The homosexual nature of some spells has been erased. In a love spell for Nike, the name of the commissioner Pantous (or Paitous) could be male or female, but two feminine pronouns reveal that it refers to a woman. Franz Boll assumed that both pronouns were scribal errors, and made the spell heterosexual by substituting masculine equivalents in his 1910 edition of the text. The first edition to restore the homosexual reading was published in 1989, although its authors also argued for Boll's scribal error theory. [13] :90–96 Masculine pronouns remain in some translations published after 1989. [14] Female-female relationships or sexual activities were occasionally depicted in Greek art. For example, a plate from Archaic Thera appears to show two women courting. [30] An Attic red figure vase in the collection of the Tarquinia National Museum in Italy shows a kneeling woman fingering the genitals of another woman in a rare explicit portrayal of sexual activity between women in Greek art, [30] although it has also been interpreted as depicting one prostitute shaving or otherwise grooming the other in a non-sexual fashion. [39] Ancient India [ edit ] In 2002 Lebanese police raided the home of a lesbian whose mother had filed a complaint accusing her of stealing the mother’s jewellery – and found her with another woman. Audacity in Adversity | LGBT Activism in the Middle East and North Africa". Human Rights Watch. 2018-04-16 . Retrieved 2019-11-04. a b "Palestine". Human Dignity Trust. Archived from the original on October 31, 2023 . Retrieved November 1, 2023.

Guppy, Shusha. " Veiled might of the harem.(American University Press)(Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800) (Book review)" ( Archive only available to researchers and legal). Times Higher Education Supplement, June 9, 2006, Vol.0(1746), p.33(1). ISSN 0049-3929. Source: Cengage Learning, Inc. Though homosexuality – both male and female – is generally a taboo subject in the Middle East, there is plenty of evidence that all-woman action is more common than people imagine, and much of it takes place under the noses of unsuspecting husbands. Ervad Behramshah Hormusji Bharda (1990). "The Importance of Vendidad in the Zarathushti Religion". tenets.zoroastrianism.com . Retrieved January 3, 2015. Lebanon votes against international gay rights bill – Georgi Azar". An-Nahar. 2018-10-18 . Retrieved 2018-10-31. Legal Status in the Palestinian territories". Birzeit University Institute of Law. Archived from the original on November 3, 2007.Mencari pasangan sebagai lesbian Arab juga tidaklah mudah. Banyak dari mereka yang harus bersembunyi dan tidak bisa membuka diri secara terang-terangan. Selain itu, stigma dan diskriminasi juga membuat banyak orang yang tidak mau terlibat dengan orang LGBT. Namun, dengan adanya komunitas lesbian Arab, mereka bisa saling mendukung dan membantu dalam mencari pasangan yang tepat. Mempertahankan Hubungan dalam Kondisi Sulit In one such story – Menstruation by the Syrian writer Ammar Abdulhamid – a married woman explains her many lesbian affairs with other married women: ‘It’s because they need a change, you see,’ she says. ‘Many of their men had the chance to fool around before marriage. But these women have only had the opportunity to do so after marriage.’ There are at least two other women poets who wrote in the style of Sappho: Erinna of Teos or Telos ( c. late 400s BC) and Nossis of Locri ( c. 300 BC). Erinna's Distaff and epigrams lament her childhood friend Baucis in a manner which "contains echoes of Sappho." [32] Nossis of Locri wrote three epigrams in a similar style, one of which bears striking resemblance to the floral eroticism found in Sappho's works. It reads as follows: [33]

A lesbian couple from Saudi Arabia have defied their home county’s strict laws against homosexuality by proudly declaring their love for each other on an Arabic TV show. Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans contain an episode in which a woman named Megilla renames herself Megillus and wears a wig to cover her shaved head. She marries Demonassa of Corinth, although Megillus is from Lesbos. Her friend Leaena comments that "They say there are women like that in Lesbos, with faces like men, and unwilling to consort with men, but only with women, as though they themselves were men". [51] Megillus seduces Leaena, who feels that the experience is too disgusting to describe in detail. Leila J. Rupp writes in Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women: "Two things are significant in this depiction: the connection of an aggressive woman from Lesbos with masculinity and the portrayal of the seduced as a prostitute". [52] Greenberg, David F. (August 15, 1990). The Construction of Homosexuality. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226306285– via Google Books. Evidence of female homosexuality in the ancient Greek world is limited. [21] Most surviving sources from the classical period come from Athens, and they are without exception written by men. At least among these Athenian men, the discussion and depiction of female homosexual activity seems to have been taboo. [22] Kenneth Dover suggests that, due to the role played by the phallus in ancient Greek men's conceptions of sexuality, female homosexual love was not explicitly defined as a sexuality or category by the authors of surviving sources. [23]a b c d e Makarem, Ghassan (2011). "The Story of HELEM". Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. 7 (3): 98–112. doi: 10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.7.3.98. JSTOR 10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.7.3.98. S2CID 144448743– via JSTOR. Meskipun hidup sebagai lesbian Arab tidak mudah, tetapi banyak dari mereka yang tetap bertahan dan berjuang untuk mendapatkan hak-hak yang sama. Mereka berjuang untuk mendapatkan pengakuan dan perlindungan dari pemerintah, serta menghapus stigma dan diskriminasi yang selama ini dihadapi. Lesbophobia di Timur Tengah a b "Everything you need to know about human rights in Palestine". Amnesty International. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021 . Retrieved November 1, 2023. Williams, Sean (2010-02-22). "Alternative sexuality in ancient Egypt? Follow the LGBT Trail at the Petrie Museum – History – Life & Style". The Independent . Retrieved 2014-06-30.