Anne Lister's Unique Sexual Identity

Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 08:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Attention has been drawn to the fact that -- in all of her voluminous journaling -- Anne Lister never identifies with existing terms for women-loving-women, such as "tribade" or "lesbian" (yes, the word existed during her era) and explicitly rejected identification with "sapphic." Some have seen this as a strong argument for viewing her primarily through a transgender lens. But this article points out a different angle: that Lister considered herself to be unique and unprecedented in terms of identity, not only her sexual identity, but her social identity in general. To put it bluntly, she appears to have had a severe case of "not like other girls." Honestly, she was a bit of a snob in various ways, and rejecting the idea that there might be other women "like her," even among the women she knew to have homosexual relationships, fits with that attitude. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #566 Shannon 2023 A Regular…