Discrimination against lesbians

Types

Jurisdictional

As lesbians are female homosexuals, legal legislation against lesbians is generally bundled with other anti-homosexual legislation. According to Human Rights Watch, there are at least 67 jurisdictions that impose laws and penalties against same-sex sexual activity as of 2026; at least 38 of which having laws explicitly criminalizing lesbian sex. Penalties against lesbian sex vary by country, including imprisonment, caning, and flagellation.

Sexual

Many lesbian women report experiences of heterosexual men being obsessed with them, often portrayed in the form desiring to "fix or convert" lesbian women to straight women through sexual intercourse or romantic relationships with men. Additionally, women are often requested to perform acts of lesbian sex in front of a male audience to authenticate their sexuality, and further marginalizing them.

"Lesbian" ranks among some of the most popular search terms on popular pornography sites. In heterosexual pornography, there are many tropes including either straight men "fixing" lesbians, or lesbians hitting on straight women, perpetuating the stereotypes that lesbianism is something to be "fixed", that female sexuality is not to be taken seriously, and that lesbians are predatory.

Lesbian erasure

Lesbian erasure refers to the process of ignoring, discarding, or purposefully writing out the history and struggles of lesbians. This term can refer to writing lesbians out of history, such as writing out Stormé DeLarverie from starting the Stonewall riots.

Anti-lesbian beliefs and stereotypes

The idea that lesbians are dangerous—while heterosexual interactions are natural, normal, and spontaneous—is a common example of beliefs that are lesbophobic. Like homophobia, this belief is classed as heteronormative, as it assumes that heterosexuality is dominant, presumed, and normal, and that other sexual or relationship arrangements are abnormal and unnatural. Lesbians encounter lesbophobic attitudes not only from straight men and women, but also gay men. Lesbophobia in gay men is regarded as manifest in the perceived subordination of lesbian issues in the campaign for gay rights.

Lesbians have been stereotyped in often contradictory ways. Kim Emery, in discussing lesbians in the United States during the late-19th century, says:

It is a truism […] that lesbian existence is inflected and afflicted by apparently incompatible social stereotypes. Lesbians are assumed to be both men in women's bodies and women marked as masculine by physical anomaly. Lesbians are accused of hating men and of wanting to be men, of being both sexually predatory and essentially asexual [sic], of committing unspeakable sexual acts and of lacking the endowments necessary to perform any [sexual acts].

A stereotype that has been identified as lesbophobic is that female athletes are always or predominantly lesbians.

Corrective rape

Corrective rape is a hate crime in which lesbian women are raped by heterosexual men under the belief that penetrative sex will change or eliminate their sexual orientation. Perpetrators have been documented telling victims that they are curing them, doing them a favor, teaching them a lesson, or showing them how to be a real woman during these attacks.

The term was coined in South Africa following the rape and murder of Eudy Simelane in 2008, but the practice has also been documented internationally. In Jamaica, parents have reportedly hired men to rape their lesbian daughters. Cases have been documented in Zimbabwe, Uganda, and India, typically perpetrated by family members or acquaintances.

Extent

Africa

In the late 2000s, men murdered and raped several lesbians in South Africa. The victims included Sizakele Sigasa (a lesbian activist living in Soweto) and her partner Salome Masooa, who were raped, tortured, and murdered in an attack that South African lesbian-gay rights organizations, including the umbrella-group Joint Working Group, said were driven by lesbophobia. In the Gauteng township of KwaThema, soccer player Eudy Simelane was gang-raped, beaten and stabbed to death, and LGBTQ activist Noxolo Nogwaza was raped and stoned before being stabbed to death. Zanele Muholi, community relations director of a lesbian rights group, reports having recorded 50 rape cases over the past decade involving black lesbians in townships, stating: "The problem is largely that of patriarchy. The men who perpetrate such crimes see rape as curative and as an attempt to show women their place in society." Corrective rape is an ongoing social problem in South Africa.

Americas

In 1995, lesbian couple and gay rights activists Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill were murdered in Oregon. Their killer stated that their being lesbians made it easier to kill them. He also murdered a bisexual man for making a pass at him.

Europe

In its 2019 annual report, France's SOS Homophobie found that anti-lesbian violence increased 42 percent in France in 2018, with 365 attacks reported.