Gender, sexuality and embodiment : access to and experience of healthcare by same-sex attracted women in Australia

This article identifies the way same-sex attracted women negotiate healthcare in a rural Australian setting. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 women. Respondents choose general practitioners (GPs) carefully, `interviewing\u27 them to see if they hold acceptable attitudes to same-sex attraction. However, sexuality is not the only evaluative criteria women use. Some women invoke gender-based discourse, evaluating GPs by how well they treat women\u27s bodies. In other instances, women utilize a framework based on sexuality; good healthcare is associated with how the practitioner dealt with same-sex attraction. Sometimes women evaluated care by reference to a model of the body that did not implicate gender or sexuality and GPs are evaluated on the basis of clinical knowledge. This shows that women do not define themselves in a unitary way in relation to gender or sexuality. They selectively and strategically employ discourses of gender, sexuality and embodiment to structure and evaluate healthcar