Lesbian-Like

Lesbian-like is a term introduced in 1998 by medieval historian Judith Bennett in response to the gap between scholars who speak of lesbians in all historical periods and those who deny the very possibility of their existence before the end of the nineteenth century. Bennett's theory advances the task of retracing the history of lesbianism in the distant past and of theorizing early lesbian existence. The term has been widely applied or at least referenced by scholars discussing contexts in which the category lesbian seems adumbrated, but not realized. The concept acknowledges the objections of strict constructionists to the claim of early lesbian existence, as well as antihomophobic resistance to this exclusion from history.

The term lesbian-like designates social and familial positions and experiences that, albeit not of a "lesbian" nature in the contemporary sense, are indicators of lives led independently by women outside the constraints of marriage and male domination, creating the possibility for the historical, or actual, existence of women who might have focused their lives on other women. The usage eschews sexuality as the sole determining component of same-sex lives, emphasizing the absence or fragmentation of male control. Thus women who live alone, by their own means, or who live with other women in communal arrangements represent social and behavioral choices previously underprivileged in attempts to define what a lesbian is, or what she might have been, in early European societies.

While some scholars feel strongly that the term usefully "destabilizes" notions of single sexual identity and returns attention to behaviors instead, others object that, by shifting "the focus from a noun (lesbian) to an adjective (lesbian-like)," the reference ends up "uncomfortably concentrating on the unknowable, rather than the knowable" (Vicinus 2004, p. xxi).

see also Homoaffectivity, Concept; Lesbianism; Same-Sex Love and Sex, Terminology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bennett, Judith. 2000. "'Lesbian-Like' and the Social History of Lesbianisms." Journal of the History of Sexuality 9(1/2): 1-22.

Carter, Julian. 2005. "On Mother-Love: History, Queer Theory, and Nonlesbian Identity." Journal of the History of Sexuality 14(1/2): 107-138.

Clark, Anna. 2006. "Twilight Moments." Journal of the History of Sexuality 14(1): 139-160.

Gorman, Jill. 2001. "Thinking with and about 'Same-Sex Desire'": Producing and Policing Female Sexuality in the Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena." Journal of the History of Sexuality 10(3): 416-441.

Hollywood, Amy M. 2001. "The Normal, the Queer, and the Middle Ages." Journal of the History of Sexuality 10(2): 173-179.

Sautman, Francesca Canadé, and Pamela Sheingorn. 2001. "Introduction: Charting the Field." In Same-Sex Love and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave.

Shepard, Alexandra. 2005. "Just Good Friends? Same-Sex Intimacy in Early Modern Britain and Europe." History Workshop Journal 58: 289-296.

Vicinus, Martha. 2004. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

                               Francesca Canadé Sautman