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a protolesbian tale about a mythical island called "California," where Queen Califia lived with her beloved subjects, all of them masculine women. "And there were no males among them at all," Montalvo wrote. He described the women as having "energetic bodies and courageous, ardent hearts." Like the Amazons of Greek myth, they waged bloody war on other lands, killing most of the males but carrying away a few so that they might copulate with them for the sake of procreation. Female babies were kept among them; male babies were slaughtered.
In 1535, Hernan Cortes, sharing his era's enchantment with the story of these fierce, manless women, wrote the name "California" on a map of a strip of land on the west coast of North America. It has remained its name ever since - though the protolesbian source was long forgotten.
"...in his effort to find a way to be true to himself, Charles becomes caught in a tragic game of Simon Says that will ultimately leave one student dead."
books with Gay Teen Characters
Absolutely Positively NOT
Rainbow Boys
Geography Club
The God Box
Hero
Freak Show
books with Lesbian Teen Characters
Erik & Isabelle Freshman Year at Foresthill High (also has a Gay Teen main character)
Hard Love
Keeping You a Secret
books with Transgender Teen Characters
Luna
Parrotfish
books with Questioning Teen Characters
The House You Pass Along The Way
books with GLBTQ Parents/Caretakers
The Manny Files
The Arizona Kid
and one graphic novel
Tough Love: High School Confidential
Ovid tells how Hera and Zeus once argued over whether men's or women's pleasure in lovemaking was greater. They called on the ancient seer Tiresias to settle their playful disagreement for he had experienced both.
Once as a youth he [Tiresias] had come upon two serpents making love; upon striking them with his staff he was immediately turned into a woman.(Hera didn't like the disrespect.)
Tiresias told the divine pair that women had nine times as much pleasure as men, an answer that so infuriated Hera that she struck him blind. In recompense Zeus gave him the gift of foretelling the future and a long life as well. (Met. 3.322-50) Though the tales that emphasis Tiresias's prophetic insights in later years make no reference to these events of his youth, one could still play with the notion that some part of his wisdom derives from perspectives gained during the years he spent as a woman.It's fascinating that this example of fluidity of gender comes to us from the mythic underpinnings of our culture. In the same tradition of native shamen, and two-spirit people possessing qualities both male and female, it's a great reminder of why alternate gender identity - the "T" in GLBTQ, is so much part of our community.
Delicate shell-bead necklaces in warm subtle tones of brown, orange, and cream cascade from my neck as I write. They are a gift from my friend, Linda Marie, who brought them from the south coast of India, where the shells were gathered from a sparkling beach that slopes into the intense blue water of the Indian Ocean. They are strung together into slender necklaces by the women and children of the village Kanya Kumari. As Linda explained to me, these Tamil-speaking dark-skinned Hindu people are descendants of the original women-centered tribes who, centuries ago, were pushed to the south of India by the invading patriarchal Aryans who began to dominate the north. Still matrilineal, the women, as so many others around the world, have been reduced to selling necklaces to tourists for a living.
They worship the goddess Kumari, a Spinster God who never took a lover and never married. The great temple of Kumari overlooks the blue sea at the very south tip of India. Huge wooden doors two stories high once opened to allow the godess, as she sits in her large statue form, to look out over the sea. Long beams of light were said to reflect over the water, gleams of the torchlights held by her worshippers and reflected from the diamonds set into her nose. But once years ago, a Portuguese colonial ship caught in a storm had mistaken her diamond light for a lighthouse signal and crashed on the rocks. Since then, the great doors of Kumari's temple are closed to the sea, though her temple services go on as before.
The local people live in thatched houses of their own making. Rape is unknown in this region, and the men are very shy around the women. The title of respect is "Mother." Linda Marie, an American woman married to an Indian man from a more northern province, had traveled to the south coast villages in 1966 and made a special friend named Antonia. Now in 1978 she returned to find her again. This time she sought an added dimension to their friendship, for in the meantime in America she had divorced her husband and had come out as a Lesbian. What follows is her account of the second visit; she has used an autobiographical character name, Cassie, as the short, red-haired, white American traveler.
