Lesbian

**Lesbian** is most often defined as a woman who is attracted to other women romantically, sexually, or both, among many other definitions. The term is generally used as a self-identification of sexual or romantic orientation. Although lesbians are frequently defined as women who are *exclusively* attracted to women, they have also been referred to as women *primarily* attracted to other women. Some prefer to use or additionally use "gay" or "gay woman" as an identifier.

Lesbians have debated who shares their identity and is part of the lesbian community for over a century. They have variously been defined based on sexual behaviors, sexual attractions, or self-identifying with the label. For instance, women who self-identify as both bisexual and lesbian would not be included in a definition that specifies lesbians are only oriented toward women, but would be in a broader definition that encompasses other labels. Definitions also vary in whether or not they use expanded language regarding gender, such as a person who self-describes as a woman or phrasing that explicitly includes people who do not identify only as women, such as woman-aligned and some genderqueer and/or non-binary people who feel a connection to womanhood.

Lesbians may be cisgender or transgender; since gender is a separate concept from sexual orientation, someone may be both trans and lesbian. Based upon their assigned gender at birth and attraction to women, and prior to realizing their gender identity and transitioning, some trans women (assigned male at birth) formerly identify as straight and some trans men (assigned female at birth) as lesbian. Trans women attracted to women may subsequently understand themselves as lesbian women. As lesbian communities tend to be more accepting than straight communities of masculine and gender non-conforming people who were assigned female at birth, trans men often initially identify as lesbians before transitioning; however, this does not mean that all butch or otherwise masculine lesbians are transgender. Depending on individual circumstances, some trans men maintain their lesbian identities and community involvement as men.

Certain lesbians have used the label to describe their gender in addition to their attractions. In the Gender Census, an annual online international survey of people who do not strictly identify with the gender binary, participants indicated their personal identifiers; the item "lesbian (partially or completely in relation to gender)" was selected by 12.9% of the participants in 2021 and 13.8% in 2022

## Etymology

The term "Lesbian" originally referred to people or things from the Greek island of Lesbos. It is associated with famous poet Sappho, a community leader from the island of Lesbos who wrote multiple love poems to other women circa 600 BCE. The adjective "sapphic" is also derived from Sappho. Sappho also wrote erotic and romantic verses that included men, but in English language texts, her particular association with the erotic love between women has been dated to 1732 or before. By 1870, "lesbianism" had become a noun for a woman's erotic interest in other women or homosexual relations between them, while the phrase "lesbian love" was in use by 1883, originally circulating in U.S. medical journals that framed sexual intimacy between women as pathological. Previously used as an adjective related to the isle of Lesbos or to amatory poetry, "lesbian" has been in continuous use since 1890 to describe romantic and/or sexual behavior between women regardless of their specific sexualities, such as "lesbian couple", "lesbian sex", or "lesbian kiss". By 1904, lesbian was in use as a noun.

## Community

### History

#### During the Weimar Republic (1919–1933)

In Germany, the word "homosexual" was widely used, but not universally loved, by gay men and lesbians by the 1920s. Other language used by homosexual women included *lesbianer* (lesbian), *freundin* (female form of "friend"), and *tribade* (from the French usage, but rare by the 1920s), along with references to Sappho. Words implying certain roles also emerged. Although less language specified feminine lesbians, *Mädi* or Dame were sometimes used. Lesbian magazines sometimes described "Don Juans" and the "Ben Hur type", while two words that suggested a masculine appearance, and might be loosely translated as "butch" today, were *Bubi* (lad, also a reference to the popular bobbed haircut) and *garçonne*. *Garçonne* was derived from the French word *garçon* ("boy") with a feminine suffix added. Its closest English translation would be "tomboy". Victor Margueritte's 1922 novel *La Garçonne*, translated for English readers as "The Bachelor Girl", led to popular use of *garçonne* as a description for flappers, women who wore masculine clothing, and lesbians. A lesbian magazine originally published as *Frauenliebe* ("Woman Love") was retitled *Garçonne* from 1930 to 1932, and a lesbian club of that name was opened in 1931 by Susi Wannowsky.

