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When I looked up "lesbian" in jisho.org, I came across the six kanji term
"女性同性愛者", which I'm concerned may sound too formal or clinical, like using
"homosexual" as a noun in English, plus katakana words of varying lengths.

The English edition of Wiktionary doesn't have a Japanese language translation
for "lesbian". Looking up weblio doesn't help much, because the entries for
the English word "lesbian" mainly provide information addressing native
Japanese speakers.

The accepted answer on Yahoo answers gives a couple of different answers, and
doesn't seem that authoritative:
<https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070712193145AAHuB7J>

I would prefer a term that's acceptable for polite, respectful but friendly
conversation.
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translation word-choice
Which word should I use for "lesbian"?
[性的少数者](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%80%A7%E7%9A%84%E5%B0%91%E6%95%B0%E8%80%85)
or "sexual minority" is the correct translation of LGBT. The L in LGBT being
lesbian, thus a likely answer is
[レズビアン](http://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/lesbian), if you look at the
examples (shown below and in the link) it is used in a neutral context. That
being said, I think for all these terms everyone has their own perception of
it and there is no "correct" answer other than to ask the person you are
referring to which term they prefer.

I thought this was a [good
read](http://withnews.jp/article/f0160501001qq000000000000000G00110101qq000013362A).

> Lesbian love
>
> 女同志の恋愛
>
> offensive term for a lesbian who is noticeably masculine
>
> 顕著に男勝りなレスビアンにとって、不快な用語
>
> English writer whose novel about a lesbian relationship was banned in
> Britain for many years (1883-1943)
>
> 英国の作家で、レスビアンの関係に関する小説が長年英国で禁止された（1883年−1943年)
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In most of the cases レズビアン or simply レズ will generally suffice in
conversations. As you guessed correctly, 同性愛者 sounds formal and stiff, and
性的少数者/LGBT would sound even more technical and formal.

However:

  * レズ (and its male-male counterpart, ゲイ) may sound a bit vulgar and direct (if not derogatory), and newspaper articles targeted at the general public tend to avoid using this term.
  * Some people are very keen and strict on the terminology around this area. I can easily imagine some people who hate to be called レズ, while some people take pride in being called as such.

So depending on who you are talking to, you may want to play it safe and
describe it indirectly (eg "～は女の人が好き") instead.

百合【ゆり】 (lit. "lily") is another indirect term for this, but AFAIK this is
mainly preferred in otaku-ish, fictional contexts. There is even a
[magazine](http://www.ichijinsha.co.jp/yurihime/) for this.
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レズ can be seen as a bit derogatory since it's outside of the community and
could come from source which are disapproving. From within the lesbian
community, ビアン is more usual or neutral. If you're specifically keen to speak
of lesbians in terms of their gender presentation, more masculine presenting
lesbians are often called ボイ and lesbians who present a softer, more
'femme'identity might be called ネコ.
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