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Sexual activity between women is as diverse as sex between ] or ]. Women in lesbian relationships may not identify as lesbian, but as ]. As with any interpersonal activity, sexual expression depends on the context of the relationship. Like anyone else (regardless of sexuality) lesbians can be promiscuous or committed, ashamed or proud. There is a wide spectrum of lesbian behavior and (as with much human behavior) generalizations can be misleading. Recent cultural changes in ] and a few other societies have enabled lesbians to express their sexuality more freely, which has resulted in new studies on the nature of female sexuality. Sexual activity between women is as diverse as sex between ] or ]. Women in lesbian relationships may not identify as lesbian, but as ]. As with any interpersonal activity, sexual expression depends on the context of the relationship. Like anyone else (regardless of sexuality) lesbians can be promiscuous or committed, ashamed or proud. There is a wide spectrum of lesbian behavior and (as with much human behavior) generalizations can be misleading. Recent cultural changes in ] and a few other societies have enabled lesbians to express their sexuality more freely, which has resulted in new studies on the nature of female sexuality.
<!--This is still too anglocentric: perhaps someone could relate it to other cultures --> <!--This is still too anglocentric: perhaps someone could relate it to other cultures -->
] women engaging in ]. Taken from ] ] ]]

There is a growing body of ] and writing on lesbian sexuality which has brought some debate about the control women have over their sexual lives, the fluidity of female sexuality, the redefinition of female sexual pleasure and the debunking of negative sexual stereotypes. One example of the latter is ''lesbian bed death'', a term invented by sex researcher ] to describe the supposedly inevitable diminution of sexual ] in long term lesbian relationships. Schwartz's published findings indicate lesbian couples have less sexual contact than those of any other sexual orientation, including gay male couples and opposite-sex cohabiting or married couples. Some have pointed out this does not necessarily reflect a lack of satisfaction with the relationship. The ] of Schwartz's survey format has been criticized by several researchers who claim the question "How often do you have sex?" is ambiguous when applied to the sexual behaviour of lesbian couples. This ambiguity, rather than a paucity of sexual relations, may account for the finding of a statistically low frequency of sexual behaviour among lesbian couples. In general, the lesbian community also rejects the notion of lesbian bed death, pointing out that passion tends to diminish in almost any relationship and many lesbian couples reportedly enjoy happy and satisfying sex lives. There is a growing body of ] and writing on lesbian sexuality which has brought some debate about the control women have over their sexual lives, the fluidity of female sexuality, the redefinition of female sexual pleasure and the debunking of negative sexual stereotypes. One example of the latter is ''lesbian bed death'', a term invented by sex researcher ] to describe the supposedly inevitable diminution of sexual ] in long term lesbian relationships. Schwartz's published findings indicate lesbian couples have less sexual contact than those of any other sexual orientation, including gay male couples and opposite-sex cohabiting or married couples. Some have pointed out this does not necessarily reflect a lack of satisfaction with the relationship. The ] of Schwartz's survey format has been criticized by several researchers who claim the question "How often do you have sex?" is ambiguous when applied to the sexual behaviour of lesbian couples. This ambiguity, rather than a paucity of sexual relations, may account for the finding of a statistically low frequency of sexual behaviour among lesbian couples. In general, the lesbian community also rejects the notion of lesbian bed death, pointing out that passion tends to diminish in almost any relationship and many lesbian couples reportedly enjoy happy and satisfying sex lives.
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Revision as of 03:55, 26 August 2005

This article is about homosexual women. See Lesbian Greek for the dialect of the island of Lesbos

A lesbian is a homosexual woman. Lesbians are sexually and romantically attracted to other women. One might argue that one is not a lesbian (as a noun) but lesbian (as an adjective). This can depend on self-identification and varies among most lesbians/lesbian women.

File:R odonnell marriage.jpg
Celebrity Rosie O'Donnell (to the right) and Kelli Carpenter speaking after their wedding on February 26, 2004 in San Francisco. The marriage was later overturned by the California Supreme Court.

Etymology

See also: Terminology of homosexuality

The word lesbian originally referred to an inhabitant of Lesbos, an island in Greece where an ancient Greek lyric poet named Sappho lived. Some of her poems concerned love between women. Whether Sappho was a lesbian in the modern meaning of the term or a poet who described lesbians is not known. While she did write poems about love between women there is some dispute as to how her writings can be interpreted. Sappho's literary association with love between women led to the term sapphism as another term for lesbianism.

Other words used to describe lesbianism over the past 200 years have included amor lesbicus, urningism and tribadism.

