Lesbian Bodies: Tribades, Tomboys, and Tarts

This article by Barbara Creed introduced me to a topic that I had never before considered, the different stereotypes associated with the lesbian body. Before, this article I was only aware of one stereotype associated with lesbian women and that was the masculine or "butch" depiction of lesbian woman. Creed talks about this masculine body stereotype in a mainly historical perspective. She mentioned the historical trials that took place in France and Holland to determine the fate of tribades; these women who were blurring the gender lines were dealt with as Creed mentions in one of three ways: legal, surgical, or lethal. All of these methods preserve traditional gender lines. 

Another interesting topic brought up by Creed is the one-sex model versus the two-sex model. Earlier on in history the woman body was viewed as an inverted male body. This point of view is what allowed some women to be pardoned for their homosexual behavior because it was believed they were actually men. However, later on when the two-sex model triumphed in popular opinion the woman body was now viewed as an inadequate and essentially incomplete version of the male body. This model led Freud to develop his theory on female homosexuality. He proposed that it arrived from "penis envy", the desire of the women to be a man. 

The animalistic female body is a stereotype that I had never heard before. The connection between homosexuality and bestiality seems to be just another way to explain homosexuality in unfavorable terms and to make it socially unacceptable. The last stereotype Creed talks about is the narcissistic lesbian body. According to this theory the lesbian woman is totally vain and self-involved; her female partner is often depicted as a mirror image of herself. So the lesbian relationship according to this stereotype is a way to further express the self-absorption of the women involved. In each of these theories it seems that men are always trying to find a way to express female homosexuality in a way that still puts men first. For the tribade stereotype women homosexuality is explained as women wanting to be men. The other stereotypes also display homosexuality as wrong or as in the narcissistic stereotype selfish. Men are probably threatened by female homosexuality because it threatens their traditional role in society.