Talk:Lesbian

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Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 10:58, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

In western vs non-western cultures

Hi there. I'm questioning the structure of the two sections "Identity and gender role in western culture" and "Outside western culture". These two sections are essentially the "history" of lesbian identities/behaviors around the world. While the section about Western history is a lot more extensive (presumably because editors found more sources), I think it would make more sense for these two sections to be one "History" section - then 3.1. can be "In western culture", preserving all the subsections as they are, and 3.2 can be "Middle East", 3.3. "Americas", etc. Maybe "Americas" should be renamed too, as it talks about Latin America with a pararaph on Native Americans.

I believe that leaving the two sections as they are reinforces an inequitable divide that elevates western LGBTQ history as more important or distinct. By making one "History" section, each "cultural region" is of equal hierarchical standing in the structure of the article. I see a previous discussion on this in the archives.

Further, this section would then become quite long (and already the subsections are large). There is an indepedent History of lesbianism article (which needs improvement). Perhaps we can shorten each subsection on history within the main Lesbian article and transfer some of the more detailed content to the History article. The History article can be linked at the top of this section with "Further reading...".

(Final point - I don't know if it's worth getting into - the division of western vs non-western cultures is complicated on its own. Technically, South America, as well as Native American cultures in North America, are also in the West...)

I look forward to hearing what others think. -- Ryan (talk) 04:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Zimmerman hanging reference

Hello RoxySaunders! In this edit, you cleaned up some Zimmerman "Histories and CUltures" encyclopedia references. Unfortunately, a reference you deleted is not correctly replaced in a couple of spots and now the page renders with sfn-no-target errors. {{sfn|Zimmerman|1999}} had a target, but it was deleted in your edit. Are you able to replace the correct citation so the error can be fixed? Maybe the problem is just the incorrect publication date -- 1999 instead of 2000. -- mikeblas (talk) 11:52, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi Mike, thanks for the heads up. I'll try to fix this when I get the chance. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 12:50, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

@Mikeblas: I recall now why I left it like that. Those two citations lack page numbers, so I was unable to determine what section (and thus, what author) was actually being cited, and I didn't/don't have the energy to search the whole encyclopedia to find out. I've gone ahead and fixed the error by adding a {{cite book}} for the encyclopedia as though Bonnie Zimmerman was its author. This is probably incorrect unless we are citing a foreword which she did write. Oh well.

The section was originally authored in this diff as part of a Wiki Ed project. It's possible User:Livrendon could help with this, but I assume they are no longer active. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 00:31, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't know who corrupted the details of the Zimmerman book, but it was published in 2000 and the isbn is 0-8153-1920-7. You can verify the details with the IA copy of the book @ https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofle00bzim/page/n7/mode/2up (the IA copy is used for the pages/chapters linked in the citations). Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 09:50, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

@Pyxis Solitary: You're right, 2000 is correct—you're welcome to fix it. The only version of the encyclopedia accessible to me when I made this change was an eBook edition distributed by Routledge in 2013 ( doi:10.4324/978020382553 ISBN 9780203825532) which seems to have faulty metadata claiming the book was published a year early. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 14:43, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

A good reason why eBooks are not the best sources. If you search a book title on Google Books it will respond with all its editions (Zimmerman @ 1). And it's always a good idea to verify information on a book through LCCN (Zimmerman @ 2) and OCLC (Zimmerman @ 3).
The citing problem is odd because when you deleted the Zimmerman ref in this edit, the book was cited as "{{sfn|Zimmerman|2000|p=748|loc=Symbols}}" and if you scroll down to the References > Parenthetical sources section it appears as Zimmerman, Bonnie, ed. (2000). Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8153-1920-7 – and linked to IA copy.
However, after your edit was reverted you changed the ref to "{{harvnb|Stevens|1999|p=748|loc=Symbols}}" and in References > Parenthetical sources the book appears as Stevens, Christy (November 30, 1999). "Symbols". In Zimmerman, Bonnie (ed.). Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures (1st ed.). New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 747–748. ISBN 9780203825532 – with url linked to the pages in the exact same IA copy. In this edit you also changed all the Zimmerman refs to 1999.
"you're welcome to fix it" – I have have been an editor in this article since 2017 and I don't understand why you expect someone else to fix problems you created.
(For historical interest, this is how Stevens/pg.748 was cited in 2019.) Pyxis Solitary (yak). Ol' homo. ⚢ 04:39, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Because Ctrl-Fing the date and ISBN is trivial except on mobile, where I'm currently participating from. It would take less time to fix than to condescendingly explain to me at length, but I guess we've already hit the point of sunk cost.

