Lesbian love is nothing new; Sappho was an Ancient Greek poetess who was born on the island of Lesbos. Many of her love poems were addressed to other women and the female narrators in many of her works speak of infatuations and love for various women. The word "lesbian" derives from the island on which she lived and her name is the origin of the word "sapphic". However, until recently, the idea of one woman loving another, let alone sleeping with another female has been perceived as something either very unusual and rare, or just downright strange. Over the last few years, there's been a gradual sea-change in regard to the general perception of what being 'lesbian' really means. The traditional image of the cropped haired, rather aggressive looking, butch dyke might still apply to some gay women, but now we're coming out of the closet in our millions and the world can see that actually, in most cases, we look just like the girl next door.

This mass 'coming out' is partly due to the proliferation of lesbian-centric resources on the internet; type in the word 'lesbian' into any of the search engines and you'll see a plethora of heavily populated chat rooms, directories, forums and dating sites like PlanetSappho.com which are the exclusive territory of sapphic women. It is this availability of male-free communities that has coaxed so many gay, bisexual and even bi-curious ladies out of their closets and into the open. Also, we now see major cultural icons like Madonna kissing Britney Spears kissing each other full on the lips in front of a television audience of millions which is exactly the right heterosexual seal of 'cool' that we lesbians have waited such a long time to see. Over the years, there have been a great many famous lesbians in both film and music but, unfortunately, they were just too frightened to come out and publicly admit it. Now we have Ellen DeGeneres and KD Lang - both of whom have an army of straight, non-judgmental fans.

The outcome of all this is that there is no longer a social stigma attached to the concept of women dating women or straight women experimenting with their sexuality by taking a same sex partner. Gay guys have been doing it for years but now there's no reason for any woman to feel repressed or uncertain about dating or sleeping with someone of their own sex. Being who we are or want to be is no longer just a possibility, it's a right and it's also something that's now accepted by our straight counterparts.

Whilst the word 'lesbian' is an all encompassing description for a gay woman, it doesn't do justice to the many different types of female who embrace the lifestyle. There are the traditional dykes as well as femmes/lipstsick lesbians whose ultra-feminine appearance would give no clue as to their sexual inclinations and bi-sexual and bi-curious women who occasionally indulge the lesbian side of their sexual and emotional psyches. Just because you don't have the shaved head and the tattoos doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself sexually with another woman if that's what you want to do. So sisters...there's never been a better time to be a lesbian and now is the time to come out of the closet and be loud and proud about joys of lesbian loving!

Sarah Harris is the founder of http://www.PlanetSappho.com - a popular lesbian dating site.