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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the structure. For the sport, see Fencing. For other uses, see Fence (disambiguation).
A wooden fence
During the Cold War, West German trains ran through East Germany. This 1977 view shows how East German authorities placed fences near the tracks to keep potential defectors at bay

A fence is a structure that encloses an area, typically outdoors, and is usually constructed from posts that are connected by boards, wire, rails or netting.[1] A fence differs from a wall in not having a solid foundation along its whole length.[2]

Alternatives to fencing include a ditch (sometimes filled with water, forming a moat).
Types
Typical agricultural barbed wire fencing
Split-rail fencing common in timber-rich areas
A chain-link wire fence surrounding a field
Portable metal fences around a construction site
A snow-covered vaccary fence near Ramsbottom in Greater Manchester, UK
Between fence and hedge: Acanthocereus tetragonus, laid out as a "living fence", rural area, Cuba
By function

Agricultural fencing, to keep livestock in and/or predators out
Blast fence, a safety device that redirects the high energy exhaust from a jet engine
Sound barrier or acoustic fencing, to reduce noise pollution[3]
Crowd control barrier
Privacy fencing, to provide privacy and security [4]
Temporary fencing, to provide safety, security, and to direct movement; wherever temporary access control is required, especially on building and construction sites
Perimeter fencing, to prevent trespassing or theft and/or to keep children and pets from wandering away.
Decorative fencing, to enhance the appearance of a property, garden or other landscaping
Boundary fencing, to demarcate a piece of real property
Newt fencing, amphibian fencing, drift fencing or turtle fence, a low fence of plastic sheeting or similar materials to restrict movement of amphibians or reptiles.
Pest-exclusion fence
Pet fence, an underground fence for pet containment
Pool fence
Snow fence
School fence

Security fence for schools in Korea

A balustrade or railing is a fence to prevent people from falling over an edge, most commonly found on a stairway, landing, or balcony. Railing systems and balustrades are also used along roofs, bridges, cliffs, pits, and bodies of water.
By construction
Brushwood fencing, a fence made using wires on either side of brushwood, to compact the brushwood material together.
Chain-link fencing, wire fencing made of wires woven together
Close boarded fencing, strong and robust fence constructed from mortised posts, arris rails and vertical feather edge boards
Expanding fence or trellis, a folding structure made from wood or metal on the scissor-like pantograph principle, sometimes only as a temporary barrier
Ha-ha (or sunken fence)
Hedge, including:

Cactus fence
Hedgerows of intertwined, living shrubs (constructed by hedge laying)
Live fencing is the use of live woody species for fences
Turf mounds in semiarid grasslands such as the western United States or Russian steppes

Hurdle fencing, made from moveable sections
Pale fence, or "post-and-rail" fence, composed of pales - vertical posts embedded in the ground, with their exposed end typically tapered to shed water and prevent rot from moisture entering end-grain wood - joined by horizontal rails, characteristically in two or three courses.
Palisade, or stakewall, made of vertical pales placed side by side with one end embedded in the ground and the other typically sharpened, to provide protection; characteristically two courses of waler are added on the interior side to reinforce the wall.
Picket fences, generally a waist-high, painted, partially decorative fence
Roundpole fences, similar to post-and-rail fencing but more closely spaced rails, typical of Scandinavia and other areas rich in raw timber.
Slate fencing in Mid-Wales
Slate fence, a type of palisade made of vertical slabs of slate wired together. Commonly used in parts of Wales.
Split-rail fence, made of timber, often laid in a zig-zag pattern, particularly in newly settled parts of the United States and Canada
Vaccary fence (named from Latin vaca - cow), for restraining cattle, made of thin slabs of stone placed upright, found in various places in the north of the UK where suitable stone is had.[5]
Vinyl fencing
Solid fences, including:

Dry-stone wall or rock fence, often agricultural
Stockade fence, a solid fence composed of contiguous or very closely spaced round or half-round posts, or stakes, typically pointed at the top. A scaled down version of a palisade wall made of logs, most commonly used for privacy.

Wattle fencing, of split branches woven between stakes.
Wire fences

Smooth wire fence
Barbed wire fence
Electric fence
Woven wire fencing, many designs, from fine chicken wire to heavy mesh "sheep fence" or "ring fence"
Welded wire mesh fence

Wood-panel fencing, whereby finished wood planks are arranged to make large solid panels, which are then suspended between posts, making an almost completely solid wall-like barrier. Usually as a decorative perimeter.
Wrought iron fencing, also known as ornamental iron

[nonexistentPumpkin]

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Lesbian (disambiguation).

Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene by Simeon Solomon, 1864
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Symbol representing lesbian made from two interlocked astronomical symbols for the planet Venus. In biology, the singular symbol represents the female sex.[1][2]
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl.[3][4][5] The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction.[4][6] The concept of "lesbian" to differentiate women with a shared sexual orientation evolved in the 20th century. Throughout history, women have not had the same freedom or independence as men to pursue homosexual relationships, but neither have they met the same harsh punishment as homosexual men in some societies. Instead, lesbian relationships have often been regarded as harmless, unless a participant attempts to assert privileges traditionally enjoyed by men. As a result, little in history was documented to give an accurate description of how female homosexuality was expressed. When early sexologists in the late 19th century began to categorize and describe homosexual behavior, hampered by a lack of knowledge about homosexuality or women's sexuality, they distinguished lesbians as women who did not adhere to female gender roles. They classified them as mentally ill—a designation which has been reversed since the late 20th century in the global scientific community.

