Lesbian

Henry Fielding wrote a pamphlet titled The Female Husband in 1746, based on the life of Mary Hamilton, who was arrested after marrying a woman while masquerading as a man, and was sentenced to public whipping and six months in jail.

Similar examples were procured of Catharine Linck in Prussia in 1717, executed in 1721; Swiss Anne Grandjean married and relocated with her wife to Lyons, but was exposed by a woman with whom she had had a previous affair and sentenced to time in the stocks and prison.

[8]: 224  Percy Redwood created a scandal in New Zealand in 1909 when she was found to be Amy Bock, who had married a woman from Port Molyneaux; newspapers argued whether it was a sign of insanity or an inherent character flaw.

[15]: 297–313  Specifically, Faderman connects the growth of women's independence and their beginning to reject strictly prescribed roles in the Victorian era to the scientific designation of lesbianism as a type of aberrant sexual behavior.

[46] Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which promoted tolerance for homosexuals in Germany, welcomed lesbian participation, and a surge of lesbian-themed writing and political activism in the German feminist movement became evident.

The publicity Hall received was due to unintended consequences; the novel was tried for obscenity in London, a spectacularly scandalous event described as "the crystallizing moment in the construction of a visible modern English lesbian subculture" by professor Laura Doan.

Blues singers Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Gladys Bentley sang about affairs with women to visitors such as Tallulah Bankhead, Beatrice Lillie, and the soon-to-be-named Joan Crawford.

Many lesbians were arrested and imprisoned for "asocial" behaviour,[i] a label which was applied to women who did not conform to the ideal Nazi image of a woman (child raising, kitchen work, churchgoing and passivity).

[51] Following World War II, a nationwide movement pressed to return to pre-war society as quickly as possible in the U.S.[53] When combined with the increasing national paranoia about communism and psychoanalytic theory that had become pervasive in medical knowledge, homosexuality became an undesired characteristic of employees working for the U.S. government in 1950.

[53] The U.S. military and government conducted many interrogations, asking if women had ever had sexual relations with another woman and essentially equating even a one-time experience to a criminal identity, thereby severely delineating heterosexuals from homosexuals.

[16]: 153–158 As a reflection of categories of sexuality so sharply defined by the government and society at large, early lesbian subculture developed rigid gender roles between women, particularly among the working class in the United States and Canada.

For working class lesbians who wanted to live as homosexuals, "A functioning couple ... meant dichotomous individuals, if not male and female, then butch and femme", and the only models they had to go by were "those of the traditional female-male [roles]".

[66] Overall, the study of contemporary lesbian experience in the region is complicated by power dynamics in the postcolonial context, shaped even by what some scholars refer to as "homonationalism", the use of politicized understanding of sexual categories to advance specific national interests on the domestic and international stage.

Six mostly secret organizations concentrating on gay or lesbian issues were founded around this time, but persecution and harassment were continuous and grew worse with the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976, when all groups were dissolved in the Dirty War.

Rare references to lesbianism were written by Ying Shao, who identified same-sex relationships between women in imperial courts who behaved as husband and wife as dui shi (paired eating).

Instead, social ostracism, legal discrimination, internalization of negative stereotypes, and limited support structures indicate factors homosexuals face in Western societies that often adversely affect their mental health.

[112][p] Depression is a more significant problem among women who feel they must hide their sexual orientation from friends and family, or experience compounded ethnic or religious discrimination, or endure relationship difficulties with no support system.

[27]: 389–390 In addition to Sappho's accomplishments,[q] Literary historians Jeannette Howard Foster and Terry Castle include the Book of Ruth,[7]: 22–23 [42]: 108  and ancient mythological tradition as examples of lesbianism in classical literature.

[42]: 6 In the 15th and 16th centuries, French and English depictions of relationships between women (Lives of Gallant Ladies by Brantôme in 1665, John Cleland's 1749 erotica Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, L'Espion Anglais by various authors in 1778), writers' attitudes spanned from amused tolerance to arousal, whereupon a male character would participate to complete the act.

His work influenced novelist Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin, which provided the first description of a physical type that became associated with lesbians: tall, wide-shouldered, slim-hipped, and athletically inclined.

