AGS 2015: Pages 18-23

Where in the risk are we?

There’s a paradoxical (n)e(u)rotic movement emerging amongst gay men. How we hurt ourselves, may in turn be how we learn to heal ourselves. We assert that sexual choices need to be appreciated before being ‘understood’ or ‘influenced’. To begin to understand our deviance from any idealized norm, we look to the patterns of change affecting our lives. The convergence of our histories with biomedical advances, the hyper-prevalence of technological communication, and global crises characterize these capricious times and greatly impacts our erotic abstractions. We’ve been rewriting the sexual risk narrative.

Over the past year we've noticed that the gay guys we know, love, and fuck, are having sex differently, particularly in how they relate to/with/away from HIV. We observed multiple discords and envies between poz and neg men within our communities. New epidemiologically inspired identities, their accompanying politics and viral hierarchies have surfaced online within gay circles.[6] In light of emerging research on Anti-Retroviral Therapies (ARVs), Pre- and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP/PEP), and Treatment as Prevention (TasP), we recognized some guys adopting new risk-benefit analyses for sex without condoms.

What we first poetically imagined as a sensual ripeness in the air amongst our friends and lovers is now strutting across gay male sex scenes toward a new sexual (r)evolution. What proof do we have of this? We, as gay men, are finally talking about ourselves again. We wear ‘Truvada Whore’ t-shirts and participate in on-line bitch sessions about PrEP. We’re discussing the release of the Partner Study[7] which suggests ‘undetectable’ may mean it’s not only safe to bareback a poz person on meds with no viral load, but it may also be safer (statistically speaking) than sex with a negative guy who doesn’t have an up-to-the-last-shag HIV test. Despite real concerns about STIs, many gay men appear to be practicing  “all rubbers off.”

Always progressive in the realms of technology, we faggots lead emerging intimacies and technological ecstasies. We flirt with online geographic proximities, choosing to ‘share my location’ on smartphone hook-up apps to scout out potential trysts, and where many of our poz buddies are using (+) as a shorthand for self-disclosure. At the same time, ‘transgressive turn-ons’ that are too dangerous for the real world become virtual beat off material with rare consequences. We embrace slut shame and attend group sex parties as if they were neighborhood potlucks. As we transgress, so we progress.


Sex = Health

Sex generates many biological and social benefits, stress reduction not the least of these. Sex gets us out of our heads, into our bodies and helps us live for and in the moment. Sex can be a spiritual high. Peak sexual experiences help us temporarily transcend a world bent on (our) self-destruction. Sex helps sweat out the chronic state of homo-hate many of us experience. On a good night, the sliding on and into each other’s bodies can be tremendously affirming, validating in many kinky ways. We can appreciate many of the ‘self-destructive tendencies’ that cannot be captured in the ‘stages of change’ and which no public health messaging is going to deter.  We need sex- and substance-positive community health models ready to catch and/or cheer us on as we stretch beyond our hard comforts. We know isolation is the killer. Those of us who benefit from the resources of the industrialized world —as consumers of pharmaceutical and users of technological privilege — have a responsibility to be of service to those who have yet to make it out of our well-lubricated black holes.[8] Much more needs to be shared about the healing benefits of sharing our stories. The contributors in this journal graciously dish out their own rough-and-tumble-out-of-bed episodes, revealing more of what is happening in these liminal erotic spaces.

Building a case for our (sexual) stories

Such narratives invite empathy and imagination. As we learn to tell our gloriously messy stories our way, perhaps we’ll see enough of versions of ourselves to experience greater relief from our present day stressors and recognize that we’re not as isolated as our silent grief and fear would tell us. To evolve we must be witnessed for coming through vulnerable and painful times of change. HIV epidemiology has been brilliant at laying out the groundwork for our understanding of how gay men have been impacted by HIV. However, we cannot expect clinical research to tell the whole of our story for us. Our HIV statistics are certainly not as stimulating as some of the tell-alls gathered in this journal.  A colleague recently said, "If I was to live my life by statistics alone, I wouldn't ever do much of anything.” We argue that our stories will inspire needed re/action more than HIV statistics can alone. Re-storying ourselves will flesh out these numbers. We’re counting on it.

Since the advent of AIDS we’ve heard gay men accuse researchers of following the agenda of the pharmaceutical gravy train in pursuit of their own careers and at the cost of community programming; that we’ve been left to fend for ourselves as they work on their mathematical models and abstracts no one really reads. The truth is that great work has been done and translating these findings to our diverse communities has been tepid at best. It’s seems to have taken a full generation of prevention workers to get their Master’s degree to understand and begin to act on these findings. Our stories augment decades of HIV/AIDS statistics and the significant body of work by MSM researchers. Our lives have been described by MSM theories in terms of minority stress, resiliency and syndemics.[9] We encourage people new to these concepts to learn about them and spread them into the queer commons. We have many fierce researchers and allies working on our behalf.