ABSTRACT
Researching and analyzing the matter of lesbian health is an emotionally taxing process. In my historical studies, I have felt compelled to scrutinize how and why it is that lesbians have stimulated such intense anxiety and hostility among physicians. 1 If one reads medical cases and scientific studies involving lesbians carefully and against the grain, it is possible to locate strategies of resistance deployed by lesbians who participated in studies about them and who engaged in their own processes of self-inquiry about what made them distinct. Since at least the beginning of this century, many lesbians, though often under duress, have told their stories to experts and allowed doctors to examine their bodies in the interrogative spirit of asking the questions of how and why they/we are different. But what often began as a question of difference for these women quickly blurred into the assumption of pathology in the view of scrutinizing experts, whether the participating subjects of studies intended it to be so or not.
