Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, Two women. Italian Renaissance engraving.
Statue of two ancient Egyptian women, Idet and Ruiu, depicted in a form typical of married couples, Museo Egizio.[1]

Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.

Ancient period

Ancient Mesopotamia

Women's sexuality in ancient Mesopotamia is not well documented. Stephanie Lynn Budin, writing on love magic, argues that "there remains no evidence for lesbianism in this regard (or any other from Mesopotamia)."[2] However, there are at least two pieces of textual evidence for Mesopotamian lesbianism.[3] One is a divinatory text which mentions female same-sex activity,[4] while another, more explicit text remains unpublished.[5]

There are also mentions in the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1700 BC) of a sal-zikrum. This term may translate to "woman-man" and refer to a gender-nonconforming individual, "perhaps a female functionary, attached to a temple."[6] The word is regularly treated as grammatically feminine,[6] but a sal-zikrum was allowed to marry women,[7] and she inherited the same amount as her brothers.[8]: 34  It is possible that a female transgressor of gender boundaries was regarded as a "woman-man" because of her social behavior (i.e., relationships with other women). The term sal-nu-bar, according to a disputed belief, referred to women who were allowed to marry but not to have children, and so "brought another woman with them to bear children"[8]: 33 

In addition, an Old Assyrian text writes of two women, Ewanika and Adi-matum, who had a betrothal contract for their "daughter." It is possible that the father passed away, leaving the two women as widows.[9]

Ancient Egypt

Homosexuality in ancient Egypt between women is less often recorded, or alluded to, in documents and other artifacts as compared to homosexuality among men, but it does appear in such documents. The Dream Book of the Carlsberg papyrus XIII claims that "If a woman dreams that a woman has intercourse with her, she will come to a bad end".[10][11] Depictions of women during the New Kingdom suggest they enjoyed, in a relaxed and intimate atmosphere, the company of other women who were scantily clad or naked. Some cosmetics-related items, which may have been owned and used by women, feature nude and suggestive depictions of women.[11]

There are several pieces of evidence for female homosexuality in Roman Egypt. There are examples of women casting love spells to make other women fall in love with them dating from the second to fourth centuries CE.[12] These spells are unusual because they were likely commissioned by women from lower social classes rather than the elite, and because they contain the names of ancient women with homoerotic desires.[13]: 73, 77  For example, Herais cast a love spell on Sarapias,[12] and the following quotation is from Sophia's love spell for Gorgonia:[13]: 87 

Burn, set on fire, inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore, for a good end. ... Force Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore, for her, so that she love her with passion, longing, unceasing love.

The homosexual nature of some spells has been erased. In a love spell for Nike, the name of the commissioner Pantous (or Paitous) could be male or female, but two feminine pronouns reveal that it refers to a woman. Franz Boll assumed that both pronouns were scribal errors, and made the spell heterosexual by substituting masculine equivalents in his 1910 edition of the text. The first edition to restore the homosexual reading was published in 1989, although its authors also argued for Boll's scribal error theory.[13]: 90–96  Masculine pronouns remain in some translations published after 1989.[14]

In the fifth century CE, women at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt sometimes pursued same-sex relationships. A letter from Shenoute chastises two women, ⲧⲁⲏⲥⲉ, Taêse and ⲧⲥⲁⲛⲥⲛⲱ, Tsansnô, for running after each other "in friendship and physical desire".[15]: 304  This phrase referred to homosexual advances, which were not uncommon.[16] It is unknown if the corporal punishment Shenoute prescribed for the women was administered.[15]: 324 

Early imperial China

In early Chinese history sexual activity between women was accepted, and sometimes actively encouraged.[17][18]: 135  Female same-sex relationships were described with a special term (traditional Chinese: 對食; simplified Chinese: 对食; pinyin: duìshí), literally 'paired eating', possibly referring to cunnilingus. In the second or third century AD Ying Shao defined it as "when palace women attach themselves as husband and wife".[19] Such relationships sometimes formed between government slaves or members of the emperor's harem. For example, under Emperor Cheng's rule (33 – 7 BC) the slave Dào Fáng (Chinese: 道房) had a homosexual relationship with Cáo Gōng (traditional Chinese: 曹宮; simplified Chinese: 曹宫), the daughter of a slave.[20] The sex handbook Dongxuanzi (Chinese: 洞玄子; pinyin: Dòng Xuán Zǐ, possibly dating to the fifth century AD[18]: 2 ) also contains examples of female same-sex contact. In the position called The Paired Dance of the Female Blue Phoenixes, two women practice scissoring.[18]: 135–136 

Ancient Greece

Evidence of female homosexuality in the ancient Greek world is limited.[21] Most surviving sources from the classical period come from Athens, and they are without exception written by men. At least among these Athenian men, the discussion and depiction of female homosexual activity seems to have been taboo.[22] Kenneth Dover suggests that, due to the role played by the phallus in ancient Greek men's conceptions of sexuality, female homosexual love was not explicitly defined as a sexuality or category by the authors of surviving sources.[23]

Nonetheless, there are a few references to female homosexuality in ancient Greek literature. The writings of two poets from the archaic period, Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) and Alcman (fl. 7th century BC), have been interpreted as concerning female homosexual desire. Alcman wrote hymns known as partheneia,[note 1] which discuss attraction between young women. Though these hymns are ambiguous, historians have posited that they are erotic or sexual.[24] At roughly the same time, Sappho's poems discuss her love for both men and women. For instance, in Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite, the poet asks Aphrodite for aid in wooing another woman. The fragment describes Sappho both giving and receiving sexual contact from the same partner, in contrast with the rigid active/passive partner dichotomy observed in Greek male homosexual relationships.[25] Only one fragment of Sappho's poetry, Sappho 94, contains a clear mention of female homosexual acts.[26]

A painting by Alexander Isailoff of Sappho.

Sappho is the most often mentioned example of an ancient Greek woman who may have actually engaged in sexual acts with women. Her sexuality has been debated by historians. Some, such as Denys Page, argue that she was attracted to women. Others, such as Eva Stigers, point out that the descriptions of love between women in Sappho's writings are not necessarily evidence of her own sexuality.[27] Some historians have gone so far as to argue that Sappho's circle were involved in female homosexuality as a kind of initiation ritual.[28] The earliest evidence of Sappho's reputation for homosexual desire comes from the Hellenistic period, with a fragment of a biography found in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri which criticizes Sappho for being "gynaikerastria."[note 2][29]

Similarly, some find evidence in Plutarch that Spartan women engaged in homosexual activities, although Plutarch wrote many centuries after classical Greece. In Plutarch's biography of Lycurgus of Sparta, part of his Parallel Lives, the author claims that older Spartan women formed relationships with girls that were similar to the erastes/eromenos relationships that existed between some older and younger male Greeks.[30] Historian Sarah Pomeroy believes that Plutarch's depiction of homosexual relationships between Spartan women is plausible. For instance, Pomeroy argues that homosexual relationships between the girls would have "flourished" in the girls' choirs that performed the partheneia of Alcman.[31]

There are at least two other women poets who wrote in the style of Sappho: Erinna of Teos or Telos (c. late 400s BC) and Nossis of Locri (c. 300 BC). Erinna's Distaff and epigrams lament her childhood friend Baucis in a manner which "contains echoes of Sappho."[32] Nossis of Locri wrote three epigrams in a similar style, one of which bears striking resemblance to the floral eroticism found in Sappho's works. It reads as follows:[33]

Nothing is sweeter than desire. All other delights are second.

From my mouth I spit even honey.

Nossis says this, whom Aphrodite does not love,

knows not her flowers, what roses they are.

