The Reluctant Lesbian: How Far Would You Go to save Your Family?

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It remains a research challenge to find historical sources related to lesbian experiences under the Nazi regime. It is difficult to know what role lesbians’ sexuality played in their detention. Sometimes their arrest had little or nothing to do with the fact that they were lesbians. At other times, their sexuality may have played a role. This was especially the case regarding arrests prompted by denunciations. Denunciations frequently affected people considered social outsiders. Denunciations of Lesbians During the Weimar era, Germans publicly challenged gender and sexual norms. This was especially true in big cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt am Main. Weimar’s Lesbian Networks and Communities In lesbian prisoners’ paperwork, camp authorities usually listed a racial, political, social, or criminal reason as the primary cause for their arrest. In a few cases, the authorities also noted their sexuality. Various right-wing and centrist political groups, as well as mainstream religious organizations, sought to counter this aspect of Weimar culture by promoting their own version of German culture. This version was rooted in classical music and literature, religion, and the family. In some cases, these groups blamed others for corrupting German culture. They blamed, for example, Jews, Communists, and Americans. Nazi Attitudes towards Homosexuality

We had pent-up sexual tension anyway. My friend went down on me because we had a vaguely flirty relationship previously anyway. While we weren’t crushing on each other hard enough to want a relationship or anything, we were curious about one another sexually and took whatever opportunity we could get to pursue that. In other words, it didn’t really come out of nowhere. It’s been almost twenty years since I last saw her. But I still have the sketch I made—a shy girl with fierce eyes that dared people to do the unthinkable.The Nazis did not systematically prosecute or persecute lesbians solely because of their sexuality. Under the Nazi regime, there was no official law or policy prohibiting sexual relations between women. This is unlike the case of gay men.

We were acquaintances, really, rather than friends. She was my best friend Steven’s* girlfriend. Steven and I had known each other since university. We’d spent our year abroad together, living out a silly, sepia-tinged Italian fantasy - ' che bello! che dolce!' - and then graduated and moved to London and ended up with a circle of six or seven close friends. As am I. Representation always matters, whether it's in the Halls of Congress or at your local independent theater. Queer women deserve to have their queer female sex represented on screen, without it devolving into typical pornographic tropes: shaved vaginas, sorority sisters, giant jiggly boobs, foot-long dildos, scissoring, a well-hung neighbor guy who just "pops in" for a threesome, etc. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of these erotic ingredients, per se, but it's formulaic and not particularly representational of most queer sex.

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The hysteria of nighttime at a wedding - everyone an inflated version of themselves, like bubbles close to popping. Things always happen at weddings. This is what I told myself the next day - this is how I wrote it off when Sarah* and I had sex.

The teenager said: "She said if I was to say anything, she'd hurt me and she would stop my tennis completely and tell the academy to get rid of me." Defence lawyer David Mason asked the girl why she had failed to speak out after she was allegedly found in bed at her Merseyside home and even lied to police that it was a "one-off". I'm not about to put Kissing Jessica Stein in this category, because it's too weak of a queer film to be even considered. There's also Mulholland Drive, which had some very brief hot queer moments relative to its era (2001). Heavenly Creatures (1994) served the queer goth community particularly well. Sadly, that community is relatively small. Another difficulty is that very few lesbians shared testimonies about their experiences during this time. This is partially because the topic of sexual relations between women remained taboo for decades after the Nazi era.Sitting in meetings with her at the prominent literary agency where we both worked left me feeling weak. Usually never short of things to say, in her presence, I’d marvel at her ability to drain all quips from my mind, leaving my mouth bone-dry. But I knew the cliché and I refused to succumb to the stereotype of being the young, ambitious 25-year-old who screws the boss. Hirschfeld and others also sought to educate the public about sexuality. For example, they promoted Hirschfeld’s ideas that homosexuality is inborn and not a vice or perversion. Maine went to Catholic school in Iowa for 13 years, and this experience informs Yes, God, Yes. The sex education curriculum instructed students that sex was only to be had between a man and a woman, married in the church, and only for reproduction. Masturbation was considered a sin, as was sex with a person of the same gender. The topic of women's pleasure was ignored entirely.