History | Equality

A Wordy, Nerdy History of ‘Lesbian’

Tracing words through history, from adjectives to identities

Artwork “Sappho of Lesbos” by the author, Joe Duncan. Map of Ancient Lesbos by Yanisbonos, licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. Bust of Sappho by Mary Harrsch, licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. Mosaic (right) by TimeTravelRome, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.

In July 2008, while the United States was on its way to electing the first Black President in U.S. history, a court battle was wrapping up partway across the world over the use of the word “lesbian” as an identity describing gay women. The Greek courts dismissed a case brought by three Greeks seeking to “prohibit the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women,” as Reuters via the New York Times reported:

Three residents of Lesbos, the birthplace of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, whose love poems inspired the term lesbian, filed suit last month, contending that their identity was insulted by the use of the word in reference to gay women. The court said that the word did not define the identity of Lesbos residents, and so could be used legitimately by gay groups in Greece and abroad.

Nations across the globe were reckoning with longstanding anti-LGBTQIA+ discrimination that had been present in every facet of societies around the world, and the transition from deeply prejudiced societies to open ones was slow and incremental. Like the rainbow colors representing the range of LGBTQIA+ identities that bleed slowly and seamlessly from one to the next, social progress also happens…