Discrimination against lesbians

Based on the categories of sex, sexual orientation, identity, and gender expression, this negativity encompasses prejudice, discrimination, hatred, and abuse; with attitudes and feelings ranging from disdain to hostility.

The first usage of the term lesbophobia listed in the Oxford English Dictionary is in The Erotic Life of the American Wife (1972), a book by Harper's Bazaar editor Natalie Gittelson.

Like homophobia, this belief is classed as heteronormative, as it assumes that heterosexuality is dominant, presumed, and normal, and that other sexual or relationship arrangements are abnormal and unnatural.

[11][12] The victims included Sizakele Sigasa (a lesbian activist living in Soweto) and her partner Salome Masooa, who were raped, tortured, and murdered in an attack that South African lesbian-gay rights organizations, including the umbrella-group Joint Working Group, said were driven by lesbophobia.

[23] Some suggest that the notion of female erotic plasticity is wishful thinking on the part of men who want to have sex with lesbians, and should be criticized for not being objective;[24][better source needed][25] while some hypothesize that lesbian relationships exist because of male sexual desires,[26] and that females are more sexually fluid.