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]
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] 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 from gay men, as well as bisexual people.[8] Lesbophobia in gay men is regarded as manifest in the perceived subordination of lesbian issues in the campaign for gay 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 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].[10]
Anti-lesbian violence
Lesbophobia is sometimes demonstrated through crimes of violence, including corrective 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 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.[13][14] 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.[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 of patriarchy. The men who perpetrate such crimes see 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]
Erotic plasticity and lesbianism
Some argue that efforts aimed at females to change their sexual orientation often include rape, and are worse than those aimed at males. Others suggest that the notion of female erotic plasticity is wishful thinking on the part of men who want to have sex with lesbians, and should be criticized for not being objective;[22][better source needed][23] while some hypothesize that lesbian relationships exist because of male sexual desires,[24] and that females are more sexually fluid.[25]
^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 from the original on 18 December 2014. Retrieved 22 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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