Two-Saris-Together
The next morning Cassie brought Saris for Antonia and her daughter and sisters. Then she took Antonia to her hotel-room and asked her to stay until Cassie went back to the USA. Cassie asked the question by pointing to the floor, then to the two beds, then to herself and the other woman. Antonia agreed, and they put the mattresses on the floor next to one another. Then so many hours were spent talking, talking, each in her own language, and the language of women, tossing their heads and waving their hands...
Cassie learned from Antonia that her mother had died when she was small but before dying she had a hex sign tattooed on Antonia's arm. Antonia taught Cassie what the word was in her language, Tamil, for two-turbans together; then another word for two-saris-together. But as for a-sari-and-a-turban-together, even when Cassie repeated the word in a near-whisper, Antonia would bite her lip and blush. Since she didn't seem to mind Cassie saying the words for two saris or two turbans out loud, Cassie surmised that a-sari-and-a-turban together was a dirty word in Tamil...
Antonia was humming, holding up her hands with her eyes closed and weaving back and forth. She knew the word "Love." She pronounced it "Luva." She understood love to mean our secret, the one we keep from the world. What would happen if the world knew an Untouchable from India and an Outcast from America shared a secret? Would it start world wars? Would the United Nations forbid women from traveling alone? If these two were caught, would they be cast to the sea and fed to the sharks? Or worse yet, would they be teated as lepers, would dogs bark and children laugh and point as they passed by? Cassie wondered. The best that could happen if everyone knew this secret would be that women from all over the world would mingle shamelessly and the men would become silent before their power.
"erotic ghazal," a lyric poem of six to fifteen rhymed couplets unified not by logic but by symbols and images: often the ghazal is compared to a thread of pearls. Love and wine were traditional themes of the ghazal because they symbolized ecstasy and liberation from restraint. Hafiz took these subjects and made them his own while infusing them with his own brand of Sufi mysticism and its yearning for a total, obliterating union of the earthly with the divine.
With locks disheveled, flushed in a sweat of drunkenness,
His shirt torn open, a song on his lips and wine cup in his hand -
With eyes looking for trouble, lips softly complaining -
So at midnight last night he came and sat at my pillow.
He bent his head down to my ear, and in a voice full of sadness
He said: "Oh, my old lover, are you asleep?"
What lover, given such wine at midnight,
Would prove love's heretic, not worshipping wine?
Don't scold us, you puritan, for drinking down to the dregs;
This fate was dealt us in God's prime Covenant.
Whatever He poured into our tankard we'll swallow;
If it's liquor of Paradise, or the wine that poisons.
A laughing wine cup, a tangle of knotted hair -
And let good resolutions, like those of Hafiz, be shattered!
On the platform we kissed, damn them all; we kissed, and we said, "See you," and then I got on the train, and he stood there for a moment, a tall, black knight in shining armor, and then he gave me a half smile and half a bow, and he ran up the stairs two at a time, turned at the top and waved, and that was the last I ever saw of him.
But it is still all there in my memory, the brightest memory of them all.
"The Two most celebrated virgins in Europe!"
Eleanor Butler (1739-1829) and Sara Ponsonby (1755-1831) were two upper-class Irishwomen who left Ireland together in 1778 and set up home together in Plas Newydd, a cottage in Llangollen Vale in Wales. This was the second time they had attempted to elope, and they had to do it in male clothes so as not to be too conspicuous on the route. Their families realized they could not be stopped, and eventually gave them small stipends. (2)
In 1782 only two years after taking up house together people were confessing themselves captivated by their romantic mode of life, and three years later their fame had traveled so widely that the Queen was asking for plans of the cottage and garden. This was only the prelude to an adulation accorded to few celebrities in any era, and it was to last until their deaths and after. (3)
'In the Vale of Langollen a Cottage is seen
Well shelter'd from tempests by shades ever green
Where the daisy first opens its eye - to the day
And the hawthorn first flowers on the bosom of May.
There far from the haunts of ambition and pride
Contentment, and virtue, and friendship abide,
And nature, complacent smiles sweet on the pair
Who have splendour forsaken to worship her there.
Bright Patterns of wisdom affection and truth
Retired to the shade in the gay bloom of youth
Your sweet rural cottage and pastoral views
Are the charm of the Vale, and the theme of the Muse.
To the Shade for concealment in vain you retire,
We follow to wonder - to gaze - and admire.
