Depiction of lesbianism has been a relatively common theme in erotic art

Erotic art

Erotic art covers any artistic work that is intended to evoke erotic arousal or that depicts scenes of love-making. It includes paintings, engravings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, music and writing.-Definition:...

 and pornography throughout history. Studies indicate that heterosexual men were more aroused by depictions involving lesbian sex than they are by depictions of heterosexual activity, while heterosexual and lesbian women were aroused by a wide range of sexual stimuli. Historically, erotica and pornography involving sex between women has been produced by men for a predominantly male audience.

Lesbianism in visual arts

Depictions of lesbianism are included among the erotic frescoes of Pompeii

Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum

Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum was discovered in the ancient cities around the bay of Naples after extensive excavations began in the 18th century. The city was found to be full of erotic art and frescoes, symbols, and inscriptions regarded by its excavators as pornographic. Even many...

.

Since the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, a number of European painters, particularly modernists, have included themes of eroticism between women among their work. These artists include François Boucher

François Boucher

François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...

, JMW Turner. Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...

's Sleep openly depicts two women asleep after love-making (indicated by the broken pearl necklace). Other painters include Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...

, Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...

, Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...

, Christian Schad

Christian Schad

Christian Schad was a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I.- Life :Schad was born in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, to a prosperous...

, Albert Marquet

Albert Marquet

Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement.-Life and work:Marquet was born in 1875 at Bordeaux. In 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work...

, Balthus

Balthus

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....

, and Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini

Leonor Fini was an Argentine surrealist painter.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she was raised in Trieste, Italy. She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932...

. More explicit depictions were an important part of the work of erotic illustrators such as Édouard-Henri Avril

Édouard-Henri Avril

Édouard-Henri Avril was a French painter and commercial artist. Under the pseudonym Paul Avril, he was an illustrator of erotic literature....

, Franz von Bayros

Franz von Bayros

Franz von Bayros was an Austrian commercial artist, illustrator, and painter best known for his controversial "Tales at the Dressing Table" portfolio. Von Bayros belonged to the Decadent movement in art, often relying on erotic themes and phantasmagoric imagery.Von Bayros was born in Zagreb, in...

 :Image:Franz von Bayros 003.jpg, Martin van Maële

Martin van Maële

Martin van Maële was a French illustrator of early 20th century literature. He is renowned for his work in the field of erotic literature...

 :File:Martin Van Maele - La Grande Danse macabre des vifs - 33.jpg, Rojan

Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky

Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky , also known as Rojan, was a Russian émigré illustrator. He is best known for his illustrations for children's books, and conversely, for his erotic illustrations.-Biography:...

, Gerda Wegener

Gerda Wegener

Gerda Gottlieb Wegener Porta was a Danish illustrator and painter best known for her erotica.-Biography:She grew up originally from the provinces as the daughter of a clergyman. She moved to Copenhagen to pursue her education at the Royal Art Academy, and married fellow artist Einar Wegener in...

, Vala Moro, and Tom Poulton

Tom Poulton

Tom Poulton was a British magazine and medical illustrator who provided artwork for a range of publications including the British Journal of Surgery and The Radio Times. After his death it was discovered that he had also secretly produced hundreds of sketches and finished drawings of men and...

. Explicit depictions of lovemaking between women were also an important theme in Japanese erotic shunga

Shunga

' is a Japanese term for erotic art. Most shunga are a type of ukiyo-e, usually executed in woodblock print format. While rare, there are extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate the Ukiyo-e movement...

, including the work of such masters as Utamaro

Utamaro

was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints . His name was romanized as Outamaro. He is known especially for his masterfully composed studies of women, known as bijinga...

, Hokusai

Hokusai

was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting...

, Katsukawa Shunchō

Katsukawa Shuncho

was a Japanese designer of ukiyo-e style Japanese woodblock prints, who was active from about 1783 to about 1795.Although a student of Katsukawa Shunshō, Shunchō's output, which consists mostly of prints of beautiful women, more closely resembles the work of Torii Kiyonaga.Shunchō also designed...

, Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Yanagawa Shigenobu

Yanagawa Shigenobu

was a Japanese painter in the ukiyo-e style. He was active in Edo from the Bunka period onward. His Osaka period dated from 1822 to 1825. In Edo, he resided in Honjo Yanagawa-chō district. He was first the pupil, then son-in-law, and finally adopted son of the Edo master printmaker Katsushika...

, Keisai Eisen

Keisai Eisen

Keisai Eisen was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist who specialised in bijinga . His best works, including his ōkubi-e , are considered to be masterpieces of the "decadent" Bunsei Era...

, Kawanabe Kyōsai

Kawanabe Kyosai

was a Japanese artist, in the words of a critic, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting"....

, and Ikeda Terukata.

Audrey Kawasaki

Audrey Kawasaki

Audrey Kawasaki is a Los Angeles-based painter, known for her distinctive, erotically charged portrayals of young, adolescent women...

 is a contemporary painter for whom erotic depictions of lesbianism form an important segment of her work.

The rise of photography was instrumental in the genesis of modern visual pornography, but erotic themes, including erotic lesbian themes, have been an important genre in art photography. Erotic and fetish photographers, such as Heinz von Perckhammer, David Hamilton

David Hamilton (photographer)

David Hamilton is a British photographer and occasional film director most known for his images of young women.-Early life and career:...

, Steve Diet Goedde

Steve Diet Goedde

Steve Diet Goedde is an American fetish photographer. Known for his erotic photographs of women paired with fetish imagery, he has had his photos published in two photography books, The Beauty of Fetish and The Beauty of Fetish, Vol. II. 'Diet' is a nickname from "Coma Diet," a past musical...

, and Bob Carlos Clarke

Bob Carlos Clarke

Robert Carlos Clarke was an Irish photographer, known for his highly stylised erotic imagery....

 frequently have included themes of eros between women in their work. More recently, lesbian and bisexual photographers such as Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin

Nancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...

, Tee Corinne

Tee Corinne

Tee Corine was a lesbian visual artist notable for the portrayal of sexuality in her artwork.-Early life and education:Corinne was born and grew up in Florida. Her mother introduced her to principles and techniques for making visual art...

, Judy Francesconi

Judy Francesconi

Judy Francesconi is an American photographer who concentrates on black-and-white fine art photography of lesbian women.She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in journalism. She is most noted for her black-and-white and sepia photography featuring beautiful women...

, and Della Grace have focused on erotic themes, reclaiming a subject that has traditionally been mainly treated through the eye of male artists.

Lesbian erotic themes in cinema

Although both lesbian and erotic themes were restrained in early cinema, suggestive scenes of dancing between women were presented in the films Pandora's Box

Pandora's Box (film)

Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent melodrama film based on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora . Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer...

(1928) and The Sign of the Cross

The Sign of the Cross (film)

The Sign of the Cross is a pre-Code epic film released by Paramount Pictures, produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille from a screenplay by Waldemar Young and Sidney Buchman, and based on the original 1895 play by Wilson Barrett....

(1932). Although lesbian themes were sometimes found in European films such as Mädchen in Uniform (1931), lesbianism was not treated openly in US cinema until the 1962 release of Walk on the Wild Side

Walk on the Wild Side (film)

Walk on the Wild Side is a 1962 film directed by Edward Dmytryk, adapted from the 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren. The film had a star-studded cast, including Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda , Anne Baxter, and Barbara Stanwyck, and was scripted by John Fante. Nonetheless,...

. Depictions of lovemaking between women were first shown in several films of the late 1960s – The Fox (1967), The Killing of Sister George

The Killing of Sister George

The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus that was adapted as a 1968 film directed by Robert Aldrich.- Stage version :Sister George is a beloved character in the popular radio series Applehurst, a nurse who ministers to the medical needs and personal problems of the local villagers...