In classical Athens, the idea of homosexual women is briefly mentioned in the Speech of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.[34] Later references to female homosexuality in Greek literature include an epigram by Asclepiades, which describes two women who reject Aphrodite's "rules" but instead do "other things which are not seemly".[35] Dover comments on the "striking" hostility shown in the epigram to female homosexuality, contrasting it with Asclepiades' willingness to discuss his own homosexual desire in other works, suggesting that this apparent male anxiety about female homosexuality in ancient Greece is the reason for our paucity of sources discussing it.[36]

In Greek mythology, the story of Callisto has been interpreted as implying that Artemis and Callisto were lovers.[37] The myth of the Amazons has also been interpreted as referring to female homosexual activities.[38]

Female-female relationships or sexual activities were occasionally depicted in Greek art. For example, a plate from Archaic Thera appears to show two women courting.[30] An Attic red figure vase in the collection of the Tarquinia National Museum in Italy shows a kneeling woman fingering the genitals of another woman in a rare explicit portrayal of sexual activity between women in Greek art,[30] although it has also been interpreted as depicting one prostitute shaving or otherwise grooming the other in a non-sexual fashion.[39]

Ancient India

The Arthashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on statecraft likely edited and compiled between the second and third centuries CE,[40] describes the fines individuals must pay for engaging in ayoni, non-vaginal sex. This category includes all non-vaginal sex, whether heterosexual or otherwise. Although both men and women who have sex with each other have to pay a fine, the fine for two women is lower. Overall, "while homosexual sex is unsanctioned" in the Arthashastra, it is also "treated as a minor offense."[41]

The Manusmriti, a first century legal text, places a very small fine upon sex between nonvirgin women; however, one who "manually deflowers a virgin" is sentenced to the loss of two fingers.[41] If two virgins are caught, the 'doer' "has to pay double the girl's dowry and is given ten whiplashes".[42] The Manusmriti fails to provide a punishment for mutual oral or manual sex.[42]

Sanskrit medical texts mention "sexual act[s] in which both the parties are female".[43] The Sushruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita both classify lesbianism as a disease resulting from an atypical conception.[44]: 597  The latter describes it as incurable, and states that a lesbian is "a woman who has an aversion for man and who has no breasts."[45] The term used for a lesbian in these texts is nārīṣaṇḍha.[44]: 593 

The Kama Sutra mentions phallus-shaped bulbs, roots, and fruits as dildos used as dildos in lesbian sex, and also records cunnilingus between women.[46]

Roman Empire, the New Testament, and early Christianity

The lesbian love story between Iphis and Ianthe, in Book IX of Ovid's the Metamorphoses, is most vivid. When Iphis' mother becomes pregnant, her husband declares that he will kill the child if it is a girl. She bears a girl and attempts to conceal her sex by giving her a name that is of ambiguous gender: Iphis. When the "son" is thirteen, the father chooses a golden-haired maiden named Ianthe as the "boy's" bride. The love of the two girls is written sympathetically:

They were of equal age, they both were lovely,
Had learned the ABC from the same teachers,
And so love came to both of them together
In simple innocence, and filled their hearts
With equal longing.

However, as the marriage draws ever closer, Iphis recoils, calling her love "monstrous and unheard of". The goddess Isis hears the girl's moans and turns her into a boy.

Lesbian sex scene. Wall painting. Suburban baths, Pompeii

References to love between women are sparse. Phaedrus attempts to explain lesbianism through a myth of his own making: Prometheus, coming home drunk from a party, had mistakenly exchanged the genitals of some women and some men. Phaedrus remarks: "Lust now enjoys perverted pleasure."[47]

It is quite clear that paiderastia and lesbianism were not held in equally good light, possibly because of the violation of strict gender roles. Seneca the Elder mentions a husband who killed his wife and her female lover and implies that their crime was worse than that of adultery between a male and female.

Iamblichus, a Greek novelist from the first century AD, is best known for his Babylonaica, or Babylonian Tales.[48] The Babylonaica contains a side story about "Berenice, who was daughter of the king of Egypt, and about her wild and lawless passions: and how she had relations with Mesopotamia." According to an ancient summary of the episode, Berenice and Mesopotamia (a woman) are wed.[49] Although the Babylonaica mainly deals with a heterosexual couple, Sinonis and Rhodanes, Berenice and Mesopotamia exist as foils for the pair.[50] Classicist Helen Morales cautions that this tale ought not to be treated as "certain evidence...that lesbian marriages were performed in the Roman imperial period," but the mere fact that it exists and survives is remarkable.[50]

Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans contain an episode in which a woman named Megilla renames herself Megillus and wears a wig to cover her shaved head. She marries Demonassa of Corinth, although Megillus is from Lesbos. Her friend Leaena comments that "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, with faces like men, and unwilling to consort with men, but only with women, as though they themselves were men".[51] Megillus seduces Leaena, who feels that the experience is too disgusting to describe in detail. Leila J. Rupp writes in Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women: "Two things are significant in this depiction: the connection of an aggressive woman from Lesbos with masculinity and the portrayal of the seduced as a prostitute".[52]

In another dialogue ascribed to Lucian, two men debate over which is better, male love or heterosexuality. One man protested that if male affairs were legitimized, then lesbianism would soon be condoned as well, an unthinkable notion.[53]

The apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter describes the punishment of both male and female homosexuals in Hell:[54]

And other men and women being cast down from a great rock fell to the bottom, and again were driven by them that were set over them, to go up upon the rock, and thence were cast down to the bottom and had no rest from this torment. And these were they that did defile their bodies behaving as women: and the women that were with them were they that lay with one another as a man with a woman.

Medieval period

Japan

Relationships between women are described in The Princess in Search of Herself,[55] a piece of literature from either the Heian[56]: 7, 450  or Kamakura period.[57]: 16  In it Chūjō is a lady-in-waiting for the High Priestess at Ise, and the two are romantically involved. Chūjō becomes angry and jealous when the high priestess abandons her to pursue a relationship with Kozaishō, another lady-in-waiting.[55][57]: 19  The text describes physical intimacy between women clearly, casting doubt on claims that female homosexuality was not present in early Japanese literature.[55]

It has been suggested that the famous Heian period writer Murasaki Shikibu loved women,[58] a reading which has been called bold, and which is based on potentially homoerotic poems exchanged with other women.[56]: 5  One section of her diary reads:[59]: 81 

In particular I missed Lady Dainagon ...I sent her the following:
How I long for those waters on which we lay,
A longing keener than the frost on a duck's wing.
To which she replied:
Awakening to find no friend to brush away the frost,
The mandarin duck longs for her mate at night.

Bowring notes that the mandarin duck was a firmly established metaphor for lovers at the time, but states that the relationship was only platonic.[59]: 176  Some work has been criticized for ignoring lesbian readings of poems like these, in "an explaining away of the simplest interpretation of a text in favor of a more complicated, but heterosexually normative, reading."[56]: 6  Examples come from the poetic exchanges between Senshi and Kodaifu, and between Ukon and Taifu, both in the Heian period. Edward Kamens notes the erotically charged nature of the poems, but says only that they "would readily be read as explicit tropes of sexual desire" if they had not been exchanged between two women.[56]: 6–7 

Other references to same-sex practices between women before the Edo period are more ambiguous. In the Kojiki the sun goddess Amaterasu is lured out of a cave by Ame no Uzume dancing and removing her clothes.[60][61] Dildos dating from as early as the Nara period may have been used for masturbation rather than lesbian sex.[58]

Europe

In medieval Europe, the Christian Church took a stricter view of same-sex relations between women. Penitentials, developed by Celtic monks in Ireland, were unofficial guidebooks which became popular, especially in the British Isles. These books listed crimes and the penances that must be done for them. For example, "...he who commits the male crime of the Sodomites shall do penance for four years". The several versions of the Paenitentiale Theodori, attributed to Theodore of Tarsus, who became archbishop of Canterbury in the 7th century, make special references to lesbianism. The Paenitentiale states, "If a woman practices vice with a woman she shall do penance for three years".[62] Penitentials soon spread from the British Isles to mainland Europe. The authors of most medieval penitentials either did not explicitly discuss lesbian activities at all, or treated them as a less serious sin than male homosexuality.[63]

