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Femme
''Femme'' (; , literally meaning ) is a term traditionally used to describe a lesbian woman who exhibits a feminine identity or gender presentation. While commonly viewed as a lesbian term, alternate meanings of the word also exist with some non-lesbian individuals using the word, notably some gay men and bisexuals. Some non-binary and transgender individuals also identify as lesbians using this term. Heavily associated with lesbian history and culture, ''femme'' has been used among lesbians to distinguish traditionally feminine lesbians from their butch (i.e. masculine) lesbian counterparts and partners. Derived from American lesbian communities following World War II when women joined the workforce, the identity became a characteristic of the working-class lesbian bar culture of the 1940s–1950s. By the 1990s, the term ''femme'' had additionally been adopted by bisexual women. 1940s through 60s culture Scholars Heidi M. Levitt and Sara K. Bridges state that the t ...
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Butch And Femme
''Butch'' and ''femme'' (; ; ) are Masculinity, masculine (Butch (lesbian slang), ''butch'') or Femininity, feminine (Femme, ''femme'') identities in the lesbian subculture that have associated traits, behaviors, styles, self-perception, and so on. This concept has been called a "way to organize sexual relationships and gender and sexual identity". Butch–femme culture is not the sole form of a lesbian Dyad (sociology), dyadic system, as there are many women in butch–butch and femme–femme relationships. Both the expression of individual lesbians of butch and femme identities and the relationship of the lesbian community in general to the notion of butch and femme as an organizing principle for sexual relations varied over the course of the 20th century. Some lesbian feminists have argued that butch–femme is a replication of heterosexual relations, while other commentators argue that, while it resonates with heterosexual patterns of relating, butch–femme simultaneously ...
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Lesbian
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction. Relatively little in history was documented to describe female homosexuality, though the earliest mentions date to at least the 500s BC. When early sexologists in the late 19th century began to categorize and describe homosexual behavior, hampered by a lack of knowledge about homosexuality or women's sexuality, they distinguished lesbians as women who did not adhere to female gender roles. They classified them as mentally ill—a designation which has been reversed since the late 20th century in the global scientific community. Women in homosexual relationships in Europe and the United States responded to the discrimination and repression either by hiding their personal lives, or accepting the label of outcast ...
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Joan Nestle
Joan Nestle (born May 12, 1940) is a Lambda Award-winning writer and editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. She is openly lesbian and sees her work of archival work as critical to her identity as "a woman, as a lesbian, and as a Jew." Life Nestle's father died before she was born, and she was raised by her mother Regina Nestle, a bookkeeper in New York City's Garment District, whom she credits with inspiring her "belief in a woman's undeniable right to enjoy sex." She attended Martin Van Buren High School in Queens and received her Bachelor of Arts from Queens College, City University of New York in 1963. During the mid-1960s she became involved in the civil rights movement, traveling to the Southern United States to join a Selma to Montgomery march and to participate in voter registration drives. She earned a master's degree in English from New York University in 1968 and worked toward a doctorate for two years before returning to Queens College to teach. ...
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Butch (lesbian Slang)
A butch is a lesbian who exhibits a masculine identity or gender presentation. Although the term originated in the lesbian community, it is also used by persons who identify as queer in the larger LGBTQIA+ subculture today. Since the lesbian subculture of 1940s America, "butch" has been present as a way for lesbians to circumvent traditional gender roles of women in society and distinguish their masculine attributes and characteristics from feminine women. ''Butch'' is often understood as the counterpart to '' femme'', with the two forming butch–femme dynamics. History Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, butch became a central identity in the lesbian community. It was often understood in conjunction with femme identity, and butch–femme relations have been studied at great length. As a result, butch identity on its own remains somewhat ill-defined. Butch people are often described as sexually dominant lesbians who are interested in having sex with femmes. ''The Queen' ...
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Lesbian Bar
A lesbian bar (sometimes called a "women's bar") is a drinking establishment that caters exclusively or predominantly to lesbian women. While often conflated, the lesbian bar has a history distinct from that of the gay bar. Significance Lesbian bars predate feminist spaces such as bookstores and coffeehouses, and contemporary LGBT services such as community centers and health care centers. While few lesbian-specific bars exist today, lesbian bars have long been sites of refuge, validation, community, and resistance for women whose sexual orientations are considered "deviant" or non-normative. They have been spaces for intergenerational community building, where women had the opportunity to come out without being "outed", which can result in the loss of jobs, family, and social status. They could, however, also be sites of intense isolation. History While women in the United States have historically been barred from public spaces promoting alcohol consumption, women's sal ...