(1968), and Therese and Isabelle (1968).

During the 1970s, depictions of sex between women were largely restricted to semi-pornographic softcore and sexploitation

Sexploitation

Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...

 films, such as Cherry, Harry & Raquel!

Cherry, Harry & Raquel!

Cherry, Harry & Raquel! is a 1970 softcore exploitation film produced and directed by American film director Russ Meyer. Following the success of Vixen! , the film is notable for the first appearance of actor Charles Napier playing Harry Thompson, a California border sheriff and marijuana smuggler...

(1970), Score

Score (film)

Score is the name of a sexploitation film directed by Radley Metzger that was one of the first films to explore bisexual relationships. It was part of the brief porn chic fad in the early 1970s that also included The Devil in Miss Jones and Deep Throat...

(1973), Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French softcore erotic movies based on a character created by Emmanuelle Arsan in the novel Emmanuelle...

(1974), and Bilitis

Bilitis (film)

Bilitis is a 1977 French romantic drama film directed by photographer David Hamilton with film score by composer Francis Lai. It stars Patti D'Arbanville and Mona Kristensen as the title characters Bilitis and Melissa respectively.-Synopsis:...

(1977). Although semi-explicit heterosexual sex scenes had been part of mainstream cinema since the late 1960s, equivalent depictions of women having sex only began making their appearance in mainstream film during the 1980s. These were typically in the context of a film that was specifically lesbian-themed, such as Personal Best (1982), Lianna

Lianna

Lianna is a drama film written and directed by John Sayles. The movie features Linda Griffiths, Jane Hallaren, Jon DeVries, among others.-Plot:...

(1983), and Desert Hearts

Desert Hearts

Desert Hearts is a 1985 lesbian-themed romantic drama film loosely based on the Jane Rule novel Desert of the Heart. Directed by Donna Deitch, the film stars Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau with a supporting performance by Audra Lindley....

(1985). The vampire film The Hunger (1983) also contained a seduction and sex scene between Catherine Deneuve

Catherine Deneuve

Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...

 and Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...

.

Henry and June

Henry and June

Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin is a 1986 book that is based upon material excerpted from the unpublished diaries of Anais Nin...

(1990) had several lesbian scenes, including one that was considered explicit enough to give the film an NC-17 rating. (There was some controversy as to whether the MPAA had given the film a more restrictive rating than it normally would have because of the lesbian nature of the scene in question.) Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct is a 1992 erotic thriller directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas, and starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone....

(1992) contained mild lesbian content, but established lesbianism as a central theme in the erotic thriller

Erotic thriller

The erotic thriller is a film and literary sub-genre which consists of a mixture between erotica and thriller. The genre increased in North American popularity from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, before declining in marketability.-1980s:...

 genre. Later in the 1990s, erotic thrillers such as Wild Side (1995) and Bound

Bound (film)

Bound is a 1996 neo-noir crime thriller film directed by the Wachowski brothers. Violet , who longs to escape her relationship with her mafioso boyfriend Caesar , enters into a clandestine affair with alluring ex-con Corky , and the two women hatch a scheme to steal $2 million of mafia money.Bound...

(1996) featured more explicit lesbian scenes.

From the 1990s onward, depictions of sex between women became fairly common in mainstream cinema, in no small part based on its ability to titillate heterosexual male audience members. Females kissing has increasingly been shown in films and on television, often as a way to include a sexually arousing element in a film without actually having the film gain a more restrictive rating by depicting sex or nudity.