The Old French legal treatise Li livres de jostice et de plet (c. 1260) is the earliest reference to legal punishment for lesbianism akin to that for male homosexuality. It prescribed dismemberment for the first two offences and death by burning for the third: a near exact parallel to the penalty for a man, although what "dismemberment" could mean for a medieval woman is unknown.[64][65]: 13  In Spain, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, sodomy between women was included in acts considered unnatural and punishable by burning to death, although few instances are recorded of this taking place. In the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V, a law on sexual offences specifically prohibits sex acts between women.[65]: 18 

There exist records of about a dozen women in the medieval period who were involved in lesbian sex, as defined by historian Judith Bennett as same-sex genital contact. All of these women are known through their involvement with the courts, and were imprisoned or executed.[66] An early example of a woman executed for homosexual acts occurred in 1477, when a girl in Speier, Germany, was drowned.[65]: 17  The 16th-century writings of Spanish jurist Antonio Gomez mentions the burning of two nuns for the use of "material instruments".[67]

Not all women were so harshly punished, though. In the early fifteenth century, a Frenchwoman, Laurence, wife of Colin Poitevin, was imprisoned for her affair with another woman, Jehanne. She pleaded for clemency on the grounds that Jehanne had been the instigator and she regretted her sins, and was freed to return home after six months imprisonment.[68] A later example, from Pescia in Italy, involved an abbess, Sister Benedetta Carlini, who was documented in inquests between 1619 and 1623 as having committed grave offences including a passionately erotic love affair with another nun when possessed by a Divine male spirit named "Splenditello". She was declared the victim of a "diabolical obsession" and placed in the convent's prison for the last 35 years of her life.[69]

However, an Italian surgeon, William of Bologna, attributed lesbianism to a "growth emanating from the mouth of the womb and appearing outside the vagina as a pseudopenis."[70]

Arab world

In the medieval Arab world, lesbianism[note 3] was considered to be caused by heat generated in a woman's labia, which could be alleviated by friction against another woman's genitalia.[71] Medieval Arabic medical texts considered lesbianism to be inborn. For instance, Masawaiyh reported:[71]

Lesbianism results when a nursing woman eats celery, rocket, melilot leaves and the flowers of a bitter orange tree. When she eats these plants and suckles her child, they will affect the labia of her suckling and generate an itch which the suckling will carry through her future life.

Al-Kindi wrote:[72]

Lesbianism is due to a vapor which, condensed, generates in the labia heat and an itch which only dissolve and become cold through friction and orgasm. When friction and orgasm take place, the heat turns into coldness because the liquid that a woman ejaculates in lesbian intercourse is cold whereas the same liquid that results from sexual union with men is hot. Heat, however, cannot be extinguished by heat; rather, it will increase since it needs to be treated by its opposite. As coldness is repelled by heat, so heat is also repelled by coldness.

The earliest story about lesbianism in Arabic literature comes from the Encyclopedia of Pleasure, and tells the story of the love between a Christian, Hind bint al-Nu'man, and an Arab woman, Hind bint al-Khuss, and we know from the Fihrist, a tenth-century catalogue of works in Arabic, of writings about twelve other lesbian couples which have not survived.[73] In addition, Ahmad al-Tifashi wrote a collection of stories, known as A Promenade of the Hearts, which included some poems on homosexual and lesbian themes.[74][75] Other accounts which mentioned lesbian relationships, include Allen Edwardes in his The Jewel in the Lotus: A Historical Survey of the Sexual Culture of the East, and Leo Africanus who reported about female diviners in Fez.[74] Moreover, the mutazarrifat (refined courtly ladies, also used for lesbians) were present in the Islamic world such as Wallada bint al-Mustakfi in Al-Andalus,[76] and slave girls (qaynas) who lived in the Abbasid Caliphate.[77] According to the Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib's Encyclopedia of Pleasure, a female poet named Al-Hurqah loved another woman, the legendary Hind bint al-Khuss. When Hind Bint al-Khuss died, her faithful lover "cropped her hair, wore black clothes, rejected worldly pleasures, vowed to God that she would lead an ascetic life until she passed away". Hind bint al-Nu'man even builds a monastery to commemorate her love for al-Zarqāʾ. This source figures the two characters as the first lesbians in Arab culture.[78]

Judaism

Between 1170 and 1180 Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbis in Jewish history, compiled his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah. It is the only Medieval-era work that details all of Jewish observance, and as regarding lesbianism states:[79]

For women to be mesollelot [women rubbing genitals against each other] with one another is forbidden, as this is the practice of Egypt, which we were warned against: "Like the practice of the land of Egypt ... you shall not do" (Leviticus 18:3). The Sages said [in the midrash of Sifra Aharei Mot 8:8–9], "What did they do? A man married a man, and a woman married a woman, and a woman married two men." Even though this practice is forbidden, one is not lashed [as for a Torah prohibition] on account of it, since there is no specific prohibition against it, and there is no real intercourse. Therefore, [one who does this] is not forbidden to the priesthood because of harlotry, and a woman is not prohibited to her husband by this, since it is not harlotry. But it is appropriate to administer to them lashings of rebellion [i.e., those given for violation of rabbinic prohibitions], since they did something forbidden. And a man should be strict with his wife in this matter, and should prevent women known to do this from coming to her or from her going to them.

Early modern period

Thailand

Sources on female homosexuality in Thai history primarily discuss royal harems, using the label เล่นเพื่อน len-phuean which literally means 'to play [with] friends'.[80]: 157  One of the earliest references is a law from King Borommatrailokkanat (who reigned 1448–1488), which penalizes lesbian relationships between palace women with whipping and which survives as part of the Three Seals Law.[80]: 158 [81]: 49 [82] There is no evidence of this punishment ever being used, and an American ambassador in the 19th century wrote that homosexuality was very common, and that only monks had been punished for it.[80]: 159 

Another source of evidence for female same-sex relationships is poetry and fiction based partly on real royal harems.[80]: 160–161  The earliest such literature, from the Rattanakosin Kingdom, is unusual in focusing more on female homosexuality than male homosexuality.[82] However, many of the literary sources are critical, and describe lesbianism as something to be avoided.[80]: 162 [81]: 50 [82] A mural at Wat Khongkharam depicts women surreptitiously touching each other's breasts, but also depicts women being punished for lesbianism.[81]: 53 

Latin America

The Florentine Codex, an encyclopedic work on the Aztec and other peoples of Central America finished in 1577,[83] contains a section on Aztec homosexuality. Book ten of the Codex covers both male and female sexuality; Geoffrey Kimball provides a terminology guide to and a new translation of this source.[84] According to Kimball, the context of the Classical Nahuatl term xōchihuah ("owner of flowers") seems to denote a "homosexual of either sex."[85] Another word, patlācheh, seems to refer specifically to a lesbian.[86]

Kimball's translation includes the following excerpt:[87]

She is a possessor of arrows; an owner of darts.

She is a possessor of companions, one who pairs off with women,

she is one who makes friends with women, one who provides herself with various young women,

one who possesses various young women.

Although the text goes on to include other unflattering descriptions of a woman who has sex with other women, "the invective against the homosexual woman is much less strident against the homosexual man".[88] Kimball adds that the first line of this excerpt "may refer to a woman who violates the sex-role stereotype, or it may have some other reference, at present not yet understood".[89]

Juana Inés de la Cruz (12 November 1648 – 17 April 1695)[90] was a prolific scholar, poet, writer, and protofeminist known for her searing critiques of misogyny. She also "addressed to three vicereines more than forty passionate, often playful, love poems".[91] The romantic nature of these poems has been debated by scholars for decades, but Amanda Powell argues that nonromantic readings of de la Cruz's work stem from historical and modern assumptions of heterosexuality.[91] For example, De la Cruz's Redondilla 87, which rapturously extols the qualities of a woman named "Feliciana," could be read in a homoerotic manner.[92]

Felipa de Souza (1556–1600) was a woman who had romantic relationships with other women during the Brazilian colonial era. She was accused of sodomy, which caused her to fall victim to the Catholic Inquisition.

