hmm, now here's an interesting one.

[sophiaserpentia]

The people of Lesbos want gay women to stop calling themselves Lesbians.

Yes, i can illustrate the problem by imagining a Big Gay Sketch in my mind's eye: a man on a flight from Athens tells a US Customs Agent that he's a Lesbian; hilarity ensues. Gee, how funny.

The use of the term to refer to homosexual women dates to the Victorian era. It was, like so many other Victorian terms, a euphemism designed to hide what could not be talked about. It was adopted alongside the now archaic term sapphist; both refer to Sappho, the ancient resident of Lesbos who wrote love poems to women.

It is not the only geographic name which has been appropriated to describe women who live as partners; see for example the term "Boston marriage," which dates to roughly the same time period. (Hmm, someone on my friend's list wrote about this term in the last week, but i don't remember who, sorry.)

Since the political lesbian movement of the 1970's, the term "lesbian" has been cemented in our cultural consciousness, so much so that the term "gay" has come in many contexts to be seen as exclusively referring to men. But, just as 'transwoman' is not a real word but a composite term made of a norm + a modifier, 'gay woman' is not a real word; but neither is 'lesbian,' being an appropriated geographical term (still being used by the people who live there today) and is more of a moralistic erasure. It is more like the heteronormative imposition of a big "CENSORED" bar than a word itself. It is another example of the dominant culture using language as a weapon to deny identity; and we queer folk have made do with the modifiers and erasures given us, but we have yet to have actual words for who it is that we are.

Comments

[gramina.livejournal.com]

But even the term "woman" itself isn't a "real term". It means "man with womb" or something.

Actually, it comes from "wyfman" and was as opposed to "werman" -- they meant, respectively, female or male person.

woman: late O.E. wimman (pl. wimmen), lit. "woman-man," alteration of wifman (pl. wifmen), a compound of wif "woman" (see wife) + man "human being" (in O.E. used in ref. to both sexes; see man). Cf. Du. vrouwmens "wife," lit. "woman-man." The formation is peculiar to Eng. and Du. Replaced older O.E. wif, quean as the word for "female human being." The pronunciation of the singular altered in M.E. by the rounding influence of -w-; the plural retains the original vowel. Meaning "wife," now largely restricted to U.S. dial. use, is attested from c.1450. Women's liberation is attested from 1966; women's rights is from 1840, with an isolated example in 1632. Verb womanize originally (1593) meant "to make effeminate;" sense of "to chase women, to go wenching" is attested from 1893.
(http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=woman&searchmode=none)

Womb actually has a separate derivation -- "womb O.E. wamb, womb "belly, uterus," from P.Gmc. *wambo (cf. O.N. vomb, O.Fris. wambe, M.Du. wamme, Du. wam, O.H.G. wamba, Ger. Wamme "belly, paunch," Goth. wamba "belly, womb," O.E. umbor "child"), of unknown origin." (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=womb&searchmode=none)

You may also be interested in the derivation of "man" -- I was intrigued to see that the slide from man-person to man-male happened in several languages, and not just in English:

man (n.) O.E. man, mann "human being, person," from P.Gmc. *manwaz (cf. O.S., O.H.G. man, Ger. Mann, O.N. maðr, Goth. manna "man"), from PIE base *man- (cf. Skt. manuh, Avestan manu-, O.C.S. mozi, Rus. muzh "man, male"). Sometimes connected to root *men- "to think" (see mind), which would make the ground sense of man "one who has intelligence," but not all linguists accept this. Plural men (Ger. Männer) shows effects of i-mutation. Sense of "adult male" is late (c.1000); O.E. used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late 13c. and was replaced by man. Universal sense of the word remains in mankind (from O.E. mancynn, from cynn "kin") and in manslaughter (q.v.). Similarly, L. had homo "human being" and vir "adult male human being," but they merged in V.L., with homo extended to both senses. A like evolution took place in Slavic languages, and in some of them the word has narrowed to mean "husband." PIE had two stems: *uiHro "freeman" (cf. Skt. vira-, Lith. vyras, L. vir, O.Ir. fer, Goth. wair) and *hner "man," a title more of honor than *uiHro (cf. Skt. nar-, Armenian ayr, Welsh ner, Gk. aner). The chess pieces so called from c.1400. As an interjection of surprise or emphasis, first recorded c.1400, but especially popular from early 20c. Man-about-town is from 1734; the Man "the boss" is from 1918. Men's Liberation first attested 1970.
(http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=man&searchmode=none)