History of lesbianism
[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.
[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".
[39] 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.
"[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.
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.
[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.
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".
[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.
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.
[76][77]: 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.
[77]: 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.
[80] 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".
For instance, Masawaiyh reported:[83] Lesbianism results when a nursing woman eats celery, rocket, melilot leaves and the flowers of a bitter orange tree.
[86][87] 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.
[86] 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,[88] and slave girls (qaynas) who lived in the Abbasid Caliphate.
[89] 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".
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.Sources on female homosexuality in Thai history primarily discuss royal harems, using the label เล่นเพื่อน len-phuean which literally means 'to play [with] friends'.
[103] 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.
[111] 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.
[112] 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,[113] whereas Fielding in The Female Husband focuses on the corruption of Hamilton's mind.
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.
[citation needed] 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.
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".
[152] 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).
Disagreements between different political philosophies were, at times, extremely heated, and became known as the lesbian sex wars,[153] clashing in particular over views on sadomasochism, prostitution and transgenderism.
[154] 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.
[160] 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.
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.
