A short history of lesbian culture

Lesbian history stretches back at least to Sappho, a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos around 600 BC, whose name and home gave us the words sapphic and lesbian. From there it runs through secret diaries, banned novels, working class bars, early activist groups, Stonewall, feminist uprisings and the flags and visibility days of today.

Much of this history was hidden, coded or destroyed, so what survives is precious. Here are the moments every sapphic woman deserves to know.

Sappho of Lesbos (about 630 to 570 BC)

Sappho was a lyric poet who lived on the Greek island of Lesbos. Ancient writers admired her enormously, but most of her work was lost over the centuries. Today we have one nearly complete poem, a prayer to Aphrodite, and many fragments, some of them just a few words on scraps of papyrus.

What survives includes poems of longing and desire addressed to women. Over time her island became shorthand for love between women, which is why we say lesbian, and her name gave us sapphic. If you want the difference between today's labels, see lesbian vs sapphic vs WLW.

Anne Lister's diaries (1791 to 1840)

Anne Lister was a landowner at Shibden Hall in Halifax, Yorkshire. She kept diaries totaling millions of words, and wrote the most private parts in a code she invented, mixing Greek letters and symbols. Once decoded, those passages revealed frank accounts of her relationships with women.

In 1834 she and Ann Walker took communion together in a York church, a commitment they treated as a marriage. Lister dressed in black, walked everywhere, and was nicknamed Gentleman Jack locally, which later became the title of a television drama about her life.

Romantic friendships and Boston marriages

In the 1800s, intense friendships between women were common and often openly affectionate, with passionate letters, shared beds and promises of devotion. In late nineteenth century New England, two women who lived together without husbands were sometimes said to be in a Boston marriage.

We usually cannot know what each of these relationships involved, and historians still debate how to describe them. But they show that women building lives around each other is nothing new.

The Well of Loneliness (1928)

Radclyffe Hall's novel follows Stephen Gordon, a masculine woman who loves women. It is not explicit at all, but it pleads openly for acceptance, and that was enough. In 1928 a British court ruled it obscene and ordered copies destroyed. In the United States, a court cleared it the following year.

The book is sad, and many modern readers find it heavy going. But for decades it was one of the only places a lonely woman could find herself on the page. It sits on our list of the best sapphic books for its history alone.

Butch and femme bar culture (1940s and 1950s)

In mid century North America, working class lesbian bars were among the few places women could meet openly. They were often raided by police, and patrons risked arrest, exposure and lost jobs. Inside, a rich culture of butch and femme roles shaped how women dressed, flirted and protected each other.

Butches often bore the brunt of street harassment and police violence because they were visible. That courage is part of why butch and femme remain cherished identities today. Our butch vs femme guide covers how those roles have changed.

Daughters of Bilitis (1955)

In 1955, a small group of women in San Francisco, including couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, founded the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. It began partly as a social alternative to the bars and grew into a national group.

From 1956 it published The Ladder, a magazine that reached isolated women across the country. Martin and Lyon stayed together for over fifty years and were the first couple married when same-sex marriage became legal in California in 2008.

Stonewall (1969)

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City, and patrons fought back. Days of protest followed, and the anniversary became the root of Pride marches around the world.

Many accounts credit Storme DeLarverie, a butch lesbian and performer, with a scuffle that helped spark the resistance, though eyewitness memories differ. Trans women of color, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, were central to the movement that grew from it.

The Lavender Menace (1970)

In 1969 feminist leader Betty Friedan reportedly called lesbians a "lavender menace" that could hurt the women's movement. In May 1970, at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York, a group of lesbian activists cut the lights, took the stage in purple Lavender Menace T-shirts, and refused to be erased.

They handed out a manifesto, The Woman-Identified Woman. The 1970s that followed saw lesbian feminist presses, bookstores, women's music labels and festivals, building a culture largely run by and for women.

Symbols and flags

• The labrys, a double-headed axe linked to myths of ancient Amazons, became a lesbian feminist symbol in the 1970s.
• The labrys flag (1999) placed a labrys over a black triangle on violet.
• The lipstick lesbian flag (2010) used shades of pink and red with a kiss mark, but was criticized for leaving butch women out.
• The orange and pink flag (2018), in sunset tones, is the most widely used lesbian flag today.

For the meaning of every stripe, see our lesbian flag guide.

Visibility and today

The 1980s and 1990s brought writers like Audre Lorde into the canon, Alison Bechdel's comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (the origin of the Bechdel test), and Ellen DeGeneres coming out on national television in 1997. In 2001 the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, and the US followed nationwide in 2015.

Today, Lesbian Visibility Day is celebrated every April 26. Lesbian culture lives in group chats, book clubs, softball leagues, the remaining lesbian bars and a lot of very specific online humor. It includes trans lesbians, nonbinary lesbians, and bi and queer women who share the same history. The story is still being written, and you are part of it.