Lesbianism is sexual and romantic desire or relationships between women. Women have typically been underrepresented in history as both writers and subjects, and lesbianism has been correspondingly under-recorded. Since the 1970s, efforts have been made to gather together and preserve lesbian history.
The study of lesbian history There has been extensive debate as to what qualifies a historic relationship as "lesbian." In 1989, an academic cohort called 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.
Female sexuality is often not adequately represented in historical 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.
Africa Cross-gender roles and marriage between women have been recorded in over 30 traditional African societies. Women may marry other women, raise their children, and be thought of as men in societies in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Kenya. The Hausa people of Sudan have a term equivalent to lesbian, kifi, that may also be applied to males to mean "neither party insists on a particular sexual role."
Near the Congo River, a female who participates in strong emotional or sexual relationships with another female among the Nkundo people is known as yaikya bonsángo (a woman who presses against another woman). Lesbian relationships are also known in matrilineal societies in Ghana among the Akan people.
In Lesotho, women engage in what is commonly considered sexual behavior to the Western world: they kiss, sleep together, rub genitals, participate in cunnilingus, and maintain their relationships with other females vigilantly. Since the people of Lesotho believe sex requires a penis, they do not consider their behavior sexual, nor label themselves lesbians.
In Tanzania, lesbians are known as msagaji (singular) or wasagaji (plural), meaning grinder or grinding in Swahili, because of the perceived nature of lesbian sex involving the mutual rubbing of vulvas.
Founded in 2004 in Namibia, the Coalition of African Lesbians is a pan-Africanist, radical feminist network of fourteen nonprofits across ten African countries, working to eradicate stigma, legal discrimination, and violence against lesbians.
Egypt
Ancient Egypt The Dream Book of the Carlsberg papyrus XIII claims that "If a woman dreams that a woman has intercourse with her, she will come to a bad end". Depictions of women during the New Kingdom suggest they enjoyed, in a relaxed and intimate atmosphere, the company of other women who were scantily clad or naked. Some cosmetics-related items, which may have been owned and used by women, feature nude and suggestive depictions of women.
In the fifth century CE, women at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt sometimes pursued same-sex relationships. A letter from Shenoute chastises two women, () and (), for running after each other "in friendship and physical desire." This phrase referred to homosexual advances. It is unknown if the corporal punishment Shenoute prescribed for the women was administered.
Medieval Egypt
Between 1170 and 1180, Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbis in Jewish history, compiled his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah. It is the only Medieval-era work that details all of Jewish observance, and regarding lesbianism it states:For women to be mesollelot [women rubbing genitals against each other] with one another is forbidden, as this is the practice of Egypt, which we were warned against: "Like the practice of the land of Egypt ... you shall not do" (Leviticus 18:3). The Sages said [in the midrash of Sifra Aharei Mot 8:8–9], "What did they do? A man married a man, and a woman married a woman, and a woman married two men."
Even though this practice is forbidden, one is not lashed [as for a Torah prohibition] on account of it, since there is no specific prohibition against it, and there is no real intercourse. Therefore, [one who does this] is not forbidden to the priesthood because of harlotry, and a woman is not prohibited to her husband by this, since it is not harlotry. But it is appropriate to administer to them lashings of rebellion [i.e., those given for violation of rabbinic prohibitions], since they did something forbidden. And a man should be strict with his wife in this matter, and should prevent women known to do this from coming to her or from her going to them.
Modern Egypt
Modern Egyptians have faced increasingly repressive strictures on sexuality. In 2017, the Egyptian government arrested and tortured out lesbian and activist Sarah Hegazi after she flew a rainbow flag at a concert.
South Africa Corrective rape, the practice of men raping lesbians with a goal of punishment of "abnormal" behavior and reinforcement of societal norms, is reported to be on the rise in South Africa. The crime is sometimes supervised by members of the woman's family or local community, and is a major contributor to HIV infection in South African lesbians. According to research by the Triangle Project in 2008, at least 500 lesbians become victims of corrective rape every year (nonprofit Luleki Sizwe puts the figure at 3600) and 86% of black lesbians in the Western Cape live in fear of being sexually assaulted. Luleki Sizwe further estimates that more than 10 lesbians are raped or gang-raped on a weekly basis. Victims are less likely to report the crime because of their society's homophobia.
Corrective rape is not recognized by the South African legal system as a hate crime, despite the fact that the South African Constitution states that no person shall be discriminated against based on their social status and identity, including sexual orientation. Legally, South Africa protects gay rights extensively, but the government has not taken proactive action to prevent corrective rape, and women have little faith in the police and their investigations.
