Community Empowerment and the Medicalization of Homosexuality: Constructing Sexual Identities in the 1930s

During the 1930s, homosexual activist-researchers needed the legitimacy of scientific/medical cooperation, although their objectives pertaining to homosexual rights were at odds with the scientific community's desire to medicalize homosexuality. A discussion of this tension considers some of the major publications that emerged from the collaboration of homosexual researchers & medical professionals, how homosexuality was framed in the terminology of pathology, & attitudes in the rising homosexual community about such medicalization. It is concluded that the similarity of purpose between the medical & homosexual communities was limited to seeking the decriminalization of homosexual behavior. This resulted in disappointment for homosexual participants, many of whom felt pathologized rather than empowered. E. Blackwell