The most common Weimar era alternative to "homosexual" was "friend", placing an emphasis on emotional relationships while also obscuring the sexual element for those not in the know. Men's and women's "friendship" magazines demonstrated that a sense of shared identity was developing between gay men and lesbians, along with discussions of how solidarity would be needed for a political movement. Compared to gay men, women seemed more tolerant of androgyny and crossing gender lines, but some publications debated the traits of masculine lesbians versus feminine lesbians.

After World War I, the number of lesbian cafés and clubs in Berlin increased dramatically, reaching more than fifty by the mid-1920s. Some establishments were class-segregated; for instance, the Club Monbijou West required an invitation, and the Pyramid was for celebrities and artists. The Chez Ma Belle Sœur was regarded by locals as a showplace for tourists. Other parts of the Weimar lesbian scene brought together women of various social classes that had been isolated from each other prior to the war.

#### During the Nazi regime (1933–1945)

Main article: Lesbian history during the Nazi regime
The history of lesbians during the Nazi regime is still being researched and compiled decades later. The experiences of lesbians and women accused of being lesbians are difficult to trace and cross-reference across scattered documents. Few women were identified as lesbians in official records kept during the Nazi era. Victims were not necessarily lesbians despite being documented as such by the Nazis; it is unclear how many of the allegations were false.

Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime used a strengthened version of Paragraph 175, which criminalized male homosexuality, to engage in extensive, systematic persecution of gay men. Sexual intimacy between women was not criminalized, with the exception of Austria, but the Nazis disrupted informal gay and lesbian social networks, raided and closed their public meeting places, and put locations under surveillance. While some fled the country, others attempted to outwardly conform by entering marriages of convenience, sometimes between a gay man and a lesbian. The Third Reich saw marriage and motherhood as the ultimate purpose of women, specifically to increase the "desirable" Aryan population. To the Nazis, lesbians could be "cured" to bear Aryan children by persuasion or by force.

Lesbians did not experience the same systematic persecution as gay men, but they could be investigated, arrested, and sent to prisons or concentration camps for other "offenses", such as being Jewish or engaging in subversive political behavior; their sexuality was not the official reason listed. While gay men were forced to wear a downward-pointing pink triangle in camps that used coded badges, lesbians were instead marked with whichever badge corresponded to their official reason for arrest and internment. Some lesbians were marked as "asocials" and wore a downward-pointing black triangle. The black triangle has been used by some lesbians in a manner similar to how some people in the gay community have reclaimed the pink triangle as a defiant symbol.

#### Legal challenges to lesbian literature

> Dottie is pretty and stout, with long, fluffy black hair, black eyes. She always wears sleeveless gowns, while Sammie 'struts' her tightly fitting tailored suit, and the inevitable attached collar and tie, which means so much in the life of a Lesbian. The two often get publicity in current periodicals and are generally called 'husband and wife.'
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> Sammie smiles when she reads these articles, while Dottie silently blushes.
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> This 'Flowery Tea Pot' has become a very popular and interesting rendezvous for loving couples of the same sex, mostly the fair sex . . . where over a cup of tea lovers meet and wistfully look into each other's eyes . . . where new ones and lonely ones get acquainted and embrace each other, swaying to the melody of a dreamy waltz.
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Chawa Zloczewer was a Polish Jewish lesbian who is best known as Eve Adams, the name she eventually adopted in the United States. The U.S. government first began surveillance of her based on "radical activities", primarily selling subscriptions to leftist magazines. She established "Eve's Hangout" in New York's Greenwich Village, a tearoom that attracted fellow lesbians and gay men. In February 1925, she wrote a short book called *Lesbian Love* as "Evelyn Addams". It included fictionalized versions of Adams and other lesbians she knew, as well as drawings of pairs of clothed and nude women, loving each other. It reflected beliefs at the time about lesbians as born "sexually inverted", or having a masculine nature, and pairing off with feminine women. Only 150 copies were made for private distribution.