The existence of a lesbian relationship between Anne Bonny and Mary Read is a matter of debate.[93]

Europe

In early modern England, female homosexual behavior became increasingly culturally visible. Some historians, such as Valerie Traub, have argued that this led to increasing cultural sanctions against lesbian behaviors.[94] For instance, in 1709, Delariviere Manley published The New Atlantis, attacking lesbian activities.[95] However, others, such as Friedli and Lillian Faderman have played down the cultural opposition to female homosexuality, pointing out that it was better tolerated than male homosexual activities.[96] Additionally, despite the social stigma, English courts did not prosecute homosexual activities between women, and lesbianism was largely ignored by the law in England.[96] Although Charles Hamilton (female husband), according to Henry Fielding, was whipped for fraud, the courts and the press of the time do not seem to have believed she committed any crimes.[97] Terry Castle contends that English law in the eighteenth century ignored female homosexual activity not out of indifference, but out of male fears about acknowledging and reifying lesbianism.[94]

The literature of the time attempted to rationalize some lesbian activities, commonly searching for visible indications of sapphic tendencies.[98] In The New Atlantis, the "real" lesbians are depicted as being masculine.[98] However, Catherine Craft-Fairchild argues in "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism" (2006) that Delariviere Manley fails to establish a coherent narrative of lesbians as anatomically distinct from other women,[99] whereas Fielding in The Female Husband focuses on the corruption of Hamilton's mind.[100] Jonathan Swift, writing for The Tatler in 1711, acknowledges the difficulty inherent in establishing such a narrative framework, where he describes a woman having her virginity tested by a lion. Despite the onlookers' failure to detect anything amiss, the lion identified her as "no true Virgin."[101][102] At the same time, positive—or potentially positive writings—concerning female homosexuality drew on the languages of both female same-sex friendship and heterosexual romance. At the time, there were no widespread cultural motifs of homosexuality.[103] Only among the less respectable members of society does it seem that there was any sort of a lesbian subculture. Academics find it likely that there was such a subculture amongst dancers and prostitutes in 18th- and early-19th-century Paris as well as in 18th-century Amsterdam.[104]

France

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also saw an increase in lesbian visibility in France, both in the public sphere and in art and literature. Fin de siecle society in Paris included bars, restaurants and cafes frequented and owned by lesbians, such as Le Hanneton, La Souris and Le Rat Mort. Private salons, like the one hosted by the American expatriate Nathalie Barney, drew many lesbian and bisexual artists and writers, including Julie d'Aubigny, Romaine Brooks, Renee Vivien, Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, and Radclyffe Hall. One of Barney's lovers, the courtesan Liane de Pougy, published a best-selling novel based on their romance called l'Idylle Saphique (1901). Many publicly acknowledged lesbians and bisexual women were entertainers and actresses. Some, like the writer Colette and her lover Mathilde de Morny, performed lesbian theatrical scenes in cabarets; these drew outrage and censorship. Descriptions of lesbian salons, cafes and restaurants were included in tourist guides and journalism of the era. These guides and articles also mentioned houses of prostitution that were uniquely for lesbians. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created paintings of many of the lesbians he met, some of whom frequented or worked at the famed Moulin Rouge.[105][106]

The 18th-century lesbian secret society named "Sect of Anandrynes" included peoples like; Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy, Princesse de Lamballe, Yolande de Polastron, Mlle Raucourt, Sophie Arnould, and Marie Antoinette.[107][108]

Ireland

Lady Frances Brudenell, Countess of Newburgh, was an Irish aristocrat known as the subject of a satire in which she was portrayed as the leader of a society of lesbians.[109]

The "Ladies of Llangollen", Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831), were two upper-class Irish women whose relationship scandalised and fascinated their contemporaries. The pair moved to a Gothic house in Llangollen, North Wales, in 1780 after leaving Ireland to escape the social pressures of conventional marriages.

England

There was allegedly a lesbian relationship between Anne, Queen of Great Britain and her courtier Abigail Masham, Baroness Masham.[110]

Anne Seymour Damer, an acclaimed English sculptor, may have been a lesbian and was in a relationship with the actress Elizabeth Farren.

Lady Catherine Jones' decision not to marry, and her close relationships and cohabitation with women throughout her life and into her death, merit speculation that she was a lesbian. The frustratingly minimal surviving documentation of her life makes this difficult to assert with confidence, but readers can read her 'close unions' with Kendall, and with Astell, as not entirely platonic.[111]

Germany

Catharina Margaretha Linck was a Prussian woman who for most of her adult life presented herself as a man. She married a woman and, based on their sexual activity together, was convicted of sodomy and executed by order of King Frederick William I in 1721. Linck's execution was the last for lesbian sexual activity in Europe and an anomaly for its time.[112][113]

Sweden

The question of Christina, Queen of Sweden's sexuality has been debated, but her relationships with women were noted during her lifetime. Christina seems to have written passionate letters to Ebba Sparre, and Guilliet suggested a relationship between Christina and Gabrielle de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Rachel, a niece of Diego Teixeira, and the singer Angelina Giorgino. According to Veronica Buckley, Christina was a "dabbler" who was "painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist" by her contemporaries, though "in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label".

Italy

Laudomia Forteguerri was an accomplished Italian poet and a member of one of the most powerful families in the sixteenth-century Republic of Siena. She is considered by some historians to be Italy's earliest lesbian writer, and she was famous for her beauty, wit, and intelligence.

Spain

Eleno de Céspedes, was a Spanish surgeon who married a man and later a woman, and was tried by the Spanish Inquisition. Céspedes may have been an intersex and/or transgender person, or, if a woman, may have been a lesbian and/or the first female surgeon known in Spain and perhaps in Europe.

Princess Isabella of Parma found more fulfillment in her relationship with her sister-in-law, Archduchess Maria Christina, than with her husband.[114]

Colonial America and the United States

In colonial American history, laws against lesbianism were suggested but not created or enforced. In 1636, John Cotton proposed a law which would make sex between two women (or two men) in Massachusetts Bay a capital offense, but the law was not enacted.[115] It would have read, "Unnatural filthiness, to be punished with death, whether sodomy, which is carnal fellowship of man with man, or woman with woman, or buggery, which is carnal fellowship of man or woman with beasts or fowls".[116] In 1655, the Connecticut Colony suggested a law against sodomy between women (as well as between men), but it did not take effect.[117]

However, Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon in 1649 in Plymouth Colony were prosecuted for "lewd behavior with each other upon a bed". Their trial documents are the only known record of sex between female English colonists in North America in the seventeenth century.[118] Hammon was only admonished, perhaps because she was under sixteen,[118] but in 1650 Norman was convicted and required to publicly acknowledge her "unchaste behavior" with Hammon. She was also warned against future offenses.[119] This is the only known example of the prosecution of female homosexual activities in United States history.[120]

In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a law stating that "Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least",[121][122][123] but the proposal failed.

In Paris in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, lesbians became more visible in art and in the public sphere. A painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec of entertainer Cha-U-Kao at the Moulin Rouge.

