Lesbos vs Lesbian

You know when I first heard that some islanders from Lesbos, an island in Greece, filed a lawsuit against an LGBT group to prevent them from using the term "lesbian", I find it quite funny. Not funny ha ha, but weird kinda funny. Some people just take things too seriously. Chill out mate!


I guess the Greek court was on the same wavelength as I did, eh. They dismissed the lawsuit accusing an LGBT rights group of demeaning the people of the Aegean island of Lesbos by purloining the word Lesbian, a term islanders have used to name themselves for centuries.


You see, they don't have to waste time going to the court. I could have told them they don't stand a chance. The word has been used and adopted into the dictionary worldwide. It's just common sense that the islanders did not have sole claim to the name. Nevertheless, they insist that they may appeal to the European Court. Whatever!

It's a well known fact that Lesbos was the home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women and often wrote passionate love poems to women. The island is a popular holiday destination for gay women. It's true! Just ask a few of my friends who loved going there in the summer. Ah! Bliss, they say.

Sappho lived from the late 7th to the early 6th century B.C. and is considered one of the greatest poets of antiquity. Very little is known of her life. According to some ancient accounts, she was an aristocrat who married a rich merchant and had a daughter with him. One tradition says that she killed herself by jumping off a cliff over an unhappy love affair.


Dimitris Lambrou one of the litigants in the case said Sappho was not gay. “But even if we assume she was, how can 250,000 people of Lesbian descent – including women – be considered homosexual?”


Tsk tsk... I didn't realise that Lesbians (I mean the people of Lesbos) are lacking intelligence. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of ancient lesbians were married and had children and still managed to have same sex relationship. It's something that is widely practised even today. Ever heard of closeted lesbians? Or double lives?


Lambrou also denied the suit was homophobic. “The word lesbian has been associated with gay women for the past few decades but we have been Lesbians for thousands of years,” he said.


Hahaha... now, that is funny!

the third sex

"Lesbian" derives from the name of the island of Lesbos which was famous for the poetess Sappho, who wrote love poetry to female lovers. Not much of Sappho's poetry remains, but that which does reflects the topics she wrote about: women's daily lives, their relationships, and rituals. She focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love for girls. Before the late 19th century, the word lesbian referred to any derivative or aspect of Lesbos, including a type of wine.

Lesbians in western cultures in particular often classify themselves as having an identity that defines their individual sexuality, as well as their membership to a group that shares common traits. Some women who engage in homosexual behavior may reject the lesbian identity entirely, refusing to identify themselves as lesbian or biseuxual.

For some women, the realization that they participated in behavior or relationships that could be categorized as lesbian caused them to deny or conceal it. Other women, however, embraced the distinction and used their uniqueness to set themselves apart from heterosexual women and gay men.

The varied meanings of lesbian since the early 20th century has prompted some historians to revisit historic relationships between women before the wide usage of the word was defined by erotic proclivities. Discussion from historians caused further questioning of what qualifies as a lesbian relationship.
 
Female homosexuality has not received the same negative response from religious or criminal authorities as male homosexuality or adultery has throughout history. Whereas sodomy between men, men and women, and men and animals was punishable by death in Britain, acknowledgment of sexual contact between women was nonexistent in medical and legal texts. The earliest law against female homosexuality appeared in France in 1270
 
During the 17th through 19th centuries, a woman expressing passionate love for another woman was fashionable, accepted, and encouraged. 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.

 
One such relationship was between Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to Anne Wortley in 1709: "Nobody was so entirely, so faithfully yours ... I put in your lovers, for I don't allow it possible for a man to be so sincere as I am."
 
Similarly, English poet Anna Seward had a devoted friendship to Honora Sneyd, who was the subject of many of Seward's sonnets and poems. When Sneyd married despite Seward's protest, Seward's poems became angry. However, Seward continued to write about Sneyd long after her death, extolling Sneyd's beauty and their affection and friendship.
 
