It is a truism that men engage in sex for the sake of having sex while women engage in sex for the sake of affection. Yet truisms are not universally true as the case of Natalie Barney illustrates.

The expatriate Natalie Barney (1876-1972) was an important literary figure whose literary works are now little remembered because, though an American, she wrote almost exclusively in French. As one source states: Barney’s weekly salon gatherings "brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation.

While Barney had many male friends, her sexual interests were exclusively lesbian. A sensationally lovely woman, she early published a set of lesbian writings with the avowed purpose of warning off male admirers. Yet that is about the only exclusivity in her sexuality which seems to have followed the pattern of male sexuality. She carried on multiple sexual relationships simultaneously, cataloging them as: liaisons (long term); demi-liaisons; and "adventures" (one night stands). Various of what could have been liaisons or demi-liaisons ended because, though not entirely free of jealousy herself, she adamantly refused to commit to being faithful. One relationship that had lasted five decades ended when at the age of 70+ she picked up a 19 year old French girl for an "adventure." Her sexual partners included some of the leading figures in early 20^th Century literature.

Barney was the daughter of a wealthy American whose wealth she inherited and a woman who was a well regarded late 19^th Century painter. Barney more or less concealed her sexual preference while her parents were alive and she dependent on them financially. Among her earliest publications were a set of love poems to her various lovers which was illustrated by her mother’s portraits of four of them (her mother not knowing that they were Barney’s lovers).

After her parents’ death, Barney was independently wealth enough to live the rest of a very long life in Paris, though she and one of her liaisons spent WWII in Italy. During the early part of the war she supported the Axis with writings that were at least vaguely anti-semitic though she was herself part Jewish. This has been attributed either to a desire to survive in Fascist Europe or to her long and deep friendship with Ezra Pound whose active support of fascism led to his prosecution for treason after the war. (Pound was later indicted for treason but escaped punishment by reason of insanity and spent 12 years in an asylum.)

Barney was the subject of numerous roman a clef portrayals in books by her contemporaries.