Close intimate relationships were common among women in the mid-nineteenth century. This was attributed to strict gender roles that led women to expand their social circle to other women for emotional support. These relationships were expected to form close between women with similar socioeconomic status.[124] Since there was not defined language in regards to lesbianism at the time, these relationships were seen as merely homosocial. Though women developed very close emotional relationships with one another, marriage to men was still the norm. However, there is evidence of possible sexual relationships beyond an emotional level. Documents from two African-American women describe practices known as "bosom sex." While these women practiced heterosexuality with their husbands, it is still believed their relationship was romantic and sexual.[125]

The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw the flourishing of "Boston marriages" in New England. The term describes romantic friendship between two women, living together without any financial support from men. Many lasting romantic friendships began at women's colleges. This kind of relationship actually predates the New England custom, as there have been examples of this in the United Kingdom and continental Europe since the seventeenth century.[126] Belief in the platonic nature of Boston marriages began to dissipate after followers of Freud cast suspicion on the supposed innocent friendships of the "marriages".[127]

Anne Lister, considered the first modern lesbian.[128]

Later 20th and early 21st centuries (1969–present)

The Stonewall Riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations, when members of the gay (i.e. LGBT) community fought back when police became violent during a police raid in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The crowd was spurred to action when butch lesbian Stormé DeLarverie punched the police officer who had struck her over the head, and called out to the crowd, "Why don't you guys do something?"[129][130] These riots are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement in the US, and one of the most important events in the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.[131][132]

Political lesbianism originated in the late 1960s among second wave radical feminists as a way to fight sexism and compulsory heterosexuality (see Adrienne Rich's essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence"). Sheila Jeffreys, a lesbian, helped to develop the concept when she co-wrote "Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism"[133] with the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group. They argued that women should abandon support of heterosexuality and stop sleeping with men, encouraging women to rid men "from your beds and your heads."[134] While the main idea of political lesbianism is to be separate from men, this does not necessarily mean that political lesbians have to sleep with women; some choose to be celibate or identify as asexual. The Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group definition of a political lesbian is "a woman identified woman who does not fuck men". They proclaimed men the enemy and women who were in relationships with them collaborators and complicit in their own oppression. Heterosexual behavior was seen as the basic unit of the patriarchy's political structure, with lesbians who reject heterosexual behavior therefore disrupting the established political system.[135] Lesbian women who have identified themselves as "political lesbians" include Ti-Grace Atkinson, Julie Bindel, Charlotte Bunch, Yvonne Rainer, and Sheila Jeffreys.

On December 15, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association voted almost unanimously to remove "homosexuality" from the list of psychiatric disorders that are included in the group's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This reversal came after three years of protests from gay and lesbian liberation activists and major disruption at the group's panel on homosexuality in 1970.[136]

In 1974, Maureen Colquhoun came out as the first lesbian MP for the Labour Party in the UK. When elected she was in a heterosexual marriage.[137]

Lesbian feminism, which was most influential from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s (primarily in North America and Western Europe), encourages women to direct their energies toward other women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism.[138] Some key thinkers and activists in lesbian feminism are Charlotte Bunch, Rita Mae Brown, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Frye, Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys and Monique Wittig (although the latter is more commonly associated with the emergence of queer theory). Into the mid-1970s, lesbians around the world were publishing their personal coming out stories, as these came few and far between at the time. In addition to coming out stories, lesbians were publishing biographies of lesbian writers who were misplaced in history, looking for examples of who they were and how their community came to be. As with Gay Liberation, the lesbian feminist understanding of the lesbian potential in all women was at odds with the minority-rights framework of the Gay Rights movement. Many women of the Gay Liberation movement felt frustrated at the domination of the movement by men and formed separate organizations; some who felt gender differences between men and women could not be resolved developed "lesbian separatism", influenced by writings such as Jill Johnston's 1973 book Lesbian Nation. Disagreements between different political philosophies were, at times, extremely heated, and became known as the lesbian sex wars,[139] clashing in particular over views on sadomasochism, prostitution and transgenderism. The "Sex Wars" was a time in feminist history that divided "anti-pornography" and "pro-sex" feminists. The common belief among pro-sex feminists was that there needed to be a new way for female desire to be advertised and demonstrated. General photography of women in this manner was debated among feminists everywhere.[140]

In the Eastern Bloc, although there were no standard laws regarding discrimination against gays and lesbians, self-expression was discouraged as it encouraged people toward actions that were outside the accepted norms of a harmonious socialist society. As such, state police often used blackmail and kept dossiers on homosexual people as a way for them to be manipulated by the state.[141]: 75  Activists in Eastern Europe were not unaware of events in the West, but generally forming associations for any type of special interest group was forbidden until the 1980s.[142][143]: 113–114, 118–119  Because state sanction was not given, many support systems for lesbians operated clandestinely. For example, in East Germany, Ursula Sillge formed the Sunday Club in 1986 to offer both a means for lesbians to gather outside the state-sanctioned churches but as a way for them to provide educational materials about homosexuality to each other and press authorities to acknowledge the discrimination faced by lesbians and gays.[144][143]: 124  The Sunday Club would not gain official sanction and the ability to register as an organization until 1990.[145]: 48  In Hungary, the first legally recognized organization to represent the LGBT community was Homéros.[146] It was organized in 1988 at the Ipoly Cinema, a venue where Ildikó Juhász operated an after-hours safe space for lesbians to come together to create social networks.[147][148]: 82, 98, 251 

Two women belonging to the US Navy who are in a relationship kiss in public upon meeting after a long time.

The Lesbian Avengers began in New York City in 1992 as "a direct action group focused on issues vital to lesbian survival and visibility."[149][150] Dozens of other chapters quickly emerged worldwide, a few expanding their mission to include questions of gender, race, and class. Newsweek reporter Eloise Salholz, covering the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, believed the Lesbian Avengers were so popular because they were founded at a moment when lesbians were increasingly tired of working on issues, like AIDS and abortion, while their own problems went unsolved.[151] Most importantly, lesbians were frustrated with invisibility in society at large, and invisibility and misogyny in the LGBT community.[151]

Many activists in the 21st century have attempted to create more visibility for lesbian history and the activists that brought it to light. They argue that LGBTQ history is not nearly as represented as other civil rights movements, including African American's or women's civil and equal rights. Activists and other volunteers around the country have attempted to collect historical artifacts, documents, and other stories to help preserve this history for generations in the future to celebrate and cherish.[152] Also in the 21st century, there has been an increased movement for LGBTQ+ visibility in school curriculums. The exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community and its history is one of the biggest contributors to homophobia and the exclusion of those a part of the LGBTQ community in schools.[153]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Maiden-songs", so-called because they were apparently composed for choruses of young girls to sing as part of religious celebrations.
  2. ↑ I.e. a woman who loves other women.
  3. ↑ Unlike contemporary European languages, medieval Arabic had terms meaning "lesbian" and "lesbianism": "sihaqa" and "sahq" respectively.

