ABSTRACT
The inclusion of the topic “male homosexuality” may suggest that problems of unusual difficulty are associated with research in the area. Research on male homosexuality is difficult for precisely the same reasons that all other scientific inquiry is difficult: it requires all the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the investigator, all of his capacity for disciplined work, and maximum objectivity. The possibilities and limits of participation for women researchers in the male homosexual world are quite different from those for men. Many of the social gatherings in that world are exclusively male; even when present, women are usually a very small minority. The problems of conducting research in the area of male homosexuality result, however, not only from the characteristic features of the homosexual world. For many investigators, the primary value of the research and the satisfactions resulting there from are to be found in its potential contribution to the solution of fundamental questions about the nature of man and society.
