No Doubt, my ... least visited page, LOL.
H.U.G.E.S.T hug to YOU for visting this page :)
Who Am I? ;)
...
Who am I?
1. Yes - I am indeed a, "GIRL" AND a .. cake! :) Though it was still a tough time of gay prejudice, I'm hugely grateful that I grew up in the time of the liberating "Do it yourself" punk and Indie music era, and identify as ... Gay - a sweet nod to slick Cole Porter lyrics.
2. I created this site in the hope that it might, genuinely, INSPIRE people across the world and perhaps, help groovers who were understandably anxious regarding coming out. (Mine wasn't ace - but I do empathise with my slick old-skool, ADORABLE Mummy (respect, she needed a wee bit of time to get-her-head-around my late-night tipsey confession (when I came home after a club night-out, she LOVED coming down, in her night slip, with my Dackles (who need to go out to the garden for pee pee)). Duh ME - I'm not a Dragon's Den entrepreneur. Plus, I hate completely random and irrelevant / targeted (tracking your browsing history) shitey ads on websites. Thus, I make NO Bucks (money) from this site. The site is a true labour of L.O.V.E from which I gain no funding nor Veuve Clicquot, GODIVA Chocolate ... treats :).
3. I am, indeed, a ... Three O, SEO - Search Engine Optimiser + old-skool HTML developer:) I have passionately, worked on this site often past 3 am (KLF Eternal song / "Three O" = Three o'clock) in the morning, so, please forgive my typos & spelling mistakes (I am now proof-reading!). Moreover, please forgive that I'm not wordsmith queen - I'm an ex-paleontologist (PhD) but I have a sharp eye for images and crops.
This site was created in a lonely time of lockdown, to cheerlead other lonely sapphic souls, across the world. This site is painstakingly HAND coded and, not WordPress = speedy Gonzales page downloads but ... UBER painstaking to update! Hurrah, though it hits my audience it could have so much more traffic, BUT, I have assertively choosen not to advertise this site via social media - why? see below.
PS
Oops, this might be the longest ever, "About Section" ever!
So, some "Jump To" links:
"Girl Friends Of Dorothy" (this site) is a labour of love that I created (and hand-coded in css (v tricky as I was an old skool slick HTMLer coder ;), researched, and wrote) during UK COVID Furloughs (from circa June 2020 & launched 31 December 2020). Hands-up: I was really lonely during COVID. With the empathy of gay loneliness, this site was created for lesbians and bi women across the WORLD who may feel sometimes the blues / loneliness, and are still experiencing homophobia, AND to demonstrate to them and HETTIES (straights) that throughout history, lesbians and bi's have importantly contributed to HUMANITY (e.g. medical care, the arts, sciences ...).
"The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency" Benjamin Mays
We should never forget the women who fought in the past for lesbian and women's rights. Alas, the struggle continues. Let's work TOGETHER, to help & nurture each other.
This site, is still growing and evolving - please do come back.
Though I have mentioned this on other pages, do please forgive me, for genuine:
Duh, Blunders & Errors - I hold my hands-up high in SHAME for any unintentional blunders, mistakes, errors ... Some blunders are due to accidental copy & pastes as this is a hand-coded HTML site while others may be research errors (I collate data from the WWW). I will be truly grateful if you email me, to politely point out, any errors which I will gladly correct.
Copywriting / Typos - Sorry :( I'm not a wordsmith queen and ... I'm the worst, proof-reader :( On the positive side you can see this content was not AI generated :) I dread what will happen in the forthcoming years regarding AI generated web / new content.
Inclusivity of Global Girl Friends of Dorothy - I genuinely appreciate ALL lesbians across the world. I'm so grateful, I was born from parents of two nationalities and also, lived abroad for a while. F**K nightmare Brexit! (NB The bonnie fab Scots (and I), didn't vote Brexit). Please forgive me - I've worked so hard to try and make this site international but through my initial research it was / is very hard to find trail blazing lesbians across the world. So, I handover the torch to YOU to discover and document from your country, stellar lesbians who have made a mark in history.
Incorrect Presumption - Oops, Not a Girl Friend of Dorothy? Sorry, if I've unjustly included someone who didn't play on our team. The historical records can be grey at times and also in history it was dangerous to be out. Please, do email me if I've made an unintentional error.