When I'm back at a real computer I'll fix the cites and probably inline them. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 13:24, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks foe your fixes, RoxySaunders! -- mikeblas (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I often defer to others to make fixes when someone else seems very familiar with the material. Most everybody tries to operate on best efforts and WP:AGF. -- mikeblas (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

barbara bee ottinger

I think we should make a page on this person. I want her name to be known in this community for her work as a photographer LydiaMurman777 (talk) 05:48, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

You can create a biographical article, too. There's no need to wait for someone else to do it. Read Help:Your first article + Wikipedia:How to create a page, and comply with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 09:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Lead sentence note

I am not too familiar with the history of this page but I took the note in good faith to assume the matter has been extensively discussed before. Can another editor point Tubend towards those discussion(s)? I'm assuming it's in one of the archives. For future reference, it's generally considered good practice to start a talk page thread instead of reverting your preferred version in again like here. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Actually, I misread what that second edit was actually doing. I will say that I think it's redundant to say "defined as human females". Women and girl already say that and it's not really something you'd expect to read outside of that context. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:37, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

"Women and girl already say that". Not any more. Sex is biology and gender is a concept — but sex and gender have now become synonyms in many circles. A trans woman was not born female, nor a trans girl. Pyxis Solitary (yak). Ol' homo. ⚢ 12:43, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not at clear that the three sources supporting the first sentence are using female or female homosexual according to your personal interpretation, especially because they were published in the 2000s.

A survey of modern dictionaries:

• Merriam-Webster: n. a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to other women : a gay woman
• American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5e. n. A woman whose sexual orientation is to women. '
• Cambridge English Dictionary n. a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to other women
• OED n. a woman who engages in sexual activity with other women; a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted (esp. wholly or largely) to other women; a homosexual woman. OED

The text (defined as human females) should be removed as it is clearly surprising and puts us in contrast to other modern reference sources. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 13:40, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Oops—no wonder I found it surprising; it was added yesterday! Reverted to the status quo.. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 13:46, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Yep, thanks. I didn't want to touch it myself because I already reverted them once and didn't want to get into in an edit war. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:50, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Pyxis Solitary I'm not saying trans women aren't women, but those articles do actually say that women/girls are human females in the lead sentence. As I said it's not really something you'd expect to read outside of that context and these articles also mention transgender individuals later on. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:48, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Anyways, in their first edit, that editor did try to change "woman and girl" to "female". [1] I then changed it back and then we had the edit that I mentioned above. I do think that the archives where this has been extensively discussed should be linked (because I'm not sure I could find that either) in the hidden note. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

References

Definition

I'm pretty sure lesbianism is for women (and some non-binary individuals) that are attracted ONLY to women and some non-binary individuals. It's not regardless. Filipusek (talk) 12:03, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

LGBTQ+

WP:NOTFORUM

what is community's view about this? 41.122.206.81 (talk) 14:20, 23 February 2025 (UTC) The acronym? There was a recent Requested Move discussion about it at Talk:LGBTQ/Archive 4#Requested move 14 August 2024. Wikipedia currently used LGBTQ. As Wikipedia is not a forum, the opinion of Wikipedia editors on this topic itself are mostly irrelevant. However, I like it :) –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 15:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC) What "community" are you referring to? The lesbian community or the Wikipedia community? Pyxis Solitary (yak). Ol' homo. ⚢ 13:13, 24 February 2025 (UTC) In addition to Pyxis' question on what 'community' means in context, I'd add, "What is the ask?" Are you asking to change LGBT -> LGBTQ+ in the article (ex: LGBT rights by country or territory), or change LGBTQ -> LGBTQ+ (ex: Infobox header), or asking to add something about the Qs and pluses and how they intersect with the Ls, or something else entirely? Since the US government (see pix of same at FBI Quantico) is dropping all references to Ts and Qs (much less pluses and the rest of us alphabet kids) are you saying we should follow suit and leave only LGB like they have? Bitten Peach (talk) 15:15, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Twentieth-century paradigm shift

Discussion previously titled Twentieth-century linguistic & behavioral paradigm shift should be addressed (in what was normal in non-romantic, non-sexual friendships between women [or girls]) –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 01:43, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

While of course lesbianism in its various forms existed before our current era (and undoubtedly existed between females as far back as our earliest hominid ancestors' time), it's also true that a paradigm shift regarding language and non-sexual, non-romantic behavior within female friendships occurred around the turn of the 20th century (and is still occurring, to a slight degree). This shift coincided with the publication and popularization of Sigmund Freud's work (which introduced a society formerly quite uncomfortable with sexuality in most contexts to sexuality being something thought about and discussed often). When Victorian girls and women called each other 'darling' and linked arms and kissed and hugged (and sisters engaged in this identical behavior at that time and prior -- this very much needs to be mentioned, as well), it was, for most of them, entirely platonic; again, if you want to make an analogy to another type of relationship women had with each other, 'sisters' would be more fitting than 'lovers' for the women (and almost all of them did) who used terms of endearment like 'dear' or 'darling' with each other and expressed friendship and caring through touch. Prior to the twentieth century, most women were quite naive in many ways involving sexuality (outside of the usual marital 'obligations'), and what would look like sexual or romantic gestures to someone from our time absolutely would not have to the vast majority of them. (Though of course, again, romantic relationships of various forms, and sexual relationships, did take place between women, at that time, and at every point in human history.) Even as recently as the 1950s and early '60s, it was common for females in the same family (sisters or a mother and daughter) to link arms in public and call themselves 'dear' -- and, again, earlier in the 20th century and prior it would have been common for female friends to do so, as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4040:4539:6400:D1E4:C2AD:DA25:2F22 (talk) 23:07, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Are you aware of WP:reliable sources which discuss this topic? –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 00:52, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Everything in Wikipedia needs to be supported with reliable sources. Our personal ideas and conclusions about any subjects are irrelevant.
"Prior to the twentieth century, most women were quite naive in many ways involving sexuality (outside of the usual marital 'obligations'), and what would look like sexual or romantic gestures to someone from our time absolutely would not have to the vast majority of them." Says who? Considering that whatever historical documentation exists (on clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, wax tablets, stone carvings, and paper) about non-modern societies and the lives of women, if at all, in those centuries was created by men, destroyed by men, rewritten by men, and controlled by men ... no one really knows the sexual and romantic lives of women in the past. We would know more about Sappho and the women in her society, for example, if Christians had not destroyed her works. Patriarchal cultures have always suppressed and tried their very best to destroy inconvenient and discomforting knowledge about women. Pyxis Solitary (yak). Ol' homo. ⚢ 15:02, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