Nevertheless, after an undercover policewoman entrapped Adams, she was found guilty of publishing an "indecent book" and sentenced to the maximum one-year imprisonment. Adams asserted that her book was "not in any way immoral, indecent, or vulgar." Some contemporary reports sensationalized her arrest and trials. After release from prison, the federal government held the deportation hearings they had previously organized against her, and she was deported to Poland. She eventually moved to Paris. In December 1943, she was arrested in Nazi-occupied France and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She died sometime between then and the liberation of the camp in 1945.

In 1928, British author Radclyffe Hall published *The Well of Loneliness*, a semi-autobiographical novel about "sexual inversion" like hers. Its depiction of a lesbian relationship led to attacks in the press and withdrawing it from publication in the Britain. Her publisher was charged under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Finding the book obscene and capable of corrupting readers, the court ordered it removed from circulation and destroyed. The labeling of the book as "obscene" drew attention of publishers in the U.S., and the firm that bought the U.S. rights hired a lawyer who successfully defended it in 1929.

*Women's Barracks*, by Tereska Torrès, was published in 1950 by Gold Medal Books and is regarded as the first lesbian pulp novel. The semi-autobiographical novel was based upon the diaries she kept as a member of the Free French Forces during World War II, novelized and published at the urging of her husband. Multiple lesbian women are described and identified as such in the story, while other women engage in occasional liaisons and are not regarded as "real Lesbians". Torrès did not regard it as a "lesbian" novel, merely one that included sexuality in a way that Americans were not accustomed to, and she was not a lesbian herself. *Women's Barracks* became the first bestselling paperback original novel, selling two million copies in just its first five years. It was also subjected to a United States congressional committee on "current pornographic materials" that eventually allowed it to remain uncensored because it had "moral lessons" about the so-called "problem" of lesbianism; however, a Canadian court review ruled it obscene.

#### Mid-20th century, United States

In the 1940s, lesbian group solidarity began to grow in the United States, and the 1950s built on that through night life at lesbian bars and house parties. In the U.S., participation in lesbian communities was largely predicated on adopting butch/femme culture and its associated roles as they were understood in that time period. The butch/femme code of personal behavior became a social imperative to increase the visibility of lesbians to the public and to each other, particularly with the expression of butch identities, whether or not a femme partner was present.

Locations where lesbians congregated became sites of resistance and defiance of the societal repression of women's sexuality. Growing lesbian pride and solidarity developed into the political consciousness of gay liberation that spread with the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the subsequent decades. Bar culture in particular evolved into politics focused on the right to congregate rather than the homophile movement that focused on the right to equal protection.

#### Stonewall riots

> It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience—it wasn't no damn riot.
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In the late 1960s, it was illegal in the state of New York for people considered "of the same sex" to publicly hold hands, kiss, or dance with each other. Police also harassed and arrested people who were not wearing attire that matched binary genders imposed by the police, such as those the police viewed as "female" who was not wearing enough "feminine" attire. Lesbians and trans men were targeted on the streets and in bars for harassment, assaults, and examinations of their anatomy; for instance, the drag king Rusty Brown was repeatedly arrested for wearing a shirt and pants.

The Stonewall riots, also called the Stonewall uprising, started on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. Initially a confrontation between patrons and police officers, it was strengthened by other members of the LGBTQIA+ community and neighborhood street people. Despite several drawbacks, the Stonewall Inn was an important institution for the local community. The Genovese crime family, a Mafia organization, found it profitable to control most of the gay bars in Greenwich Village, including Stonewall Inn. Police officers were bribed to ignore the bar or tip it off prior to the frequent police raids, which usually resulted in people who were inside the bar fleeing and those outside dispersing.

