Foucault notes in The History ofSexuality that the emergence, in the 19th centuiy, of medical andpsychiatric discourses defining homosexuals as a deviant classfacilitated social control, but also made possiblethe formation of a ‘reverse’ discourse: homosexuality began tospeak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or ‘naturality’be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the samecategories by which it was medically disqualified