Perhaps the most famous of these romantic friendships was between Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, nicknamed the Ladies of Llangollen. Butler and Ponsonby eloped in 1778, to the relief of Ponsonby's family (concerned about their reputation had she run away with a man) to live together in Wales for 51 years and be thought of as eccentrics. Their story was considered "the epitome of virtuous romantic friendship" .
 
Romantic friendships were also popular in the U.S. Enigmatic poet Emily Dickinson wrote over 300 letters and poems to Susan Gilbert, who later became her sister-in-law, and engaged in another romantic correspondence with Kate Scott Anthon. Anthon broke off their relationship the same month Dickinson entered self-imposed lifelong seclusion.
 
Nearby in Hartford, Connecticut, African American freeborn women Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus left evidence of their passion in letters: "No kisses is like yours". In Georgia, Alice Baldy wrote to Josie Varner in 1870, "Do you know that if you touch me, or speak to me there is not a nerve of fibre in my body that does not respond with a thrill of delight?"
 
Around the turn of the 20th century the development of higher education provided opportunities for women. In all-female surroundings, a culture of romantic pursuit was fostered in women's colleges. Older students mentored younger ones, called on them socially, took them to all-women dances, and sent them flowers, cards, and poems that declared their undying love for each other.
 
Women who had the option of a career instead of marriage labeled themselves New Women, and took their new opportunities very seriously. This period was labelld as "the last breath of innocence" before 1920 when characterizations of female affection were connected to sexuality, marking lesbians as a unique and often unflattering group. 
 
 
** Excerpts from Wikipedia

femme vs butch

% of each type in general population

SOFT ANDROGYNE

Your score placed you in the category of Soft Androgyne. This is the "steel magnolia" type. You may also wish to review Strong Femme and Androgyne, the two categories surrounding you. In a ranking across the femme/butch gamut, if 1 is femme and 100 is butch, you fall between 41 and 47 on the scale. For a review of where you fall in the overall population in numbers, refer to this chart. Your group is a large part of the 35-45 age group for the most part and has a wide mix of genders and orientations.

*mmmm... some of them are true but others are touch and go.

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For most of your life and social interaction, you don't really see yourself as either butch or femme, but if pressed into a corner, you react more femme than butch. You prefer to seek aid rather than solve your problems on your own, and prefer to give aid rather than to encourage someone to stand on their own feet. You're fairly well balanced over all, with the occasional weakness you haven't quite yet conquered.

Education is important to you, as you see knowledge as a key to independence and freedom, and you tend to have a higher educational level than your peers, either formally or by self-teaching. You read a lot, and a varied assortment of genres, enjoying cartoons as much as heavy psych drama. Biography, however, bores you. You like historical anecdotes but are not very good at memorizing dates, having a more general sense of time.

Your home is a roof for you and not a showplace. Order is optional. You cook if you have to and are efficient at it but really don't like to bother. You prefer to be fed. You like small dogs or big cats and the occasional hamster.

You enjoy a fairly strong butch for a partner, along the lines of a Feminist or Classic Butch, and take on other Androgynes as friends. Family is not terribly important to you, and odds are good you came from a home where that was not the primary issue. You may have a good, but distant relation with your family, or may not be in touch at all, but it's pretty certain you don't live with them unless you have to, or in the same city.

of lost love

I want to understand how it is you can say you love someone so much and then walk right out of her life?

I want you to know that there hasn’t been a moment that you weren’t on her mind.

I want to know why you left her?

Her chest tighten from hurting so much and her eyes red from crying for you. Was it too late to fix it?

You would always have her heart. You're the other half of her soul.

How could you?

not new but kinda new

I know I can run yet I can't hide forever. These were my random thoughts and feelings of my alter-ego that was kept away.

I love reading fan-fictions and hurt/comfort themes so here are my versions. Am I pathetic? A freak? Fucked up? Well, maybe.

These are the things that makes me me. Geddit?

taste of fire and hell

I died and thought I’ve gone to Heaven. Alas, I had a taste of Hell and now I am alive, once again. What curse bequeathed to me for I shall be burnt whilst I breathe?