Women in homosexual relationships in Europe and the United States responded to the discrimination and repression either by hiding their personal lives, or accepting the label of outcast and creating a subculture and identity. Following World War II, during a period of social repression when governments actively persecuted homosexuals, women developed networks to socialize with and educate each other. Gaining greater economic and social freedom allowed them to determine how they could form relationships and families. With second-wave feminism and the growth of scholarship in women's history and sexuality in the late 20th century, the definition of lesbian broadened, leading to debate about the term's use. While research by Lisa M. Diamond identified sexual desire as the core component for defining lesbians,[7][a] some women who engage in same-sex sexual activity may reject not only identifying as lesbians but as bisexual as well. Other women's self-identification as lesbian may not align with their sexual orientation or sexual behavior. Sexual identity is not necessarily the same as one's sexual orientation or sexual behavior, due to various reasons, such as the fear of identifying their sexual orientation in a homophobic setting.

Portrayals of lesbians in the media suggest that society at large has been simultaneously intrigued and threatened by women who challenge feminine gender roles, as well as fascinated and appalled with women who are romantically involved with other women. Women who adopt a lesbian identity share experiences that form an outlook similar to an ethnic identity: as homosexuals, they are unified by the heterosexist discrimination and potential rejection they face from their families, friends, and others as a result of homophobia. As women, they face concerns separate from men. Lesbians may encounter distinct physical or mental health concerns arising from discrimination, prejudice, and minority stress. Political conditions and social attitudes also affect the formation of lesbian relationships and families in the open.

Etymology
Painting of a woman dressed in Greek robes sitting on a marble bench with trees and water in the distance.
Sappho of Lesbos, depicted here in a 1904 painting by John William Godward, gave the term lesbian the connotation of erotic desire between women.
The word "lesbian" is the demonym of the Greek island of Lesbos, home to the 6th-century BCE poet Sappho.[3] From various ancient writings, historians gathered that a group of young women were left in Sappho's charge for their instruction or cultural edification.[8] Little of Sappho's poetry survives, but her remaining poetry reflects the topics she wrote about: women's daily lives, their relationships, and rituals. She focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love for girls.[9] Before the mid-19th century,[10] the word lesbian referred to any derivative or aspect of Lesbos, including a type of wine.

In Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1866 poem "Sapphics", the term lesbian appears twice but capitalized both times after twice mentioning the island of Lesbos, and so could be construed to mean 'from the island of Lesbos'.[12] In 1875, George Saintsbury, in writing about Baudelaire's poetry, refers to his "Lesbian studies" in which he includes his poem about "the passion of Delphine" which is a poem simply about love between two women which does not mention the island of Lesbos, though the other poem alluded to, entitled "Lesbos", does.[13] Use of the word lesbianism to describe erotic relationships between women had been documented in 1870.[14] In 1890, the term lesbian was used in a medical dictionary as an adjective to describe tribadism (as "lesbian love"). The terms lesbian, invert and homosexual were interchangeable with sapphist and sapphism around the turn of the 20th century.[14] The use of lesbian in medical literature became prominent; by 1925, the word was recorded as a noun to mean the female equivalent of a sodomite.[14][15]

The development of medical knowledge was a significant factor in further connotations of the term lesbian. In the middle of the 19th century, medical writers attempted to establish ways to identify male homosexuality, which was considered a significant social problem in most Western societies. In categorizing behavior that indicated what was referred to as "inversion" by German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, researchers categorized what was normal sexual behavior for men and women, and therefore to what extent men and women varied from the "perfect male sexual type" and the "perfect female sexual type".[16]

Far less literature focused on female homosexual behavior than on male homosexuality, as medical professionals did not consider it a significant problem. In some cases, it was not acknowledged to exist. Sexologists Richard von Krafft-Ebing from Germany and Britain's Havelock Ellis wrote some of the earliest and more enduring categorizations of female same-sex attraction, approaching it as a form of insanity (Ellis' categorization of "lesbianism" as a medical problem is now discredited).[17] Krafft-Ebing, who considered lesbianism a neurological disease, and Ellis, who was influenced by Krafft-Ebing's writings, disagreed about whether sexual inversion was generally a lifelong condition. Ellis believed that many women who professed love for other women changed their feelings about such relationships after they had experienced marriage and a "practical life".[18]

Ellis conceded that there were "true inverts" who would spend their lives pursuing erotic relationships with women. These were members of the "third sex" who rejected the roles of women to be subservient, feminine, and domestic.[19] Invert described the opposite gender roles, and also the related attraction to women instead of men; since women in the Victorian period were considered unable to initiate sexual encounters, women who did so with other women were thought of as possessing masculine sexual desires.[20]

The work of Krafft-Ebing and Ellis was widely read, and helped to create public consciousness of female homosexuality.[c] The sexologists' claims that homosexuality was a congenital anomaly were generally well-accepted by homosexual men; it indicated that their behavior was not inspired by nor should be considered a criminal vice, as was widely acknowledged. In the absence of any other material to describe their emotions, homosexuals accepted the designation of different or perverted, and used their outlaw status to form social circles in Paris and Berlin. Lesbian began to describe elements of a subculture.[23]

Lesbians in Western cultures in particular often classify themselves as having an identity that defines their individual sexuality, as well as their membership to a group that shares common traits.[24] Women in many cultures throughout history have had sexual relations with other women, but they rarely were designated as part of a group of people based on whom they had physical relations with. As women have generally been political minorities in Western cultures, the added medical designation of homosexuality has been cause for the development of a subcultural identity.[25]

Sexuality and identity

Lesbian feminist flag consisting of a labrys (a double-bladed axe) within the inverted black triangle, set against a violet-hue background. The labrys represents lesbian strength.[26]

Lesbian flag derived from the colors of the Lipstick lesbian flag design.[27][28]