There are many slang terms for lesbians including dyke and bulldyke. Both are almost always regarded as pejorative when used by outsiders but many within the lesbian and queer communities have reclaimed their usage.

The law

In Western societies, explicit prohibitions on women's homosexual behavior have been markedly weaker than those on men's homosexual behavior. Jewish religious teachings condemn male homosexuality but are more lenient towards lesbianism, ruling it to be acceptable in an unmarried woman if this prevents her from premarital sexual relations with a male but it is not encouraged. In the United Kingdom lesbianism has never been illegal, unlike male homosexuality which was criminalised in the late 19th century, occasionally produced a prison sentence and was only legalised in England and Wales in 1967. There are various apocryphal stories about why lesbianism was not criminalised in the UK. One relates that Queen Victoria refused to sign a bill outlawing it, insisting, "ladies did not do such things." However lesbian publications such as The Well of Loneliness were prosecuted in the courts.

Reproductive and parenting rights

In some countries the right of lesbian women's access to assisted birth technologies such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) has been the subject of debate. In Australia the High Court rejected a Roman Catholic Church move to ban access to IVF treatments for lesbian and single women. However, Prime Minister John Howard sought to amend legislation in order to prevent access to IVF for these groups, which raised indignation from the gay and lesbian community.

Many lesbian couples seek to have children through adoption but this is not possible in every country.

Sexuality

Three 18th Century women engaging in foreplay.

Sexual activity between women is as diverse as sex between heterosexuals or gay men. Women in lesbian relationships may not identify as lesbian, but as bisexual. As with any interpersonal activity, sexual expression depends on the context of the relationship. Like anyone else (regardless of sexuality) lesbians can be promiscuous or committed, ashamed or proud. There is a wide spectrum of lesbian behavior and (as with much human behavior) generalizations can be misleading. Recent cultural changes in western and a few other societies have enabled lesbians to express their sexuality more freely, which has resulted in new studies on the nature of female sexuality.

File:JenniferRoveroAndSydneyMoon.jpg
Two 20th Century women engaging in foreplay. Taken from Wet & Wild: Slippery When Wet 2000

There is a growing body of research and writing on lesbian sexuality which has brought some debate about the control women have over their sexual lives, the fluidity of female sexuality, the redefinition of female sexual pleasure and the debunking of negative sexual stereotypes. One example of the latter is lesbian bed death, a term invented by sex researcher Pepper Schwartz to describe the supposedly inevitable diminution of sexual passion in long term lesbian relationships. Schwartz's published findings indicate lesbian couples have less sexual contact than those of any other sexual orientation, including gay male couples and opposite-sex cohabiting or married couples. Some have pointed out this does not necessarily reflect a lack of satisfaction with the relationship. The methodology of Schwartz's survey format has been criticized by several researchers who claim the question "How often do you have sex?" is ambiguous when applied to the sexual behaviour of lesbian couples. This ambiguity, rather than a paucity of sexual relations, may account for the finding of a statistically low frequency of sexual behaviour among lesbian couples. In general, the lesbian community also rejects the notion of lesbian bed death, pointing out that passion tends to diminish in almost any relationship and many lesbian couples reportedly enjoy happy and satisfying sex lives.

Culture

File:Homosexualitystein.jpg
Gertrude Stein and lover Alice B. Toklas .

Throughout history, hundreds of lesbians have been well-known figures in the arts and culture (see List of famous gay, lesbian or bisexual people).

Before the influence of European sexology emerged at the turn of the twentieth-century, in cultural terms female homosexuality remained almost invisible as compared to male homosexuality which was subject to the law and thus more regulated and reported by the press. However with the publication of works by sexologists like Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter and Magnus Hirschfeld the concept of an active female homosexuality became better known.

As female homosexuality became more visible it was described as a medical condition. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Sigmund Freud referred to (female) homosexuality as inversion or inverts and characterised female inverts as possessing male characteristics. Freud drew on the "third sex" ideas popularized by Magnus Hirschfeld and others. While Freud admitted he had not personally studied any such "aberrant" patients, he placed a strong emphasis on psychological rather than biological "causes." Freud's writings did not become well-known in English-speaking countries until the late 1920s.

This combination of sexology and psychoanalysis eventually had a lasting impact on the general tone of most lesbian cultural productions. A notable example is the 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall in which these sexologists are mentioned along with the term invert which later fell out of favour in common usage. Freud's interpretation of lesbian behavior has since been rejected by most psychiatrists and scholars, although recent biological research is now providing some findings that may bostler a Hirschfeld-ian "third sex" understanding of same-sex attraction.

