This book is part of a new generation of historical research that challenges prevailing arguments for the medical and legal construction of male homosexual identities in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. British society could not tolerate the discussion necessary to form medical or legal concepts of "the homosexual." The development of masculinity as a social status is examined, for its influence in shaping societal attitudes towards sex and sexuality between men and fostering resistance to any kind of recognition of these phenomena.