Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

7 led armies. Penthesileia, Boudicca, St Joan all come immediately to mind. These
women, amazons, and military leaders have been lesbian heroes from time to time
and the subject of iconic imagery.
8 leadership of nations. Catherine the Great is perhaps one of the most famous of
leading lesbians. Only four names are listed in Lavender Lists: Queen Christina of
Sweden, 1632-1654, Queen Anne of England, 1702-1714, Empress Anna Ioannovna
of Russia, 1730-1786, and Empress Catherine II (The Great) of Russia, 1762-1796.
Lynne Yamaguchi Fletcher and Adrien Saks (Eds.). 1990. Lavender Lists, p. 95.
Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated in order to be able to continue her
relationship with Ebba Sparre. Permission not to marry meant giving up her throne.
For more on this see Lillian Fardermann. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men, p. 55.
9 brought down monarchies feeding revolution. “Among the political pamphlets which
helped ignite the French Revolution is a whole group of accusations focusing
on Marie Antionette’s supposed tribadism and her aggressive sexuality.”
Lillian Faderman. 1981, Surpassing the Love of Men, p. 42.
10 barbarians. The word “barbarian” (Gr. barbaros, ) means foreign, other.
Lesbians, by definition in a straight world, are barbaric and behave in barbarous
ways. In earlier times most of the barbarians encountered by the Greek world were
from the East, some of them with long traditions of worship of female forms and
goddesses, some of them amazons. It’s not hard to see why lesbians are not readily
elected to office.
11 sexuality to be ignored. “Queensland's Family First Senate candidate John Lewis said
Liberal candidate for Brisbane Ingrid Tall was not getting his party's preferences
because she was a lesbian.” “Family First won't preference lesbians”. Sydney
Morning Herald. 5 October 2004.
12 disproportion to our numbers. “If all Lesbians suddenly turned purple today, society
would be surprised at the number of purple people in high places.” Sidney Abbot
and Barbara Love. 1978. Sappho was a Right-on Woman.
13 Erinna. Erinna is linked with Sappho and best known for ”a long poem written in
hexameters (the meter of Homer), lamenting her childhood friend Baucis, who died
soon after marriage.” Margaret Williamson. 1995. Sappho’s Immortal Daughters. p. 17.
Erinna’s work is described by an anonymous poet as a “Lesbian honeycomb”, ibid.
p. 18.
14 Nossis. It is possible that Nossis was descended from a line of women poets.
Williamson also suggests that the references Nossis makes to roses are both
allusive of desire and evocative of Sappho, “whose poems are referred to as roses”,
ibid. p. 19.
15 Dickinson. Emily Dickinson’s poems are known for their cryptic and enigmatic
qualities. In the last decade or so, scholars have been more willing to write about
her long relationship with Susan Gilbert. It was not so easy at the time of her death
and much of her correspondence was burned by members of her family to protect
her privacy, or was it their reputation See Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell
Smith (Eds.). 1998. Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan
Huntington Dickinson.
16 Mew. Charlotte Mew burned most of her work before killing herself. Scholars
suggest that she was attempting to mask her lesbianism. Her work has re-emerged,
however, precisely because of her status as a lesbian, and it has been recently
published in the Penguin Anthology of Lesbian Short Stories. Margaret Reynolds
(Ed.). 1993. Penguin Anthology of Lesbian Short Stories.
84