Aviva Directory » People & Daily Life » Lifestyles » LGBTQIA+ » Lesbian

Otherwise known as a gay woman, a lesbian is a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to other women.

The term may also be used as an adjective to associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction, regardless of sexual orientation.

The term has roots in the Greek island of Lesbos, home to the 6th-century BCE poet Sappho, who is said to have gathered a group of young women around her, and whose poetry focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love for girls. Before the mid-19th century, the term lesbian referred to anything associated with Lesbos, including a type of wine that was produced there.

The first literature to use the term without mentioning the island of Lesbos was a piece written by George Edward Bateman Saintsburty, an English critic and literary historian, in 1875, who refers to the "Lesbian studies" of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, in which is included a poem about "the passion of Delphine," about love between two women.

In 1890, the term was used in a medical dictionary as an adjective describing tribadism as "lesbian love."

Although the use of lesbian became prominent in medical literature, far less literature focused on female homosexual behavior than on male homosexuality, as medical professionals did not consider lesbianism to be a significant problem.

However, Henry Havelock Ellis, an English physician, eugenicist, and social reformer who studied human sexuality, approached same-sex attraction as a form of insanity, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a German psychiatrist who focused on human sexuality, believed that lesbianism was a neurological disease. Ellis suggested that same-sex attraction among women could be cured by marriage to a man and exposure to a "practical life."

Because women in Western cultures had long been political minorities, the added designation of homosexuality prompted the development of a subcultural identity among lesbians.

Citing greater sexual fluidity among homosexual women, as compared to homosexual men, some women who are attracted to other women reject the labels altogether. Many social scientists have lent credibility to this, finding that behavior and identity often don't match. Women may identify as heterosexual yet have sexual relations with other women, self-identified lesbians may have sex with men, or women may find that their sexual identity changes over time.

In reference to medical issues, lesbians are often referred to as "women who have sex with women, or abbreviated WSW.

Historically, women have not enjoyed the same freedom or independence as men to pursue homosexual relationships. At the same time, they have not generally met the same harsh treatment as gay men in some societies, where lesbian relationships were likely to be regarded as harmless. In contrast, homosexual relationships among men were harshly punished.

In summary, a lesbian is a woman who experiences romantic and sexual attraction exclusively to other women, forming a significant part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

 

 

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