Liebe, die edel und rein ist oder sexuelle Perversitäten

In the early 20th century, the first women’s rights movement fought for the social, political, and legal emancipation of women. Among others, they fought for the right to vote, access to higher education, free choice of labour and better conditions for single mothers. Both the emerging discipline of sexology and the opponents of the women’s rights movement repeatedly suggested connections between women’s rights movement and female homosexuality; supposedly, feminists were often homosexual and enticed other, particularly young, women to enter sexual relationships with women. Most feminists did not react to these accusations or made statements regarding female homosexuality at all. Only in two contexts, multiple feminist publications on this topic can be found: in response to Anna Rüling’s public talk »What interest does the women’s rights movement have in the resolution of the homosexual problem?« at the annual conference of the scientific-humanitarian committee, and with regards to the proposed (but ultimately rejected) expansion of § 175, which made sexual intercourse between men illegal, to include women.

This paper is concerned with discourses within the first women’s rights movement in Germany on women loving women with regards to these two discursive events. It addresses questions of which terms existed for female homosexuality and homosexuals, what they refer to, and which concepts of same-sex love and sexuality they are based on. Additionally, I critically investigate in which contexts and with what kind of intentions homosexual women were (not) talked about, how they were evaluated, and what kind of (ir)relevance was attributed to them in the context of the first women’s rights movement.