Lesbianism in contemporary pornography

Contemporary lesbian pornography, is a prominent genre in mainstream hard core

Hardcore pornography

Hardcore pornography is a form of pornography that features explicit sexual acts. The term was coined in the second half of the 20th century to distinguish it from softcore pornography. It usually takes the form of photographs, often displayed in magazines or on the Internet, or films. It can also...

 and softcore

Softcore

Softcore pornography is a form of filmic or photographic pornography or erotica that is less sexually explicit than hardcore pornography. It is intended to tickle and arouse men and women. Softcore pornography depicts nude and semi-nude performers engaging in casual social nudity or non-graphic...

 pornography, with many adult video titles, websites, and entire studios (such as Girlfriends Films, Triangle Films, and Sweetheart Video

Sweetheart Video

Sweetheart Video is an American pornographic film studio, founded by Jonathan Blitt and pornographic actress Nica Noelle in 2008. The studio specializes in lesbian-themed films. Noelle writes and directs all the films....

) devoted entirely to depictions of sexual activity between women. Many heterosexual adult videos include at least one lesbian sex scene. In Japanese adult video, however, lesbianism is considered a fetish

Sexual fetishism

Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...

 and is only occasionally included in mainstream heterosexual videos. Rezu (レズ—lesbian) video is a specialized genre, though a large number of such videos are produced, nevertheless.

Most porn actresses perform in sex scenes with other women at least occasionally. A number of porn actresses, such as Jana Cova

Jana Cova

Jana Cova , is a Czech pornographic actress and nude model of Polish descent.Born in Prague, Cova grew up in the countryside in the Czech Republic where she "had a great childhood". She initially started working as a bikini model, then started doing nude and eventually softcore modeling...

, Felecia

Felecia

Felecia Danay is an American pornographic actress, nude model, and feature dancer.Felecia features in a comic book entitled Adult Star Stories: Felicia by Hippy Comix.- Awards :AVN Awards* Hall of Fame Inductee...

, Justine Joli

Justine Joli

Justine Joli is the stage name of an American adult model and pornographic actress.-Early life:Joli grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, splitting her summers between a farm in Hannibal, Missouri and Crested Butte, Colorado. She did ballet from age 3 to age 15...

, Jade Starr

Jade Starr

Jade Starr is an American model, Go-Go dancer, and actress based in Los Angeles. She is a mix of Cherokee and Irish. Her work ranges from fashion modeling to lesbian pornography. She has done close to 30 adult films and one mainstream film...

 and Charlie Laine

Charlie Laine

Charlie Laine is an American pornographic actress and adult model originally from Marion, Wisconsin.-Biography:Laine dropped out of high school at age 17. She started in the adult industry at age 18 in November 2002. She had moved to Florida and modeled there before moving back to Wisconsin...

, even specialize in this genre and only have sex with other women on camera. Though porn industry publicity tends to portray porn actresses as being bisexual, such on-screen activity does not necessarily reflect real-life sexual orientation. Some actresses who perform in these scenes are bisexual or lesbian in real life, while others are "gay-for-pay

Gay-for-pay

Gay-for-pay describes male or female actors, pornographic stars, or sex workers who self-identify as heterosexual but who are paid to act or perform as homosexual professionally. The term has also applied to other professions and even companies with the same core concerns and criticism in place...

" and are exclusively heterosexual off-camera.

Mainstream pornography depicting sex between women (in both Western and Japanese pornography) is typically aimed at a male audience (though it also has a small lesbian audience), which is why it is usually grouped with "straight" porn (in contrast to gay male pornography

Gay pornography

Gay pornography is the representation of sexual intercourse between men with the primary goal of sexual arousal in its audience. There is also a tradition, and continuing considerable output, of lesbian pornography....

, which is largely segregated from mainstream heterosexual pornography). There is small genre of pornography made by lesbians, such as the defunct lesbian erotic magazine On Our Backs

On Our Backs

On Our Backs was the first women-run erotica magazine and the first magazine to feature lesbian erotica for a lesbian audience in the United States....

, videos by Fatale Media, SIR Video, Pink and White Productions, and BLEU Productions, and web sites such as the CyberDyke Network.

