(The figurative kind, but also the literal, whose story is for another time.)
female gender nonconformity, transvestitism, or apparent lesbianism could lead to serious trouble with the Gestapo, though not in simple, direct ways, and not necessarily in isolation from other aspects of a person’s life—thus not in a manner that some of the opponents of including women in the memorial would term “persecution.” Perceived gender nonconformity might, for example, bolster an accusation of sabotage.
Even absent an explicit campaign against lesbianism, some lesbians and female‐to‐male transvestites were harassed, terrorized, and subjected to violence by state and [NSDAP] officials and hostile neighbors at least in part on account of their gender or sexuality. This maltreatment can be accurately termed “persecution,” though it was nothing like what men caught up in the effort to eradicate male homosexuality suffered.
[…]
Thus far, historians of lesbians [under Fascism] have found a checkered record. Some women ran into serious trouble with the state on account of their sexuality. Others did not. Austria had an anti‐homosexuality law that did apply to women, and women were convicted under it. Although Germany’s sodomy law did not apply to women, there were legal grounds for prosecuting women for same‐sex sexuality.
With the exception of the sodomy law, sex laws in Germany, including the age of consent law, were gender‐neutral and therefore could be used against lesbians. They were applied in cases where the fact of the matter was simple lesbianism, not the crime with which the women in question were charged.
(Emphasis added.)
The case of lesbians is different [from men], as in Germany: they run into moral and social sanctions more than anything else, they are marginalized, perhaps even arrested, prosecuted with specious motivations such as supposed mental illnesses. Particularly avid in denouncing lesbianism were the priests and psychiatrists: given that female homosexuality was unpunishable by law, the stigmatization of lesbians occurred by declaring them mentally ill (hysterical).
See also: Lesbianism and Fascist Rule: Exploring the Discrepancies between the Persecution of Gay Men and Women in Nazi Germany and Queer in Europe during the Second World War.