In the early morning hours on June 28, 1969, Stonewall Inn was not tipped off before police officers arrived with a warrant. The officers were physically aggressive with the patrons and began arresting employees for liquor license violations and patrons for "cross-dressing". Stormé DeLarverie, who worked as a drag king, and several fellow butch lesbians attempted to defend their friends, but were beaten by police. Although there is some debate about whether or not DeLarverie was the party in certain events, along with the sequence of those events, she has been attributed with throwing the first punch and initiating the riot. At some point, DeLarverie stated an officer told her to move along, called her a slur referring to a gay man, and hit her; she punched back. When a lesbian was forced into the police van and struck over the head, she shouted at the onlookers to act; the crowd began throwing objects at the police. Some accounts are that DeLarverie complained about her handcuffs and was struck with a baton. She was dragged into the police wagon and attempted to flee toward Stonewall Inn. When she was pulled back and further beaten by the officers, she reportedly yelled to the crowd, "Why don't you do something?"

Over the following six days, the community engaged in protests and violent clashes with law enforcement on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets, and in nearby Christopher Park. Although the uncoordinated actions are often called a riot, DeLarverie described it as a rebellion, uprising, and civil rights disobedience. The event is widely regarded as a catalyst for the civil rights movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the United States.

#### Lesbian-feminism and the lesbian sex wars

Lesbian-feminism and the lesbian separatist movement emerged from within the larger Second Wave of feminism, which had largely ignored and excluded lesbians. Many radical feminists believed the sexual revolution of the 1960s was more exploitative than liberating and saw sexual liberation and women's liberation as mutually exclusive. They wanted feminists to stop focusing on sex, and some viewed lesbians as "hypersexual". In 1969, the president of the National Organization of Women (NOW), Betty Friedan, said that lesbians were the "lavender menace" to the reputation of the women's liberation movement (Susan Brownmiller further dismissed lesbians as only an inconsequential "lavender herring" in a March 1970 article in *The New York Times*). Author and lesbian Rita Mae Brown was relieved of her duties as editor of New York-NOW's newsletter; in response, she and two other lesbians resigned from other NOW offices and issued a statement about homophobia within NOW. In late 1969, Brown joined others in organizing a lesbian-feminist movement. At the Second Congress to Unite Women on May 1, 1970, the "Lavender Menace"—a group of lesbian activists from Radicalesbians, the Gay Liberation Front, and other feminist groups—coordinated a demonstration to successfully demand recognition of lesbianism and the oppression of lesbians as legitimate feminist concerns. Those planning the action included Brown, Ellen Bedoz, Cynthia Funk, Lois Hart, and March Hoffman.

The Radicalesbians additionally distributed their article "The Woman Identified Woman", which framed "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" as categories created and used by a male-dominated society to separate women from each other and dominate them. The article argued that since lesbianism involved women relating to women, it was essential to women's liberation. They called for complete separatism from men. According to "Lavender Menace" member Jennifer Woodul, the term "woman-identified" may have been proposed by Cynthia Funk, and it was meant to be less threatening to heterosexual women than "lesbian". The group criticized characterizing lesbians based on sexuality as "divisive and sexist", and redefined lesbianism as a primarily political choice that showed solidarity between women.

Expressions of lesbian sexuality were often treated as problematic by the lesbian-feminist movement, and the acceptance of lesbians in the feminist movement was contingent upon de-emphasizing sexuality. Many heterosexual feminists did not welcome discussions of any sexuality whatsoever and thought feminism should move away from the topic; thus, lesbian-feminists further reframed lesbianism as a matter of sensuality rather than sexuality. They also portrayed men's sexuality as always aggressive and seeking to conquer while women were portrayed as nurturing and seeking to communicate. In this ideology, lesbianism became the ultimate expression of feminism by not involving men, while sex with men was oppressive and corrupt. With men, maleness, masculine roles, and the patriarchy all seen as linked together, lesbian-feminists viewed feminists who continued to associate with men, especially by having sex with them, as inferior and consorting with "the enemy". All-"lesbian" retreats were held, and houses and communes were formed, for those seeking to practice lesbian separatism. Since any desire for men was seen as "male identified" rather than "woman identified", straight feminists were seen as unwilling or unable to commit to other women, making them lesser feminists than political lesbians who chose women.

