Laura Robinson, professor of English at the Royal Military College in Ontario, incited much derision when she claimed, at an Alberta academic conference, that Anne Shirley, the main character of the Canadian classic Anne of Green Gables, was lesbian. Robinson notes that Anne refers to her closest female pals as "bosom friends." Anne's crush on schoolmate Gilbert Blythe, whom she eventually marries, doesn't disprove her thesis but rather represents the "triumph of compulsive heterosexuality." The complete lack of any mention of lesbian sex is taken to mean that it must be seething beneath the surface.

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