Tribadism, Modern

Tribadism is an archaic term for lesbianism or female homosexuality, and describes sexual activity between women. Tribade used to be a synonym for lesbian. The word comes from and is spelled the same in French, and the French word derives from the Latin tribas, which is a translation of a nearly identical Greek word meaning to rub. In ancient Greek the term described a woman using a dildo on herself or someone—anyone—else. The fact that her partner could be male or female suggests that tribadism described a phallic sexuality on the part of a woman, and that several practices could fall under this category.

In English the word appears in Ben Johnson's poem The Forest (1601), and describes a type of sexual being, a tribade, that the speaker suggests can furnish new sexual experiences. The fascination with tribades included the myth that lesbians had enlarged clitorises that could penetrate other women. Tribades were often described as beings with a female member, thus giving them a kinship to hermaphrodites. Tribade in French eighteenth-century texts is translated for English readers as woman-lover, and William King defines tribad in his 1732 satire The Toast as a woman who loved women. This description is telling because it suggests that the term was doing the work of making lesbian sex intelligible by defining it as some kind of imitation of heterosexual intercourse. Marie Antoinette was accused of tribadism, among other things, with other aristocratic ladies of her circle, as a way of discrediting her. Tribadism was also sometimes referred to as female sodomy.

In the twentieth century the definition of tribadism narrowed from describing general lesbian practices not confined to penetration with clitorises or dildos to the specific practice of rubbing the clitoris against another woman's genitals or thighs as a way of receiving, and giving, sexual stimulation. This practice was called dyking, friction, and banging by lesbians in the 1950s. It was once the only form of sexuality many lesbians practiced. Since 1965 tribadism has referred almost exclusively to women rubbing their genitals together, and the practice was sometimes frowned on by lesbian-feminists in the 1960s and 1970s as an imitation of heterosexuality. The popularity of oral sex among lesbians and heterosexual women from the 1960s onward, and the surge in dildo and vibrator use in the 1990s among all women, relegated tribadism to the shadows as an old-fashioned or even immature form of sexual stimulation. Tribadism in the early twenty-first century is known as humping or scissoring, and is enjoying a resurgence among lesbians and heterosexual women alike, largely because of increased interest in female sexual pleasure in the wake of the Sexual Revolution, the women's movement, and 1990s sex radicalisms. It is often mentioned in sex manuals, and is sustained as a concept in popular cultural consciousness by the success of bands such as Scissor Sisters. The term can also be used as a verb—tribbing—that refers to clitoral stimulation with any partner by rubbing.

see also Lesbianism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Castle, Terry. 1993. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668–1801. New York: HarperCollins.

Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky, and Madeline D. Davis. 1994. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. New York: Penguin.

                                                 Jaime Hovey