Lesbians protesting for same-sex marriage.
A lesbian is a gay female. The term can be used as a noun or an adjective.
Etymology
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The word lesbian originally referred to an inhabitant of Lesbos, an island in Greece where an ancient Greek lyric poet named Sappho lived. Some of her poems concerned love between women. Whether Sappho was a lesbian in the modern meaning of the term or a poet who described lesbians is not known. While she did write poems about love between women, there is some dispute as to how her writings can be interpreted. Sappho's literary association with love between women led to the term sapphism as another term for lesbianism.
Other words used to describe lesbianism over the past 200 years have included amor lesbicus and tribadism.
There are many slang terms for lesbians including dyke and bulldyke. Both of these are almost always regarded as pejorative when used by outsiders, but many within the lesbian and queer communities have reclaimed their usage.
External links Edit
- Australia backs lesbian IVF treatment - BBC News Online
- Lesbians protest IVF ban plan - BBC News Online
- Lesbian couples raise well-adjusted teenagers
- The National Center for Lesbian Rights
- Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC)
| This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Lesbian. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with LGBT Info, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. |