Ancient Roman Empire
Records of magic spells from Roman Egypt (2nd to 4th centuries CE) include love spells commissioned by women to make other women fall in love with them. These spells are unusual because they were likely commissioned by women from lower social classes rather than the elite, and because they contain the names of ancient women with homoerotic desires. For example, Herais cast a love spell on Sarapias, and the following quotation is from Sophia's love spell for Gorgonia:
In the first century, a satirical story in the epigrams of Martial told of a masculine woman named Philaenis who had sex with women .
The Roman fabulist Phaedrus attempted to explain lesbianism through a myth: the Titan Prometheus, coming home drunk from a party, had mistakenly exchanged the genitals of some women and some men. Phaedrus remarks: "Lust now enjoys perverted pleasure."
Roman writer Seneca the Elder used the hypothetical of a husband who killed his wife and her female lover as an example of a legal case where the facts were too obscene to discuss openly.
The lesbian love story between Iphis and Ianthe, in Book IX of Ovid's the Metamorphoses, is especially vivid. When Iphis' mother becomes pregnant, her husband declares that he will kill the child if it is a girl. She bears a girl and attempts to conceal her sex by giving her a name that is of ambiguous gender: Iphis. When the "son" is thirteen, the father chooses a golden-haired maiden named Ianthe as the "boy's" bride. The love of the two girls is written sympathetically:Ovid. Metamorphoses, Section 9, Line 1-206.
They were of equal age, they both were lovely,Had learned the ABC from the same teachers,And so love came to both of them togetherIn simple innocence, and filled their heartsWith equal longing.
However, as the marriage draws ever closer, Iphis recoils, calling her love "monstrous and unheard of." The goddess Isis hears the girl's moans and turns her into a boy.
Iamblichus, a Greek novelist from the first century AD, is best known for his Babylonaica, or Babylonian Tales. The Babylonaica contains a side story about "Berenice, who was daughter of the king of Egypt, and about her wild and lawless passions: and how she had relations with Mesopotamia." According to an ancient summary of the episode, Berenice and Mesopotamia (a woman) are wed. Although the Babylonaica mainly deals with a heterosexual couple, Sinonis and Rhodanes, Berenice and Mesopotamia exist as foils for the pair. Classicist Helen Morales cautions that this tale ought not to be treated as "certain evidence...that lesbian marriages were performed in the Roman imperial period," but the mere fact that it exists and survives is remarkable.
Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans contain an episode in which a woman named Megilla renames herself Megillus and wears a wig to cover her shaved head. She marries Demonassa of Corinth, although Megillus is from Lesbos. Her friend Leaena comments that "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, with faces like men, and unwilling to consort with men, but only with women, as though they themselves were men." Megillus seduces Leaena, who feels that the experience is too disgusting to describe in detail. In Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women, Leila J. Rupp writes, "Two things are significant in this depiction: the connection of an aggressive woman from Lesbos with masculinity and the portrayal of the seduced as a prostitute."
In another dialogue ascribed to Lucian, two men debate over which is better, male love or heterosexuality. One man protested that if male affairs were legitimized, then lesbianism would soon be condoned as well, an unthinkable notion.
In the ruins of Pompeii, a Roman town destroyed in 79 CE, archaeologists discovered a love poem graffitied onto a wall. The poem is written with feminine declensions for both speaker and addressee, and identified archivally as Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 4.5296.
During early Christianity in the Roman Empire, one work of note was the Apocalypse of Peter. It seems to have been most prominent in the 2nd–3rd centuries when Christians were still a tiny minority, and was not ultimately included in the canon of the New Testament. It is one of the earliest depictions of hell, and suggests lesbians are one category of sinners to be tormented by punishments after the Second Coming of Jesus, although the passage phrases it as secondary to a condemnation of male homoeroticism, and was possibly added by a later editor or scribe:
Asia
China In early Chinese history, sexual activity between women was accepted and sometimes actively encouraged. Female same-sex relationships were described with a special term (), literally "paired eating," possibly referring to cunnilingus. In the second or third century AD Ying Shao defined it as "when palace women attach themselves as husband and wife." Such relationships sometimes formed between government slaves or members of the emperor's harem. For example, under Emperor Cheng's rule (33–7BC) the slave Dào Fáng () had a homosexual relationship with Cáo Gōng (), the daughter of a slave. The sex handbook Dongxuanzi (, possibly dating to the fifth century AD) also contains examples of female same-sex contact. In the position called The Paired Dance of the Female Blue Phoenixes, two women practice scissoring.