Lesbianism

“ Here, in a single volume, it has been our intention to list, document and review every novel dealing, however slightly, with female variance, lesbianism or intense emotional relationships between women. We have also included a majority of the better known novels which, dealing primarily with male homosexuality, are of interest to the collector of variant fiction in general. ”

“ They are a hard, efficient lot, doing men’s work, thinking like men and sometimes driven to take the place of men—in the proscribed zones of desperate flings at love and sex. Lesbianism is scandalously rampant, frequently an acquired dislocation rather than a pathological aberration.
The existence of the average G-girl revolves between routine grind and physical frustration. She leaves her job at five. If she goes home, it is to her tiny room or apartment to heat her dinner out of tin cans and ponder whether to wash her panties or write letters home, or get drunk. ”

“ Chevalier says that the kind of meretrices who exploit women may be met with in all streets and boulevards of Paris, in the theatres and at balls, at the races and exhibitions of every kind. The little girls, between the ages of ten and fifteen, who may be seen selling flowers in the restaurants and cafés of Paris, are also, to a large extent, in the service of lesbianism. ”

“ Lesbianism is the staple subject of a school of Parisian tale-tellers, who deal with it in the crudest way that anything like literary diction allows. In French heterosexualism there appears also far less of the ideal, of dignified and virile qualities, than in any other society in Europe. France indeed is the land of an apotheosis of—vulvolatry. Of course one must remember that Paris is not France, and that Parisian story-writers should not be considered as wholly representative of French racial aspects. ”

“ After a number of years the girl left the house, and he began to associate with venal women and continued the same practices with the learned priestesses of Venus. By the time he was thirty years old he had tasted all the salacious practices these women are able to teach. Thereupon he turned to homosexuality in the houses for that purpose. There he plays, as a rule, the active part.
The overstimulated women who indulge in homosexuality are chiefly found among the venal class. It is known that lesbianism is very prevalent among the meretrices of Paris. ”

“ Among the women of savages in all parts of the world homosexuality is found, though it is less frequently recorded than among men. [147]
In New Zealand it is stated on the authority of Moerenhout (though I have not been able to find the reference) that the women practised Lesbianism. In South America, where inversion is common among men, we find similar phenomena in women. Among Brazilian tribes Gandavo [148] wrote:—
"There are certain women among these Indians who determine to be chaste and know no man. ”

“ Both, of these books hint at lesbianism on the cover blurbs, but are, rather, highly risque French novels with brief, irrelevant and heterosexually oriented contact between women characters strictly for voyeuristic effect.
CARPENTER, EDWARD. Iolaus; an Anthology of Friendship. N. Y., Albert & Charles Boni, 1935, (m) . Listed as “the first of its kind” this is said also to be “very vague and old-fashioned.” ”

“ The variant element in this is minor and problematical. In conversation, it occurred to a group of reviewers that the developing relationship between Marjorie and Marsha “resembled a love affair”, that Marsha’s attack of hysterics at her wedding, and her outcry that all she had ever wanted was a friend, and now she’d always be alone, was of distinct significance, BAYOR.
WYLIE, PHILIP. The Disappearance. Rinehart 1951, pbr Pocket Books 1958. Science fiction; for men, all women vanish; for women, all men vanish. The problem of lesbianism arises in the women’s world ”

“ Lesbian essence is of mental quality. There are aggressively endowed women whose minds are so bent that they instinctively nurture any element in themselves which is blighting and ill-omened and calamitous in effect. There are some to which the natural inhibition of their own sex is lure and challenge. There are some so solitary by destiny and growth that the first woman-friend who comes into their adolescence with sympathy and understanding wins a passionate Lesbian adoration the deeper for being unrealized. ”

“ That o'er the tender Lesbian stole;
And in a voice whose thrilling tone
Fancy might deem the Lesbian's own,
One of those fervid fragments gave,
Which still,—like sparkles of Greek Fire,
Undying, even beneath the wave,—
Burn on thro' Time and ne'er expire.
SONG. As o'er her loom the Lesbian Maid
In love-sick languor hung her head,
Unknowing where her fingers strayed,
She weeping turned away, and said,
"Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain—
"I cannot weave, as once I wove—
"So wildered is my heart and brain
"With thinking of that youth I love!" ”

“ The deep-dyed Lesbian woman is a creature whose sensibilities are over-balanced: whose imagination moves on mad low-flying wings: whose brain is good: whose predilections are warped: who lives always in unrest: whose inner walls are streaked with garish heathen pigments: whose copious love-instincts are an odd mixture of mirth, malice and luxure. ”

“ They make with men varied flinty friendships, but to each other they are friends, lovers, victims, preyers, masters, slaves: the flawed fruits of one oblique sex-inherence.
Except two breeds—the stupid and the narrowly feline—all women have a touch of the Lesbian: an assertion all good non-analytic creatures refute with horror, but quite true: there is always the poignant intensive personal taste, the flair of inner-sex, in the tenderest friendships of women. ”

“ The Lesbian sex-strain as an effect is reckoned a prenatal influence—and, as I conceive, it comes also of conglomerate incarnations and their reactions and flare-backs. Of some thus bestowed it makes strange hard hightly emotional indefinably vicious women, turbulent and brilliant of mind, mystically overborne, overwrought of heart. They are marvels of perverse barbaric energy. ”

“ Whether because of disgust, confusion, or ignorance about homosexuality, lesbian and gay sexuality dominates the discourse of not only same-sex adoption, but all lesbian and gay issues. The classification of lesbians and gays as ‘exclusively sexual beings’ stands in stark contrast to the perception of heterosexual parents as ‘people who, along with many other activities in their lives, occasionally engage in sex.’ Through this narrative, lesbians and gays are reduced to one-dimensional creatures, defined by their sex and sexuality. ”