A Sweet Request For Help, Please :)
Hustling - Be a sweety and consider leaving A Wee Tip to help fund the site.
Additions To The Slick Sapphic Roll-Call - Please, do email me, if you have suggestions of slick lesbians to add herein. Though, I have some to add on to the lesbian trailblazers page - to be honest, due to my sadness of Google AI overviews harvesting ALL internet content + lame sapphic influencers / "journalists" pirating content for clickbait without politely linking to their sources ... hmm, I'm wondering if it's worth my passionate effort?.
❤ Please Do Link To My Site ❤
To those that have linked to my site, I give you the HHHHHHHHUGEST ever hug of thanks to YOU ❤ ❤ ❤ I have consciously avoided promoting my site via social media because I'm not a screen girl but also, there is so much vitriol + false news commenting on social media.
About The Girl - The Somewhat Mysterious Webmistress
A face to the webmistress? Me ;) Though I'm a brainstormer, do-er & cheerleader, I've always shied away from any limelight & social media selfies. Everyone, has their own right to their privacy / OUTness. During this research, I read a poignant quote:
"I'm out," she once told me. "But I am not out and about it."
Even though, in some fortunate countries homosexuality is no longer illegal - forgive me I'm, still guarded to who I'm OUT to as, even in "swinging London" and these sometimes more liberal uK times - homophobia still exists in the uK. Moreover, even if I was hetty (straight), I would still not be a social media nor selfie queen.
Emailing The Mysterious Webmistress
Thank you very much, if you take the time to find my email address and contact me. I've tried to code + place my email address so it doesn't get harvested by shitey email address hackers. As I'm not promoting this site via social media - when I do receive emails, I so skip down my high street with HUGE joy over positive email feedback.
Please check your email junk folder to find my email reply: Hand's up, I confess, I'm uber friendly! If your email is "nice" and not a suspect & dodgy hacker/scammer/AI - I do respond genuinely, BUT, oops, perhaps a tad too sweetly enthusiastically? As I still use a much loved, old skool email address sometimes my 1st email may go into your junk folder - so please check there too.
Why Have I Shied Away From Social Media Promoting This Site?
Sadly, over time, I have witnessed how SOME social media commenting has changed and has become increasingly ... NASTY, VILE, TOXIC ... and has also spread false news, yet no social media company is stopping this and rarely held to account. Social media's Nasty Commentators & False News generators are getting away with their nasty publications because social media company owner's are willingly irresponsible, because it will affect their profits: slyly defending themselves that they are being "champions of Freedom Of Speech". Worse still, social media companies consider themselves as "platforms" and not "publishers". What is the difference between being a "platform" and "publisher". It hugely does matter regarding content and law... more
Publishers - aggregate, curate and edit content such as a newspaper and, thus are deemed as responsible for what is published. That's why some legal cases can be brought against Publishers for e.g. defamation.
Platform owners - such as social media companies e.g. "X", Tiktok ... provide the technical functionality and network for (third party) publishers to upload and distribute their content and, therefore social media companies have been able to circumvent their responsibility. Fer Fook Sake social media owners take responsibility for content, advertising & their algos and stop false news, accounts and comments on their "platform". They have had plenty of time to address this!
Did USA implement a ban on TikTok, in Jan 2025? No! Cos, Trump won the election and had successfully used TikTok to win votes! Groovers, I'm not advocating a boycott on social media but for MORAL awareness:
Telegram Messenger: BBC Panorama's Telegram and the Russian Billionaire (2024) - "the social media platform is also popular with criminals ... French police ... have accused ... of complicity in drug dealing, fraud and the sharing of child sexual abuse images on Telegram."
Facebook: Netflix's The Great Hack (2019) - The Facebook & Cambridge Analytica data vote Scandal - how they impacted the BREXIT win. Why does this seem forgotten / ignored?
TickTok: amnesty.org's TikTok's "For You" feed risks pushing children and young people towards harmful mental health content.
Moralistic Censorship e.g. Online Grooming: BBCs Online Grooming (2017) ... reveals the scandal of child sexual grooming and abuse online and asks if social media companies are doing enough to prevent paedophiles from targeting children?
Social Media Algo Advertising
If you (I sincerely hope not) receive any hate comments / hate false news - LOG IT, expose (to every one) and do complain to the social media provider and publicise it.
