Portal:Society

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. Lesbian, as a concept, is used to differentiate women with a shared sexual orientation, and the concept is a 20th-century construct. Throughout history, women have not had the freedom or independence to pursue homosexual relationships where men have. However, they also have not met the same harsh punishment in some societies as homosexual men. In the past, lesbian relationships were sometimes regarded as harmless unless the participants attempted to pursue privileges traditionally enjoyed by their peers. As a result, little in history has been documented to give an accurate description of how female homosexuality has been expressed. When early sexologists in the late 19th century began to categorize and describe homosexual behavior, hampered by a lack of knowledge about lesbianism or women's sexuality, they distinguished lesbians as women who did not adhere to female gender roles and designated them mentally ill. Women in homosexual relationships responded to this designation either by hiding their personal lives or accepting the label of outcast and creating a subculture and identity that developed in Europe and the United States. Women exhibit sexual fluidity; some women who engage in homosexual behavior may reject identifying as lesbian or as bisexual. Greater understanding of women's sexuality has led to three components to identifying lesbians: sexual behavior, sexual desire, or sexual identity.

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A drawing of travelers on the California Trail, one of the major emigrant trails across the Western United States used by over 250,000 people heading west during the California Gold Rush. This, combined with those coming from the east across the Isthmus of Panama or around Cape Horn, greatly increased the population of California, and spurred the movement to make it the 31st U.S. state.

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• ... that after the American Civil War ended, Ladies' Memorial Associations sprang up all over the South to bury Johnny Reb, build monuments (example pictured) in honor of Confederate soldiers, and propagate the Lost Cause?
• ... that Body of Proof episode "Society Hill" marked the first appearance of Megan Hunt's mother Joan, played by Six Feet Under star Joanna Cassidy?
• ... that Bernhard Kummer regarded the conversion of the Germanic peoples as a cultural catastrophe and thus titled his doctoral thesis Midgards Untergang?

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• 4 July 1963 - Federation of Malaya Red Cross Society received official recognition as an independent national society by the International Committee of the Red Cross
• 14 July 1904 - Incorporation of the Minnesota Society of Certified Public Accountants
• 22 July 1932 - Establishment of the Turkish Language Association
• 30 July 1982 - Chinese Society Halls on Maui (pictured) placed on the Hawaii State Register of Historic Places

“ Man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection. ” — Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605)

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Harriet Arbuthnot was an early 19th-century English diarist, social observer and political hostess on behalf of the Tory party. During the 1820s she was the "closest woman friend" of the hero of Waterloo and British Prime Minister, the 1st Duke of Wellington. She maintained a long correspondence and association with the Duke, all of which she recorded in her diaries, which are consequently extensively used in all authoritative biographies of the Duke of Wellington. Born into the periphery of the British aristocracy and married to a politician and member of the establishment, she was perfectly placed to meet all the key figures of the Regency and late Napoleonic eras. Recording meetings and conversations often verbatim, she has today become the "Mrs Arbuthnot" quoted in many biographies and histories of the era. Her observations and memories of life within the British establishment are not confined to individuals but document politics, great events and daily life with an equal attention to detail, providing historians with a clear picture of the events described. Her diaries were themselves finally published in 1950 as The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot. (Full article...)

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