Views about lesbianism in erotica

Several penile plethysmography studies have shown high levels of arousal in heterosexual men to pornography showing sexual activity between women. One of these studies reported that on average heterosexual men are more aroused by pornography showing sexual activity between women than they are by depictions of heterosexual activity. These findings correspond with reports in several earlier studies (summarized in Whitley et al. (1999); see also anecdotal reports in Loftus (2002).

Enjoyment of lesbian pornography can have little connection to feelings towards homosexuals in real life. A heterosexual man may be aroused by pornographic depictions of lesbianism yet hold homophobic views. However, several studies suggest that men who perceive lesbianism as erotic may have less or no negative attitudes toward lesbians than they do towards gay men.

Lesbian views on sex between women in erotica are complex. Historically, women have been less involved in the production and consumption of erotica in general and visual pornography in particular than have men. Since the late 1960s, radical feminist objections to pornography and the sexual objectification

Sexual objectification

Sexual objectification refers to the practice of regarding or treating another person merely as an instrument towards one's sexual pleasure, and a sex object is a person who is regarded simply as an object of sexual gratification or who is sexually attractive...

 of women have influenced the lesbian community. Some lesbians and bisexual women object to all pornography on feminist grounds. Since the end of the 1980s "Lesbian Sex Wars", however, lesbians and bisexual women are more likely to have positive views about erotica and pornography. Some lesbians are even consumers of mainstream pornography, but many dislike what they perceive as inaccurate and stereotypical depictions of women and lesbianism in mainstream pornography. Some are also uncomfortable with male interest in lesbians. As of the early 2000s, there is a very strong lesbian erotic literature movement, as well as a small genre of pornography made by lesbians for a lesbian audience (see "Lesbianism in contemporary pornography" above).

See also

• Femslash
  Femslash
  Femslash is a subgenre of slash fan fiction which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Typically, characters featured in femslash are heterosexual in the canon universe; however, similar fan fiction about lesbian characters is commonly labeled as...
  
  
• History of erotic depictions
  History of erotic depictions
  The history of erotic depictions includes paintings, sculpture, photographs, dramatic arts, music and writings that show scenes of a sexual nature throughout time. They have been created by nearly every civilisation, ancient and modern. Early cultures often associated the sexual act with...
  
  
• Media portrayal of lesbianism
  Media portrayal of lesbianism
  Lesbians often attract media attention, particularly in relation to feminism, love and sexual relationships, marriage and parenting. Some writers have asserted this trend can lead to exploitative and unjustified plot devices.-Fiction:...
  
  
• Yuri (genre)

Lesbianism in visual arts

• Bonnet, Marie-Jo. (2000). Les Deux Amies: Essai sur le couple de femmes dans l'art. Paris: Editions Blanche. ISBN 2-911621-94-8

Views about lesbianism in erotica

• Bunch, Charlotte
  Charlotte Bunch
  Charlotte Bunch is an American activist, author and organizer in women's and human rights movements.A Board of Governor’s Distinguished Service Professor in Women's and Gender Studies, Bunch founded Washington D.C...
  
