Discrimination against lesbians, sometimes calledlesbophobia or lesphobia, comprises various forms of prejudice and negativity towardslesbians as individuals, as couples, as a group, or lesbianism in general.
Examples of discrimination against lesbians include, but are not limited to, discrimination in housing and employment, physical or sexual abuse includingcorrective rape, lack of legal protections for lesbian couples to care for one another, removal of children from lesbian mothers, negative stereotypes and negative media representation, verbal harassment, legal persecution and imprisonment, government censorship, and familial and/or community rejection.
The first usage of the termlesbophobia listed in theOxford English Dictionary is inThe Erotic Life of the American Wife (1972), a book byHarper's Bazaar editor Natalie Gittelson.[1][2] While some people use only the more general termhomophobia to describe this sort of prejudice or behavior, others believe that the termshomosexual andhomophobia do not adequately reflect the specific concerns of lesbians, because they experience the double discrimination of both homophobia and sexism.[3][4]
In the late 2000s, men murdered and raped several lesbians in South Africa.[5][6] The victims included Sizakele Sigasa (a lesbian activist living inSoweto) and her partner Salome Masooa, who were raped, tortured, and murdered in an attack that South African lesbian-gay rights organizations, including the umbrella-group Joint Working Group, said were driven by lesbophobia.[7][8] In theGauteng township ofKwaThema, soccer playerEudy Simelane was gang-raped, beaten and stabbed to death, and LGBTQ activistNoxolo Nogwaza was raped and stoned before being stabbed to death.[9][10]Zanele Muholi, community relations director of a lesbian rights group, reports having recorded 50 rape cases over the past decade involving black lesbians in townships, stating: "The problem is largely that ofpatriarchy. The men who perpetrate such crimessee rape as curative and as an attempt to show women their place in society."[8][11][12] Corrective rape is an ongoing social problem in South Africa.[13][14][15]
In 1995, lesbian couple and gay rights activists Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill were murdered in Oregon. Their killer stated that them being lesbians made it easier to kill them, and also had murdered a bisexual man for making a pass at him.[16]
In its 2019 annual report, France'sSOS Homophobie found that anti-lesbian violence increased 42 percent in France in 2018, with 365 attacks reported.[17][18][19]
As of 2024, 1 in 5 countries worldwidecriminalize private, consensual intimate activity between adult women. The penalties and effects of criminalization include arrest and detention, physical and sexual violence from other individuals or government actors, coerced marriage, and separation of mothers from their children, among many other consequences.[20]
LGBTQ youth are disproportionately likely to end up homeless.[21][22] More than half of these youth were homeless due to significant conflicts with family members over their sexual orientation or identity.[22][21]
"Lesbian" is consistently one of the top search terms on popular pornography sites.[23] Pornography often portrays inaccurate, fetishistic caricatures of lesbians. Common porn storylines include men "fixing" lesbians or lesbians hitting on straight women, perpetuating the stereotypes that lesbianism is something to be "fixed", that female sexuality is not to be taken seriously, and that lesbians are predatory.[24]
Lesbian erasure refers to the process of ignoring, discarding, or purposefully writing out the history and struggles of lesbians.[25] This term can refer to writing lesbians out from history, such as writing outStormé DeLarverie from starting the Stonewall riots.[26]
The idea that lesbians are dangerous—whileheterosexual interactions are natural, normal, and spontaneous—is a common example of beliefs which are lesbophobic. Like homophobia, this belief is classed asheteronormative, as it assumes that heterosexuality is dominant, presumed, and normal, and that other sexual or relationship arrangements are abnormal and unnatural.[27] Lesbians encounter lesbophobic attitudes not only in straight men and women, but also gay men.[28] Lesbophobia in gay men is regarded as manifest in the perceived subordination of lesbian issues in the campaign for gay rights.[29]
Lesbians have been stereotyped in often contradictory ways. Kim Emery, in discussing lesbians in the United States during the late-19th century, says:
It is a truism […] that lesbian existence is inflected and afflicted by apparently incompatible social stereotypes. Lesbians are assumed to be both men in women's bodies and women marked as masculine by physical anomaly. Lesbians are accused of hating men and of wanting to be men, of being both sexually predatory and essentially asexual [sic], of committing unspeakable sexual acts and of lacking the endowments necessary to perform any [sexual acts].[30]
A stereotype that has been identified as lesbophobic is that female athletes are always or predominantly lesbians.[31][32]
^Ogden, Annegret S. (1986).The Great American Housewife: From Helpmate to Wage Earner, 1776–1986.Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 206.ISBN0-313-24752-8.
^Pithouse, Richard (29 March 2011)."Only Protected on Paper".The South African Civil Society Information Service. Archived fromthe original on 18 December 2014. Retrieved22 December 2013.
^Peper, Karen, "Female athlete=Lesbian: a complex myth constructed from gender role expectations and lesbiphobia",Queer words, queer images: communications and the construction of homosexuality, pages 193–208 (New York University Press, 1994)
^Darcy Plymire and Pamela Forman, "Breaking the Silence: Lesbian Fans, the Internet, and the Sexual Politics of Women's Sport",International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, pages 1566–1768 (Springer Netherlands, April 2000)
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