The word “lesbian” is used to describe a female homosexual or a woman who is primarily attracted to other women. However, there is a reason why the word lesbian became a common word to describe such women, and that reason is what we would explore in today’s write-up.
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According to Britannica.com, and newworldencyclopedia.com, the word lesbian originated from a Greek island of Lesbos, which is the home of a poet Sappho, who lived in the city in the sixth century.
Sappho was one of the few female poets in the era when most of the poets were men, and she was believed to be attracted to other women as she wrote love poems to them. Due to the fact that such acts were not common at that time, it attracted her lots of criticisms both during her lifetime and in death.
That was how the island Lesbos became associated with female-to-female relationships, leading to the word “lesbian”, and it is believed that most of her literary works were either destroyed or changed by moralists who didn’t believe in her actions.
However, in 2008, three of the islanders sued the Greek LGBT community in order to ban the use of the works lesbian so as not to associate it with the name of the island. Unfortunately, the three islanders lost the case against the LGBT community and had to pay all the court costs.
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