From beneath the rainbow: lesbian and bisexual women’s perspectives on health and disease

Abstract

Abstract This study aimed to understand the meanings that homosexual and bisexual women give to the state of health and illness and the way they evaluate their own state of well-being. It is a qualitative research study consisting of the accounts of 14 women from the municipality of Imperatriz, Maranhão, Brazil. Medical anthropology and gender studies contributed to analyzing the categories “Dimensions of health and disease” and “Looking at one’s own health”. These sections discuss the dualistic mind-body perspectives that etiologically characterized the health-disease process in these interlocutors’ view. In addition, the sociocultural context was understood as shaping the way they translated and evaluated their own health condition, a context crossed by their bisexual and lesbian experience. Therefore, the interviewees’ sexual identities and behaviors challenge the rigid way the health-disease process is interpreted by biomedical knowledge, questioning practices that marginalize these women in health care services.