Discrimination against lesbians, sometimes calledlesbophobia, comprises various forms of prejudice and negativity towardslesbians as individuals, as couples, as asocial group, or lesbianism in general. Based on the categories ofsex,sexual orientation,identity, andgender expression, this negativity encompasses prejudice, discrimination, hatred, and abuse; withattitudes and feelings ranging from disdain tohostility. It is analogous togayphobia.
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]
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.[5] A stereotype that has been identified as lesbophobic is that female athletes are always or predominantly lesbians.[6][7] Lesbians encounter lesbophobic attitudes not only in straight men and women, but also gay men.[8] Lesbophobia in gay men is regarded as manifest in the perceived subordination of lesbian issues in the campaign forgay rights.[9]
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 atruism […] 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].[10]
Lesbophobia is sometimes demonstrated through crimes of violence, includingcorrective rape and even murder. In the late 2000s, several rape/murders of lesbians occurred in South Africa.[11][12] 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.[13][14] In theGauteng township ofKwaThema, soccer playerEudy Simelane was gang-raped, beaten and stabbed to death, and LGBT activistNoxolo Nogwaza was raped and stoned before being stabbed to death.[15][16]
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."[14][17][18]
In its 2019 annual report,SOS Homophobie found that anti-lesbian violence increased 42 percent in France in 2018, with 365 attacks reported.[19][20][21]
Lesbian erasure references the process of ignoring or discarding the history and problems of lesbians.[22] The term demonstrates the ways in which the contributions of notable lesbian women are diminished by making their lesbianism no longer a part of their story; some examples beingStormé DeLarverie,Audre Lorde, orAngela Davis.[23]
Some suggest that the notion of femaleerotic plasticity is wishful thinking on the part of men who want to have sex with lesbians, and should be criticized for not being objective;[24][better source needed][25] while some hypothesize that lesbian relationships exist because of male sexual desires,[26] and that females are moresexually fluid.[27]
^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.
^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)
^Megan Radclyffe,Lesbophobia!: Gay Men and Misogyny (Continuum, October 2005)
^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.
^Clarke, Victoria; Peel, Elizabeth (2007).Out in Psychology: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer Perspectives (1st ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, England:John Wiley & Sons.ISBN978-0470012871.
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