The Nazis believed that German women had a special task to perform: motherhood. According to Nazi logic, lesbians were women and should thus be mothers. They had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “ Aryans .” In addition, there was no specific law under which lesbians were prosecuted. Thus, there is not always an obvious place to look for criminal records pertaining to their arrests and detentions. For example, lesbians appear in court cases and police files relating to political opposition or asocial behavior. However, these are scattered across many files and in various archives. Scholars hoping to learn about lesbians’ stories are painstakingly combing through these files. The first teaser for Lars von Trier‘s buzzy erotic drama Nymphomaniac has been released online, and it’s branded with the auteur’s distinctive style of yellow-tinted scenery and an unvarnished, at times unsettling, naturalism that hooks you even though you might want to look away. Billed as an “appetizer” from the first of eight chapters of Nymphomaniac, the scene features Stacy Martin as a younger version of Joe ( Charlotte Gainsbourg) embarking on a mission to seduce a fellow passenger aboard a train.

Amanda Knox says women in her prison sought out each other’s company — and sex — in desperate bids for human connection. Picture: AP Mandy has just turned 18, still an innocent virgin who day dreams about a boy at her college. She comes home for the summer break and her mom tells her they have arranged to visit all the boring, dim and distant family relatives; definitely the last thing she needs to do on holiday, so she asks if she can go and stay with her friend Suzie instead. Reluctantly her mom finally agrees. Sexual relations between women were taboo for much of German society. Neighbors, family members, and friends sometimes disapproved of and thus denounced the women involved to the police. It is possible they did not realize that sexual relations between women were not illegal. In some of these cases, the police dismissed the complaints because they had no legal basis. Over the course of the 1930s, Nazi actions targeting male homosexuality became more systematically oppressive. In 1935, the Nazi regime reformed Paragraph 175. The statute now criminalized any and all sexual intimacy between men. The Nazis also increased the severity of the punishment for these crimes. They instructed prosecutors to argue for harsh sentences in court. Judges often complied.

The Hunger (1983)

In the camps, women who self-identified or were identified as lesbians did not wear the pink triangle. Instead, they wore badges that corresponded to the official reason for their arrest and internment. Sexual Relations between Women in Concentration Camps Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox. I'm not about to put Kissing Jessica Stein in this category, because it's too weak of a queer film to be even considered. There's also Mulholland Drive, which had some very brief hot queer moments relative to its era (2001). Heavenly Creatures (1994) served the queer goth community particularly well. Sadly, that community is relatively small. It is difficult to know what role lesbians’ sexuality played in their detention. Sometimes their arrest had little or nothing to do with the fact that they were lesbians. At other times, their sexuality may have played a role. This was especially the case regarding arrests prompted by denunciations. Denunciations frequently affected people considered social outsiders. Denunciations of Lesbians

First-hand testimonies, memoirs, and diaries of former prisoners reveal that prisoners had sexual encounters with each other in concentration camps. According to these sources, sexual encounters ranged from consensual intimacies to prostitution to brutal sexual assault. Both heterosexual and same-sex relationships took place in the camps. Lesbians responded to these new fears and conditions in different ways. Not all lesbians made the same decisions. Nor did they all have the same choices. For example, Aryan lesbians had far more options than Jewish or Romani lesbians, who—above all — faced persecution for racial reasons. Marking the first time the lesbian vampire appears onscreen, Universal Pictures was well aware that its “Dracula” sequel had sapphic overtones. In “The Celluloid Closet,” gay film historian Vito Russo noted the studio stoked the flames in its initial marketing. Russo also cites the film as an early example of the (albeit negative) predatory homosexual trope.Ever since Director Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience premiered at TIFF in 2017, it's been the talk of the town among the five queer women who care about this kind of stuff. The film tells story of Orthodox Jewish lesbians in London: Esti (Rachel McAdams) caught in a loveless relationship with a Rabbi, and Ronit (Rachel Weisz) trapped in a series of meaningless heterosexual hookups. Various right-wing and centrist political groups, as well as mainstream religious organizations, sought to counter this aspect of Weimar culture by promoting their own version of German culture. This version was rooted in classical music and literature, religion, and the family. In some cases, these groups blamed others for corrupting German culture. They blamed, for example, Jews, Communists, and Americans. Nazi Attitudes towards Homosexuality Some women engaged in sexual relations with their fellow female prisoners. It is important to note that such relations do not always fit neatly within the category of “lesbianism.” This is because not all women who engaged in same-sex relations were lesbians. Some women developed same-sex relationships and later described them as a source of comfort in the camps. Others even saw them as necessary for survival. Besides being a genuinely considerate movie with some thoughtful meditations on religion and culture, it has the added thrill of having super erotic sex scenes, made possible because: Yet, denunciations could cause unwanted scrutiny for lesbians. Sometimes a denunciation led the police to discover criminal offenses. For example, it could reveal ties to a resistance organization, friendship with Jews, or subversive political behavior. In those cases, women could be arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Case of Elli Smula and Margarete Rosenberg