The subject of criminalizing lesbianism actually entered the official
record of parliamentary proceedings earlier than 1921, when in 1920 a
London magistrate requested that a clause be extended to 'cover cases
of gross indecency between women'. Such legislation may not have const
ituted a direct attack on female homosexuality as an immoral behavior
or abnormal sexual category, so much as signaled how the struggle for
hegemony over law enforcement and the control of public space resulted
in a pragmatic strategy enacted against certain women, such as the Wo
men Police Sen ice, who refused to be constructed either as culturally
feminine or as heterosexual.