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Lesbian Feminism
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it. Some key thinkers and activists include Charlotte Bunch, Rita Mae Brown, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Frye, Mary Daly, ...
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Alyson Publications
Alyson Books, formerly known as Alyson Publications, was a book publishing house which specialized in LGBT fiction and non-fiction. Former publisher Don Weise described it as "the world's oldest and largest publisher of LGBT literature" and "the home of award-winning books in the areas of memoir, history, humor, commercial fiction, mystery, and erotica, among many others".Weise 2009. History Founded in Boston in 1980 by Sasha Alyson, Alyson Publications began in 1990 to sell LGBT-themed children's books, entitled ''Alyson Wonderland''. It was acquired by Liberation Publications in 1995 and sold to Regent Entertainment Media, Inc. in 2008, and in November, as Alyson Books, named Don Weise its publisher. He has written of his commitment to Alyson's traditional areas of specialisation, but has stated that he is keen also to embrace "more serious nonfiction—particularly in the areas of current affairs, politics, self-help, and autobiography—as well as literary fiction and ...
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Lipstick Lesbian
"Lipstick lesbian" is slang for a lesbian who exhibits a great amount of feminine gender attributes, such as wearing make-up, dresses or skirts, and having other characteristics associated with feminine women. In popular usage, the term is also used to characterize the feminine gender expression of bisexual women, or the broader topic of female–female sexual activity among feminine women. An alternate term for ''lipstick lesbian'' is '' doily dyke''. Definitions and society The term ''lipstick lesbian'' was used in San Francisco at least as early as the 1980s. In 1982, Priscilla Rhoades, a journalist with the gay newspaper ''Sentinel'', wrote the feature story "Lesbians for Lipstick". In 1990, the gay newspaper '' OutWeek'' covered the Lesbian Ladies Society, a Washington, D.C.–based social group of "feminine lesbians" that required women to wear a dress or skirt to its functions. The term ''lipstick lesbian'' became popular when used by writer Deborah Bergman, a repor ...
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Gender Expression
Gender expression (or gender presentation) is a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender in a particular cultural context, typically understood in terms of masculinity and femininity. Gender expression is an external display of one's gender identity, through aspects such as clothing, hairstyles, voice, makeup, body language, and behavior. A person's gender expression may align with traditional gender roles or may be gender nonconforming, incorporating both masculine and feminine traits or neither. It may or may not reflect their gender identity or sex assigned at birth. Gender expression is influenced by sociocultural norms and is distinct from both gender identity and sexual orientation. Terminology Although gender expression is often assumed to reflect a person's internal gender identity, the two are not always aligned. For example, some transgender people may adopt expressions that differ from their gender identity for reaso ...
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Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is the definition of heterosexuality as the normative human sexuality. It assumes the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two distinct, opposite genders) and that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of the opposite sex. Heteronormativity creates and upholds a social hierarchy based on sexual orientation with the practice and belief that heterosexuality is deemed as the societal norm. A heteronormative view, therefore, involves alignment of biological sex, sexuality, gender identity and gender roles. Heteronormativity has been linked to heterosexism and homophobia, and the effects of societal heteronormativity on lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals have been described as heterosexual or "straight" privilege. Etymology Michael Warner popularized the term in 1991, in one of the first major works of queer theory. The concept's roots are in Gayle Rubin's notion of the "sex/gender system" and Adrienne Rich's notion of compul ...
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Journal Of Lesbian Studies
''Journal of Lesbian Studies'' is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. It examines the cultural, historical, and interpersonal impact of the lesbian experience on society. The journal is a forum for research and theory, addressing the history, politics, science, race, literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ..., and life cycle issues of lesbians. It also carries book reviews related to lesbian studies. It was founded in 1997 by Haworth Press, who was acquired by Taylor & Francis in 2007. See also *'' GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies'' References Works about lesbians LGBTQ-related journals Sexology journals Lesbian literature Women's studies journals Academic journals established in 1997 {{LGBT-jo ...
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