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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]". [130] Although many municipalities enacted laws against cross-dressing, some women would socialize in bars as butches: dressed in men's clothing and mirroring traditional masculine behavior. Others wore traditionally feminine clothing and assumed the role of femmes. Butch and femme modes of socialization were so integral within lesbian bars that women who refused to choose between the two would be ignored, or at least unable to date anyone, and butch women becoming romantically involved with other butch women or femmes with other femmes was unacceptable. [130] a b "Lesbian". Oxford Reference: A Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford University Press . Retrieved December 10, 2018. More discussion on gender and sexual orientation identity has affected how many women label or view themselves. Most people in western culture are taught that heterosexuality is an innate quality in all people. When a woman realizes her romantic and sexual attraction to another woman, it may cause an "existential crisis"; many who go through this adopt the identity of a lesbian, challenging what society has offered in stereotypes about homosexuals, to learn how to function within a homosexual subculture. [36] Lesbians in western cultures generally share an identity that parallels those built on ethnicity; they have a shared history and subculture, and similar experiences with discrimination which has caused many lesbians to reject heterosexual principles. This identity is unique from gay men and heterosexual women, and often creates tension with bisexual women. [25] One point of contention are lesbians who have had sex with men, while lesbians who have never had sex with men may be referred to as " gold star lesbians". Those who have had sex with men may face ridicule from other lesbians or identity challenges with regard to defining what it means to be a lesbian. [37] Must the film focus primarily on a gay storyline, or can it feature strong lesbian characters doing something entirely different than just being lesbians? Is subtext enough, or must the sapphic be explicit? How much cinephile wrath will rain down on us for the absence of a certain recent Oscar winner? (Hot dog fingers, we argue, are simply not enough!)
a b c Farr, Rachel H.; Diamond, Lisa M.; Boker, Steven M. (2014). "Female Same-Sex Sexuality from a Dynamical Systems Perspective: Sexual Desire, Motivation, and Behavior". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 43 (8): 1477–1490. doi: 10.1007/s10508-014-0378-z. ISSN 0004-0002. PMC 4199863. PMID 25193132. R Dennis Shelby; Kathleen Dolan (2014). Lesbian Women and Sexual Health: The Social Construction of Risk and Susceptibility. Routledge. p.34. ISBN 978-1317718192 . Retrieved April 11, 2018. Hermaphroditism appeared in medical literature enough to be considered common knowledge, although cases were rare. Homoerotic elements in literature were pervasive, specifically the masquerade of one gender for another to fool an unsuspecting woman into being seduced. Such plot devices were used in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1601), The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser in 1590, and James Shirley's The Bird in a Cage (1633). [61] Cases during the Renaissance of women taking on male personae and going undetected for years or decades have been recorded, though whether these cases would be described as transvestism by homosexual women, [62] [63] or in contemporary sociology characterised as transgender, is debated and depends on the individual details of each case.Brogan, Donna; Frank, Erica; Elon, Lisa; O'Hanlan, Katherine A. (2001). "Methodologic Concerns in Defining Lesbian for Health Research". Epidemiology. 12 (1): 109–113. doi: 10.1097/00001648-200101000-00018. PMID 11138804. S2CID 6560616. In Germany between 1898 and 1908 over a thousand articles were published regarding the topic of homosexuality. [22] Between 1896 and 1916, 566 articles on women's "perversions" were published in the United States. [23] For ten centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, lesbianism disappeared from literature. [238] Foster points to the particularly strict view that Eve—representative of all women—caused the downfall of mankind; original sin among women was a particular concern, especially because women were perceived as creating life. [239] During this time, women were largely illiterate and not encouraged to engage in intellectual pursuit, so men were responsible for shaping ideas about sexuality. [240] One such relationship was between Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to Anne Wortley in 1709: "Nobody was so entirely, so faithfully yours ... I put in your lovers, for I don't allow it possible for a man to be so sincere as I am." [74] Similarly, English poet Anna Seward had a devoted friendship to Honora Sneyd, who was the subject of many of Seward's sonnets and poems. When Sneyd married despite Seward's protest, Seward's poems became angry. Seward continued to write about Sneyd long after her death, extolling Sneyd's beauty and their affection and friendship. [75] As a young woman, writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft was attached to a woman named Fanny Blood. Writing to another woman by whom she had recently felt betrayed, Wollstonecraft declared, "The roses will bloom when there's peace in the breast, and the prospect of living with my Fanny gladdens my heart:—You know not how I love her." [76] [e] The Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. An attempt by natives of Lesbos (also called "Mytilene" in Greece) in 2008 to reclaim the word to refer only to people from the island was unsuccessful in a Greek court. Inhabitants of Lesbos claimed the use of lesbian to refer to female homosexuality violated their human rights and "disgrace[d] them around the world". [12]