During the twentieth century lesbians such as Gertrude Stein and Barbara Hammer were noted in the US avant-garde art movements along with figures such as Leontine Sagan in German pre-war cinema. Since the 1890s the underground classic The Songs of Bilitis had been influential on lesbian culture and this book provided a name for the first campaigning and cultural organisation in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis.

During the 1950s-60s there was a rise in lesbian pulp fiction in the US and UK, many of which carried 'coded' titles such as Odd Girl Out, The Evil Friendship by Vin Packer and the Beebo Brinker series by Ann Bannon. British school stories also provided a haven for 'coded' and sometimes outright lesbian fiction.

During the 1970s the second wave feminist era lesbian novels became more politically oriented, works often carried the explicit ideological messages of separatist feminism and the trend carried over to other lesbian arts. In the early 1990s lesbian culture was influenced by a younger generation who had not taken part in the feminist 'sex wars,' which strongly informed post-feminist queer theory and the new queer culture.

From the 1980s lesbians have been increasingly visible in mainstream culture: In music (Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang and the Indigo Girls), in sports (Martina Navratilova), in comic books (Alison Bechdel and Diane DiMassa). More recently lesbian homoeroticism has flowered in fine art photography and the writing of authors such as Pat Califia and Jeanette Winterson. There is an increasing body of lesbian films such as Desert Hearts, Go Fish, Watermelon Woman, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Everything Relative and Better than Chocolate (See List of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender-related films).

An expansion of the publishing industry and the growing visibility of lesbian love have provided a viable market for re-issues of older or neglected lesbian classics such as the first lesbian feature-film Madchen in Uniform and the novels of Jane Rule. There is also a growing market for feature-length documentary films.

Media depictions

Lesbians often attract media attention, particularly in relation to feminism, love and sexual relationships, marriage and parenting.

Mainstream broadcast media

Russian pop couple Yulia and Lena of t.A.T.u. The singers were criticized for the high level of sexual content in their concerts.

In television, the number of lesbian couples portrayed is generally less than the number of gay male couples. Notable lesbian couples on television include:

  • Dr. Kerry Weaver and Sandy Lopez in ER
  • Xena and Gabrielle in Xena: Warrior Princess. These characters were not officially "outed" in the storyline but their relationship was implied through comically ambiguous dialogue and actions laced with double-meaning, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions.

The 1980s television series L.A. Law included a lesbian couple, which caused much more controversy than lesbian TV characters would a decade later. The 1989 BBC mini series Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was based on lesbian writer Jeanette Winterson's novel of the same title. Russian pop-duo t.A.T.u was popular in Europe during the early 2000s, gaining attention and TV airplay for their pop videos because they were marketed as lesbians, although they were not.

Actress and comedian Ellen Degeneres came out publicly as a lesbian in 1997 and her character on the sitcom Ellen did the same soon after. Ellen, then in its fourth season, became the first American sitcom with a lesbian lead character. The coming out episode won an Emmy but the series was cancelled after one more season.

In 2004 The L Word was primarily focused on the lives of a group of lesbian friends and Ellen Degeneres had a popular daytime talk show. In a 2005 episode of The Simpsons titled "There's Something About Marrying", Marge's sister Patty came out as a lesbian.

Cinema

File:Madchen.jpg
A scene from Mädchen in Uniform (Germany, 1931), the first lesbian feature film. It was immediately banned in the United States but then released in a heavily cut version. Despite the addition of an altered, subtly pro-Nazi ending, it was later banned in Germany, after which director Leontine Sagan and many of the cast fled the country. Scriptwriter Christa Winsloe eventually joined the French resistance and was executed by the Nazis in 1944).

The first lesbian-themed feature film was the exceptional Mädchen in Uniform (1931), based on a novel by Christa Winsloe and directed by Leontine Sagan, tracing the story of a schoolgirl called Manuela von Meinhardis and her passionate love for a teacher, Fräulein von Nordeck zur Nidden. It was written and mostly directed by women. The impact of the film in Germany's lesbian clubs was overshadowed however by the cult following for The Blue Angel (1930).

Until 1985's breathrough Desert Hearts any notion of lesbian love in a film almost always required audiences to infer the relationships. The lesbian aesthetic of Queen Christina (1933) with Greta Garbo has been widely noted, even though the film is not about lesbians. Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, referred more or less overtly to lesbianism but the two characters involved were not presented positively: Mrs Danvers was portrayed as obsessed, neurotic and murderous while the never-seen Rebecca was described as having been selfish, spiteful and doomed to die. All About Eve (1950) was originally written with the title character as a lesbian but this was very subtle in the final version, with the hint and message apparent to alert viewers.

