Lesbian Flag, Sadlesbeandisaster". Majestic Mess. April 2019. Archived from the original on 8 June 2019 . Retrieved 24 August 2019. Narrowing down the best movies in any genre is tough, but for lesbian films you have to begin with a reductive question: What isa lesbian film? What, in fact, is a lesbian? (OK, that’s a different piece). The government of the United Kingdom does not ask citizens to define their sexuality. A survey by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2010 found that 1.5% of Britons identified themselves as gay or bisexual, and the ONS suggests that this is in line with other surveys showing the number between 0.3% and 3%. [206] [207] Estimates of lesbians are sometimes not differentiated in studies of same-sex households, such as those performed by the U.S. census, and estimates of total gay, lesbian, or bisexual population by the UK government. Polls in Australia recorded a range of self-identified lesbian or bisexual women from 1.3% to 2.2% of the total population. [208] Health Physical

The study estimated the total population of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals at 8.8 million, but did not differentiate between men and women. [205] 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. [56] 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). [57] 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. [58] The two women had a relationship that was hailed as devoted and virtuous, after eloping and living 51 years together in Wales. The movie features a queer romance between a lesbian couple that is super heartwarming. This particular storyline wasn't part of the original novel, according to BuzzFeed, and co-author Lauren Myracle told the outlet, "Having a heteronormative story all around would be abnormal. It would be weird," adding, "the version in the movie is much more satisfying."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 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). [61] 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, [62] [63] or in contemporary sociology characterised as transgender, is debated and depends on the individual details of each case. In this Japanese thriller, Rei helps the woman she's had a crush on for years escape her abusive husband. As they venture on their journey, their feelings for each other begin to ignite. Bendix, Trish (September 8, 2015). "Why don't lesbians have a pride flag of our own?". AfterEllen. Archived from the original on September 9, 2015 . Retrieved 23 July 2019.

Most of the women who reported homosexual activity had not experienced it more than ten times. Fifty-one percent of women reporting homosexual experience had only one partner. [196] Women with post-graduate education had a higher prevalence of homosexual experience, followed by women with a college education; the smallest occurrence was among women with education no higher than eighth grade. [197] Some criticized Kinsey's methodology. [198] [199] In the middle of the 1970s, gay men and lesbians began to appear as police officers or detectives facing coming out issues. This did not extend to CBS' groundbreaking show Cagney & Lacey in 1982, starring two female police detectives. CBS production made conscious attempts to soften the characters so they would not appear to be lesbians. [290] In 1991, a bisexual lawyer portrayed by Amanda Donohoe on L.A. Law shared the first significant lesbian kiss [t] on primetime television with Michele Greene, stirring a controversy despite being labeled "chaste" by The Hollywood Reporter. [292] Ellen DeGeneres with her Emmy Award in 1997. Her coming out in the media, as well as her sitcom, "ranks, hands down, as the single most public exit in gay history", changing media portrayals of lesbians in Western culture. [293]

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. [128] Stearn, William T. (May 1962). "The Origin of the Male and Female Symbols of Biology" (PDF). Taxon. 11 (4): 109–113. doi: 10.2307/1217734. ISSN 0040-0262. JSTOR 1217734 . Retrieved 23 July 2019. During the 17th through 19th centuries, a woman expressing passionate love for another woman was fashionable, accepted, and encouraged. [68] 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. [72] [d] R Dennis Shelby; Kathleen Dolan (2014). Lesbian Women and Sexual Health: The Social Construction of Risk and Susceptibility. Routledge. p.34. ISBN 978-1317718192 . Retrieved April 11, 2018. 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. [98] 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. [99] Harlem resident Gladys Bentley was renowned for her blues songs about her affairs with women.

Dekker, Rudolf M.; van de Pol, Lotte C. (1989). The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0333412527. Brendan (January 10, 2012). "Berlin's Lesbische Frauen". Cabaret Berlin. Archived from the original on 28 May 2020 . Retrieved 13 June 2020. (originally published by Slow Travel Berlin) 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. [91] Her contemporaries included artist Romaine Brooks, who painted others in her circle; writers Colette, Djuna Barnes, social host Gertrude Stein, and novelist Radclyffe Hall. 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. [42] 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.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. [109] In a rare instance of sexuality being the focus of a romantic friendship, two Scottish schoolteachers in the early 19th century were accused by a student of visiting in the same bed, kissing, and making the bed shake. The student's grandmother reported the teachers to the authorities, who were skeptical that their actions were sexual in nature, or that they extended beyond the bounds of normal friendship: "Are we to say that every woman who has formed an intimate friendship and has slept in the same bed with another is guilty? Where is the innocent woman in Scotland?" [73] Etymology Sappho of Lesbos, depicted here in a 1904 painting by John William Godward, gave the term lesbian the connotation of erotic desire between women. Zimmerman, Bonnie, ed. (2000). "Lesbian (by Colleen Lamos)". Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (1sted.). New York: Garland Publishing. p. 453. ISBN 0-8153-1920-7. The equivocal grammatical status of "lesbian," as both noun and adjective, captures the historical difficulty and the controversy over its definition. Whereas the former names a substantive category of persons—female homosexuals—the latter refers to a contingent attribute. The use of the term to denominate a particular kind of woman, one whose sexual desire is directed toward other women, originated in the late nineteenth century with the formulation of types of sexual deviance, especially homosexuality. ...Taking "lesbian" as an adjective, however, implies that female same-sex desire is a detachable modifier, a relative characteristic rather than an essential, or core, substance. Describing an object or activity as lesbian may simply reflect its contingent affiliation or association with female homoeroticism. Such an understanding of the term was common in Western society before the twentieth century and remains so in non-Western cultures that do not sharply distinguish female homosexuality from heterosexuality. Both male and female homosexuality were known in Aztec culture. Although both were generally disapproved of, there is no evidence that homosexuality was actively suppressed until after the Spanish Conquest. [156] Female homosexuality is described in the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century study of the Aztec world written by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. It describes Aztec lesbians as masculine in appearance and behavior and never wishing to be married. [156] The book Monarquía indiana by Fray Juan de Torquemada, published in 1615, briefly mentions the persecution of Aztec lesbians: "The woman, who with another woman had carnal pleasures, whom they called patlache, which is to say: female incubus; they both died for it." [156] [k]