Faderman, Lillian (April 1992). "The Return of Butch and Femme: A Phenomenon in Lesbian Sexuality in the 1980s and 1990s". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 2 (4): 578–596. JSTOR 3704264. Best friends Amy and Molly spent all of high school focusing on their grades. On the night of their graduation, the best friends cram four years of experiences into one night, like partying with their peers. Amy, who's been out for two years, also kisses a girl for the first time with encouragement from her BFF. In the middle of the 1970s, gay men and lesbians began to appear as police officers or detectives facing coming out issues. This did not extend to CBS' groundbreaking show Cagney & Lacey in 1982, starring two female police detectives. CBS production made conscious attempts to soften the characters so they would not appear to be lesbians. [290] In 1991, a bisexual lawyer portrayed by Amanda Donohoe on L.A. Law shared the first significant lesbian kiss [t] on primetime television with Michele Greene, stirring a controversy despite being labeled "chaste" by The Hollywood Reporter. [292] 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. [293]Female sexuality is often not adequately represented in texts and documents. Until very recently, much of what has been documented about women's sexuality has been written by men, in the context of male understanding, and relevant to women's associations to men—as their wives, daughters, or mothers, for example. [42] Often artistic representations of female sexuality suggest trends or ideas on broad scales, giving historians clues as to how widespread or accepted erotic relationships between women were.
Berlin had a vibrant homosexual culture in the 1920s, and about 50 clubs catered to lesbians. Die Freundin ( The Girlfriend) magazine, published between 1924 and 1933, targeted lesbians. Garçonne (aka Frauenliebe ( Woman Love)) was aimed at lesbians and male transvestites. [92] These publications were controlled by men as owners, publishers, and writers. Around 1926, Selli Engler founded Die BIF – Blätter Idealer Frauenfreundschaften ( The BIF – Papers on Ideal Women Friendships), the first lesbian publication owned, published and written by women. In 1928, the lesbian bar and nightclub guide Berlins lesbische Frauen ( The Lesbians of Berlin) by Ruth Margarite Röllig [93] further popularized the German capital as a center of lesbian activity. Clubs varied between large establishments that became tourist attractions, to small neighborhood cafes where local women went to meet other women. The cabaret song " Das lila Lied" ("The Lavender Song") became an anthem to the lesbians of Berlin. Although it was sometimes tolerated, homosexuality was illegal in Germany and law enforcement used permitted gatherings as an opportunity to register the names of homosexuals for future reference. [94] 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. [95] Radclyffe Hall's image appeared in many newspapers discussing the content of The Well of Loneliness. Gradually, women began to author their own thoughts and literary works about lesbian relationships. Until the publication of The Well of Loneliness, most major works involving lesbianism were penned by men. 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. [250] Author George Sand was portrayed as a character in several works in the 19th century; writer Mario Praz credited the popularity of lesbianism as a theme to Sand's appearance in Paris society in the 1830s. [251] [r] Charlotte Brontë's Villette in 1853 initiated a genre of boarding school stories with homoerotic themes. [253] In Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1866 poem "Sapphics", the term lesbian appears twice but capitalized both times after twice mentioning the island of Lesbos, and so could be construed to mean ' from the island of Lesbos '. [13] In 1875, George Saintsbury, in writing about Baudelaire's poetry, refers to his "Lesbian studies" in which he includes his poem about "the passion of Delphine" which is a poem simply about love between two women which does not mention the island of Lesbos, though the other poem alluded to, entitled "Lesbos", does. [14] Use of the word lesbianism to describe erotic relationships between women had been documented in 1870. [15] In 1890, the term lesbian was used in a medical dictionary as an adjective to describe tribadism (as "lesbian love"). The terms lesbian, invert and homosexual were interchangeable with sapphist and sapphism around the turn of the 20th century. [15] The use of lesbian in medical literature became prominent; by 1925, the word was recorded as a noun to mean the female equivalent of a sodomite. [15] [16] Lesbian teenager Alike lives in Brooklyn with her family and is hoping to find a lover, but she's unsure how much of her sexuality she should