Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

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1 criminals. To be a lesbian in some places is to be a criminal. In Tasmania during
the late 80s and early 90s lesbians could be arrested for their sexual practice.
Among those sent to the gas chambers by Nazis were a significant number of
lesbians. Upon searching for the key words “Islam lesbian” on the internet, the
message came up “no match”. This is rather like China’s denial of lesbian
existence in the People’s Republic. There are countries where being a lesbian
carries an immediate jail sentence, places like Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia,
Morocco, Tunisia, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda,
Barbados, Oman and Romania. Persecution, however, extends to countries where
theoretically to be a lesbian is not an infringement of the law, but in reality it
remains so. This is the case in Colombia, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Brazil. Death is
the penalty in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Chechen Republic, Sudan, Taiwan and Yemen. Amnesty International.
1997. Breaking the Silence: Human rights violations based on sexual orientation,
pp. 77-90. As Lillian Faderman argues, the real crime of lesbians is claiming
men’s freedoms for themselves. For this, lesbians have been executed as was
Catharine Margaretha Linck, an eighteenth-century German who disguised
herself as a man, fought as a soldier, and was executed in 1721. Lillian Faderman.
1981. Surpassing the Love of Men. pp. 51-2. Also see Susan Hawthorne. 2004a.
“Research and Silence.”
2 tattoos. Since the 1990s tattoos have become fashion accessories even in the
mainstream. A significant number of working-class lesbians sported tattoos many
years earlier. This might indicate that lesbians are part of the fashion avant garde!
3 safer that way. Silence has often been used as a defence by lesbians. To speak out
was to risk exposure, arrest, sometimes death.
4 Botany Bay. Numerous women were transported to Botany Bay by the British
government, many for petty crimes. Among them are bound to have been some
lesbians, women with a tendency to independence and rebellion, refractory girls,
as the women convicts were called. For further information on women convicts
see Portia Robinson. 1988. The Women of Botany Bay: A Reinterpretation of the Role
of Women in the Origins of Australian Society. For a poetic treatment of the same
material see Jordie Albiston’s Botany Bay Document (1996).
5 instead. An alternative story is told in Sara Hardy’s play, “Queer Fruit”. The horse
is stolen to help her lover and friend who’d been caught pocketing an egg and
taken to London after being convicted. The first woman is transported to Norfolk
Island where she dies at the hands of the brutal jailers, the second is transported
to New South Wales where she begins a new life, does not marry, and runs her
own farm, as do Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb on the outskirts of
Geelong, near Melbourne. They are known locally as the “Lady Squatters”.