ABSTRACT
I first discovered the term “gay bowel syndrome” in 1994, buried in a medical journal article on emergency room treatment of adult male rape survivors. Working as an AIDS educator a few months later, I received in the mail a sample educational brochure on sex ually transmitted diseases that included a short description of gay bowel syndrome. The appearance of this gay disease in clinical research and public health campaign texts intrigued me, both in the manner in which the notion of a gay disease seemed to be treated as publicly acceptable and medically factual, as well as the durability of such a term across the span of several years. The queer activist in me was angered by what I judged to be blatant medical homopho bia, while the queer scholar in me became deeply interested in the construction of scientific fact in application of the syndrome to gay male bodies.
