The visibility of lesbians on Wikipedia II

Lucy Elmina Anthony was a long-time companion of women’s suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw.

Nieves López Pastor‘s relationship with Reposo de Urquía was so strong that even her nephews and nieces referred to López Pastor as “Aunt Nieves“. 

Katherine Fowler Philips was known for her poems about passionate friendships between women.

For over forty years Marie Corelli lived with Bertha Vyver​, to whom she left everything when she died. Joe Cartais lived a rather colourful life.

These types of examples are literal phrases taken from Wikipedia in Spanish and illustrate the previous article “The Visibility of Lesbians on Wikipedia,” which we published in 2024. In it, we collected examples and analyzed what the Wikiesfera community of female editors encountered when creating, translating, or improving biographies of lesbian women, one of our areas of interest when working on the free encyclopedia.

In response to the omissions, euphemisms, and biases that appear in many articles, we are putting into practice various strategies that we have learned over our 10 years of existence as a group, particularly by discussing specific cases at Wikiesfera meetings. That is why we decided to write a follow-up to the article, with this new post that moves from analysis to strategies, both to rethink and structure them among ourselves and to share them with the community. And here it is.

> Strategies and best practices

• Although there is increasingly more information available on this subject, the main difficulty in including the sexual orientation of the woman portrayed in the article lies in finding sources that confirm it, especially if she did not live openly and explicitly as a lesbian. Following the saying, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ rumors and indirect references often (or may) contain truths, so it is necessary to investigate and also look into her partner or partners, as our protagonist may appear in the information about them. Of course, when profiling women from non-Spanish-speaking countries, it is essential to search for sources in other languages.

• Once we have found the information that confirms this, we move from euphemisms or omissions to clarity and forcefulness. From friends to partners, from housemates to life partners. And reclaiming the use of the word lesbian.

• It is interesting to consider that, if we ultimately cannot find sources that confirm the information but do find others that express doubts, we can leave the suspicions expressed in the article. We should also bear in mind that this could be modified in the future if verified information on the matter comes to light.

• To strengthen the presence of these profiles on Wikipedia, it is strategic to link articles to one another. This is known as not leaving an ‘orphan article,’ that is, one without links to others. For example, naming other women and creating a hyperlink to their article. And vice versa. This strategy creates a kind of spider’s web which, in addition to being real in that it depicts the network of relationships that were established between them (and which, in the case of lesbians, we know is fundamental), allows us to jump from one to another, increasing the number of visits and, therefore, their visibility. 

Natalie Barney, Janet Flanner, and Djuna Barnes, intellectuals, friends, and visible lesbians on Wikipedia. Their articles are linked to each other. c.1925

• In Wikidata, we can include their partner or partners and add sexual orientation as an item (statement). In addition to their presence in the Wikidata data repository (which is so useful, for example, for artificial intelligence, with the multiplier effect that this implies), the fact that their partner’s name or sexual orientation appears in the article’s entry is highly visible.

• For the same purpose, we can use the See also section, a place where we can put other Wikipedia articles to redirect to, including other people, and especially other lesbians, with whom the biographee may be related by profession, era, country, etc. Similarly, we can include her article in the See also section of other biographies.

• It is also important to categorize correctly, bearing in mind that there are already many categories of lesbians, by profession, by country… but taking into account that this categorization can only be done if the information is justified in the text.

• It is possible to create a Personal Life section. This is more common in the English Wikipedia than in Wikipedia in Spanish, and is a way of emphasizing this part of her biography. However, her lesbianism can be added to the Biography or Career sections.

• A common issue that often causes confusion and uncertainty about how to act is the inclusion of many women in the bisexual category, when they are probably lesbians. This tends to apply to women who have been married or have had relationships with men. This is the case of the writer Gloria Fuertes, who mentions her fourteen-year-old boyfriend in a poem and is later linked to Carlos Edmundo de Ory, also through some verses (although she is not even mentioned in his article). Our criterion is, even though we know we are in complex territory and without wishing to underestimate bisexual identity, that if she has had a stable relationship with a woman, she should also be classified as a lesbian.

• Finally, we must patroll these articles and follow up on them. We have had cases where people, sometimes linked to the biographees, want to erase that part (lesbianism) of their history and try to revert our edits. Keeping an eye on them and, therefore, receiving a notification when articles are modified, is strategic in defending the information we have added and the way we have done so. The case of the Spanish singer-songwriter Mari Trini is significant. Although her relationship with Claudette Loetitia Lanza, who was also her secretary, has been a proven fact since a biography of the singer was published in 2024, a paragraph stating this relationship was deleted on the grounds that there were no references. To solve it, our colleagues included the sources, which exist in abundance, and we will be monitoring any possible changes to the article.

> A final thought

Is it necessary to say that a woman is a lesbian? We are often asked this question in relation to our specific work on this topic on Wikipedia.

There are at least two arguments that we usually raise. On the one hand, there is consensus that personal relationships are significant in a biography. And, although this could be a debate in itself, whether this information is so relevant or whether it always is, the truth is that this is usually done with heterosexual people, so we understand that it should be the same with homosexual people.

On the other hand, it is clear that we need role models and to create a genealogy, and that to do so it is important to find this information in as many biographies as possible and also in as diverse a range of profiles as possible. Doing so also serves to confirm, for those who may doubt it, that love and desire between women is neither a contemporary fad nor a Western phenomenon, but rather something intrinsic to human beings and their ways of relating to one another.

Rosa Bonheur and Anna Klumpke, a couple of 19th-century painters

Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language – this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable
Adrienne Rich

NOTE: This article was written by Encina Villanueva and Celia Hernández (SalviaRomana) and was originally posted at Wikiesfera blog. A presentation of the research and findings was showcased during the Queering Wikipedia 2025 Conference (recording available on Youtube).