Gay Women Not Lesbians, Islanders say

[linuxdoctor]

This one is too funny for words, but here are some anyway.

It seems that the residents of the island of Lesvos object to the use of the word 'Lesbian' when referring to women who love other women. They say that a true Lesbian is an inhabitant of their island and not a homosexual female. So the islanders are taking a Greek "Gay and Lesbian" group to court in an attempt to stop them from using the word. For the full article see http://www.smh.com.au/news/wor.....01520.html

Lesbians (sic) have long used the island as their spiritual home in honour of a 7th century BC poetess named Sappho who wrote of the love of women by women. Lesvos has become the Mecca for lesbians (sic) especially around the village of Eressos, Sappho's birthplace.

I think this is quite funny really. I don't particularly like 'lesbians' since they essentially took over the gay rights movement in the 1980's and turned it away from it's original goals as a freedom movement aiming at ending the persecution of gays into an equality movement which asserts the insane notion that all people are created equal. I left the "gay liberation movement" in disgust asking, in effect, why should we, as gay people, be settling for mere equality when we are already superior?

I wish the island inhabitants of Lesvos luck in their court case.
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Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.

If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.

[Pie32]

Interesting, I would have thought that inhabitants of Lesvos would be called lesosians, lesvosies, or (if they really had to drop that 's') lesvians.

I don't care if it's pronounced the same way, it's a completely different word. You can't claim that 'red' and 'read' (not read) are the same word, even though they are pronounced the same.
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[linuxdoctor]

The name of island is written as Λέσβος in greek and is transliterated into the roman alphabet as Lesbos or Lesvos. Both are used and both are acceptable. The word 'lesbian' comes from the first spelling, obviously.
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Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.

If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.

[mcwkm]

lesbian
Function: noun
Date: circa 1890
: a woman who is a homosexual
from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

Tough luck people from that island but words can have different meanings and/or sound alike, you can't change that and I highly doubt they win their court case.

[linuxdoctor]

Um... You seem to have misquoted the text fro Merriam-Webster.

[mcwkm]

[Pie32]

Miriam Webster gets owned by Dictionary.com this time around:

[mellymoo]

[Voldemort]

I'm a Greek so I know from first hand..

'Lesbian' word isn't used for inhabitants of the island Lesvos that much.. In Greek, you are less likely to say "He/she is a lesbian" if they are from Lesvos, obviously, as that could be a little offending, due to it's double meaning.. You will say "He/she is an inhabitant of Lesvos".

In Greek, in order to refer to a homosexual female you stress the word in the "i", as lesbian, while in order to refer to the islanders you stress it in the "e", as lesbian, so you are less likely to confuse..
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[Confused]

Haha that's great, but I can definitely see it as being offensive.
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