She focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love for girls. Little of Sappho's poetry survives, but her remaining poetry reflects the topics she wrote about: women's daily lives, their relationships, and rituals. From various ancient writings, historians gathered that a group of young women were left in Sappho's charge for their instruction or cultural edification. The word lesbian is derived from the name of the Greek island of Lesbos, home to the 6th-century BCE poet Sappho. Sappho of Lesbos, depicted here in a 1904 painting by John William Godward, gave the term lesbian the connotation of erotic desire between women.
Following World War II, during a period of social repression when governments actively persecuted homosexuals, women developed networks to socialize with and educate each other. Women in homosexual relationships in Europe and the United States responded to the discrimination and repression either by hiding their personal lives, or accepting the label of outcast and creating a subculture and identity.
They classified them as mentally ill-a designation which has been reversed since the late 20th century in the global scientific community.
When early sexologists in the late 19th century began to categorize and describe homosexual behavior, hampered by a lack of knowledge about homosexuality or women's sexuality, they distinguished lesbians as women who did not adhere to female gender roles. As a result, little in history was documented to give an accurate description of how female homosexuality was expressed. Instead, lesbian relationships have often been regarded as harmless, unless a participant attempts to assert privileges traditionally enjoyed by men. Throughout history, women have not had the same freedom or independence as men to pursue homosexual relationships, but neither have they met the same harsh punishment as homosexual men in some societies. The concept of "lesbian" to differentiate women with a shared sexual orientation evolved in the 20th century. The word lesbian is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction. In biology, the singular symbol represents the female sex. Symbol representing lesbian made from two interlocked astronomical symbols for the planet Venus.