Those graces which fancy and feeling refine,
Like the glow-worm thro' deepest obscurity shine
While ambition exults in her storm-beaten dome,
Like the tower on your Mountain that frowns o'er your home
With tranquil seclusion, and friendship your lot
How blest, how secure, and how envied your cot! (4)
"...share everything. Their bound books are gold-lettered, E.B. on the front, S.P. on the back; so with their china and with nearly every possession they have. Their letters are signed jointly, the initials of the Beloved followed by the full name of the writer of the letter. In speech they use always the collective 'We'. They call one another 'Beloved' always, as Dorothy and William Wordsworth do. 'Beloved', which had about the same weight then as 'Darling', and which even in Sara's account book was shortened to 'My B'.
Yet none of this compares with the subtilty [sic] of the concealed relationship, for to all appearances Eleanor Butler seems to be the stronger character; people notice that it is she who appears to make the decisions; to do most of the talking; who is the active principle. Yet when the library chimney catches fire and their precious cottage is likely to burn down it is not Eleanor but Sarah who has the presence of mind to thrust her arm up the chimney, burning it as she does so, and to pull down Lady Dungannon's dull, voluminous letter, which has started the trouble. When a drunken man calls at the cottage and puts his foot in the kitchen door it is not Eleanor but Sarah who goes down to send him away. (5)
I kept my bed all day with one of My dreadful Headaches. My Sally. My Tender, My Sweet Love lay beside me holding and supporting My Head till one o'clock when I by Much entreaty prevailed with her to rise and get her breakfast. She never left me for half a Moment the entire day Except at Two o'clock when she perceived Mr Whalley and little Richard coming down the Field. She ran out to Prevent his rapping at the door and to borrow the 1st Volume of the Tab de Suisse which she knew I was pining for... My beloved Sat by My Bed Side reading it to me for near Two Hours - I wou'd not permit her to Continue - lest it shou'd impair her precious Health. Mrs Tatters uneasy that we did not come down Stairs at the usual hour Scratched at our Door for admittance, came on the bed to me and lay there till Ten o'clock at night Purring all the Time - a day of Tenderness and Sensibility'
'My Sally How can I acknowledge the grateful Sense my Heart labours under of Your Tenderness, anxiety and incessant attention to your B.' (6)
A Lesbian Lip-Lock in Tiananmen Square!
London's Chinatown all decorated!
Look at all the Red things for sale in Taiwan!According to legend, in ancient China, the Nián (年) was a man-eating beast from the mountains (in other versions from under the sea), which came out every 12 months somewhere close to winter to prey on humans. The people later believed that the Nian was sensitive to loud noises and the colour red, so they scared it away with explosions, fireworks and the liberal use of the colour red. These customs led to the first New Year celebrations. Guò nián (simplified Chinese: 过年; traditional Chinese: 過年), which means to celebrate the new year, literally means the passover of the Nian.I didn't know that - and that's really cool, an explanation of the use of the color red and the loud fireworks!
Li Yu's play, Lian xiang ban or "Pitying the Fragrant Companion." It is a story about two women (one of them married) who love each other so much that they perform a wedding ceremony for themselves. The married woman conspires successfully to have her husband accept her lover as a concubine and the two women live together happily ever after. That the play later became closely identified with the lesbian experience is unmistakable; for example, in the autobiographical work on Shen Fu (1763-?) Six Chapters of a Floating Life, we find him teasing his wife about her infatuation with a singsong girl, "Are you trying to imitate Li-weng's 'Pitying the Fragrant Companion'?"
From the Chronicles, too, we know about the affection between Duke Ling of Wei and his minister, Ni Xia. Once, when the two men were taking a stroll in an orchard, Ni picked a peach off one of the trees and took a bite off it. The fruit was so delicious that he offered the rest of it to the duke; a common euphemism for male homosexual love, fen tao zhi ai (literally, "the love of the shared peach"), is derived from this account.
It's a season of hormones,The author even has all the songs from the book on an imix on her website (right column, under "Sayde's imix") which is pretty cool - it's not even a movie (yet?), and it already has its own soundtrack!
gold lamé,
hissy fits,
jazz hands,
song and dance,
true love,
and unitards
that will determine their future
--and test their friendship.
