November 29, 2002 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 25"

"

The history of pathology

Jennifer Terry examines 100 years of scientific thought on homosexuality

Re-casting Science

An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and

Homosexuality in Modern Society

by Jennifer Terry

Univ of Chicago, $20 paperback

Reviewed by Milla Rosenberg

Our community knows HIV's most iconic figures; from Greg Louganis to Magic Johnson, these celebrities, with access to the best of medical care, are often said to have "beaten❞ AIDS. But we often forget the ordinary people who, in the face of discrimination, took on medicine from the inside.

Surveying the current society's views of homosexuality, one finds all sorts of "explanations" for why someone is lesbian or gay. Geneticists study fruit flies, psychologists examine twins, and neurologists compare brain structures. While this debate may never be fully resolved, one cannot help but ask: How did I come to be this way? What is the one "true" reason for my sexual orientation?

Reading Jennifer Terry's An American Obsession leaves one enraptured by her uncovering of not just the remarkable people, but the ordinary men and everyday women. Their stories show a challenge to the medical homophobia that so often conflated gay love with disease.

Terry has worked in AIDS activism for nearly 20 years through community groups, legal advocacy, and teaching. In 1988, a time when the mainstream media barely acknowledged the risks for women contracting HIV, she spoke at the Second International AIDS Forum, analyzing how medicine often served to regulate women's bodies.

Her work takes the long view, tracing the formation of medical categories, especially “homosexuality,” a term that is barely a century old. In the introduction to Obsession, she writes thoughtfully of why she focused more on the past than the current pandemic:

Perhaps this is a sign of my psychical defense against it [AÏDS]. I do not want to give the epidemic any more than it has already taken."

Formerly of Ohio State University and now a professor of women's studies at the University of California at Irvine, Terry tracks the history of medical perceptions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender peoples from the nineteenth century to the present. Examining an array of case histories, medical texts, and legislative debates, she shows how homosexuality became an object of scientific fears.

From the demonizing work of German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who argued that homosexuality is a "degenerative problem" of the nervous system, to the heroic attempts of gay Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to bring rational, compassionate accounts of gay and transgender peoples, Terry illuminates how physicians created new categories as they sometimes opened up, and sometimes narrowly contained discussions of sexuality.

Noting the visible queer presence in cities from New York to Chicago, the reader learns of the long-term

relationships formed and the erotic practices between women in the early 20th century. For

eve

lesbians, role-playing was sometimes identiAN AMERICAN OBSESSION

fied in terms of “masculine” and “feminine,” but while doctors sought to condemn this, the subjects' testimony shows the pleasure and playfulness of these roles.

In the 1930s, in the face of doctors' damning remarks, people identified positively as gay, bisexual and transvestite lived confident lives, expressing their desires to live as a different gender.

The later chapters provide great insights into the ways that the Cold War and McCarthyism enforced domesticity for women and elevated heterosexuality to national policy.

The homophile movement became the key precursor to Stonewall, generating chapters throughout the country and leading demonstrations at the White House. Again and again, we see that gays and lesbians, such as sex researchers Thomas Painter and Jan Gay, entered scientific debates and even aided in medical studies of LGBT folks.

Terry's epilogue on new studies of sexual-

SCIENCE, MEDICINE,

AND HOMOSEXUALITY IN MODERN SOCIETY

ity highlights this dilemma, as she strongly critiques both the New Right's "reparative" therapies and the findings of gay scientists who seek to locate orientation in genes. In their quest for scientific truth, the claims of gay scientists like Simon LeVay and Richard Pillard often fuel the harshest critics on the right.

Whether one has just begun to explore the LGBT community's past or seeks to understand how medical science has shaped LGBT people's lives, this book is a valuable resource.

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northcoast MEN'S CHORUS

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