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13 - Desire, Love, and Sex between Women in Global History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
Leila J. Rupp
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

and sex between women. The history of female homoerotic relations throughout time and in different places is widely varied, shaped by the societies and cultures in which women lived. How women act on their desires, what kinds of acts they engage in and with whom, what kinds of meanings they attribute to those desires and acts, how they think about the relationship between love and sexuality, whether they think of sexuality as having meaning for identities, whether they form communities with people with like desires—all of this differs across time and place. Yet there are discernible patterns, both in the ways that homoerotic relations have been conceived within persistently male-dominated social arrangements and in the forms of desire and intimacy experienced by women. A global historical view makes clear that emergence into public is not everywhere significant, that desire and love between women can flourish within heteronormative social arrangements, and that the emergence of a lesbian identity is a minor part of the whole story of female homoerotic relations.

Keywords

female same-sex sexualityfemale homoerotic desirefemale masculinityromantic friendshipnonbinary genderqueer identitiessocial construction of sexuality
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 273 - 292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

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