This is so in depth & conclusive that I have to share.
Lesbian women, transmasc+ & masc-leaning gender diverse people in general often face invisibility or even outright rejection of their sexuality & gender in societies that view women as lesser, and the reason transmasc+ people also suffer is because the culture eventually refuses to see them as anything but a woman; Later on, as I've understood it, ethnographers and missionaries in, say, North America or Turtle Island often omitted to mention masc-leaning gender diverse people and lesbian women due to a perception that women & 'women' weren't important & that 'crossdressing' & gender nonconforming actions by men and/or 'men' were far morally deviant, suspect and grave than a woman and/or 'woman' doing the same things; it meant, among with other factors, by much nuance that men and fem-leaning gender diverse people got much more attention, and since the European colonists and missionaries and later 'western' ethnographers then didn't see anything but 'the inferior woman', both masc-leaning gender diverse people & lesbian women often didn't get much attention... 'Women's stories' didn't matter in the same way to them, and neither were their 'moral crimes' as severe as when a man and 'man' did the same. I'd call this—when affecting masc-leaning gender diverse people—'pseudo-misogynistic transmisandry' or perhaps 'physi-reductory transmisandry'—when they are reduced to their bodies in patriarchal societies, though am open to suggestions or being told a word already exists😵💫
I also recall reading about a Roman or Greek poet who thought lesbian love as impossible, whilst male-male same sex love was as natural as anything to him... Well, when you relegate all women to domestic duties as Greek & Roman society would almost unequivocally do, what chance is she going to have to explore her sexuality? Even so, the ancient stories written in the two with erotic elements are always absent of caring about female sexuality, as it was deemed irrelevant compared to male sexuality.... In these very same stories, women are often side antagonists or in some other way an obstacle for the morally perfect male hero.
Again, not a critique towards men, but rather this specific iteration of masculinity that is so unbelievably toxic and still has a foothold over most of the world (partly thanks to colonialism), and turns men into emotionless brutes who hate themselves, and women into meek, submissive and obedient dolls.
But this is part of the reason why ancient Roman and Greek sapphic material is so scarce... Historical disinterest and rejection of female sexuality, relegated to compulsory heterosexuality for all of the 'gentle sex' or what ever the flip they would say 😵💫 it is possible a romantic inscription found in Pompeii could be directed from one woman to another, so I do recommend looking that one up, too, if it isn't in this article (I'm writing this new stuff months later).
Still no fan of the terms 'feminism', 'matriarchy' nor 'patriarchy', as they're so provoking—all can end discussions before they even begin & cause pointless fights. The terms are spectrums with diff levels, but try to tell that to the person you've now upset because you even dared mentioned the word 'patriarchy' :I principal feminism is not female domination, nor is it androcide—it's erasing these toxic, unfounded and naturally incompatible stereotypes and gender norms that have affected men and women so all over the world.
Within the past month, I have encountered at least three different people asking the question of how lesbians were perceived in ancient Gree
