A boy's world?

[Bill the Pony]

First of all, bravo to all for such well-written and thoughtful posts!

Here's one of my theories about the early criticism:
Perhaps the early critics' inability to accept platonic relationships was a product of the war. Often the bereft will stuff their feelings and become numb to deep emotion. If this happens in one's years of transition from the late teens to the mid twenties or thirties, then the result is a grown man who is numb to emotion. This man would come to view emotion and strong platonic attatchments as a province of childhood. There were likely many such men after WWI, who then taught their sons that line of reasoning. These sons fought in WWII, and those teachings found resonance and became thus entrenched in their thought processes. The effects of this are still found today.

Another possibility is that some of the critics themselves were gay, and as it just wasn't done in those days, the repression would have been trememdous. Such a situation would lead someone to call the same-gender relationships "laughable."

Hope I made sense...