By Tim Lambert
Early Lesbians
Lesbianism has always existed, of course, but less was written about lesbians than about gay men. In the Ancient World, lesbianism was seldom written about. Sappho was a Greek poet who lived about 600 BC. She likely was a lesbian. Unfortunately, little is known about her and little of her work survives. Much later in history the word lesbian was coined because Sappho came from the island of Lesbos. The word sapphic comes from her name.
Little was written about lesbians in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Church considered it a sin, but gay women were, obviously, likely to be secretive. Lesbianism was regarded as sinful and shameful.
In certain European countries in the late Middle Ages, lesbian acts were illegal, and the punishments were severe, including death. However, very few records of women being prosecuted at that time exist. There are far more records of gay men being punished.
There were lesbian nuns. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was an abbess. She was a famous writer and theologian. She may have been a lesbian.
In the 17th century, an abbess, Benedetta Carlini (1590-1661), was accused of committing lesbian acts with another nun. She was eventually imprisoned for the rest of her life.
In 1649, two women, Sara Norman and Mary Hammon of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, were prosecuted for ‘lewd behaviour with each other upon a bed’. This is the first mention of lesbians in the North American colonies. Mary Hammon was ‘cleared with admonition’ by the court. Sara Norman was forced to ‘publicly acknowledge’ her behaviour. However, prosecutions for lesbianism were very rare in Colonial America.
Lesbians in the 19th Century
Lesbianism has never been illegal in England. There is a persistent myth that an act was passed in 1885 outlawing both male homosexuality and lesbianism. Still, when the act went to receive the royal assent, Queen Victoria redacted the parts about lesbianism because she refused to believe it existed. In reality, an MP added an amendment to an existing act. It outlawed male homosexuality but said nothing about lesbianism.
In the 19th century, women sometimes lived together. It was acceptable for women to have ‘close friendships’. No doubt, some were romantic relationships. Two women living together were called Boston Marriages.
One famous lesbian of the 19th century was Anne Lister (1791-1840). She was a landowner who recorded her lesbian affairs in diaries. She is sometimes called the first modern lesbian. In 1834, she married a woman named Ann Walker in York, England. They exchanged vows and rings, but the law did not recognise the marriage.
Several prominent women who lived in the 19th century may have been lesbians. Susan B. Anthony likely was a lesbian.
Lesbians in the 20th Century
Lesbians in England
Lesbianism has never been illegal in England. In 1921, the House of Commons passed a bill to make lesbianism illegal. However, it was rejected by the House of Lords, and it never became law. Lesbianism was by no means acceptable, but gay women were treated much less harshly than gay men.
On 16 November 1928, a court in Britain decided that a lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, was obscene. It was banned, and it remained banned in Britain until 1959. Although lesbianism has never been illegal in Britain, some books about it were once banned for obscenity. Nevertheless, in the USA and Britain, lesbian pulp fiction about lesbians was common in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lesbians in the USA
In the USA, the first lesbian kiss on stage was in a play called God of Vengeance, performed in Greenwich Village, New York, in 1922.
In 1926, Edouard Bourdet wrote a play about lesbians called The Captive. The play was performed on Broadway in New York. However, the authorities eventually banned the play.
The first film to show a lesbian kiss was Morocco, made in 1930, starring actress Marlene Dietrich. In the film, Marlene is dressed in men’s clothing for a cabaret act. She kisses a member of the audience. The famous film about lesbians, The Killing of Sister George, was made in the USA in 1968.
Lesbians in Germany
In Germany in 1871, a law was passed against male homosexuality. There was no specific law against lesbianism. In 1904, a German journalist, Anna Rüling, made a speech defending lesbian rights.
During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), lesbians had many meeting places in German cities. The world’s first lesbian magazine, Die Freundin, was published in Germany between 1924 and 1933. One of the first explicitly lesbian films was Mädchen in Uniform, made in Germany in 1931. In Nazi Germany (1933-1945) lesbians were not persecuted to the same extent as gay men. However the Nazis closed lesbian meeting places.
The first lesbian bars opened in the 1920s. In Paris, there was a famous lesbian bar called Le Monocle. In the USA, the first lesbian bar was opened by a Polish woman, Eva Kotchever, in 1926. However, the authorities raided the bar and closed it in 1927. Nevertheless, there were many lesbian bars in the USA by the 1950s.
Lesbianism became more acceptable in the Western World in the late 20th century. In the USA, the Daughters of Bilitis was formed in 1955 to campaign for lesbian civil rights. In the 1950s, there were many lesbian bars where women could meet.
Lesbians in the late 20th Century
The first lesbian magazine in the USA was Vice Versa. It was published in Los Angeles for a few months in 1947-1948. Another lesbian magazine, The Ladder, was published across the USA from 1956 to 1972.
The first lesbian magazine in Britain was Arena Three, published from 1964 to 1971. In 1967, BBC 2 broadcast a documentary about lesbians called Consenting Adults 2: The Women.
In the USA during the 20th Century, an African-American lesbian, Ruth Ellis (1899-2000), was a prominent campaigner for gay rights. Another African American lesbian campaigner was Audre Lorde (1934-1992).
Joan E. Biren (1944-) is a photographer. In 1979, she published a famous book, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided to remove homosexuality (including lesbianism) from its list of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Attitudes to lesbianism gradually changed.
In Britain, Maureen Colquhoun was elected an MP in 1974. She was the first openly lesbian MP, but she faced a great deal of criticism for it. In the USA, the first openly lesbian member of Congress was Tammy Baldwin. She was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998. In 2009, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the prime minister of Iceland. She was the first openly lesbian head of government.
The famous tennis player Martina Navratilova is a lesbian. Sally Ride (1951-2012), the first American woman in space, was also a lesbian.
In Britain in 1974, the first lesbian kiss shown on TV was broadcast by BBC 2. In the USA, the first lesbian kiss on TV was broadcast in 1991.
8 October is International Lesbian Day. It’s not certain how the day started, but it probably began in New Zealand in 1980 when a Lesbian Day March was held on International Women’s Day, 8 March. It later moved to 8 October.
Lesbians in the 21st Century
In 2006, DC Comics introduced a lesbian superhero, Batwoman.
In 2008, the world’s first museum of Lesbianism, the Charlotte Museum, opened in New Zealand.
In the early 21st century, certain countries passed laws allowing same-sex marriage. The first (legal) lesbian marriage took place in the Netherlands in 2001. In the USA, the first lesbian marriage took place in Massachusetts in 2004. Same-sex marriages were made legal in Britain in 2014.
However, lesbianism is still illegal in many countries.
Last revised 2025