Two key texts to the lesbian-feminist movement were Adrienne Rich's 1980 article "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" and Lillian Faderman's 1981 book *Surpassing the Love of Men*. The texts emphasized loving and passionate relationships between women that were not necessarily sexual; however, they also treated sexuality as unimportant. Faderman's book claimed that the medical establishment's view of love between women as pathological led to the patriarchy treating any close relationships as suspicious and sexual; therefore, women's relationships should defy that view by no longer emphasizing sexuality. Rich continued the framing of lesbians as a political identity, a resistance to patriarchy, and commonality between all women-identified "passionate friends", warriors, and activists. She furthered the argument that being a lesbian was a choice, and that all feminists should make that choice as they removed themselves from male influences. Faderman and Rich's texts also split lesbian history from the history of gay men.

The "sex wars" shifted near the end of the 1970s to encompass additional sexual expressions beyond lesbianism. Anti-pornography feminism developed in part from lesbian-feminist thoughts about straight men as inherently aggressive toward women and heterosexual sex as equivalent to violence. Butch/femme culture was seen by lesbian-feminists and anti-pornography feminists alike as only an imitation of heterosexuality that reproduced the patriarchy, rather than its own rich culture. Since butch lesbians were associated with masculine traits, lesbian-feminists saw them as inherently suspicious. The free expressions of sexual desire between femmes and butches were regarded as incompatible with the lesbian-feminists' desexualized version of who could be a lesbian. Further, the importance of butches, femmes, and their culture was dismissed. When mentioned at all, lesbian-feminists treated them as if they were only a footnote, rather than presenting butches and femmes as essential to lesbian history. As "pro-sex" feminists discussed sexuality, Esther Newton was one of the proponents of butch/femme dynamics. Many lesbians pointed out that the roles had transgressive potential for subverting heterosexual gender norms, rather than imitating them.

Second Wave feminism's focus primarily on the concerns of white, middle-class women pushed out working-class and black women. The lesbian-feminist disapproval of butches and femmes may have derived from this classism and racism, as black lesbian culture and white working-class lesbian culture were often organized around butch/femme roles. Many black lesbian-feminists broke away to form their own groups. They had been condemned by white lesbian-feminists for fighting alongside black men for freedom, yet faced sexism within black freedom movements. Formed in 1975, the Combahee River Collective is now one of the best-known black lesbian-feminist groups.

Various lesbian-feminists refused to accept transgender women as women and based their definition of "women" on genitals present at birth. When Beth Elliott, a transsexual lesbian folk singer, had her membership revoked from the Daughters of Bilitis organization in December 1972, several members resigned in protest. She was on the organizing committee for the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference held in 1973 and was scheduled to perform her music. When a group leafleted the conference to protest and misgender Elliott, keynote speaker Robin Morgan rewrote her speech to address the controversy, but only included transphobic rhetoric and attacks on Elliott. Over two-thirds of the attendees voted to allow Elliott to remain, but the hateful ideas in Morgan's speech spread throughout the mid-1970s. Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys, and Janice G. Raymond also became prominent anti-trans voices. Raymond cited Adrienne Rich in a chapter called "Sappho by Surgery" in a book that was published in 1979. Other lesbian-feminists broke ties with the anti-trans elements and supported trans inclusion; these included Candy Coleman, Jeanne Córdova, Deborah Feinbloom, and the Reverend Freda Smith.