Foster suggests that women would have encountered suspicion about their own lives had they used same-sex love as a topic, and that some writers including Louise Labé, Charlotte Charke, and Margaret Fuller either changed the pronouns in their literary works to male, or made them ambiguous.

[15]: 263 [r] In the 20th century, Katherine Mansfield, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, and Gale Wilhelm wrote popular works that had same-sex relationships as themes.

If not victims, lesbians were depicted as villains or morally corrupt, such as portrayals of brothel madames by Barbara Stanwyck in Walk on the Wild Side from 1962 and Shelley Winters in The Balcony in 1963.

[120]: 241–242 Realism in films depicting lesbians developed further to include romance stories such as The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love and When Night Is Falling, both in 1995, Better Than Chocolate (1999), and the social satire But I'm a Cheerleader (also in 1999).

[120]: 270  A twist on the lesbian-as-predator theme was the added complexity of motivations of some lesbian characters in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994), the Oscar-winning biopic of Aileen Wuornos, Monster (2003), and the exploration of fluid sexuality and gender in Chasing Amy (1997), Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), and Boys Don't Cry (1999).

On March 6, 1923, during a performance of the play in a New York City theatre, producers and cast were informed that they had been indicted by a Grand Jury for violating the Penal Code that defined the presentation of "an obscene, indecent, immoral and impure theatrical production."

One episode of Police Woman earned protests by the National Gay Task Force before it aired for portraying a trio of murderous lesbians who killed retirement home patients for their money.

WBMA-LP, the ABC affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, even refused to air the first run of the episode, citing conservative values of the local viewing audience, which earned the station some infamy and ire in the LGBT community.

[130]: 245–249 Dramas following L.A. Law began incorporating homosexual themes, particularly with continuing storylines on Relativity, Picket Fences, ER, and Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, both of which tested the boundaries of sexuality and gender.

The primary figure earning this attention was Martina Navratilova, who served as tabloid fodder for years as she denied being lesbian, admitted to being bisexual, had very public relationships with Rita Mae Brown and Judy Nelson, and acquired as much press about her sexuality as she did her athletic achievements.