Lesbian community flag introduced in social media in 2018, with the dark orange stripe representing gender variance.[29][30]
The notion that sexual activity between women is necessary to define a lesbian or lesbian relationship continues to be debated. According to feminist writer Naomi McCormick, women's sexuality is constructed by men, whose primary indicator of lesbian sexual orientation is sexual experience with other women. The same indicator is not necessary to identify a woman as heterosexual. McCormick states that emotional, mental, and ideological connections between women are as important or more so than the genital.[31] Nonetheless, in the 1980s, a significant movement rejected the desexualization of lesbianism by cultural feminists, causing a heated controversy called the feminist sex wars.[32] Butch and femme roles returned, although not as strictly followed as they were in the 1950s. They became a mode of chosen sexual self-expression for some women in the 1990s. Once again, women felt safer claiming to be more sexually adventurous, and sexual flexibility became more accepted.[33]

The focus of the debate often centers on a phenomenon named by sexologist Pepper Schwartz in 1983. Schwartz found that long-term lesbian couples report having less sexual contact than heterosexual or homosexual male couples, calling this lesbian bed death. Some lesbians dispute the study's definition of sexual contact, and introduced other factors such as deeper connections existing between women that make frequent sexual relations redundant, greater sexual fluidity in women causing them to move from heterosexual to bisexual to lesbian numerous times through their lives—or reject the labels entirely. Further arguments attested that the study was flawed and misrepresented accurate sexual contact between women, or sexual contact between women has increased since 1983 as many lesbians find themselves freer to sexually express themselves.[34]

More discussion on gender and sexual orientation identity has affected how many women label or view themselves. Most people in western culture are taught that heterosexuality is an innate quality in all people. When a woman realizes her romantic and sexual attraction to another woman, it may cause an "existential crisis"; many who go through this adopt the identity of a lesbian, challenging what society has offered in stereotypes about homosexuals, to learn how to function within a homosexual subculture.[35] Lesbians in western cultures generally share an identity that parallels those built on ethnicity; they have a shared history and subculture, and similar experiences with discrimination which has caused many lesbians to reject heterosexual principles. This identity is unique from gay men and heterosexual women, and often creates tension with bisexual women.[24] One point of contention are lesbians who have had sex with men, while lesbians who have never had sex with men may be referred to as "gold star lesbians". Those who have had sex with men may face ridicule from other lesbians or identity challenges with regard to defining what it means to be a lesbian.[36]

Researchers, including social scientists, state that often behavior and identity do not match: women may label themselves heterosexual but have sexual relations with women, self-identified lesbians may have sex with men, or women may find that what they considered an immutable sexual identity has changed over time.[6][37] Research by Lisa M. Diamond et al. reported that "lesbian and fluid women were more exclusive than bisexual women in their sexual behaviors" and that "lesbian women appeared to lean toward exclusively same-sex attractions and behaviors." It reported that lesbians "appeared to demonstrate a 'core' lesbian orientation."[7]

A 2001 article on differentiating lesbians for medical studies and health research suggested identifying lesbians using the three characteristics of identity only, sexual behavior only, or both combined. The article declined to include desire or attraction as it rarely has bearing on measurable health or psychosocial issues.[38] Researchers state that there is no standard definition of lesbian because "[t]he term has been used to describe women who have sex with women, either exclusively or in addition to sex with men (i.e., behavior); women who self-identify as lesbian (i.e., identity); and women whose sexual preference is for women (i.e., desire or attraction)" and that "[t]he lack of a standard definition of lesbian and of standard questions to assess who is lesbian has made it difficult to clearly define a population of lesbian women". How and where study samples were obtained can also affect the definition.[6]

Female homosexuality without identity in western culture
Further information: History of lesbianism
The varied meanings of lesbian since the early 20th century have prompted some historians to revisit historic relationships between women before the wide usage of the word was defined by erotic proclivities. Discussion from historians caused further questioning of what qualifies as a lesbian relationship. As lesbian-feminists asserted, a sexual component was unnecessary in declaring oneself a lesbian if the primary and closest relationships were with women. When considering past relationships within appropriate historic context, there were times when love and sex were separate and unrelated notions.[39] In 1989, an academic cohort named the Lesbian History Group wrote:

Because of society's reluctance to admit that lesbians exist, a high degree of certainty is expected before historians or biographers are allowed to use the label. Evidence that would suffice in any other situation is inadequate here... A woman who never married, who lived with another woman, whose friends were mostly women, or who moved in known lesbian or mixed gay circles, may well have been a lesbian. ... But this sort of evidence is not 'proof'. What our critics want is incontrovertible evidence of sexual activity between women. This is almost impossible to find.[40]

Female sexuality is often not adequately represented in texts and documents. Until very recently, much of what has been documented about women's sexuality has been written by men, in the context of male understanding, and relevant to women's associations to men—as their wives, daughters, or mothers, for example.[41] Often artistic representations of female sexuality suggest trends or ideas on broad scales, giving historians clues as to how widespread or accepted erotic relationships between women were.

