The Term Lesbian and Who it Includes
An abriged history of lesbians in etymology and culture
BY DANIELLE CROOM
Ah, lesbians and linguistics – two of my favorite things! And the word “Lesbian” certainly has an interesting story behind it. It comes from the Isle of Lesbos, home to the ancient Greek poet, Sappho. Very little of her poetry survived through the ages, but many of the fragments that did depict her love of women. In a poem from 1866 titled “Sapphics”, Algernon Charles Swinburn describes a fantastical dream wherein Sappho meets Aphrodite and is surrounded by lovers who sing a song that makes the goddess cry. The poem also insinuates that Aphrodite and Apollo’s muses were so taken aback by both the song and the displays of love between Sappho and the women of Lesbos, that they fled the island, leaving it barren. In the text, “Lesbian” is capitalized and is meant to refer to the lovers who are from Lesbos, but these characters are only given the titles of “lovers” and “Lesbians,” so it is no surprise that the two would be conflated. Swinburn was not the only poet to write about Sappho, and he wasn’t even the first. Charles Baudelaire, in his poetry book “Fleurs du Mal,” which was published in 1857, wrote a poem titled “Lesbos”. The poem similarly describes Sappho and Venus (the Roman name of Aphrodite), and even talks of Sappho’s death: “De Sapho qui morut le jour de son blaspheme” (Of Sappho, who died the day of her blasphemy). In the same book, Baudelaire wrote the poems “Femmes Damnées,” focusing on two more women: Delphine and Hippolyta. This text tells the story of the two women who are clearly in love, but Hippolyta fears the consequences of their relationship and wrestles with the shame that comes from such taboo:
Avons-nous donc commis une action étrange? (have we committed a strange action?) Explique, si tu peux, mon trouble et mon effrois (Explain, if you will, my trouble and my dread)
Je frissonne de peur quand tu me dis “mon ange” (I shiver with fear when you call me “my angel”)
Et cependant je sens ma bouche aller vers toi (and yet I feel my mouth go to you)
The similar themes in these two poems were summed up as “lesbian studies” by critic George Saintsbury in 1875, thus comparing Sappho and her lovers of Lesbos to Delphine and Hippolyta, and giving the word Lesbian a new meaning.
Of course, these were written before any time when women could openly love one another, and lesbian was used as a diagnosis rather than an identity. How perfectly ironic that we lesbians get our title from men who, at best, pitied us, and, at worst, hated us. Lesbian did not appear as a term of identity until the 1920s in Berlin, a city which was more tolerant of homosexuality, though it was illegal. Still, a niche of lesbian culture and art was gradually developing.
In 1923, the play “God of Vengeance” by Sholem Asch was produced on Broadway; however, given the portrayal of lesbian characters in the play, it was almost immediately shut down, with the cast being arrested for obscenity. In 1928, London author Radclyffe Hall published “The Well of Loneliness,’ and it quickly became famous within the lesbian community and infamous outside of it. The novel was put on trial for obscenity, and all copies in the UK were ordered to be destroyed. The novel depicted a self identified “invert,” a term that was used at the time for women who opted to present themselves as masculine. Hall’s novel spread to America, and it was read by nearly every lesbian of the 20th century.
The next major hallmark of lesbian culture occurred in the 1950s, when lesbian cultural organizations began to form, the first of which being the Daughters of Bilitis. They started publishing “The Ladder,” a lesbian newsletter containing advice, poetry, social events, and ways to combat homophobic laws. The subscribers list was such sensitive information due to the danger of being outed that there were only ever two copies of the document. Thanks to these efforts and many more, ‘50s was seen as the height of butch and femme culture. For those that are unfamiliar, “butch” and “femme” are terms describing masculine and feminine lesbians, respectively. But these terms offered so much more than presentation—the language also articulates a specific relationship within the lesbian community. The solidarity between butches and femmes is an integral aspect of the identity, and they protect each other in whatever way they can. However, many second wave feminists of the ‘70s would denounce these identities, claiming them to be heteronormative and regressive. Those feminists failed to consider the inherent transgressiveness of lesbian masculinity, and how masculinity, defined on its own terms (and completely divested from men), can be a powerful thing. Second wave feminism also introduced the idea of political lesbianism, which was not authentic lesbianism, but rather an attempt to protest by withholding sex from men. With this also came lesbian separatism, a movement for women to be completely cut off from men in order to escape the patriarchy. However, this movement proved to be extremely harmful, as it completely ignored the intersectionality of gender and race, and had a fixation on biology that targeted trans women. Second wave feminism included these exclusionary issues as well, demonizing “masculinity” both in gender presentation and biological essentialism.
Given the ever-changing nature of the modern landscape of queer culture, a contemporary definition of lesbian has been developing out of necessity. What most people have agreed upon is that lesbianism is non-men loving other non-men, maintaining the fact that lesbians are not attracted to men, while allowing for the gender diversity of the community. However, there has been much discourse on the topic. It is my personal opinion that the change in definition of lesbian is not a change at all; it has always retained the same meaning, but now we have the language to further articulate its nuances. In the 1950s, the only definition of non-man was woman, and now, with the gender spectrum widely known and more accepted, our language has shifted to reflect that. There is also a precarious tendency to retroactively label people of the past in ways that they did not identify themselves. We must not, in our efforts to find people like us, forget the material conditions that formed the everyday lives of those that came before us. It’s also important to note that lesbian is a term that has developed solely out of the western world and Euro-American culture. While I am not fully informed on its usage in other cultures, it would be inappropriate to impose Euro-American ideas of gender and sexuality on those who may not have the same cultural norms. As a final disclaimer: I have absolutely no patience for transphobic people, especially transphobic lesbians. The lesbian community is made all-the-better because of the gender diversity; being in community with both transmasculine and transfeminine people is a prerequisite to my definition of lesbianism. Historically, lesbians have had the reputation of being hostile to trans women especially, and therefore it is our responsibility to reverse that reputation.
Words are a tool that will never fully capture intended meaning, and there is no exception with the word ‘lesbian’. “Lesbian” is so much more than a sexual orientation: it is the lens through which I view the world; it is a politicized identity; it is a celebration; it is immense gratitude for the people who forced the world to tolerate us; it is love, acceptance, joy, hardship, and community. Who is included in the term “lesbian”? Anyone who identifies with its meaning, and continues to push the boundaries of vocabulary.
Sources
https://fleursdumal.org/poem/179
http://www.lyriktheorie.uni-wuppertal.de/lyriktheorie/texte/1875_saintsbury1.html
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45302/sapphics-56d224c13e1d5
Cohen, Margaret; Dever, Carolyn, eds. (2001). "Chapter Ten: Comparative Sapphism, Sharon Marcus". The Literary Channel: The Inter-National Invention of the Novel (PDF). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 251–285.
Doan, Laura (2001). Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture, Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11007-3
Nestle, J. (1992). The Persistent desire : A femme-butch reader (1st ed.). Boston: Alyson Publications.
Vogel, P. (2017). Indecent. New York: Theatre Communications Group.