WLW stands for women loving women. It covers any woman whose attraction includes other women: lesbian, bisexual, pansexual and queer women all sit inside it. It is an umbrella rather than a label about one person.
Why it exists alongside lesbian
Because lesbian means attraction to women only, and a great many women who love women are not that. A bisexual woman dating a woman is not a lesbian and may still want a word for what she is doing. WLW covers her without asking her to pick a side or explain herself.
It is also useful for describing things rather than people: a WLW film, a WLW couple, a WLW storyline. It says what the relationship is without claiming anything about the individuals in it.
The related abbreviations
- MLM. Men loving men, the mirror image. Not to be confused with multi level marketing, which uses the same letters and causes regular confusion online.
- NBLW and NBLNB. Non binary people loving women, and loving other non binary people.
- Sapphic. Much the same ground as WLW, from the poet Sappho. Some prefer it, and it is slightly more literary.
- Achillean. The MLM equivalent, from Achilles.
Where it comes from
Online, and from fandom and Tumblr in particular, where people needed a short way to tag relationships without arguing about labels. It spread to Twitter and TikTok and is now ordinary usage among younger people, and largely unknown to older ones.
Where it turns up in adverts
Rarely as those three letters. Escort profiles more often say bisexual, which is the label that signals a woman will see women as well as men, and the site publishes a bisexual category page listing the profiles that carry it. Couples bookings are a separate question again, covered in duo and couples bookings. As with every label in an advert, it tells you what to ask about rather than what is guaranteed.