Using This Site As A Clickbait Source Without Linking To It
This site has been created independently by a girl friend of Dorothy, with no funding, who genuinely and heartfeltly wanted to collate in one place, an homage to historical slick lesbians who have made their fab mark in history and society and, helped lesbian visibility and lesbian (and women's) rights. I aint profiting from it, indeed I have not gained any income from it, but I do get the HUGEST kick out of the web traffic it's acquiring across the globe, particularly where awful homophobia is still strife :(
I'm flabbergasted by some google searches e.g. "lesbian movies" = in the top ten Google results I was shocked to see that STRAIGHT magazines like Harper's BAZAAR, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elle Magazine, Good HouseKeeping pages coming up in the first page - for sure honing into the clickbait pink dollars! For such a search, as a lezza, I would be seeking posts from e.g gay websites, the IMBd/BFI ... Would you for example consult Harper's BAZAAR to discover new ... lesbian movies?
Working as an SEO, I appreciate the demand on producing Clickbait posts but I always tried to think of a new angle for my content writers to create unique and cool content. Content writers who have come across this site - don't be lame and use this site to regurgitate my pages in vanilla buzzfeed style posts. Do your own research across the web and make your own fab mark.
If you do use any of my pages' content as a clickbait-post seed / source - be a gentlewoman and have the courtesy to link this site.
Shall I Keep Updating This Site?
June 2025+: FFS - Google's AI Overviews Are Killing Traffic To Informational Websites
Not only did I have to start battling content creators using this site as a seed / source (without linking to it), now I've had to add Google AI Overviews distain :( Since mid 2025, Google's AI Overviews have appeared more prominently in search results for reference / news and question based queries taking up a huge amount of search result's real estate, above the fold. It's hugely devastated independent site's traffic like mine (I was truly gutted) and even wiki (which I have huge respect for). We both have created our sites to open up knowledge, for love and no financial gain.... more
Oxford English Dictionary Definition of Artificial Intelligence: "The capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour; the field of study concerned with this. In later use also: software used to perform tasks or produce output previously thought to require human intelligence, esp. by using machine learning to extrapolate from large collections of data..."
AI NASA Definition: "Artificial intelligence refers to computer systems that can perform complex tasks normally done by human-reasoning, decision making, creating, etc. There is no single, simple definition of artificial intelligence because AI tools are capable of a wide range of tasks and outputs ..." Source: NASA - Aug 2025
AI Is Not HUMAN: AI systems have to be coded for functionality FIRST, then SECONDLY be FED DATA and THIRDLY learn from NEW DATA / interaction with users to build it's responses. Please remember that AI is not HUMAN.
Google's Reach in 2025 (Under Estimated): "Google accounts for 89.66% of the global search engine market... There are an estimated 9.5 million Google searches per minute - source: Semrush | "Approximately 99,000 search queries are processed by Google every second, resulting in about 8.5 billion searches daily and roughly 2 trillion global searches annually." source: seo.ai. There is no accurate data on how many web pages Google has indexed - Google used to be somewhat transparent and display "X" results (which for sure was a huge under estimation) but no longer does this.
Google's AI Data Source: Google cleverly has sussed that users are asking questions to find answers. Fun search engine Ask Jeeves, founded in 1996, however, did this before with it's "answer" engine algo (I know, as I was thrilled to share offices with them in my slick Carlton TV web times and they were v sweet). Where has Google's AI "suddenly" got it's HUGE data pool to answer a HUGE amount of user questions? 10p bet - Google's AI data has been:
* skimmed off the huge world wide web.
* without communication and the permission of site owner's.
* without compensation to the site owners (as many have lost traffic to their site).
Where else did Google's AI get it's data? Why isn't there an outcry about this? Could it be that, there are so many independent sweet site owner enthusiasts / uni's who have no mega bucks to take them to court?
Google's AI Overview "Mistakes Caveat": In Google's targeted UX (user experience) placement - Google has NOT transparently displayed it's "Mistakes" Caveat at the top of the AI Overview inset but intentionally at the end of each click and reveal. The "Mistakes" Caveat, states: "AI responses may include mistakes". What monitoring is being done by Google AI to ensure the data is correct? Hopefully with good morality, a human content writer will fact check their research but of course in this sad day in age, there are bad actors consciously inciting false news. So not only should we question Google AI for relaying potentially false info as a result of an authors mistake but also how does it distinguish what is false info / propaganda? Would you like to read false info / propaganda? nAnd no way will I use Google AI overviews for health related questions!