“ The blurb reads “Life and love among warped women”, but don’t let it scare you. This is one of the better and more serious approaches to the writing of a serious novel of lesbians through the stereotyped pattern of the paperback novel. The basic plot concerns Anne, and her experiences in trying to find out for herself, the hard way, whether she is a lesbian or whether she can successfully adjust to life as a normal woman. The story ends with the surprising, but growingly popular affirmation that “adjustment” is not always to be desired at all costs. ”

“ How many of these Lesbian dames have I seen who, for all their customs and habits, yet fail not at the last to go after men! Even Sappho herself, the mistress of them all, did she not end by loving her fond, favourite Phaon, for whose sake she died? For after all, as I have heard many fair ladies declare, there is nothing like men. All these other things do but serve them but in the lack of men. And if they but find a chance and opportunity free from scandal, they will straight quit their comrades and go throw their arms round some good man's neck. ”

“ The 'great and beautiful soul' could only be found in the male form—women belonged to the animal sphere and could contribute only to the sensual pleasure of man."
As the women were neglected by the men, the former tended to engage in erotic practices among members of their own sex. In the island of Lesbos, the women were especially given to indulging in the love of their own sex—from which historic precedent we get the term Lesbian Love. ”

“ The Lesbian ladies applied themselves successfully to literature. They formed clubs for the cultivation of poetry and music. They studied the arts of beauty, and sought to refine metrical forms and diction. Nor did they confine themselves to the scientific side of art. Unrestrained by public opinion, and passionate for the beautiful, they cultivated their senses and emotions, and indulged their wildest passions. All the luxuries and elegances of life which that climate and the rich valleys of Lesbos could afford were at their disposal ”

“ In the ornamental trades and callings, such as dressmakers, milliners, dealers in fine underwear and hosiery, costume-designers and so on, the Uraniad has a large field. Here she can come unsuspected into intimate bodily contact with beautiful women. Jeune filles appétissantes innocently can titillate daily her sexualism. Professional acquaintances second it. The professions of mantua-making, millinery, corset-ateliers and so on are recognized as screens for the Lesbian bawd in many great cities, especially Paris. ”

“ Well, by what I have heard say, there be in many regions and lands plenty of such dames and Lesbian devotees,—in France, in Italy, in Spain, Turkey, Greece and other places. And wherever the women are kept secluded, and have not their entire liberty, this practice doth greatly prevail. ”

“ The plus indicates good of kind, not intrinsic merit. An interesting story of a lesbian triangle—Chris, Dizz, and young Carol. One reader commented that this story was a sort of lesbian dreamworld—these women seemed to live in a society, and a world, completely unmixed with ordinary life at all. Certainly they are all treated as quite the ordinary thing, and there are almost no hints that there is a heterosexual world outside the gay one, which must be taken into account. Certainly it makes no incursions into the novel. ”

“ A man makes the most important decision of his life on the rebound of disillusion after discovering that a woman who risked her life to save him is a lesbian.
+ KRAMER, N. MARTIN (pseud. of Beatrice Ann Wright) . Hearth and The Strangeness. Macmillan 1956, pbr Pyramid 1957. An excellent novel of the fear of inherited insanity in a family. The youngest child, Aliciane, becomes a lesbian; this is one of the few realistic and unromanticized portraits of the factors in the development of homosexuality from childhood. ”

“ This June, recognizing the joys and sorrows that the gay and lesbian movement has witnessed and the work that remains to be done, we observe Gay and Lesbian Pride Month and celebrate the progress we have made in creating a society more inclusive and accepting of gays and lesbians. I hope that in this new millennium we will continue to break down the walls of fear and prejudice and work to build a bridge to understanding and tolerance, until gays and lesbians are afforded the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans. ”

“ In casual, conversational and entirely frank form, a woman born in 1865 (and therefore, at the time of writing, in her sixties) tells the story of her entire life as a lesbian. With the exception of “slightly autobiographical”—and always greatly disguised—fiction, this is probably the earliest such memoir in the literature. The writing is highly competent and professional, (subtly denying the author’s insistence that she was not a writer;) and filled with most interesting revelations about the lesbian world of New York and Paris at the turn of this century. ”

“ And even in France, a Country that treats our Sex with more Respect than most do, We are by the Salique Law excluded from Soveraign Power. The French are an ingenious People, and the Contrivers of that Law knew well enough, that We were no less capable of Reigning, and Governing well, than themselves; but they were suspicious, that if the Regal Power shou’d fall often into the hands of Women, they would favour their own Sex, and might in time restore ’em to their Primitive Liberty and Equality with the Men, and so break the neck of that unreasonable Authority they so much affect over us ”

“ All the drawing and painting in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the face of a pretty girl.
In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other. The unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the same sex. I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman. In our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of auto-eroticism. ”

“ To me the important task of modern [25] feminism is to accept and proclaim sex; to bury for ever the lie that has too long corrupted our society—the lie that the body is a hindrance to the mind, and sex a necessary evil to be endured for the perpetuation of our race. To understand sex—to bring to it dignity and beauty and knowledge born of science, in place of brute instinct and squalor—that is the bridge that will span the breach between Jason and Medea. ”

“ Evening waster about a young no-good who earns his living as a paid escort/gigolo and relaxes with boy friends but still loudly insists he is normal. Your editor enjoyed this out of sheer perversity; usually novels treating of male homosexuality engage the subject with deadly seriousness, while the paperback originals reek with drooling voyeuristic strip-teases about lesbians, for the sake of men who like to enjoy pipe-dreams about lesbians making love, and about some Big Handsome Hero who eventually converts the girls to “normality” with some secret formula of caresses. ”