This groundbreaking collection includes thirteen essays from historians, sociologists, and anthropologists who discuss transgendered females and same-sex desire among women in Asia, Latin America, Native North America, and Africa. Offering compelling evidence against the commonly accepted notion that non-Western women are generally passive victims of male domination and compulsory heterosexuality, these essays on lesbian desire in ancient and modern India, butch-femme social types in Indonesia and Peru, and the lesbian movement in Mexico dispel the myth that same-sex female desire is rooted in Western neo-imperialist culture.