References

  1. ↑ Guidotti, Maria Cristina (a cura di), Le donne dei faraoni: il mondo femminile nell'antico Egitto: Bergamo, Palazzo della Ragione 14 aprile-29 giugno 2003, 2003, p. 95
  2. ↑ Budin, Stephanie Lynn (2016). "Female sexuality in Mesopotamia". Women in Antiquity: Real women across the Ancient World. New York: Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-138-80836-2.
  3. ↑ Bahrani, Zainab (1993). "The Iconography of the Nude in Mesopotamia". Source: Notes in the History of Art. 12 (2): 13. doi:10.1086/sou.12.2.23202931. ISSN 0737-4453. S2CID 193110588.
  4. ↑ Bottéro, J.; Petschow, H. (1975). "Homosexualität". In Edzard, Dietz Otto (ed.). Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (in French and German). Vol. IV: Ḫa-a-a - Hystaspes. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. p. 468. ISBN 3-11-006772-2.
  5. ↑ Bottéro, Jean (1980). "L'"amour libre" à Babylone et ses "servitudes"". In Poliakov, Léon (ed.). Le couple interdit, entretiens sur le racisme (in French). Paris: Mouton. p. 33. ISBN 2-7193-0469-7.
  6. 1 2 Driver, G.R.; Miles, John C. (Spring 1939). "The Sal-Zikrum 'Woman-Man' in Old Babylonian Texts". Iraq. 6 (1): 66–67. doi:10.2307/4241640. JSTOR 4241640. S2CID 163671604 – via Cambridge Core.
  7. ↑ Zuffi, Stefano (2010). Love and the Erotic in Art. Getty Publications. p. 235. ISBN 9781606060094.
  8. 1 2 Schärf Kluger, Rivkah (1991). The Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh: A Modern Ancient Hero. Daimon. ISBN 9783856309794.
  9. ↑ Stol, Marten (2016). Women in the Ancient Near East. Walter de Gruyter. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-61451-323-0.
  10. ↑ Manniche 1987, p. 22.
  11. 1 2 John J Johnston (2010). "Beyond Isis and Osiris: Alternate Sexualities in Ancient Egypt". Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL. pp. 9–10. Archived from the original on 2023-04-12.
  12. 1 2 Boehringer, Sandra (2013), Hubbard, Thomas K. (ed.), "Female Homoeroticism", A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, p. 160, doi:10.1002/9781118610657.ch9, ISBN 978-1-118-61065-7, retrieved 2023-07-29
  13. 1 2 3 Brooten, Bernadette J. (1996). Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-07591-5.
  14. ↑ Victor, Ulrich (1997). Lukian von Samosata, Alexandros oder der Lügenprophet (in German). Leiden, New York, Cologne: Brill. p. 134. ISBN 9789004107922.
  15. 1 2 Wilfong, Terry C. (2002). ""Friendship and Physical Desire": The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in Fifth-Century CE Egypt". In Rabinowitz, N.; Auanger, L. (eds.). Among women: From the homosocial to the homoerotic in the ancient world. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292719460.
  16. ↑ Young, Dwight Wayne (1993). Coptic Manuscripts from the White Monastery: Works of Shenute. Vienna: Hollinek. pp. 112–113. ISBN 9783851192544.
  17. ↑ van Gulik, R. H. (2003). Sexual Life in Ancient China: A preliminary survey of Chinese sex and society from ca. 1500 B.C. till 1644 A.D. (1st updated ed.). Leiden, Boston: Brill. pp. 48, 274. ISBN 9789004126015.
  18. 1 2 3 Ruan, Fang Fu (1991). Sex in China: Studies in sexology in Chinese culture (Softcover reprint ed.). New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4899-0611-3.
  19. ↑ Hinsch, Bret (1992). Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The male homosexual tradition in China (1st paperback ed.). Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. p. 174. ISBN 9780520067202.
  20. ↑ Wilbur, C. Martin (1943). Slavery in China during the Former Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.–A.D. 25. Chicago: Field Museum Press. pp. 424–425. OCLC 5344470.
  21. ↑ Dover, Dalton James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  22. ↑ Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 182. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  23. ↑ Downing, Christine (1994). "Lesbian Mythology". Historical Reflections. 20 (2): 171.
  24. ↑ Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  25. ↑ Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  26. ↑ McEvilly, Thomas (1971). "Sappho, Fragment 94". Phoenix. 25 (1): 2–3.
  27. ↑ Downing, Christine (1994). "Lesbian Mythology". Historical Reflections. 20 (2): 192.
  28. ↑ Downing, Christine (1994). "Lesbian Mythology". Historical Reflections. 20 (2): 193.
  29. ↑ Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  30. 1 2 3 Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  31. ↑ Pomeroy, Sarah B. (1995). Goddesses, Whores, Wives, & Slaves. London: Pimlico. p. 55.
  32. ↑ Elaine Fantham; Helene P. Foley; Natalie Kampen; Sarah B. Pomeroy; H. Alan Shapiro (1994). Women in the classical world : image and text. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 164–165. ISBN 0-19-506727-4. OCLC 27265657.
  33. ↑ Elaine Fantham; Helene P. Foley; Natalie Kampen; Sarah B. Pomeroy; H. Alan Shapiro (1994). Women in the classical world : image and text. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 165. ISBN 0-19-506727-4. OCLC 27265657.
  34. ↑ Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 172. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  35. ↑ Asklepiades, The Greek Anthology 5.207
  36. ↑ Dover, Kenneth James (1978). Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 172–3. ISBN 978-0-7156-1111-1.
  37. ↑ Downing, Christine (1994). "Lesbian Mythology". Historical Reflections. 20 (2): 180.
  38. ↑ Downing, Christine (1994). "Lesbian Mythology". Historical Reflections. 20 (2): 176.
  39. ↑ Federico Giannini, Ilaria Baratta. "The erotic ceramics of the National Archaeological Museum in Tarquinia". Finestre sull' Arte.
  40. ↑ Kauṭalya (2012). The Arthaśāstra : selections from the classic Indian work on statecraft. Translated by Mark McClish and Patrick Olivelle. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub. Co. pp. xiv. ISBN 978-1-60384-849-7. OCLC 789148479.
  41. 1 2 Ruth Vanita; Saleem Kidwai (2000). Same-sex love in India : readings from literature and history (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 25. ISBN 0-312-22169-X. OCLC 43227295. Archived from the original on 2022-05-23. Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  42. 1 2 Ruth Vanita; Saleem Kidwai (2000). Same-sex love in India : readings from literature and history. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 26. ISBN 0-312-22169-X. OCLC 43227295. Archived from the original on 2022-05-23. Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  43. ↑ Bhishagratna, Kaviraj Kunja Lal (1911). An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita in Three Volumes. Vol. II. Calcutta: Self-published. p. 132.
  44. 1 2 Sweet, Michael J.; Zwilling, Leonard (1993). "The First Medicalization: The Taxonomy and Etiology of Queerness in Classical Indian Medicine". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 3 (4): 590–607. ISSN 1043-4070. JSTOR 3704394. PMID 11623132.
  45. ↑ Shree Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society (1949). The Caraka Saṃhitā (in Sanskrit, Hindi, Gujarati, and English). Vol. IV. Jamnagar: The Ayurveda Mudranalaya. p. 584.
  46. ↑ Doniger, Wendy; Kakar, Sudhir (2009). Vatsyayana Kamasutra (Reissued paperback ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 68, 125. ISBN 978-0-19-953916-1.
  47. ↑ Coray, Joseph Andrew (2001). Sexual diversity and Catholicism: toward the development of moral theology By Patricia Beattie Jung, Joseph Andrew Coray. Liturgical Press. ISBN 9780814659397. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  48. ↑ Potter, David, ed. (2006). A companion to the Roman Empire. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. pp. xxiii. ISBN 0-631-22644-3. OCLC 60550606.
  49. ↑ Morales, Helen (2006). "Marrying Mesopotamia: Female Sexuality and Cultural Resistance in Iamblichus' Babylonian Tales". Ramus. 35 (1): 78–101. doi:10.1017/S0048671X0000093X. ISSN 0048-671X. S2CID 141030553. Archived from the original on 2023-04-12. Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  50. 1 2 Morales, Helen (2006). "Marrying Mesopotamia: Female Sexuality and Cultural Resistance in Iamblichus' Babylonian Tales". Ramus. 35 (1): 79. doi:10.1017/S0048671X0000093X. ISSN 0048-671X. S2CID 141030553. Archived from the original on 2023-04-12. Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  51. ↑ Halsall, Paul (20 January 2021). "Lucian: Dialogues of the Courtesans Section 5: LEAENA AND CLONARIUM". Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks Project. Archived from the original on 7 December 2022. Retrieved 6 December 2022.
  52. ↑ Rupp, Leila J. (2009). Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women. New York University Press. p. 30. ISBN 9780814775929.