Ancient Greece and Rome
Further information: Homosexuality in ancient Greece and Homosexuality in ancient Rome

The Victory of Faith by Saint George Hare has been described by Kobena Mercer as depicting an interracial lesbian couple, likening it to Les Amis by Jules Robert Auguste.[42]
Women in ancient Greece were sequestered with one another, and men were segregated likewise. In this homosocial environment, erotic and sexual relationships between males were common and recorded in literature, art, and philosophy. Very little was recorded about homosexual activity between Greek women. There is some speculation that similar relationships existed between women and girls — the poet Alcman used the term aitis, as the feminine form of aites — which was the official term for the younger participant in a pederastic relationship.[43] Aristophanes, in Plato's Symposium, mentions women who are romantically attracted to other women, but uses the term trepesthai (to be focused on) instead of eros, which was applied to other erotic relationships between men, and between men and women.[44]

Historian Nancy Rabinowitz argues that ancient Greek red vase images which portray women with their arms around another woman's waist, or leaning on a woman's shoulders can be construed as expressions of romantic desire.[45] Much of the daily lives of women in ancient Greece is unknown, in particular their expressions of sexuality. Although men participated in pederastic relationships outside marriage, there is no clear evidence that women were allowed or encouraged to have same-sex relationships before or during marriage as long as their marital obligations were met. Women who appear on Greek pottery are depicted with affection, and in instances where women appear only with other women, their images are eroticized: bathing, touching one another, with dildos placed in and around such scenes, and sometimes with imagery also seen in depictions of heterosexual marriage or pederastic seduction. Whether this eroticism is for the viewer or an accurate representation of life is unknown.[43][46] Rabinowitz writes that the lack of interest from 19th-century historians who specialized in Greek studies regarding the daily lives and sexual inclinations of women in Greece was due to their social priorities. She postulates that this lack of interest led the field to become over male-centric, and was partially responsible for the limited information available on female topics in ancient Greece.[47]

Women in ancient Rome were similarly subject to men's definitions of sexuality. Modern scholarship indicates that men viewed female homosexuality with hostility. They considered women who engaged in sexual relations with other women to be biological oddities that would attempt to penetrate women—and sometimes men—with "monstrously enlarged" clitorises.[48] According to scholar James Butrica, lesbianism "challenged not only the Roman male's view of himself as the exclusive giver of sexual pleasure but also the most basic foundations of Rome's male-dominated culture". No historical documentation exists of women who had other women as sex partners.[49]

Early modern Europe
A front and back illustration of a Renaissance-era hermaphrodite showing a person with female facial features, breasts, and what appears to be a small penis or large clitoris. She wears a small hood and open robe tied multiple times around the legs. Where it opens in the front, the apparent rear appearance shows it to be perhaps a shell of some kind, as one with her body. Two squares are missing from her the back of her head and torso. She has no buttocks.
Lesbianism and hermaphroditism, depicted here in an engraving c. 1690, were very similar concepts during the Renaissance.
Female homosexuality did not receive the same negative response from religious or criminal authorities as male homosexuality or adultery did throughout history. Whereas sodomy between men, men and women, and men and animals was punishable by death in England, acknowledgment of sexual contact between women was nonexistent in medical and legal texts. The earliest law against female homosexuality appeared in France in 1270.[50] In Spain, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, sodomy between women was included in acts considered unnatural and punishable by burning to death, although few instances are recorded of this taking place.[51]

The earliest such execution occurred in Speier, Germany, in 1477. Forty days' penance was demanded of nuns who "rode" each other or were discovered to have touched each other's breasts. An Italian nun named Sister Benedetta Carlini was documented to have seduced many of her sisters when possessed by a Divine spirit named "Splenditello"; to end her relationships with other women, she was placed in solitary confinement for the last 40 years of her life.[52] Female homoeroticism was so common in English literature and theater that historians suggest it was fashionable for a period during the Renaissance.[53] Englishwoman Mary Frith has been described as lesbian in academic study.[54]

Ideas about women's sexuality were linked to contemporary understanding of female physiology. The vagina was considered an inward version of the penis; where nature's perfection created a man, often nature was thought to be trying to right itself by prolapsing the vagina to form a penis in some women.[55] These sex changes were later thought to be cases of hermaphrodites, and hermaphroditism became synonymous with female same-sex desire. Medical consideration of hermaphroditism depended upon measurements of the clitoris; a longer, engorged clitoris was thought to be used by women to penetrate other women. Penetration was the focus of concern in all sexual acts, and a woman who was thought to have uncontrollable desires because of her engorged clitoris was called a "tribade" (literally, one who rubs).[56] Not only was an abnormally engorged clitoris thought to create lusts in some women that led them to masturbate, but pamphlets warning women about masturbation leading to such oversized organs were written as cautionary tales. For a while, masturbation and lesbian sex carried the same meaning.[57]

Class distinction became linked as the fashion of female homoeroticism passed. Tribades were simultaneously considered members of the lower class trying to ruin virtuous women, and representatives of an aristocracy corrupt with debauchery. Satirical writers began to suggest that political rivals (or more often, their wives) engaged in tribadism in order to harm their reputations. Queen Anne was rumored to have a passionate relationship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, her closest adviser and confidante. When Churchill was ousted as the queen's favorite, she purportedly spread allegations of the queen having affairs with her bedchamberwomen.[58] Marie Antoinette was also the subject of such speculation for some months between 1795 and 1796.[59]

Female husbands
Painting of a Renaissance-era woman dressed as a man, standing and looking away, as a woman dressed as a woman holds the other's hand to her breast, looking imploringly at the other, set against a bucolic backdrop.
Gender masquerade as a dramatic device was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as this scene of Viola and Olivia from Twelfth Night by Frederick Pickersgill (1859).
Hermaphroditism appeared in medical literature enough to be considered common knowledge, although cases were rare. Homoerotic elements in literature were pervasive, specifically the masquerade of one gender for another to fool an unsuspecting woman into being seduced. Such plot devices were used in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1601), The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser in 1590, and James Shirley's The Bird in a Cage (1633).[60] Cases during the Renaissance of women taking on male personae and going undetected for years or decades have been recorded, though whether these cases would be described as transvestism by homosexual women,[61][62] or in contemporary sociology characterised as transgender, is debated and depends on the individual details of each case.

