HISTORY OF THE LESBIANISM in en.lesbianas.tv

In the first code known about the history, the Code of Hammurabi (1770 B.C.), appears the salzikrum, a figure that characterizes a "woman - man" who could have one or several wives and exclusive rights of heredity. The word Salzikrum " means "daughter - male" . The salzikrum probably never had children, just as the eunuchs, and even for law if they had children they were transferred in adoption and could not claim them in the future.

Although the documents on this matter are scarce, it is thought that in outlying communities of Albania, Yugoslavia and Italy there were accepted the lesbian relations in past epochs. For example, in the mountainous zones of Cabiria existed an aboriginal society composed only by women called sbraie. In China also are described relations between women who were intergesticulating  as husband and woman, situation to which one was alluding with the term dui shi.

According to the majority of the historians, the first poetical text was created by a woman called Enheduanna, daughter of king Sargon I of Acadia. This princess and priestess, born about the year 2300 B.C., was composing singings in honor of Inanna, goddess of the love and the war. The historian Judy Grahn, researcher of the homosexual culture, does a lesbian reading  of the hymns of the princess Enheduanna. And it is based on the sensual exaltation of the beauty that it does in her singings about the goddess Inanna, to whom it even was referring like "wife".

In 630-560 B.C. there is had steadfastness of the existence of Sappho, a Greek poetess who was living in the island of Lesbos. His poems and his transcendency in the later centuries did that the term "lesbianism" was accepted internationally as way of denoting the feminine homosexuality.

In the ancient Rome and in Greece the lesbianism was accepted by normality. In Rome, for example, public baths existed for women who, in spite of being married, wanted to support sexual contacts with other women. These baths were relying on with girls, the slaves "felatoras", that they were satisfying their lesbian desires. Also wedding steadfastness exists between women. With the expansion of the Christianity, the acceptance of the homosexual relations was decreasing little by little up to going so far as to turn into motive of pursuit. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that the motive of the Christian condemnation was centring more on the adultery that in identifying if it was committed between men or between women.

In the Middle age only few cases of lesbianism are known by the ecclesiastic archives where denunciations, condemnations and sermons are compiled. Saint Ambrose, in the IVth century, qualified the desire of a few women for others of lustful act; Saint Crisostom qualified it of shameful. Centuries later Saint Anselm would refer to the sexual relation between women as an offence on the nature; and in the same sense Pedro Abelardo would declare himself. Saint Thomas established as one of the vices against nature the coitus between female and female. Later many theologians would base on Saint Thomas to condemn the lesbianism as a sin of lechery.

In ten centuries only a dozen of allusions exist to the lesbianism, always tied to the ecclesiastic condemnation, the heresy or the witchcraft. The nuns, for example, were instructed to avoid the carnal attraction between them, and further on, in the Councils of Paris (1212) and Rouen (1214) there were prohibited they to sleep meetings and forced them to support his rooms illuminated during the night. Other measurements to avoid these relations were consisting of preventing the nuns from visiting or to prohibit them to close the doors to be able to be controlled by the abbess at all times.

Other women of the epoch known by their lesbian tendencies  were Juana de Arco, Catalina de Erauso (the "nun second lieutenant") and the queen Cristina de Suecia. The treatment for the lesbianism was, inside the condemnation, more light than for the male homosexuality. It was considered that the male seed was more important than the feminine one, and therefore his useless waste was constituting a major affront God. The lesbian relations were punished by minor, comparable sentences to those of the masturbation. Nevertheless this treatment was not unanimous since in any places the lesbianism was even punished with the capital punishment. Although generally the lesbianism was considered to be a problem much less serious than the relations between men, which would give place to a minor pursuit but also to a major ignorance of the existence and the identity of the lesbian women.

Meanwhile, in Latin America there is had steadfastness of the existence of lesbian women in aboriginal communities at the end of the XVIth century. For example the women known like cacoaimbeguira belonging to tribe of Tupinamba, that were exercising man's offices, were going to the war and were related to other women who were adopting the wife's roll.

At the end of the XIXth century a new discipline arose, inside the Psychology, known like sexology, with that the sexual relations tried to be studied by science. The lesbianism qualified then as a pathological perversion, together with others as the sadomasochism, the fetishism, the exhibitionism, the zoofilia or the paedophilia. Also there was described the lesbian as a woman male, giving place to a stereotype that, although it was coinciding with some lesbians, was leaving to the margin other many women who were not dressing themselves of man or were not presenting masculine manners. The sexology was considering the sick mental lesbians because it was contemplating them from the social stereotyped roll of the epoch, that is to say, they were separating from the normality that was assuming to the role of the woman as wife, mother and minder of the progeny. The emotional aspect was obviated completely. With these erroneous concepts, in the last years of the XIXth century and first of the XXth such abuses were committed as considering a women's illness to be the lesbianism prostitutes or hospitalizing the lesbians in mental hospitals near to criminals, applying to them methods as the electroshock, the lobotomy or the eradication of the clitoris. Nevertheless, in Europe and the United States the romantic friendship had been accepted between women from half of the XVIIIth century, steadfastness of it staying in the literature in works as " The bostonians ", by Henry James, in which the emotional union was talking each other between independent women, giving place to the extension of the term "bostonian marriage" in the America of the XIXth century. Also there are known in the Anglo-Saxon society of the XVIIIth century cases of romantic friendship as that of the "Ladys of Llangollen" (Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby), or those of Sarah Scott, Elizabeth Carter, Anna Seward, Honora Sneyd, Mary Wollstonecraft, Fanny Blood, etc.

Already in the XXth century the influence of the stereotypes created by the psychologists did that absurd credence was spreading between the population on the lesbians  as the separation in two rolls, that of the male woman, who was doing of husband, and the feminine woman (pseudolesbians), who was fulfilling the wife's roll. In the twenties campaigns developed to prepare the lesbian mental illness between the young girls, and this work provoked that one was starting associating the lesbianism with the alienation, the illness, the perversion and the vice. Before this treatment many lesbian women were accepted themself as sick and tried to push his emotions back marrying or committing suicide. Nevertheless from the ends of the XIXth century some women started standing out in his activities, studies and professions, collaborating to give place to what it would know  as "new woman". Their active work would be decisive so that the society was accepting the rights of the women, like the right to vote or the equality of conditions. Although the majority of these women were not lesbian, there were psychologists who considered them to be as such for presenting, according to them, masculine behaviors. Between these women who changed little by little the sickly conception that was had of the lesbianism we find, for example, to: Florence Nigtthingale, creator of a school for nurses in London; Francisca Maria Souvestre, director of similar boarding school to that of Sappho; Romaine Brooks, painter and writer; writers Natalie Barney, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Radclyffe Hall, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Marguerite Yourcenar, Carmen de Burgos "Colombine" ; artists Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan,...

At the end of the XXth century and beginning of the XXIst the rights of the lesbian women have kept on advancing thanks to collective and individual initiatives of famous and anonymous lesbians, but still in many parts of the world the lesbianism keeps on being a motive of public derision and even of inequality and reprobation on the part of the authorities.

Description: origins of the lesbianism, historical lesbians, history of the bisexuality, studies on the lesbianism, articles about the lesbianism, origins of the lesbians, lesbianism in the antiquity, lesbians in the history, investigation on the lesbianism.