Lesbianism and Fascist Rule: Exploring the discrepancies between the persecution of gay men and women in Nazi Germany

This paper looks at the discrepancies in persecution of lesbians and gay men in the Third Reich. The historiographic scope of the paper includes the role of women as agents of fascism during the Nazi regime. It addresses the misogyny that underpinned all aspects of German life under Hitler. The author concludes that because women’s sexual autonomy (including homosexuality) was disenfranchised and invalidated, homosexual behavior among women was not believed to permanently alter women’s sexual viability (as was thought to be true for homosexual men). Resultingly, lesbian women were not considered threatening to the birth rate or the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) and were therefore not systemically persecuted