If discovered, punishments ranged from death, to time in the pillory, to being ordered never to dress as a man again. Henry Fielding wrote a pamphlet titled The Female Husband in 1746, based on the life of Mary Hamilton, who was arrested after marrying a woman while masquerading as a man, and was sentenced to public whipping and six months in jail. Similar examples were procured of Catharine Linck in Prussia in 1717, executed in 1721; Swiss Anne Grandjean married and relocated with her wife to Lyons, but was exposed by a woman with whom she had had a previous affair and sentenced to time in the stocks and prison.[63]

Queen Christina of Sweden's tendency to dress as a man was well known during her time, and excused because of her noble birth. She was brought up as a male and there was speculation at the time that she was a hermaphrodite. Even after Christina abdicated the throne in 1654 to avoid marriage, she was known to pursue romantic relationships with women.[64]

Some historians view cases of cross-dressing women to be manifestations of women seizing power they would naturally be unable to enjoy in feminine attire, or their way of making sense out of their desire for women. Lillian Faderman argues that Western society was threatened by women who rejected their feminine roles. Catharine Linck and other women who were accused of using dildos, such as two nuns in 16th century Spain executed for using "material instruments", were punished more severely than those who did not.[65][63] Two marriages between women were recorded in Cheshire, England, in 1707 (between Hannah Wright and Anne Gaskill) and 1708 (between Ane Norton and Alice Pickford) with no comment about both parties being female.[66][67] Reports of clergymen with lax standards who performed weddings—and wrote their suspicions about one member of the wedding party—continued to appear for the next century.

Outside Europe, women were able to dress as men and go undetected. Deborah Sampson fought in the American Revolution under the name Robert Shurtlieff, and pursued relationships with women.[68] Edward De Lacy Evans was born female in Ireland, but took a male name during the voyage to Australia and lived as a man for 23 years in Victoria, marrying three times.[69] Percy Redwood created a scandal in New Zealand in 1909 when she was found to be Amy Bock, who had married a woman from Port Molyneaux; newspapers argued whether it was a sign of insanity or an inherent character flaw.[70]

Re-examining romantic friendships
Black and white photo of two women sitting in a hammock in turn of the 20th century dresses; one reclines and the other sits on her lap and wraps her arm around the other, both staring at each other.
Intimacy between women was fashionable between the 17th and 19th centuries, although sexuality was rarely publicly acknowledged. (Photograph c. 1900.)
During the 17th through 19th centuries, a woman expressing passionate love for another woman was fashionable, accepted, and encouraged.[67] These relationships were termed romantic friendships, Boston marriages, or "sentimental friends", and were common in the U.S., Europe, and especially in England. Documentation of these relationships is possible by a large volume of letters written between women. Whether the relationship included any genital component was not a matter for public discourse, but women could form strong and exclusive bonds with each other and still be considered virtuous, innocent, and chaste; a similar relationship with a man would have destroyed a woman's reputation. In fact, these relationships were promoted as alternatives to and practice for a woman's marriage to a man.[71][d]

One such relationship was between Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to Anne Wortley in 1709: "Nobody was so entirely, so faithfully yours ... I put in your lovers, for I don't allow it possible for a man to be so sincere as I am."[73] Similarly, English poet Anna Seward had a devoted friendship to Honora Sneyd, who was the subject of many of Seward's sonnets and poems. When Sneyd married despite Seward's protest, Seward's poems became angry. Seward continued to write about Sneyd long after her death, extolling Sneyd's beauty and their affection and friendship.[74] As a young woman, writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft was attached to a woman named Fanny Blood. Writing to another woman by whom she had recently felt betrayed, Wollstonecraft declared, "The roses will bloom when there's peace in the breast, and the prospect of living with my Fanny gladdens my heart:—You know not how I love her."[75][e]

An engraved drawing of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, known as the "Ladies of Llangollen". They are shown sitting in a private library wearing smoking jackets, with a cat in the foreground sitting in a chair.
The Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby.
The two women had a relationship that was hailed as devoted and virtuous, after eloping and living 51 years together in Wales.
Perhaps the most famous of these romantic friendships was between Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, nicknamed the Ladies of Llangollen. Butler and Ponsonby eloped in 1778, to the relief of Ponsonby's family (concerned about their reputation had she run away with a man)[77] to live together in Wales for 51 years and be thought of as eccentrics.[78] Their story was considered "the epitome of virtuous romantic friendship" and inspired poetry by Anna Seward and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[79] Diarist Anne Lister, captivated by Butler and Ponsonby, recorded her affairs with women between 1817 and 1840. Some of it was written in code, detailing her sexual relationships with Marianna Belcombe and Maria Barlow.[80] Both Lister and Eleanor Butler were considered masculine by contemporary news reports, and though there were suspicions that these relationships were sapphist in nature, they were nonetheless praised in literature.[72][81]

Romantic friendships were also popular in the U.S. Enigmatic poet Emily Dickinson wrote over 300 letters and poems to Susan Gilbert, who later became her sister-in-law, and engaged in another romantic correspondence with Kate Scott Anthon. Anthon broke off their relationship the same month Dickinson entered self-imposed lifelong seclusion.[82] Nearby in Hartford, Connecticut, African American freeborn women Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus left evidence of their passion in letters: "No kisses is like youres".[83] In Georgia, Alice Baldy wrote to Josie Varner in 1870, "Do you know that if you touch me, or speak to me there is not a nerve of fibre in my body that does not respond with a thrill of delight?"[84]

Around the turn of the 20th century, the development of higher education provided opportunities for women. In all-female surroundings, a culture of romantic pursuit was fostered in women's colleges. Older students mentored younger ones, called on them socially, took them to all-women dances, and sent them flowers, cards, and poems that declared their undying love for each other.[85] These were called "smashes" or "spoons", and they were written about quite frankly in stories for girls aspiring to attend college in publications such as Ladies Home Journal, a children's magazine titled St. Nicholas, and a collection called Smith College Stories, without negative views.[86] Enduring loyalty, devotion, and love were major components to these stories, and sexual acts beyond kissing were consistently absent.[85]

