For the purposes of this article female homoeroticism covers any sexual activity between one or more female partners, including business relationships such as prostitution or socially recognized relationships, which could include marriages in some situations according to the scholar Bernadette J. Brooten in her work Love between Women Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Although evidence suggests that many elite men have struggled, even in comedies, to understand female homoeroticism in their own culture, the extremely blurry line between social ideal and social reality remains difficult to navigate, even for scholars.