  . (1982) Lesbianism and erotica in pornographic America. In: L Lederer (ed). Take back the night. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-14907-5.
• Conway, Mary T. (1997). Spectatorship in lesbian porn: The woman's woman's film. Wide Angle 19(3):91–113. (abstract)
• Duncker, Patricia. (1995). "Bonne excitation, orgasme assuré": The representation of lesbianism in contemporary French pornography. Journal Of Gender Studies 4(1):5–15.
• Dunn, Sara. (1990). Voyages of the Valkyries: Recent lesbian pornographic writing. Feminist Review 34:161–170. .
• Henderson, Lisa. (1991). Lesbian pornography: Cultural transgression and sexual demystification. Women and Language 14(1): 3–12. (Reprinted: S. Munt (ed). (1992). New lesbian criticism: Literary and cultural perspectives. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. p 173–191. ISBN 0-231-08019-0; and L. Gross and J. Woods (eds). (2000). Columbia Reader in Lesbian and Gay Studies. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10447-2.)
• Jenefsky, Cindy and Diane Helene Miller.(1998). Phallic intrusion: Girl–girl sex in Penthouse. Women’s Studies International Forum 21(4):375–385. .
• Kitzinger, Jenny and Celia Kitzinger. (1993). "Doing it": Representations of lesbian sex. In: Griffin G (ed). Outwrite: Lesbianism and popular culture. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-0688-8.
• McDowell, Kelly. (2001). The politics of lesbian pornography: Towards a chaotic proliferation of female sexual imagery. Xchanges 1.1 (online journal).
• Morrison, Todd G and Dani Tallack. (2005). Lesbian and bisexual women’s interpretations of lesbian and ersatz lesbian pornography. Sexuality & Culture 9(2):3–30. .
• Packard, Tamara and Melissa Schraibman. (1993). Lesbian pornography: Escaping the bonds of sexual stereotypes and strengthening our ties to one another. UCLA Women's Law Journal 4:299–328.
• Penelope, Julia. (1980). The lesbian in heterosexual fantasies. Sinister Wisdom 15:76–91.
• Rodgerson, Gillian. (1993). Lesbian erotic explorations. In: L Segal and M McIntosh (eds). Sex exposed: Sexuality and the pornography debate. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p 275–279. ISBN 0-8135-1938-1.
• Russo, Anne and Lourdes Torres. (2001). Lesbian porn stories: Rebellion and/or resistance? In: A Russo (ed). Taking back our lives: A call to action for the feminist movement. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-203-90330-7.
• Sheldon, Caroline. (1984). Lesbians and film: Some thoughts. In: R Dyer (ed). Gays and film. New York: Zoetrope. p 5–26. ISBN 0-918432-58-8.
• Smyth, Cherry. (1990). The pleasure threshold: Looking at lesbian pornography on film. Feminist Review 34:152–159. .
• Swedberg, Deborah. (1989). What do we see when we see woman/woman sex in pornographic movies? NWSA Journal 1(4):602–616.

External links

• Erotic and Pornographic Art: Lesbian by Tasmin Wilton, glbtq, 2002.
• Pornographic Film and Video: Lesbian by Teresa Theophano, glbtq, 2002.
• "Kira Cochrane wishes Keira and Scarlett would stop it" by Kira Cochrane, New Statesman, February 27, 2006
• It's February; Pucker Up, TV Actresses by Virginia Heffernan, New York Times, February 10, 2005. (requires login)
• "Boogie Dykes: How two San Francisco independent filmmakers are changing the world of mainstream porn" by Michelle Tea
  Michelle Tea
  Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, prostitution, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and currently lives in San Francisco...
  
  , San Francisco Bay Guardian
  San Francisco Bay Guardian
  The San Francisco Bay Guardian is a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. The paper is owned mostly by its publisher, Bruce B...
  
  , January 31, 2001.
• "Celebrating Lesbian Sexuality: An Interview with Inoue Meimy, Editor of Japanese Lesbian Erotic Lifestyle Magazine Carmilla" interview by Katsuhiko Suganuma and James Welker, Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context 12, January 2006.
• Shoujo-ai Canada
• Yuricon – Anime convention and publishing geared toward fans of yuri anime and manga.
• Shoujo-Ai Archive – Fanfiction, chat room and forum about lesbianism in anime and manga.
• Isle of Lesbos – Historical poetry, classical art, and vintage images for lesbians.
• Le Musee Lesbien, Saphisme.com.
• The Encyclopedia of Lesbian Movie Scenes – Lesbian scenes in mainstream film.
• Lezlove Video Group – Discussion group for lesbian erotica.
• Leslita – Archive of lesbian-themed original fiction.