Discrimination against lesbians

Discrimination against lesbians, sometimes called lesbophobia, comprises various forms of prejudice and negativity towards lesbians as individuals, as couples, as a social group, or lesbianism in general. This negativity encompasses prejudice, discrimination, hatred, and abuse; with attitudes and feelings ranging from disdain to hostility. It is analogous to gayphobia.

Soweto Pride 2012 participants remember lesbians raped and murdered in 2007.

Terminology

The first usage of the term lesbophobia listed in the Oxford English Dictionary is in The Erotic Life of the American Wife (1972), a book by Harper's Bazaar editor Natalie Gittelson.^[1][2] While some people use only the more general term homophobia to describe this sort of prejudice or behavior, others believe that the terms homosexual and homophobia do not adequately reflect the specific concerns of lesbians, because they experience the double discrimination of both homophobia and sexism.^[3][4]

Extent

The idea that lesbians are dangerous—while heterosexual interactions are natural, normal, and spontaneous—is a common example of beliefs which are lesbophobic. Like homophobia, this belief is classed as heteronormative, as it assumes that heterosexuality is dominant, presumed, and normal, and that other sexual or relationship arrangements are abnormal and unnatural.^[5] Lesbians encounter lesbophobic attitudes not only in straight men and women, but also gay men.^[6] Lesbophobia in gay men is regarded as manifest in the perceived subordination of lesbian issues in the campaign for gay rights.^[7]

Anti-lesbian violence

Lesbophobia is sometimes demonstrated through crimes of violence, including assault, corrective rape and murder.

In the late 2000s, men murdered and raped several lesbians in South Africa.^[8][9] The victims included Sizakele Sigasa (a lesbian activist living in Soweto) 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.^[10][11] In the Gauteng township of KwaThema, soccer player Eudy Simelane was gang-raped, beaten and stabbed to death, and LGBT activist Noxolo Nogwaza was raped and stoned before being stabbed to death.^[12][13] 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 of patriarchy. The men who perpetrate such crimes see rape as curative and as an attempt to show women their place in society."^[11][14][15] Corrective rape is an ongoing social problem in South Africa.^[16][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]

Legal persecution

As of 2024, 1 in 5 countries worldwide criminalize 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.^[22]

Negative Reactions from Family

LGBT youth are disproportionately likely to end up homeless.^[23][24] More than half of these youth were homeless due to significant conflicts with family members over their sexual orientation or identity.^[24][23]

Negative Media Representations

The word "lesbian" is consistently one of the top search terms on popular pornography sites.^[25] 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.^[26]

Negative Stereotypes

Further information: LGBTQ stereotypes § Lesbians

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].^[27]

A stereotype that has been identified as lesbophobic is that female athletes are always or predominantly lesbians.^[28][29]

Lesbian Erasure

Main article: Lesbian erasure

Lesbian erasure references the process of ignoring or discarding the history and problems of lesbians.^[30] The term demonstrates the ways in which the contributions of notable lesbian women are diminished or ignored; some examples being Stormé DeLarverie, Audre Lorde, or Angela Davis.^[31]

See also

• LGBTQ portal

• Lesbian
• Corrective rape
• Compulsory heterosexuality
• Heterosexism
• History of lesbianism
• Lesbianism in erotica
• Sapphobia
• Societal attitudes toward homosexuality
• Violence against LGBT people
• Violence against women