Women who had the option of a career instead of marriage labeled themselves New Women, and took their new opportunities very seriously.[f] Faderman calls this period "the last breath of innocence" before 1920 when characterizations of female affection were connected to sexuality, marking lesbians as a unique and often unflatteringly-portrayed group.[85] Specifically, Faderman connects the growth of women's independence and their beginning to reject strictly prescribed roles in the Victorian era to the scientific designation of lesbianism as a type of aberrant sexual behavior.[87]

Identity and gender role in western culture
Construction
Reproduction of a German magazine cover with the title "Die Freundin" showing a nude woman sitting on a horse, looking behind her.
Berlin's thriving lesbian community in the 1920s published Die Freundin magazine between 1924 and 1933.
For some women, the realization that they participated in behavior or relationships that could be categorized as lesbian caused them to deny or conceal it, such as professor Jeannette Augustus Marks at Mount Holyoke College, who lived with the college president, Mary Woolley, for 36 years. Marks discouraged young women from "abnormal" friendships and insisted happiness could only be attained with a man.[25][g] Other women embraced the distinction and used their uniqueness to set themselves apart from heterosexual women and gay men.[89]

From the 1890s to the 1930s, American heiress Natalie Clifford Barney held a weekly salon in Paris to which major artistic celebrities were invited and where lesbian topics were the focus. Combining Greek influences with contemporary French eroticism, she attempted to create an updated and idealized version of Lesbos in her salon.[90] Her contemporaries included artist Romaine Brooks, who painted others in her circle; writers Colette, Djuna Barnes, social host Gertrude Stein, and novelist Radclyffe Hall.

Berlin had a vibrant homosexual culture in the 1920s, and about 50 clubs catered to lesbians. Die Freundin (The Girlfriend) magazine, published between 1924 and 1933, targeted lesbians. Garçonne (aka Frauenliebe (Woman Love)) was aimed at lesbians and male transvestites.[91] These publications were controlled by men as owners, publishers, and writers. Around 1926, Selli Engler founded Die BIF – Blätter Idealer Frauenfreundschaften (The BIF – Papers on Ideal Women Friendships), the first lesbian publication owned, published and written by women. In 1928, the lesbian bar and nightclub guide Berlins lesbische Frauen (The Lesbians of Berlin) by Ruth Margarite Röllig[92] further popularized the German capital as a center of lesbian activity. Clubs varied between large establishments that became tourist attractions, to small neighborhood cafes where local women went to meet other women. The cabaret song "Das lila Lied" ("The Lavender Song") became an anthem to the lesbians of Berlin. Although it was sometimes tolerated, homosexuality was illegal in Germany and law enforcement used permitted gatherings as an opportunity to register the names of homosexuals for future reference.[93] Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which promoted tolerance for homosexuals in Germany, welcomed lesbian participation, and a surge of lesbian-themed writing and political activism in the German feminist movement became evident.[94]

Reproduction of a London newspaper, headline reading "A Book That Must Be Suppressed" and Radclyffe Hall's portrait: a woman wearing a suit jacket and bow tie with a black matching skirt. Her hair is slicked back, she wears no make-up, in one hand is a cigarette and her other hand is in her skirt pocket.
Radclyffe Hall's image appeared in many newspapers discussing the content of The Well of Loneliness.
In 1928, Radclyffe Hall published a novel titled The Well of Loneliness. The novel's plot centers around Stephen Gordon, a woman who identifies herself as an invert after reading Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, and lives within the homosexual subculture of Paris. The novel included a foreword by Havelock Ellis and was intended to be a call for tolerance for inverts by publicizing their disadvantages and accidents of being born inverted.[95] Hall subscribed to Ellis and Krafft-Ebing's theories and rejected Freud's theory that same-sex attraction was caused by childhood trauma and was curable. The publicity Hall received was due to unintended consequences; the novel was tried for obscenity in London, a spectacularly scandalous event described as "the crystallizing moment in the construction of a visible modern English lesbian subculture" by professor Laura Doan.[96]

Newspaper stories frankly divulged that the book's content includes "sexual relations between Lesbian women", and photographs of Hall often accompanied details about lesbians in most major print outlets within a span of six months.[97] Hall reflected the appearance of a "mannish" woman in the 1920s: short cropped hair, tailored suits (often with pants), and monocle that became widely recognized as a "uniform". When British women supported the war effort during the First World War, they became familiar with masculine clothing, and were considered patriotic for wearing uniforms and pants. Postwar masculinization of women's clothing became associated primarily with lesbianism.[98]

A publicity photo of a stout African American woman in white tuxedo with tails and top hat, carrying a cane and her signature in the lower right corner.
Harlem resident Gladys Bentley was renowned for her blues songs about her affairs with women.
In the United States, the 1920s was a decade of social experimentation, particularly with sex. This was heavily influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, who theorized that sexual desire would be sated unconsciously, despite an individual's wish to ignore it. Freud's theories were much more pervasive in the U.S. than in Europe. With the well-publicized notion that sexual acts were a part of lesbianism and their relationships, sexual experimentation was widespread. Large cities that provided a nightlife were immensely popular, and women began to seek out sexual adventure. Bisexuality became chic, particularly in America's first gay neighborhoods.[99]