share with her parents and younger sister. When Alike meets Bina, a girl from her church, she develops a crush on her new friend. The primary component necessary to encourage lesbians to be public and seek other women was economic independence, which virtually disappeared in the 1930s with the Great Depression. Most women in the U.S. found it necessary to marry, to a " front" such as a gay man where both could pursue homosexual relationships with public discretion, or to a man who expected a traditional wife. Independent women in the 1930s were generally seen as holding jobs that men should have. [109]Further information: Homosexuality in ancient Greece and Homosexuality in ancient Rome 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. [43] Female homosexual behavior may be present in every culture, although the concept of a lesbian as a woman who pairs exclusively with other women is not. Attitudes about female homosexual behavior are dependent upon women's roles in each society and each culture's definition of sex. Women in the Middle East have been historically segregated from men. In the 7th and 8th centuries, some extraordinary women dressed in male attire when gender roles were less strict, but the sexual roles that accompanied European women were not associated with Islamic women. The Caliphal court in Baghdad featured women who dressed as men, including false facial hair, but they competed with other women for the attentions of men. [152] [153] Both male and female homosexuality were known in Aztec culture. Although both were generally disapproved of, there is no evidence that homosexuality was actively suppressed until after the Spanish Conquest. [156] Female homosexuality is described in the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century study of the Aztec world written by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. It describes Aztec lesbians as masculine in appearance and behavior and never wishing to be married. [156] The book Monarquía indiana by Fray Juan de Torquemada, published in 1615, briefly mentions the persecution of Aztec lesbians: "The woman, who with another woman had carnal pleasures, whom they called patlache, which is to say: female incubus; they both died for it." [156] [k] Whenever Todd Haynes’ unspeakably beautiful Patricia Highsmith adaptation comes to mind, it brings some of the novel’s last words along with it: “It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and hell.” In that light, a spot on a list of the decade’s best films hardly seems like much of a reach.
Queen Christina of Sweden's tendency to dress as a man was well known during her time, and excused because of her noble birth. She was brought up as a male and there was speculation at the time that she was a hermaphrodite. Even after Christina abdicated the throne in 1654 to avoid marriage, she was known to pursue romantic relationships with women. [65] Stearn, William T. (May 1962). "The Origin of the Male and Female Symbols of Biology" (PDF). Taxon. 11 (4): 109–113. doi: 10.2307/1217734. ISSN 0040-0262. JSTOR 1217734 . Retrieved 23 July 2019. Portrayals of lesbians in the media suggest that society at large has been simultaneously intrigued and threatened by women who challenge feminine gender roles, as well as fascinated and appalled with women who are romantically involved with other women. Women who adopt a lesbian identity share experiences that form an outlook similar to an ethnic identity: as homosexuals, they are unified by the heterosexist discrimination and potential rejection they face from their families, friends, and others as a result of homophobia. As women, they face concerns separate from men. Lesbians may encounter distinct physical or mental health concerns arising from discrimination, prejudice, and minority stress. Political conditions and social attitudes also affect the formation of lesbian relationships and families in the open.Chic and popular culture The August 1993 cover of Vanity Fair that marked the arrival of lesbian chic as a social phenomenon in the 1990s. The Latin American lesbian movement has been the most active in Mexico, but has encountered similar problems in effectiveness and cohesion. While groups try to promote lesbian issues and concerns, they also face misogynistic attitudes from gay men and homophobic views from heterosexual women. In 1977, Lesbos, the first lesbian organization for Mexicans, was formed. Several incarnations of political groups promoting lesbian issues have evolved; 13 lesbian organizations were active in Mexico City in 1997. Ultimately, lesbian associations had little influence on the homosexual and feminist movements. [160] While the term 'lesbian' is a term some use to describe themselves, others prefer other terms such as 'gay' or 'queer', while others prefer no label at all. After a snowstorm forces a group of friends to shelter together on Christmas Eve, drama start heating up and nothing will be the same as their lives intertwine. This Netflix movie is based on the YA novel Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green, Lauren Myracle, Maureen Johnson. Olivia Colman won the Oscar in 2019 for her role as Queen Anne, an 18th century English monarch who develops a relationship with a new servant named Abigail, which upsets the Queen's close friend and lover, Lady Sarah.
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