Homosexuality cannot be inferred from masculine appearance or anatomy

Evidence

People are always ready to see the lesbian as wearing a felt hat, her hair short, and a necktie; her mannishness is seen as an abnormality indicating a hormonal imbalance. Nothing could be more erroneous than this confusion of the homosexual and the virago. There are many homosexual women among odalisques, courtesans, and the most deliberately “feminine” women; by contrast, a great number of “masculine” women are heterosexual. Sexologists and psychiatrists confirm what ordinary observation suggests: the immense majority of “cursed women” are constituted exactly like other women. Their sexuality is not determined by anatomical “destiny.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1031

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s core argument that gender is socially situated, echoing themes from chapter on biological data and the myth of woman’s nature. — connects to: Physiological virility does not predetermine homosexual attraction — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1032; Sexuality is an ontological structure of the For-itself, not a physiological given — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1003; Sexual difference cannot be reduced to activity versus passivity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 96
• SEED: An essay angle: the cultural iconography of the lesbian — felt hat, short hair, necktie — as a persistent visual shorthand that misreads sexuality through appearance, undermining every stereotype-based account of identity.

Broader Connections

• Physiological virility does not predetermine homosexual attraction #corroborates (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1032
• Sexuality is an ontological structure of the For-itself, not a physiological given #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1003
• Sexual difference cannot be reduced to activity versus passivity #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 96