May 02 2008
An island of 90,000 Lesbians
A lesser known fact is that word lesbian, popular for describing homosexual women, originates from the name of a Greek island called Lesbos. The association of the island with female homosexuality is due to the writing of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, who frequently expressed female to female love in her work and was a native of the Grecian island of Lesbos.
Lesbos is the third largest of the Greek islands with a population of 90,000. Effectively anyone born on the island is a Lesbian – as in ‘from Lesbos’ – not necessarily to say homosexual.
Why is this suddenly of interest? Well a row has broken out over who exactly has the right to use the word “lesbian”. A campaign group on Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term. Apparently because of the social problems it causes Lesbo’s inhabitants and to quote the campaign leader Dimitris Lambrou, “International dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.”
I admit, its an amusing quirk of naming which would quickly become tiresome to explain, but to say that lesbians (homosexual women) disgrace the islanders is frankly more than a little offensive. Gay and lesbian Rights groups in Greece have pledged to fight the case.
This story is more than a little of my usual beat, so to link this back to bisexuality at least if not men. Aparently this Greek poet Sappho was in fact bisexual not lesbian and committed suicide for the love of a man.
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2 Responses to “An island of 90,000 Lesbians”
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I must admit this is hilarious, and ridiculous
Also, the word “lesbian” has little to do with Lesbos. It comes from Lesbia, the alias the Roman poet Catullus gave the woman he was in love with. She wasn’t a lesbian, she just didn’t love him back.