Explicitly lesbian films and others with sympathetic portrayals of lesbian characters and lesbian leads began to appear during the 1990s and by 2000 there were films in which characters explored issues beyond their sexual orientation, reflecting an attitude that lesbianism involves more than sexual desire. Notable mainstream theatrical releases included Bound (1996) and Kissing Jessica Stein (2001). There have also been many foreign-language lesbian films such as Show me Love (Swedish, 1998) and Blue Gate Crossing (Taiwanese, 2004).

Actors who have played lesbian roles on film include Madonna, Nia Long, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Latifah, Angelina Jolie, Glenn Close and many others.

See also: List of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender-related films.

Pornography

Depictions of lesbian sex are relatively common in Western pornography. This is a controversial issue within the lesbian community, in part because the majority of this pornographic content is produced by and targeted at heterosexual men. Some lesbians have argued that pornography in any form inevitably leads to the objectification and stereotyping of women. Others support pornography as a valid forum for personal expression and the assertion of women's individual rights.

File:Menginsappho.jpg
Sappho, an artistic notion of the Greek poet by Charles-August Mengin (1877).

Reactions of heterosexual men

In Western culture, the response of straight men to lesbian content in pornography is largely positive. This contrasts sharply with a widespread aversion to sexually explicit images of male homosexuality. However, positive reactions by straight men to lesbian pornography does not necessarily indicate tolerance of lesbians or a general acceptance of lesbianism in society. Lesbians are often the victims of gay-bashing and sexual assault.

Reactions of heterosexual women

Many heterosexual women are said to have a more positive attitude towards depictions of lesbian sex than most heterosexual men have to depictions of male gay sex. Some suggest this may be because heterosexual women are on average "more bi-curious" than heterosexual men. However this is controversial, since significant numbers of heterosexual women have negative attitudes towards lesbianism, ranging from mild to extreme.

Related groups and movements

Feminism

Lesbians protesting for same-sex marriage.

Historically, lesbians have been involved in womens' rights. Late in the 19th Century the term Boston marriage was used to describe romantic unions between women living together while contributing to the suffrage movement. Continuing a tradition of inclusive acceptance, in 2004 Massachusetts became the first American state to legalize same-sex marriages .

During the 1970s and 80s, with the emergence of modern feminism and the radical feminism movement, lesbian separatism became popular and groups of lesbian women came together to live in communal societies. Some women found this kind of society liberating. Others, like Kathy Rudy in Radical Feminism, Lesbian Separatism, and Queer Theory, remarked that in her experience, stereotypes (along with the hierarchies to reinforce them) developed in the lesbian separatist collective she lived in, ultimately leading her to leave the group.

During the 1990s dozens of chapters of Lesbian Avengers were formed to press for lesbian visibility and rights.

Transgender and transsexual women

The relationship between lesbianism and transgender or transsexual women who identify as lesbian has been a turbulent one, with historically negative attitudes, but this seemed to be changing by the close of the twentieth century.

Some lesbian groups openly welcome transgender or transsexual women and may even welcome any member who identifies as lesbian, but a few groups still do not welcome transwomen.

Disputes in defining the term lesbian along with enforced exclusions from lesbian events and spaces have been numerous. Some who hold a non-inclusionist attitude often make reference to strong, typically second-wave feminist ideas such as those of Mary Daly, who has described post-operative transsexuals as constructed women. They may attribute transsexualism to mechanisms of patriarchy or do not recognize a transsexual's identification as female and lesbian. By defining lesbian through these views, they subsequently defend the non-inclusion of women with transsexual or transgender backgrounds.

Inclusionists claim these attitudes are inaccurate and derive from fear and distrust or that the motivations and attitudes of transgender or transsexual lesbians are not well understood, and so defend the inclusion of transwomen into lesbianism and lesbian spaces.

Both views are common. One incident due to this divisiveness arose during the early 1990s in Australia when the wider lesbian community raised money to purchase a building devoted to lesbian women along with a uniquely lesbian-only space called The Lesbian Space Project. After the organisation successfully bought the building, a debate over the inclusion of transwomen polarised the lesbian community, the building was later closed and the funds were moved to help support the Pride Centre, a lesbian and gay community centre in Sydney.

An example often cited among the transgender and transsexual communities is the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, a well-known and primarily lesbian event restricted to womyn-born womyn. Camp Trans, an organization oriented towards transwomen, was started as a result.

See also

External links

Media depictions

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