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

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Some women engaged in sexual relations with their fellow female prisoners. It is important to note that such relations do not always fit neatly within the category of “lesbianism.” This is because not all women who engaged in same-sex relations were lesbians. Some women developed same-sex relationships and later described them as a source of comfort in the camps. Others even saw them as necessary for survival. She said that Lyte warned she would get her thrown out of the prestigious Lawn Tennis Association academy if she told anyone. 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.

Over the course of the 1930s, Nazi actions targeting male homosexuality became more systematically oppressive. In 1935, the Nazi regime reformed Paragraph 175. The statute now criminalized any and all sexual intimacy between men. The Nazis also increased the severity of the punishment for these crimes. They instructed prosecutors to argue for harsh sentences in court. Judges often complied. I’d come out when I was 17 and been disowned by my parents. I’d moved to London and been in and out relationships and casual flings. She was 40 and had been married for 10 years, with three children under the age of 10. The agency we worked for also represented her husband, an esteemed writer, so I knew I absolutely couldn’t go there.The first teaser for Lars von Trier‘s buzzy erotic drama Nymphomaniac has been released online, and it’s branded with the auteur’s distinctive style of yellow-tinted scenery and an unvarnished, at times unsettling, naturalism that hooks you even though you might want to look away. Her husband reacted surprisingly well too, suggesting that they enrol in therapy to help both of them exit their long-standing relationship. I took this as my cue to make a commitment and said I would move to the suburbs to be with her and her three children, once her husband had moved out. 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 Perhaps it’s trite to say that “representation matters,” but some things are cliché because they’re true. The first time I ever saw lesbians onscreen was when my high school’s Gay Bisexual Straight Alliance played part of the first scene of the original L Word series. (The “sweet little figs” scene, in case you were wondering—the girls who get it get it.) Even so, it wasn’t until years later, when I first saw Blue Is the Warmest Color , that I actually found a queer story that reminded me of my own.

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. One said: "I f*****g love you so much. All I want to do is to be with you for the rest of my life. I love you."In addition, there was no specific law under which lesbians were prosecuted. Thus, there is not always an obvious place to look for criminal records pertaining to their arrests and detentions. For example, lesbians appear in court cases and police files relating to political opposition or asocial behavior. However, these are scattered across many files and in various archives. Scholars hoping to learn about lesbians’ stories are painstakingly combing through these files. 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.

Mr Mason claimed the affair had been invented by the mother, who was angry when her daughter's tennis career faltered. I felt more in touch with myself. Maybe it was the tequila working its magic, but a dormant place had been awakened inside of me and it was singing. I’m usually not that comfortable with letting it all hang out, but none of that mattered. Our two bodies were coming together and it felt totally empowering. Despite having unshaven legs, chipping toenail polish, and hair all over the place, I felt sexier than ever before. 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. Because there was no single law or policy that applied to sexual relations between women, lesbians had a wide range of experiences in Nazi Germany. These experiences were not solely determined by their sexuality. Rather, other factors shaped lesbians’ lives during the Nazi era. Among them were supposed “racial” identity, political attitudes, social class, and gender norms. Based on these factors as well as others, some lesbians (especially those who were working class) were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. In these instances, they were classified as political prisoners or asocials. Jewish lesbians largely faced Nazi persecution and mass murder as Jews. In most cases, their sexuality was a secondary factor. The Germans and their collaborators murdered an unknown number of Jewish lesbians during World War II. Before the Nazis: Lesbians in the Weimar Republic The Nazis believed that German women had a special task to perform: motherhood. According to Nazi logic, lesbians were women and should thus be mothers. They had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “ Aryans .”We’re even better friends now. I’m not sure if it’s because we share something together that none of our other friends do or if it’s because we know what each other taste like. She’s always been someone I could tell my deepest darkest secrets to and now we had one of our own together. Bodily fluids were exchanged—how could we not become better friends? Although we’re nowhere near ashamed of what happened, we prefer to keep it between the two of us. It’s better that way. The fact that my friend went down on me and we actually survived the experience with our friendship intact doesn’t mean I recommend you try the same thing. Here’s why.

But even in cases when lesbians were arrested and sent to concentration camps, the records can be hard to find. One of the greatest challenges is that lesbians were rarely identified as such in official records from the Nazi era. Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Soon afterwards, Germany’s gay and lesbian communities came under pressure and scrutiny from the new regime. For men accused of homosexuality, this worsened over the course of the 1930s. They faced brutal persecution. Shutting Down Lesbian and Gay Meeting Places Sexual relations between women were taboo for much of German society. Neighbors, family members, and friends sometimes disapproved of and thus denounced the women involved to the police. It is possible they did not realize that sexual relations between women were not illegal. In some of these cases, the police dismissed the complaints because they had no legal basis.And that’s how it remained for a long time: a sore spot of a secret. I couldn’t think about it too closely because, like pressing a bruise, it made me flinch with discomfort. I’d consigned it as much as possible to memory until last year when Steven told me that he planned to propose.