  53. ↑ Hubbard, Thomas K. (12 May 2003). Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: a sourcebook of basic documents By Thomas K. Hubbard. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520234307. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  54. ↑ Wesley Center Online. "Apocalypse of Peter". The Apocryphal New Testament. Clarendon Press, 1924. Archived from the original on 20 August 2011. Retrieved 7 August 2011.
  55. 1 2 3 Pflugfelder, Gregory M. (1992). "Strange Fates. Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari". Monumenta Nipponica. 47 (3): 367. doi:10.2307/2385103. ISSN 0027-0741. JSTOR 2385103.
  56. 1 2 3 4 Mostow, Joshua S. (1996). Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image. USA: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 9780824817053.
  57. 1 2 Keene, Donald (1989). "A Neglected Chapter. Courtly Fiction of the Kamakura Period". Monumenta Nipponica. 44 (1): 1–30. doi:10.2307/2384696. ISSN 0027-0741. JSTOR 2384696.
  58. 1 2 Lunsing, Wim (2016). Beyond Common Sense: Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Japan. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 28–29. ISBN 978-0-710-30593-0.
  59. 1 2 Bowring, Richard (1996). The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780141907659.
  60. ↑ Wieringa, Saskia E. (2007). "Silence, Sin, and the System: Women's Same-Sex Practices in Japan". In Wieringa, Saskia E.; Blackwood, Evelyn; Bhaiya, Abha (eds.). Women's Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia. USA: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 28. ISBN 9781403977687.
  61. ↑ Dumont, Éric; Manigot, Vincent (2014). "Une histoire du striptease japonais". Cipango (21). doi:10.4000/cipango.2230. ISSN 1164-5857.
  62. ↑ Paenitentiale Umbrense, 2.12
  63. ↑ Bennett, Judith M. (2000). ""Lesbian-like" and the Social History of Lesbianisms". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 9 (1): 5.
  64. ↑ Boswell, John (1981). Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 289–90. ISBN 978-0-226-06711-7.
  65. 1 2 3 Crompton, Louis (1981). "The Myth of Lesbian Impunity. Capital Laws from 1270 to 1791". Journal of Homosexuality. The Haworth Press. 6 (1/2): 11–25. doi:10.1300/j082v06n01_03. PMID 7042821. S2CID 30112253. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
  66. ↑ Bennett, Judith M. (2000). ""Lesbian-like" and the Social History of Lesbianisms". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 9 (1): 3.
  67. ↑ Velasco, Sherry (2011-05-02). Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 978-0-8265-1752-4. Archived from the original on 2023-04-12. Retrieved 2022-04-14.
  68. ↑ Bennett, Judith M. (2000). ""Lesbian-like" and the Social History of Lesbianisms". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 9 (1): 18–19.
  69. ↑ Randall, Frederika (19 January 1986). "Divine Visions, Diabolical Obsessions". The New York Times. New York. Archived from the original on 19 May 2009. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
  70. ↑ Greenberg 2008, p. 278.
  71. 1 2 Amer 2009, p. 217.
  72. ↑ Amer 2009, pp. 216–217.
  73. ↑ Amer 2009, pp. 218–219.
  74. 1 2 Amer 2009, p. 220.
  75. ↑ Shereen El-Feki (2013). Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World. Chatto & Windus. pp. 223–225. ISBN 978-0-7011-8316-5.
  76. ↑ Amer 2009, p. 231.
  77. ↑ Amer 2009, p. 232.
  78. ↑ Amer, Sahar (2 May 2009). "Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 18 (2): 215–236. doi:10.1353/sex.0.0052. PMID 19768852. S2CID 26652886. Archived from the original on 2 April 2018. Retrieved 4 April 2011..
  79. ↑ "Issurei Bi'ah 21:8–9" (in Hebrew). Archived from the original on November 30, 2011. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
  80. 1 2 3 4 5 Singhakowinta, Jaray (2010). Unimaginable Desires: Gay relationships in Thailand (PhD thesis). Goldsmiths College, University of London.
  81. 1 2 3 Sinnott, Megan J. (2004). Toms and Dees: Transgender identity and female same-sex relationships in Thailand. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 9780824827410.
  82. 1 2 3 Numun, Wanna (2012). "Significance of Homosexuality in Thai Society". Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences. 8 (2): 160.
  83. ↑ "General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: The Florentine Codex". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 US. Archived from the original on 2022-12-08. Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  84. ↑ Kimball, Geoffrey (1993-12-06). "Aztec Homosexuality:: The Textual Evidence". Journal of Homosexuality. 26 (1): 7–24. doi:10.1300/J082v26n01_02. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 8113605.
  85. ↑ Kimball, Geoffrey (1993-12-06). "Aztec Homosexuality:: The Textual Evidence". Journal of Homosexuality. 26 (1): 11. doi:10.1300/J082v26n01_02. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 8113605.
  86. ↑ Kimball, Geoffrey (1993-12-06). "Aztec Homosexuality:: The Textual Evidence". Journal of Homosexuality. 26 (1): 12. doi:10.1300/J082v26n01_02. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 8113605.
  87. ↑ Kimball, Geoffrey (1993-12-06). "Aztec Homosexuality:: The Textual Evidence". Journal of Homosexuality. 26 (1): 16. doi:10.1300/J082v26n01_02. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 8113605.
  88. ↑ Kimball, Geoffrey (1993-12-06). "Aztec Homosexuality:: The Textual Evidence". Journal of Homosexuality. 26 (1): 17. doi:10.1300/J082v26n01_02. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 8113605.
  89. ↑ Kimball, Geoffrey (1993-12-06). "Aztec Homosexuality:: The Textual Evidence". Journal of Homosexuality. 26 (1): 21. doi:10.1300/J082v26n01_02. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 8113605.
  90. ↑ Gobernación, Secretaría de. "Conoce más acerca de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz". gob.mx (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2022-11-26. Retrieved 2022-12-09.
  91. 1 2 Powell, Amanda (2017). ""Transiting to the sumptuous gardens of Venus" (sapphist feminism, Sor Juana's lesbianism)". In Bergmann, Emilie L.; Schlau, Stacey (eds.). Routledge research companion to the works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. London. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-317-04164-1. OCLC 985840432. Archived from the original on 2023-04-12. Retrieved 2022-12-09.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  92. ↑ Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sister (2014). Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz : selected works. Edith Grossman. New York. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-393-24607-0. OCLC 915594909.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  93. ↑ Johnson, Charles (14 May 1724). The General History of Pyrates. Ch. Rivington, J. Lacy, and J. Stone.
  94. 1 2 Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 409. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  95. ↑ Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 413. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  96. 1 2 Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 408–431. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  97. ↑ Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 418. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  98. 1 2 Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 415. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  99. ↑ Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 417. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  100. ↑ Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 420. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  101. ↑ Jonathan Swift. Tatler no. 5, 1711
  102. ↑ Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 15 (3): 420–421. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  103. ↑ Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (2006). "Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 22 (3): 413. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0025. PMID 19238765. S2CID 44802282.
  104. ↑ Clarke, Anna (1996). "Anne Lister's Construction of Lesbian Identity". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 7 (1): 26.
  105. ↑ "Stéphanie Bee, Montmartre fin de siècle un repaire de lesbiennes, L'Univers, 1 November, 2010". November 2010. Archived from the original on 2016-10-26. Retrieved 2016-10-25.
  106. ↑ Nicole G Albert, "De la topographie invisible à l'espace public et littéraire :les lieux de plaisir lesbien dans le Paris de la Belle Époque" Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 2006 /4 (no 53-4)
  107. ↑ Fraser. Marie Antoinette. p. 131.
  108. ↑ Cronin, V. Louis and Antoinette. pp. 138–9.
  109. ↑ Edward Shorter: Written in the flesh, a history of desire. 2005 p. 77
  110. ↑ Gregg, pp. 275–276; Somerset, pp. 360–361; Waller, pp. 324–325
  111. ↑ "Richard Jones, Earl of Ranelagh". Westminster Abbey. Archived from the original on 1 January 2018. Retrieved 1 January 2018.
