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This article examines 3 papers presented before the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine by 19th-century physician Julia W. Carpenter. The article identifies 3 strategies Carpenter used to negotiate the incompatible rhetorical expectations for women and for physicians. The published records of academy discussions provide evidence for Carpenter's colleagues' reactions to each strategy, revealing the complexity of her rhetorical situation and demonstrating the complex links among rhetorical practice, professional identity, and a communicator's social position.

In 1838, Mary Gove (Nichols) began lecturing on anatomy and physiology, a rhetorical act that was both new and risky because public discussion of the human body and disease was believed inappropriate for women. In order to protect her ethos, Gove used her ostensibly informative lectures to promote her reform agenda, by implying that her audience already shared her beliefs in women's right to physiological knowledge and their obligation to use that knowledge to reform society. Rather than relying only on the conventional advice to construct one's ethos based on the audience's existing values, Gove also crafted her audience's ethos, describing her listeners in ways that emphasized values conducive to her reform agenda. Her use of this strategy suggests that an audience's acceptance of nontraditional speakers is not simply a matter of “letting” them speak; it also means, to some degree, acknowledging the alternative values they represent.