‘The Wild Women of the West (Midlands)’: how LesBeWell imagined queer women’s health and its obstacles in the 1990s through the pages of Dykenosis

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1994, the Birmingham based lesbian health activism group LesBeWell began to produce a newsletter titled Dykenosis. Variously describing itself as ‘for women who have sex with women’, ‘health information for dykes’ and ‘the national bi-monthly newsletter about lesbian health’, the newsletter offers a window into how one activist group imagined the health and ill health of women who had sex with women in the 1990s. By analysing Dykenosis, this article illuminates how LesBeWell identified and attempted to eliminate social and institutional obstacles to ‘dyke’ health. The article focuses on Dykenosis’ collation of experiences of invisibility and hypervisibility within Britain’s National Health Service, and the mobilisation of research, complaint, and community self-help within its pages and beyond as remedy to NHS shortcomings.