Two lesbians holding a lesbian pride flag at the 2022 Fierté Montréal march [ 1 ]
A symbol for lesbianism made from two intersecting female symbols [ 2 ]
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene by Simeon Solomon , 1864
Painting of a woman dressed in Greek robes holding a lyre, with three partially nude women sitting in front of her on a long marble bench.
Sappho by Amanda Brewster Sewell , 1891. Sappho of Lesbos gave the term lesbian the connotation of erotic desire between women.
Lesbian feminist flag consisting of a labrys (a double-bladed axe) within the inverted black triangle , set against a violet -hue background. The labrys represents lesbian strength . [ 19 ]
Lesbian flag derived from the colors of the lipstick lesbian flag design [ 20 ] [ 21 ]
Lesbian community flag introduced in social media in 2018, with the dark orange stripe representing gender variance [ 22 ] [ 23 ]
The Victory of Faith by Saint George Hare has been described by Kobena Mercer as depicting an interracial lesbian couple, likening it to Les Amis by Jules Robert Auguste . [ 34 ]
A front and back illustration of a Renaissance-era hermaphrodite showing a person with female facial features, breasts, and what appears to be a small penis or large clitoris. She wears a small hood and open robe tied multiple times around the legs. Where it opens in the front, the apparent rear appearance shows it to be perhaps a shell of some kind, as one with her body. Two squares are missing from her the back of her head and torso. She has no buttocks.
Lesbianism and hermaphroditism , depicted here in an engraving c. 1690 , were very similar concepts during the Renaissance.
Painting of a Renaissance-era woman dressed as a man, standing and looking away, as a woman dressed as a woman holds the other's hand to her breast, looking imploringly at the other, set against a bucolic backdrop.
Gender masquerade was a popular dramatic device in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as this scene of Viola and Olivia from Shakespeare 's Twelfth Night painted by Frederick Pickersgill (1859).
Black and white photo of two women sitting in a hammock in turn of the 20th century dresses; one reclines and the other sits on her lap and wraps her arm around the other, both staring at each other.
Intimacy between women was fashionable between the 17th and 19th centuries, although sexuality was rarely publicly acknowledged. (Photograph c. 1900 .)
An engraved drawing of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, known as the "Ladies of Llangollen". They are shown sitting in a private library wearing smoking jackets, with a cat in the foreground sitting in a chair.
The Ladies of Llangollen , Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby.
The two women had a relationship that was hailed as devoted and virtuous, after eloping and living 51 years together in Wales.
Reproduction of a German magazine cover with the title "Die Freundin" showing a nude woman sitting on a horse, looking behind her.
Berlin's thriving lesbian community in the 1920s published Die Freundin magazine between 1924 and 1933.
Reproduction of a London newspaper, headline reading "A Book That Must Be Suppressed" and Radclyffe Hall's portrait: a woman wearing a suit jacket and bow tie with a black matching skirt. Her hair is slicked back, she wears no make-up, in one hand is a cigarette and her other hand is in her skirt pocket.
Radclyffe Hall 's image appeared in many newspapers discussing the content of The Well of Loneliness .
A publicity photo of a stout African American woman in white tuxedo with tails and top hat, carrying a cane and her signature in the lower right corner.
Harlem resident Gladys Bentley was renowned for her blues songs about her affairs with women.
Two women assembling a section of a wing for a WWII fighter plane.
Women's experiences in the work force and the military during World War II gave them economic and social options that helped to shape lesbian subculture.
An upside down black triangle.
Women who did not conform to the Nazi ideal of a woman were considered asocial, imprisoned, and identified with a black triangle . Lesbians were deemed asocial.
An upside down pink triangle.
Many lesbians reclaimed the symbolism of the pink triangle , though the Nazis only applied it to gay men .
A drawn illustrated magazine cover of a woman in half shadow with short, wavy hair holding a harlequin mask under the title "The Ladder" and the date "October 1957" underneath it.
The 1957 first edition of The Ladder , mailed to hundreds of women in the San Francisco area, urged women to take off their masks.
A brightly painted book cover with the title "The Third Sex", with a sultry blonde wearing a red outfit showing cleavage and midriff seated on a sofa, while a redhead with short hair places her hand on the blonde's shoulder and leans over her, also displaying cleavage wearing a white blouse with rolled-up sleeves.
Though marketed to heterosexual men, lesbian pulp fiction provided an identity to isolated women in the 1950s.
A historic shunga woodblock printing from Japan depicting two women having sex
A graph with seven columns labeled 0 to 6. The 0 column is "exclusively heterosexual" and is shown completely white. A gradient line showing the varying degrees of bisexual responses starts at the beginning of column 1 and rises to the end of column 5. Column 6 is "exclusively homosexual" and is shown filled with the color blue.
Kinsey's scale of sexual responses showing exclusively heterosexual and homosexual , with the varying degrees of bisexuality in between
A painting of two short-haired women in a massive bed, covered to their chins in blankets under a red top cover. One woman is looking sleepily at the other.
In Bed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1893). The Parisian artist employed the association between lesbianism and prostitution. [ 15 ] : 281–283
Still shot from the film "The Children's Hour", showing Shirley MacLaine looking down at the left and Audrey Hepburn to her right staring at her, in a bedroom. The words "Can an ugly rumor destroy what's beautiful?" obscure much of MacLaine's face.
Lesbianism, or homosexuality, was never spoken about in The Children's Hour , but it is transparent why Shirley MacLaine 's character hangs herself.
A photograph of Ellen DeGeneres with her 1997 Emmy Award.
Ellen DeGeneres with her Emmy Award in 1997. Her coming out in the media, as well as her sitcom, "ranks, hands down, as the single most public exit in gay history", changing media portrayals of lesbians in Western culture. [ 132 ]
Cover of Vanity Fair magazine from August 1993 showing k.d. lang reclining in a barber chair with eyes closed and holding a compact mirror. She has shaving foam on her chin and is wearing an open-collar white shirt, black and white striped tie, dark color pinstripe vest and cuffed pants, and black lace boots. Supermodel Cindy Crawford is holding a straight razor to lang's chin while lang's head rests on her breast. Crawford is wearing a one-piece black bathing suit and high heel black boots, with head thrown back as her long hair cascades down her back.
The August 1993 cover of Vanity Fair that marked the arrival of lesbian chic as a social phenomenon in the 1990s
Attendees at 2012 New York City Pride parade