When I signed up for this vourse, I had absolutely no idea of what Lesbos was. I had never heard of the island before. As i told friends where I was going, though, some of them would joke about Lesbos being a lesbian place assuming that island is where the word “lesbian” derives from. Stil, they didn’t know this for a fact, but that happened to be my first impression of the place.

I had also already seen the episode from South Park called “D-Yikes!” which is about lesbians protecting the bar “Les Bos” from the Persians. At the time, I didn’t think much about the concept or the name of the bar, but now, reading about Lesbos and it’s history with the gays, I can see the very clear connection between Lesbos and this episode. This however, is a very distinct way of representing history and culture through parody and satire.

On a further investigation into this, I found that people commenting this episode on Reddit seemed to have an undersanding that people from Lesbos are known as being gay. Still, this might sound like the locals themselves are gay and that being on the whole island. On the contrary, the fact is the lesbians are tourists holoidaying in one specific town, Eressos, and the locals wanting them to go away because it hindered real tourism. While some of the information might be corresponding with the facts, like the origin being the ancient greek poet Sappho, these are bliefs that I think stem from poor research and the potrayel of Lesbos through media and pop-culture.