  112. ↑ Crompton, Louis (2006). Homosexuality & Civilization. Harvard University Press. pp. 473–475. ISBN 0-674-02233-5. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 1 August 2014.
  113. ↑ Matter, E. Ann (1986). "My Sister, My Spouse: Woman-Identified Women in Medieval Christianity". Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 2 (2): 91. JSTOR 25002043.
  114. ↑ Falvai, Róbert (2012). "Izabella, Izabella! Aki igazán a sógornőjét szerette" [Isabella, Isabella! She Who Really Loved Her Sister-In-Law]. In Gottesmann, Péter (ed.). A Hofburg dámái [Ladies of the Hofburg] (in Hungarian). Duna International. pp. 15, 28. ISBN 978-6155129568. OCLC 909849482.
  115. ↑ Dorothy A. Mays Women in early America: struggle, survival, and freedom in a new world Archived 2023-04-12 at the Wayback Machine, ABC-CLIO, 2004 ISBN 1-85109-429-6 p. 232
  116. ↑ Whitmore, William Henry (February 1995). The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts: Reprinted from the Edition of 1660, With the Supplements to 1672 : Containing Also, the Body of Liberties of. Fred B. Rothman &. ISBN 0-8377-2053-2.
  117. ↑ Foster, Thomas (2007). Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America. New York University Press.
  118. 1 2 Borris, Kenneth (2003-12-19). Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance: A Sourcebook of Texts, 1470-1650. Taylor & Francis. p. 113. ISBN 978-0-203-49916-0.
  119. ↑ Legal case: Norman, Hammon; Plymouth, March 6, 1649 Archived October 4, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. OutHistory (2008-07-15). Retrieved 2010-11-30.
  120. ↑ Bullough, Vern; Bullough, Bonnie (1977). "Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s: A Newfound Study". Signs. 2 (4): 895–904. doi:10.1086/493419. PMID 21213641. S2CID 145652567.
  121. ↑ Amendment VIII: Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments Archived 2019-04-28 at the Wayback Machine. Press-pubs.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2010-11-30.
  122. ↑ Abramson, HA (1980). "The historical and cultural spectra of homosexuality and their relationship to the fear of being a lesbian". The Journal of Asthma Research. 17 (4): 177–88. doi:10.3109/02770908009105669. PMID 7021523.
  123. ↑ "Timeline of Oppression". Geneseo.edu. 1969-06-27. Archived from the original on 2013-12-07. Retrieved 2013-12-03.
  124. ↑ Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll (1975). "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America". Signs. 1 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1086/493203. JSTOR 3172964. S2CID 143774652.
  125. ↑ Hansen, Karen V (1995). "No Kisses Is Like Youres': An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century". Gender and History. 7 (2): 153–182. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.1995.tb00019.x.
  126. ↑ Fuchs, Rachel G; Thompson, Victoria E (2004). Women in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 47. ISBN 0230802168.
  127. ↑ Gardiner, Judith (2016). "Women's Friendships, Feminist Friendships". Feminist Studies. 42: 484–501 – via JSTOR.
  128. ↑ Gibson, Michelle A.; Meem, Deborah T.; Alexander, Jonathan (14 February 2013). Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies. ISBN 9781452235288. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  129. ↑ Chu, Grace (July 26, 2010). "From the Archives: An interview with lesbian Stonewall veteran Stormé DeLarverie". AfterEllen.com. Archived from the original on April 16, 2020. Retrieved October 11, 2017.
  130. ↑ Yardley, William (May 29, 2014) "Storme DeLarverie, Early Leader in the Gay Rights Movement, Dies at 93 Archived 2021-06-29 at the Wayback Machine" in The New York Times.
  131. ↑ National Park Service (2008). "Workforce Diversity: The Stonewall Inn, National Historic Landmark National Register Number: 99000562". US Department of Interior. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  132. ↑ "Obama inaugural speech references Stonewall gay-rights riots". North Jersey Media Group Inc. January 21, 2013. Archived from the original on May 30, 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  133. ↑ Jeffreys, Sheila. "Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism". Archived from the original on 2021-06-07. Retrieved 2018-10-14.
  134. ↑ Bindel, Julie (30 January 2009). "My sexual revolution". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 August 2013. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
  135. ↑ Bunch, Charlotte. "Lesbians in Revolt". The Furies: Lesbian/Feminist Monthly. Archived from the original on 9 March 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  136. ↑ Lewis, Abram J. (2016). "'We Are Certain of Our Own Insanity': Antipsychiatry and the Gay Liberation Movement, 1968–1980". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 25 (1): 83–113. ISSN 1043-4070.
  137. ↑ "Where are they now: Maureen Colquhoun". Archived from the original on 2013-12-14.
  138. ↑ Rich, A. (1980). "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence". Signs; 5, 631–660.
  139. ↑ Lesbian Sex Wars Archived 2006-03-21 at the Wayback Machine, article by Elise Chenier from GLBTQ encyclopedia.
  140. ↑ Guy, Laura (2016). "Sex Wars Revisited". Aperture. 225: 54–59 – via JSTOR.
  141. ↑ Torra, Michael Jose (Summer 1998). "Gay Rights after the Iron Curtain". The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. Medford, Massachusetts: The Fletcher School at Tufts University. 22 (2): 73–88. ISSN 1046-1868. JSTOR 45289040. OCLC 8897849563. Archived from the original on 13 January 2022. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
  142. ↑ "Tracing the Hungarian LGBT Movement". Central European University. Budapest, Hungary. 28 January 2014. Archived from the original on 20 August 2020. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
  143. 1 2 McLellan, Josie (Autumn 2012). "Glad to be Gay Behind the Wall: Gay and Lesbian Activism in 1970s East Germany". History Workshop Journal. Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. 74 (71): 105–130. doi:10.1093/hwj/dbs017. ISSN 1363-3554. JSTOR 23278603. OCLC 4907756113. Archived from the original on 7 June 2022. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
  144. ↑ Dobler, Jens; Schmidt, Kristine; Nellißen, Kay (20 January 2015). "Sonntags im Club" [Sundays at the Club]. lernen-aus-der-geschichte (in German). Berlin, Germany: Agentur für Bildung – Geschichte, Politik und Medien e.V. Archived from the original on 27 September 2020. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
  145. ↑ Tammer, Teresa (2013). Schwul bis über die Mauer: Die Westkontakte der Ost-Berliner Schwulenbewegung in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren [Gay over the Wall: The East Berlin Gay Movement's Contacts with the West in the 1970s and 1980s] (Masterarbeit) (in German). Berlin, Germany: Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt University of Berlin. No. 541240. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
  146. ↑ Renkin, Hadley Z. (2007). "Predecessors and Pilgrims: Lesbian History-making and Belonging in Post-socialist Hungary" (PDF). In Kuhar, Roman; Takács, Judit (eds.). Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Mirovni inštitut. pp. 269–286. ISBN 978-961-6455-45-9. Archived from the original on 15 February 2018.
  147. ↑ Kuruc, Andrej (Summer 2021). "Ildi Juhász: Pre lesby za socializmu v Maďarsku nebol priestor" [Ildi Juhász: There Was No Room for Lesbians under Socialism in Hungary]. Magazin QYS (in Slovak). Bratislava, Slovakia: Nomantinels. pp. 50–54. ISSN 2453-9023. Archived from the original on 12 June 2022. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
  148. ↑ Borgos, Anna, ed. (2016). Secret Years: Sixteen Lesbian Life Stories (PDF) (English language ed.). Budapest, Hungary: Labrisz Books. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 January 2022. (Hungarian version ISBN 978-963-08-0856-9 was published in 2011.)
  149. ↑ Lesbian Avenger Organizing Handbook Archived 2010-03-07 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 2009-3-4.
  150. ↑ "Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire, Too". Archived from the original on March 26, 2010. Editors Janet Baus, Su Friedrich. (1993)
  151. 1 2 1993, Eloise Salholz, Newsweek, "The Power and the Pride."
  152. ↑ Loveland, Barry, and Malinda Triller Doran. "Out of the Closet and Into the Archives: A Partnership Model for Community-Based Collection and Preservation of LGBTQ History." Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 83, no. 3 (2016): 418-24.
  153. ↑ Moorhead, Laura. "LGBTQ Visibility: In the K-12 Curriculum." The Phi Delta Kappan 100, no. 2 (2018): 22-26.

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lesbian history.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.