with toilet paper? Or should he tend her himself in the men's room with open urinals? Parents who struggle with such issues must certainly reveal to their children the importance of cross-sex modesty and encourage their children to differentiate between the sexes in deciding how modest one is to be in particular occasions.

 Cross-sex modesty standards are built into our culture. Not only do we have separate restrooms, but there are segregated locker rooms. The dressing rooms in department stores are often gender specific. We house men and women in different hospital rooms, and we put them in different jails and prisons. Just a century ago it was not uncommon to send them to separate schools. We might laugh at a group of 12 year old boys swimming naked together in a local creek, but it would take on a different connotation in our culture if there was a girl or two among them. These standards highlight the cultural values and tell our children in a thousand different ways that it is okay to be less modest with the self-sex.

 Does this tradition of culture specific modesty protect against sexual situations? Not completely. It protects us from sexual situations with the opposite sex, but not from members of the same sex.

 And there are more people with self-sex sexual interest than our culture mythology suggests. Data available tells us that between 40 and 50 percent of men and women today have experienced at least some sexual interest and fantasy about same sex individuals, and around 10 percent of people are exclusively homosexual (Kinsey et al 1948; Kinsey et al 1953, Weinberg, 1966, Downey, 1980). Segregation of the sexes does not protect against sexual situations with this vast number of people. Every exclusively heterosexual man or woman has entered a restroom many, many times with self-sex people who have experienced some sexual interest in the self-sex. Why doesn't this bother people?

 The answer is found in the way we pretend that homosexual interest does not exist except in the minds of a few alien and peculiar souls, easily recognized men who talk and act like women, or masculine women intent on acting like men. But most heterosexual men and women cannot detect people who identify themselves privately as homosexual (Berger, 1987) might as well the much larger group of people who have a few thoughts and feelings here and there but are largely heterosexual.

 Pretending that homosexuality is confined to unsual people allowed us to become a culture that was shocked at the idea of women reporters entering the dressing rooms of male athletes, while never thinking of screening male reporters to determine if there were homosexuals among them. A high school kid who took a quick peek into a girl's dressing room is severely disciplined, but if he sneaked a quick glance at the naked body of a fellow athlete he might be able to disguise any prurient interest simply because the boys around him have accepted the myth that all but the very odd male is exclusively attracted to females. We supply women officers to strip search women prisoners without asking if either the prisoners, or the officers, are lesbians.

 But people with some homosexual interest, and even activity, permeate our society. They are our brothers, our children, our parents, even ourselves. But still they continue to surprise us. We are surprised to learn movie stars or tennis players are gay, that our friend's daughter is a lesbian, that the man we worked so closely with at the office was a closet homosexual. We should learn from such revelations that homosexuality is not confined to the flamboyant radicals, but we don't. We continue to rely on protecting our standards of modesty by segregating the sexes.

 The illusion that virtually everyone is exclusively sexually interested in the opposite sex, has an interesting effect on the modesty comfort of heterosexual people. The comfort heterosexual people feel undressing in front of self-sex people may be compromised upon learning that some or all of the people they are with have homosexual interests. If a closeted homosexual who evoked no discomfort was suddenly identified as gay, that person might evoke the anxiety of a bodily modesty invasion even though the newly identified gay person neither felt not evinced homosexual interests.

 Still there is little evidence in the literature that this is true. The one study that seems on target in the literature (Cameron, Cameron and Proctor, 1988) is based on a highly biased questionnaire that surely distorts the findings. The authors misleadingly conclude for the reader that their study showed that "About three-quarters of the sample reported that, when disrobed, they were averse to being seen by homosexuals." But this is a distortion of their findings. What they asked people was, "If you were nude or your genitals were exposed in a public place (such as a restroom, bathhouse, or shower), what would be your reaction if you noticed someone of YOUR sex watching you and deriving obvious sexual pleasure from your nudity (i.e., they were getting 'turned on' by your body)?" Not surprisingly, seventy-five percent of heterosexuals said that they would be either displeased or outraged by such bizarre behavior. The misleading implication is that the same homosexuals who now closet their homosexuality out of fear of heterosexual censure would begin transgressing the privacy of heterosexuals in such flamboyant and uncontrollable fashion.

 Such fear may well be what is behind much negativity heterosexuals sometimes express about homosexuals. Since the vast majority of homosexuals and bisexuals are closeted when interacting with heterosexuals, many people can only imagine them as very crazed and unsympathetic kinds of people. And the flamboyant homosexual championing gay rights does little to dispel this image. But homosexuals are typically moral people who care very much that their heterosexual friends are offended by them (Wilson, 1983). Perhaps this is why people who learn about homosexuality in courses, or by meeting and getting to know an identified homosexual, become less negative about homsexuals as a group. (Kituse, 1962; Simons, 1965, Rooney & Gibbons, 1966, Lumbey, 1976; Nyberg & Alston, 1976-77, Jenkins, 1977).

 Heterosexuals who know little about homosexuality may experience increased bodily modesty discomfort with homosexuals initially, but unless the homosexuals they interact with violate community modesty standards, that discomfort should fade quickly. Why? Because their negativity towards homosexuals stems in large part, apparently, from ignorance about them and because most modesty concerns fade quickly when the context becomes routinized.

 So, although most people may experience an increase of bodily modesty upon learning that certain confederates are 'homosexual,' in most cases one would expect that discomfort to fade quickly if the homosexuals were well behaved and adhered to community modesty standards.

 There is another group of people, however, who might be of more concern. There is a minority of people who feel great stress about private homosexual thoughts, sometimes distorting their view of the world to defend themselves against the fear that they are in fact homosexual. Such homophobic people are not merely negative about homosexuality in an abstract way, but they are anxious that they may themselves be thought to be homosexual (Crawley, 1983). It might be very anxiety provoking for such a person to be in the presence of a known homosexual in that it could represent a personal temptation to act on homosexual impulses. Certainly people of homophobic dynamics experience such anxiety even when the self-sex observers are not identified as homosexual, and we can speculate that the anxiety would sometimes be more severe when the observers were identified as such. Although their numbers might be estimated to be small, no one knows how many homophobic people like this that there are. Since their fear of homosexuality arises not from ignorance, nor from the behavior of known homosexuals, but rather from fears of what they perceive in themselves, simple experience with homosexuals would not be sufficient to dispel this fear.

 To prove to themselves, and the world, that they are not homosexual, they might become increasingly rigid in their sex-role behavior. Men try to be more masculine, more aggressive, and to weed out any sign of femininty in their character (Lehne, 1976). It would not be surprising to find those who are capable of it building their bodies and posturing in ways to display their masculinity. Women afraid of homosexuality in themselves might be somewhat less dangerous, retreating instead into a deferential, passive or feminine posture. For homophobics, at least, we can expect the childhood pattern of modesty training to become contaminated with excessive anxiety and the need for enhanced modesty around identified homosexuals to become urgently exagerated.

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