We know about women from their own writings. I was talking specifically about the 19th century and the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. I know that to a non-historian (particularly a younger non-historian), that feels as if it might as well have well been the neolithic period. And I was NOT suggesting women's general (though obviously not universal) relative (to 2025) 'naiveté' on sexual matters (which is a cultural phenomenon extremely well-documented in women's own writings [by the way, you're talking to someone who possesses a vagina, uterus, and ovaries, if that means anything to you, who also has a bachelor's degree in history (Northwestern University, 2003 - I went on to get my master's in another field) with an emphasis on the Victorian period]) was a good thing! Here's a historical tidbit for you: the Bronte sisters routinely called one another 'dear' and 'darling' and regularly slept in the same bed, as adults, with their arms around one another. Very commonplace behavior among sisters at that time. I think it's a leap to suggest they (or most of the other women who engaged in the same sorts of behaviors with sisters) had incestuous feelings. (I'm basically asexual, myself, and if I weren't, I'd likely be bisexual, so.. I suppose that makes me LGBTQ+. In any case, I have no prejudice or bias against homosexuality or any other marginalized sexuality/ies.) (I apologize for all parentheses and the nested parentheses -- it's how I think; I hope you could work through it.) A Cornish Lad Abroad (talk) 18:21, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Your perspective is noted, but Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research, which includes novel interpretations of primary sources like historical letters. It is not clear what text you want to add or change in the article, but it will need to be cited to a reliable secondary source.

Aside: speculation on Charlotte Brontë's sexuality is in reference to her... "strong and passionate friendship" with Ellen Nussey,[2] not her sisters—it is very hard to rationalize their correspondence as platonic, not that it has stopped historians from trying. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 21:06, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting there was speculation that Bronte was incestuous with her sisters. Please slow down and read more carefully. (Good job on the quickie research into her life, though!) I didn't interpret anything. I shared several facts that are known about the sisters from their (and others') letters. (I've read well over one-hundred biographies on the family.) I didn't engage in any original research, but you certainly engaged in some wild speculation to suggest that Charlotte Bronte and Ellen Nussey were lovers. A Cornish Lad Abroad (talk) 21:33, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

"I didn't jump to conclusions. I took a tiny step, and there conclusions were." –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 21:46, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

There needs to be a mention, even if it's only one sentence, that pre-20th-century instances of female friends or sisters calling one each other 'dear' or 'darling' or engaging in more physical touch than would be considered normal (for non-lovers) now were not necessarily in romantic or sexual relationships -- though of course they could have been. Each case would have to be considered individually and with great care (and by someone extremely well-versed in the social mores of the time). To deny this is to engage in willful ignorance and ahistoricity. Quoting a historian on this would be the way to go (as you've rightly reminded everyone a few dozen times). I don't intend to touch this article, myself, because I don't intend to continue to fight with the people who 'own' it. If you ever went Wikipedia to be taken seriously as a resource or considered credible at all, I'd suggest you behave differently -- in a few dozen ways. A Cornish Lad Abroad (talk) 21:46, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Noted. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 22:39, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

If we take the personalities out of the equation, the question is simpler: Can we find a reliable source that states, "pre-20th-century instances of female friends or sisters calling one each other 'dear' or 'darling' or engaging in more physical touch... were not necessarily in romantic or sexual relationships"? If so, and it represents the general consensus of authors on the subject, I don't think there would be much pushback on adding that strongly sourced statement to the article. Considering the paucity of reliable material from previous eras both ancient and modern, and the hesitance of many academics to overplay ambiguous evidence, there should be sources out there that support such a statement if it is as mainstream a belief as Cornish implies. Similar discussions are legion on all pages that relate to sexuality and relationships regardless of gender, from popes and emperors to poets and entertainers. Bitten Peach (talk) 15:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)