No location saw more visitors for its possibilities of homosexual nightlife than Harlem, the predominantly African American section of New York City. White "slummers" enjoyed jazz, nightclubs, and anything else they wished. Blues singers Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Gladys Bentley sang about affairs with women to visitors such as Tallulah Bankhead, Beatrice Lillie, and the soon-to-be-named Joan Crawford.[100][101] Homosexuals began to draw comparisons between their newly recognized minority status and that of African Americans.[102] Among African American residents of Harlem, lesbian relationships were common and tolerated, though not overtly embraced. Some women staged lavish wedding ceremonies, even filing licenses using masculine names with New York City.[103] Most homosexual women were married to men and participated in affairs with women regularly.[104]

Across town, Greenwich Village also saw a growing homosexual community; both Harlem and Greenwich Village provided furnished rooms for single men and women, which was a major factor in their development as centers for homosexual communities.[105] The tenor was different in Greenwich Village than Harlem. Bohemians—intellectuals who rejected Victorian ideals—gathered in the Village. Homosexuals were predominantly male, although figures such as poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and social host Mabel Dodge were known for their affairs with women and promotion of tolerance of homosexuality.[106] Women in the U.S. who could not visit Harlem or live in Greenwich Village for the first time were able to visit saloons in the 1920s without being considered prostitutes. The existence of a public space for women to socialize in bars that were known to cater to lesbians "became the single most important public manifestation of the subculture for many decades", according to historian Lillian Faderman.[107]

Great Depression
The primary component necessary to encourage lesbians to be public and seek other women was economic independence, which virtually disappeared in the 1930s with the Great Depression. Most women in the U.S. found it necessary to marry, to a "front" such as a gay man where both could pursue homosexual relationships with public discretion, or to a man who expected a traditional wife. Independent women in the 1930s were generally seen as holding jobs that men should have.[108]

The social attitude made very small and close-knit communities in large cities that centered around bars, while simultaneously isolating women in other locales. Speaking of homosexuality in any context was socially forbidden, and women rarely discussed lesbianism even amongst themselves; they referred to openly gay people as "in the Life".[109][h] Freudian psychoanalytic theory was pervasive in influencing doctors to consider homosexuality as a neurosis afflicting immature women. Homosexual subculture disappeared in Germany with the rise of the Nazis in 1933.[111]

World War II
Two women assembling a section of a wing for a WWII fighter plane.
Women's experiences in the work force and the military during World War II gave them economic and social options that helped to shape lesbian subculture.
An upside down black triangle.
Women who did not conform to the Nazi ideal of a woman were considered asocial, imprisoned, and identified with a black triangle. Lesbians were deemed asocial.
An upside down pink triangle.
Many lesbians reclaimed the symbolism of the pink triangle, though the Nazis only applied it to gay men.
The onset of World War II caused a massive upheaval in people's lives as military mobilization engaged millions of men. Women were also accepted into the military in the U.S. Women's Army Corps (WACs) and U.S. Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). Unlike processes to screen out male homosexuals, which had been in place since the creation of the American military, there were no methods to identify or screen for lesbians; they were put into place gradually during World War II. Despite common attitudes regarding women's traditional roles in the 1930s, independent and masculine women were directly recruited by the military in the 1940s, and frailty discouraged.[112]

Some women arrived at the recruiting station in a man's suit, denied ever being in love with another woman, and were easily inducted.[112] Sexual activity was forbidden and blue discharge was almost certain if one identified oneself as a lesbian. As women found each other, they formed into tight groups on base, socialized at service clubs, and began to use code words. Historian Allan Bérubé documented that homosexuals in the armed forces either consciously or subconsciously refused to identify themselves as homosexual or lesbian, and also never spoke about others' orientation.[113]

The most masculine women were not necessarily common, though they were visible so they tended to attract women interested in finding other lesbians. Women had to broach the subject about their interest in other women carefully, sometimes taking days to develop a common understanding without asking or stating anything outright.[114] Women who did not enter the military were aggressively called upon to take industrial jobs left by men, in order to continue national productivity. The increased mobility, sophistication, and independence of many women during and after the war made it possible for women to live without husbands, something that would not have been feasible under different economic and social circumstances, further shaping lesbian networks and environments.[115]

Lesbians were not included under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which made homosexual acts between males a crime. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) stipulates that this is because women were seen as subordinate to men, and the Nazi state feared lesbians less than gay men. Many lesbians were arrested and imprisoned for "asocial" behaviour, a label which was applied to women who did not conform to the ideal Nazi image of a woman (cooking, cleaning, kitchen work, child raising, and passivity). These women were identified with an inverted black triangle.[117] Although lesbianism was not specifically criminalized by Paragraph 175, some lesbians reclaimed the black triangle symbol as gay men reclaimed the pink triangle, and many lesbians also reclaimed the pink triangle.[116]

Postwar
A drawn illustrated magazine cover of a woman in half shadow with short, wavy hair holding a harlequin mask under the title "The Ladder" and the date "October 1957" underneath it.
The 1957 first edition of The Ladder, mailed to hundreds of women in the San Francisco area, urged women to take off their masks.
Following World War II, a nationwide movement pressed to return to pre-war society as quickly as possible in the U.S.[118] When combined with the increasing national paranoia about communism and psychoanalytic theory that had become pervasive in medical knowledge, homosexuality became an undesired characteristic of employees working for the U.S. government in 1950. Homosexuals were thought to be vulnerable targets to blackmail, and the government purged its employment ranks of open homosexuals, beginning a widespread effort to gather intelligence about employees' private lives.[119] State and local governments followed suit, arresting people for congregating in bars and parks, and enacting laws against cross-dressing for men and women.[120]

