A HISTORY OF SECRET SAPPHIC CONNECTIONS

Rachel Badham looks at how queer people developed covert ways of talking to each other while their lives had to be hidden in society

For centuries, LGBTQ+ people have used secretive signs to subtly communicate with one another without being persecuted, and to give meaning to a subculture which hadn’t yet been recognised by hegemonic culture. The communications predominantly used by gay men have been widely documented; many are now familiar with Polari, the language used mainly by queer men to both conceal their sexuality in public. The ‘hanky code’ is also a longstanding tradition which allows gay men to measure sexual compatibility based on displaying different coloured handkerchiefs from their back pockets.

However, the symbols used by self-identifying queer women are lesser known. The colours violet and lavender are often associated with the LGBTQ+ community, however they were originally a symbol of lesbian interest. Prose written by ancient Greek poet Sappho, who speaks of young women with “violet tiaras”, is the first documented instance of a queer woman expressing same-sex interest while referencing the colour. In the 1920s, queer women were known to gift lavender or violets as an expression of sapphic interest, or would wear purple pins (or the actual flowers) on their lapels to signal their involvement in the community.

Lavender then became associated with the wider LGBTQ+ community, and its queer connotations came into the spotlight when the early gay rights movement emerged and lavender sashes and armbands were distributed to a crowd of hundreds in a 1969 ‘gay power’ march. Despite the queer meaning of lavender eventually becoming more universal and much less secretive, it was reclaimed by the lesbian community in the 1970s when a group of queer feminists became known as the Lavender Menace.

Much as men used Polari, queer women also used slang terms to communicate with one another, as there was limited language to describe sexual relations between two women due to historical repression of both queer and female sexuality. One of the earliest known slang terms for lesbian sex was ‘game of flats’, which originated in the 17th century, because the act could be visualised as two playing cards (also known as ‘flats’) rubbing together. Another term, popularised by Sarah Waters’ classic lesbian novel Tipping the Velvet referred to oral sex, usually when performed by other women.

Queer women have also been known to use secretive communications to conceal their activities when they met up. Alla Nazimova, a 20th-century Hollywood actress known for having relationships with other women, has been credited with creating the phrase ‘sewing circle’ as a code name for her gatherings of fellow lesbian and bisexual+ actresses, such as Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead.

Much like gay men using the ‘hanky code’, women have adopted a variety of slang terms to indicate their sexual preferences, interests and roles. Many are familiar with the ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ lesbian labels, however lesser-known terms which were only understood by queer women include the 1950s slang ‘pancake’, which referred to a butch woman who assumed both top and bottom sexual roles. Another 1950s term used to refer to bisexual+ women was ‘gillette blade’, meaning ‘cuts both ways’. Slang terms to describe queer women’s sexual interests continue to be used today, and although many are now known by outside communities, they remain an important mode of queer communication.

Lesbian and bisexual+ women are acknowledged more today than they have been in the past, but secretive communications are still used in countries where the LGBTQ+ community continues to be persecuted. A BBC report, The Secret Language of Lesbian Love, found women in Burundi, Africa, continue to use secret modes of communication via the internet. Same-sex relations are illegal in Burundi, but an underground network of queer women communicate online and meet once a month, where they wear T-shirts with a discreet matching symbol to mark their identity and independence. The symbol is unknown to outsiders and was not shown or described in the report to protect the community.

Queer women in Burundi also use codes when talking to one another online, consisting of internet shorthand and obscure symbols used by lesbian and bisexual+ women around the world, which are only identifiable to those within the community. One woman who spoke to the BBC said: “We don’t have dating apps, but we have social media... there are certain shorthands there too. A meme we may have picked up from somewhere else, or a coded phrase. Nothing that anyone else outside the lesbian community would ever be able to pick up on.”

For queer women in countries such as Burundi, where they risk discrimination and persecution because of their identity, secret codes and symbols which are only understood by other sapphic women are a lifeline for many, and the creation of the internet has facilitated queer communications and brought them into the new age.

For centuries, secretive symbols and languages have been used by lesbian, bisexual+ and queer women to express themselves, and although they are not discussed as frequently as the communications used by gay men, they have played an integral role in unifying queer women in times when they weren’t accepted by the wider world.