Google's AI Overview Real Estate + Good Enough "Answers" > Zero click thru's: since mid 2025 Google's AI Overviews have become devastatingly more prominent for reference / question answers. It appears that at the moment searchers are willing to accept Google's AI overview answers, even though they may have info mistakes. As the users may perceive that their question has been answered, they do not click thru to websites cited in Google's AI nor Google's traditional search results links which equates to Zero click thrus to other sites. Numerous independent studies have been undertaken - like Wiki my site traffic has been so devastated. This is gutting for sites - site owner's have worked hard to SEO landing pages which will bring people to their page and worked hard to curate compelling content for people to explore the site's other content.
The Death Of Website Human Ref Info / AI Content Looping: Bite the hand that feeds you! According Similarweb's data, Wikipedia has seen a drop of 23 percent in total site traffic, over the past three years ie from an average of more than 165 million visits per day to its primary ".org" domain to below 128 million average daily visits - read datareportal's interesting article Digital 2025: Exploring Trends In Wikipedia Traffic. Since Google's AI overviews have devastated my traffic in mid 2025, I have not been updating my site which sooo, truly pains me as I enjoyed it so much:( Why should I update my site with careful research, for Google AI to devour it and I get no traffic from my amends? Though I gain no bucks from this site what motivated me was traffic to it, with the hope I was perhaps helping someone. Others like me, may stop amending / uploading well researched info.
If human content writers give up writing new, well researched informational essays and people resort to AI content-written posts for their website, where will Google AI feed its craving for new data? Eventually, AI could be harvesting it's own data which then will reduce the quality and accuracy of Google's AI overviews.
Humane Advice: A Google Search for "coming out": Would YOU like a computer generated AI (non-human) response vs a human response (someone talking from their heart and experience, compiled from a number of REAL experiences)?
AI Chat: Please, really consider if you will converse and how much you become immersed in AI / Chatbot interaction and how much personal details / thoughts you share with it. In ChatBots, every emotion can be mirrored right back at YOU by a pattern-matching machine / code that appears human, yet the human in the interaction may spiral and this interaction can complicate someone's psychology, put them in mentally unstable places that may lead to destructive thoughts. For example, Coming out and other experiences like loosing a loved one are only human experienced which a computer code can not FEEL. Do read Evening Standard's Beware the Chatbot - Sept 2025 and other articles. Please seek HUMAN help from a trustworthy family member / friend or seek sweet help from specialised HUMAN organisations such as thetrevorproject.org, childline.org.uk, www.stonewall.org.uk ...
While producing this site I have tried to open up less well known and possibly new topics regarding lesbian history and researched many sources to, as best as I can, fact check. Uber Pants! I'm becoming more and more discouraged that my site is surprisingly, being used by eager eagle clickbait corporate digital magazine content writer's + social media "influencers" as inspiration for content, without accreditation / links to this site. Moreso, guttingly, Google's (non fact checking) AI overview is killing my traffic, like other fab (hard researched) info sites. So WRONG! As an academic sting, I have hidden an "Easter Egg" to see if it is taken up by content writers, influencers and AI, without: fact checking, politely crediting and linking to this site and, if it ... snowballs online because of lame / no research ... ;)
Huzzah! Only, circa three days after uploading my "Easter Egg" (19/09/2026), Google AI has, indeed ... slurped my "Easter Egg": features it in Google's search AI overview, intermittently credits and links to my site, BUT ... so clearly and alarmingly, has NOT fact checked it!!! I'm not yet screengrabbing it as, Eager eagle clickbait content writer's / social media "influencers" - let's see if you fall for it too ;) 10p bet - you haven't been interested to visit this page nor, have you credited this site / linked to it if you have sourced any info from this site / been inspired to create a new content page based on it (as mine ranks highly and could be an additional traffic puller for yours). En garde.
With Slick Electro Jazz-Hands :) My Sign-Off
Holy Moly, way too many slick tunes to choose from, for my sign-off. Though I'm a V COOL Indie Kid, yet wanting to sing & dance in my living room to Taylor Swift Shake It Off (R.E.M.I.X)... I'm signing off to, the cracking tune ... KEEP DANCING!
