10 Theories About How Lesbians Have Sex From Straight People In History

Feature image via dodsonandross.com

A favorite historical genre is “faux sociological studies of human sexuality that say crazy-ass shit about lesbians,” and though they were a huge trend in the 1950s and 60s there is a deep and rich history of mostly straight men speculating on or reporting about what women do in bed together in the name of research and information and anthropology and definitely not because it’s sexy to read about.

Most of these excerpts come from or were found because of Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women by Leila Rupp and Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman.

How Lesbians Have Sex, According to People From History

1. Probably the devil is involved

—Hincmar of Reims, 9th century

2. Or fencing. Definitely fencing.

“They bang coffin against coffin” and “they don’t bother with a pestle in their mortar” and “they play the game of thigh-fencing.”
—Etienne de Fougères in Livres des manières, 12th century

3. Maybe it’s just like heterosex?

“Kissing and hugging […] exactly like a man with women.”
—A witness at the trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer, 1477

4. Yeah I think it’s like heterosex.

“If a woman gets upon a woman, and both fall to thrusting at each other mutually, it may happen that the seed of her on top may be injected into the natural vase of her laying under.”
—Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, in Peccatum Mutum: The Secret Sin, 1893

5. Everyone’s a switch.

“Sometimes the lover is the mistress / Sometimes the mistress is the lover.”
—Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin (1595–1650), Sonnet XXXIII

6. Root vegetables

“They dress up a foster-sister or girlfriend or servant girl like a man and relieve their desire with dildos or with bulbs, roots, or fruits that have that form.”
—Kama Sutra, 2nd century

7. Yep. Definitely root vegetables.

“Wives would cut a sweet potato or manioc root in the shape of the male organ, or use a banana for the purpose. Two of them would shut themselves in a hut and one would lie on the bed and play the female role while the other, with the artificial organ tied around her stomach, played the male role. They then reversed roles.”
—E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1930s

8. Also scissoring.

“The one that must stay underneath lies on her back, stretches out one leg and bends the other while leaning slightly to the side, therefore offering her opening [vagina] wide open: meanwhile, the other lodges her bent leg in her groin, puts the lips of her vagina between the lips that are offered for her, and begins to rub the vagina of her companion in an up-and-down and down-and-up movement that jerks the whole body.”
—Shihâb al-Dîn Ahmad al-Tîfâshî, author of The Delight of Hearts, 13th century

9. Maybe in the bath???

“A number of fair ladies naked and at the bath, which did touch, and feel, and handle, and stroke, one the other, and intertwine and fondle with each other, and so enticingly and prettily and featly did show all their hidden beauties.”
—Signeur de Brantôme, in Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies, 1665

10. …This one is kind of accurate actually.

“[Sappho’s image] adorned the alter in the hall where everything was calculated to make sense and fantasy reel. The orgies opened with flagellation and ended in the most shameful of sexual perversions. Deep hatred against men was the first principle.”
—Frusta, in Flagellation and the Jesuit Confessional, 1834


Join A+

Ryan Yates


Ryan has written 1136 articles for us.


  1. Re: #3, I have definitely had conversations with straight people who thought “kissing and hugging” = the whole extent of what two women can get up to. 15th century ideas are still going strong!

  2. It’s remarkable to me how much people don’t seem to understand the concept of hands. Hands never have a problem getting and staying hard, they can pretty much be as big or small as the situation demands, they’re flexible and versatile and can provide multiple types of stimulation simultaneously…and you’re more likely to get a disease from kissing than from hands. Seriously people, HANDS.

  3. The level of RANK ignorance about the physicality of non-heteronormative sex still blows my mind !!! It’s like they’re never going to get it. No wonder mid-America/suburbia was so titillated by “50 Shades of Gray “.

  4. Thank you, I feel substantially more educated now.
    Seems that tribadism and strapping on enjoy a longer standing tradition than fingerbanging.
    Maybe that’s due to the lack of hand sanitizer in the third century, or you know, people being incapable to imagine non heteronormative sex for millennia.
    I got a strong Warehouse 13 vibe out of this article, btw. *sigh*

    • Okay but how to sanitize the dildo and make it safe? Cause uh veggies can cut you and some non-organic and non-vegan dildos are porous and can never be truly cleaned.

      Autostraddle, I’m asking for uh..a friend who really wants to write high fantasy porn bits in a world she made up with renaissance to bronze age level tech at different point in different stories and minimal magic and elves of many shapes, shades and hair textures but can’t get her brain out of the reality of dental hygenie and how a blacksmith/metal worker’s hands would really feel like ect enough to do it.

      *is totally subtle*

      • I appreciate and am awed by your dedication to historical detail.
        Maybe this was a practice the enlightened ancient greeks pursued, but was lost during the darkest of the dark ages?
        Another aspect we have all yet, neglected: nail clippers.
        Maybe the revolution of the tribadist practices lay within the advent of manicures?

      • I know the Persians have had removal of pubic hair as a thing using sugaring since the Bronze age and I’ve seen art depicting women in a hammam touching themselves and each other in the pubic region. The conjecture was they were soothing their loins post-epilation and there were pots of stuff they were reaching for so it’s plausible. However I have no source for that work of art that I vividly remember or the explaination.

        But I don’t ever recall reading anything about the Hellenes doing that and I’d really rather look at that vase as something way more pleasurable than hair removal.

        • Yeah, scholars have also suggested that the scene might depict perfuming or depilating the standing woman, and the thing in her left hand might either be a wine cup or a vessel for oil or perfume. Well, maybe they had a quality time after shaving.

  5. If anyone wants to know what ancient Romans thought, well the belief was that lesbians had clitorises the size of penises which they used to penetrate. I am unsure if only some lesbians had the super-clitoris, or if everyone got one. Comparatively, thats not so weird, since ancient Romans also believed you could be impregnated by a sunbeam, and that hitting snakes with a stick could get you a sex change.

Contribute to the conversation...