The U.S. military and government conducted many interrogations, asking if women had ever had sexual relations with another woman and essentially equating even a one-time experience to a criminal identity, thereby severely delineating heterosexuals from homosexuals.[121] In 1952, homosexuality was listed as a pathological emotional disturbance in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.[122] The view that homosexuality was a curable sickness was widely believed in the medical community, general population, and among many lesbians themselves.[123]

Attitudes and practices to ferret out homosexuals in public service positions extended to Australia[124] and Canada.[125] A section to create an offence of "gross indecency" between females was added to a bill in the United Kingdom House of Commons and passed there in 1921, but was rejected in the House of Lords, apparently because they were concerned any attention paid to sexual misconduct would also promote it.[126]

Underground socializing
Very little information was available about homosexuality beyond medical and psychiatric texts. Community meeting places consisted of bars that were commonly raided by police once a month on average, with those arrested exposed in newspapers. In response, eight women in San Francisco met in their living rooms in 1955 to socialize and have a safe place to dance. When they decided to make it a regular meeting, they became the first organization for lesbians in the U.S., titled the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). The DOB began publishing a magazine titled The Ladder in 1956. Inside the front cover of every issue was their mission statement, the first of which stated was "Education of the variant". It was intended to provide women with knowledge about homosexuality—specifically relating to women and famous lesbians in history. By 1956, the term "lesbian" had such a negative meaning that the DOB refused to use it as a descriptor, choosing "variant" instead.[127]

The DOB spread to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and The Ladder was mailed to hundreds—eventually thousands—of DOB members discussing the nature of homosexuality, sometimes challenging the idea that it was a sickness, with readers offering their own reasons why they were lesbians and suggesting ways to cope with the condition or society's response to it.[123] British lesbians followed with the publication of Arena Three beginning in 1964, with a similar mission.[128]

A brightly painted book cover with the title "The Third Sex", with a sultry blonde wearing a red outfit showing cleavage and midriff seated on a sofa, while a redhead with short hair places her hand on the blonde's shoulder and leans over her, also displaying cleavage wearing a white blouse with rolled-up sleeves.
Though marketed to heterosexual men, lesbian pulp fiction provided an identity to isolated women in the 1950s.
Butch and femme dichotomy
Further information: Butch and femme
As a reflection of categories of sexuality so sharply defined by the government and society at large, early lesbian subculture developed rigid gender roles between women, particularly among the working class in the U.S. and Canada. For working class lesbians who wanted to live as homosexuals, "A functioning couple ... meant dichotomous individuals, if not male and female, then butch and femme", and the only models they had to go by were "those of the traditional female-male [roles]".[129] Although many municipalities enacted laws against cross-dressing, some women would socialize in bars as butches: dressed in men's clothing and mirroring traditional masculine behavior. Others wore traditionally feminine clothing and assumed the role of femmes. Butch and femme modes of socialization were so integral within lesbian bars that women who refused to choose between the two would be ignored, or at least unable to date anyone, and butch women becoming romantically involved with other butch women or femmes with other femmes was unacceptable.[129]

Butch women were not a novelty in the 1950s; even in Harlem and Greenwich Village in the 1920s some women assumed these personae. In the 1950s and 1960s, the roles were pervasive and not limited to North America: from 1940 to 1970, butch/femme bar culture flourished in Britain, though there were fewer class distinctions.[130] They further identified members of a group that had been marginalized; women who had been rejected by most of society had an inside view of an exclusive group of people that took a high amount of knowledge to function in.[131] Butch and femme were considered coarse by American lesbians of higher social standing during this period. Many wealthier women married to satisfy their familial obligations, and others escaped to Europe to live as expatriates.[132]

Fiction
See also: Lesbian literature
Regardless of the lack of information about homosexuality in scholarly texts, another forum for learning about lesbianism was growing. A paperback book titled Women's Barracks describing a woman's experiences in the Free French Forces was published in 1950. It told of a lesbian relationship the author had witnessed. After 4.5 million copies were sold, it was consequently named in the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials in 1952.[133] Its publisher, Gold Medal Books, followed with the novel Spring Fire in 1952, which sold 1.5 million copies. Gold Medal Books was overwhelmed with mail from women writing about the subject matter, and followed with more books, creating the genre of lesbian pulp fiction.[134]

Between 1955 and 1969, over 2,000 books were published using lesbianism as a topic, and they were sold in corner drugstores, train stations, bus stops, and newsstands all over the U.S. and Canada. Most were written by, and almost all were marketed to heterosexual men. Coded words and images were used on the covers. Instead of "lesbian", terms such as "strange", "twilight", "queer", and "third sex", were used in the titles, and cover art was invariably salacious.[135] A handful of lesbian pulp fiction authors were women writing for lesbians, including Ann Bannon, Valerie Taylor, Paula Christian, and Vin Packer/Ann Aldrich. Bannon, who also purchased lesbian pulp fiction, later stated that women identified the material iconically by the cover art.[136] Many of the books used cultural references: naming places, terms, describing modes of dress and other codes to isolated women. As a result, pulp fiction helped to proliferate a lesbian identity simultaneously to lesbians and heterosexual readers.[137]

Second-wave feminism
The social rigidity of the 1950s and early 1960s encountered a backlash as social movements to improve the standing of African Americans, the poor, women, and gays all became prominent. Of the latter two, the gay rights movement and the feminist movement connected after a violent confrontation occurred in New York City in the 1969 Stonewall riots.[138] What followed was a movement characterized by a surge of gay activism and feminist consciousness that further transformed the definition of lesbian.

The sexual revolution in the 1970s introduced the differentiation between identity and sexual behavior for women. Many women took advantage of their new social freedom to try new experiences. Women who previously identified as heterosexual tried sex with women, though many maintained their heterosexual identity.[139] With the advent of second-wave feminism, lesbian as a political identity grew to describe a social philosophy among

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