Editing Lesbian (section)

=== Great Depression ===
The primary component necessary to encourage lesbians to be public and seek other women was economic independence, which virtually disappeared in the 1930s with the [[Great Depression]]. Most women in the U.S. found it necessary to marry to a "[[Beard (companion)|front]]" such as a gay man where both could pursue homosexual relationships with public discretion, or to a man who expected a traditional wife. Independent women in the 1930s were generally seen as holding jobs that men should have.<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=94–96}}

The social attitude made very small and close-knit communities in large cities that centered around bars, while simultaneously isolating women in other locales. Speaking of homosexuality in any context was socially forbidden, and women rarely discussed lesbianism even amongst themselves; they referred to openly gay people as "in the Life".<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=105–112}}{{efn|Historian [[Vern Bullough]] published a paper based on an unfinished study of mental and physical traits performed by a lesbian in [[Salt Lake City]] during the 1920s and 1930s. The compiler of the study reported on 23 of her colleagues, indicating there was an underground lesbian community in the conservative city. Bullough remarked that the information was being used to support the attitude that lesbians were not abnormal or maladjusted, but it also reflected that women included in the study strove in every way to conform to social gender expectations, viewing anyone who pushed the boundaries of respectability with hostility. Bullough wrote, "In fact, their very success in disguising their sexual orientation to the outside world leads us to hypothesize that lesbianism in the past was more prevalent than the sources might indicate, since society was so unsuspecting."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bullough |first1=Vern |last2=Bullough |first2=Bonnie |title=Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s: A Newfound Study |journal=[[Signs (journal)|Signs]] |date=July 1977 |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=895–904 |doi=10.1086/493419 |pmid=21213641 |s2cid=145652567}}</ref>}} Freudian psychoanalytic theory was pervasive in influencing doctors to consider homosexuality as a neurosis afflicting immature women. Homosexual subculture disappeared in Germany with the rise of the Nazis in 1933.<ref name="Aldrich2006"/>{{rp|pp=191–193}}