A lesbian is a woman who is romantically and sexually attracted only to other women. Women who are attracted to both women and men are more often referred to as bisexual. An individual's self-identification might not correspond with her behaviour, and may be expressed with either, both, or neither of these words.

Lesbian married couple demonstration march

History

The earliest known written references to same-sex love between women come from ancient Greece. Sappho (the eponym of "sapphism"), who lived on the island of Lesbos, wrote poems which apparently expressed her sexual attraction to other females but some ancient accounts also describe her as having had love affairs with men. Moreover, Maximus of Tyre wrote that Sappho's relationships with the girls in her school were platonic. Modern scholarship suggests a parallel between the ancient Greek constructs of love between men and boys and the friendships between Sappho and her students in which "both pedagogy and pederasty may have played a role." Lesbian relationships have also been cited in ancient Sparta. Plutarch, writing about the Lacedaemonians, reports that "love was so esteemed among them that girls also became the erotic objects of noble women." Accounts of lesbian relationships are also found in poetry and stories from ancient China, but are not documented with the detail given to male homosexuality. Research by anthropologist Liza Dalby, based mostly on erotic poems exchanged between women, has suggested lesbian relationships were commonplace and socially accepted in Japan during the Heian Period. During medieval times in Arabia there were reports of relations between harem residents, although these were sometimes suppressed. For example, Caliph Musa al-Hadi ordered the beheading of two girls who were surprised during lovemaking.

LINKS and REFERENCE

• http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&field-12668446=lesbian

• AskOxford.com http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/homosexual?view=uk

• http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1999/1999-05-01.html

• http://www.enotes.com/feminism-literature/hellman-lillian

• http://classiclit.about.com/od/bannedliteratur1/tp/aatp_bannedplay.htm

• http://www.playersring.org/2004_2005_Season/Children's_Hour.htm

• http://gayleft1970s.org/issues/gay.left_issue.05.pdf

• http://polish.imdb.com/title/tt0207072/alternateversions

• http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/boston_marriages.html

• Criticism of Lesbian Bed Death

• Australia backs lesbian IVF treatment - BBC News Online

• Lesbians protest IVF ban plan - BBC News Online

• Lesbian couples raise teenagers just as decent as heterosexuals

• The National Center for Lesbian Rights

• Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC)

• An article on World Pride 2006, to be held in Jerusalem, Israel

• World Pride 2006 Site

• Gay and Lesbian Widow Support Site

• All Things Lesbian

• Your Gay and Lesbian Community Center

• The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

• SHOE Leading Lesbian Online Community

• Upton United Reformed Gay Church

• Sayoni - An organisation for Asian Queer Women

Media depictions

• AfterEllen.Com Lesbian and Bisexual Women in Entertainment and the Media

• The Encyclopedia of Lesbian Movie Scenes Warning: contains explicit pornographic content

• It's February; Pucker Up, TV Actresses The New York Times

Magazines

• Curve Magazine

• On Our Backs

• Diva

SOME PROMINENT MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE:

Simon Hall

David Watkins

Katie Davis

Leon Benjamin Forde

Warren Blackwell

Darryl Gee

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