Installment number three our week-long ren of our much loved former lumn. We dug up a vob lson for today. Mrice von Rz' helpful gui to gay male sex and s termology origally appeared issue #41, July/Augt 2006.
Contents:
- THE BIGGT MYTH ABOUT GAY SEX
- WHO ARE GAYS - 10 MYTHS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY
- THE GAY BERLER: ACTIVELY PASSIVE
THE BIGGT MYTH ABOUT GAY SEX
Long before hookup apps like Grdr and Scff, gay and bisexual men seekg sual sex wore lored handkerchiefs their pant pockets ditg what kd of sex they were seekg and whether they were a domant/top or submissive/bottom. The lor is pretty extensive and clus var kks and fetish, and is still ed today by gay clothg brands like Nasty Pig and CellBlock 13 — and, obvly, by kky gay men. "Octave, The Rul of the Game, Jean Renoir, 1939Toby, a Passive BarebackerToby is a whe, 35-year-old, HIV-negative gay man who me to see me bee of prsn and lonels.
WHO ARE GAYS - 10 MYTHS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALY
Toby sound bleak when he scribed the Christian lerature she regularly sent him about the evils of homosexualy and how gays were beg plagued by AIDS as punishment om God. Lt we fet the potential ser nsequenc of havg sex whout ndoms, I clu the latt rmatn about the health risks of ndomls sex, discsg the relative safety of HIV-posive men who bareback wh other fected Men Are Takg Sexual RisksThere are abundant theori but no five answers about why gay men take sexual risks.
After more than three s of safer sex msag agast the backdrop of gay men sickeng horribly and then dyg, new medil treatments have stemmed the ti of the panmic and offered real hope for longer-term survival to people wh HIV.
Queer theorist Tim Dean (2000) wr: "In view of statistics on new seronversns, some AIDS tors have begun to acknowledge that, unlikely though may seem, remag HIV-negative fact pos signifint psychologil challeng to gay men" (p. To those who have not been workg the gay men's muny for the past 25 years, this statement might seem absurd, but is te that HIV-negative gay men face unique challeng that make seem almost easier to Francis Bay area psychologist Walt Ots (1995) was one of the first mental health profsnals to qutn why gay men who had th far ped beg fected wh HIV were placg themselv at risk for beg so. Ots scribed HIV-negative men who stggled a world and gay muny that, however untentnally, nsired their difficulti nsequential as pared to those of men who were fightg for their liv.
THE GAY BERLER: ACTIVELY PASSIVE
The unfected men's growg visibily triggered old childhood feelgs of beg an outsir, and for some, ntributed to an acute psychologil crisis that often created a nfluence of behavrs and thought patterns that placed them at risk for ntractg have suggted that durg the '80s, gay men unnscly llud wh the general public's equatn of a gay inty wh an AIDS inty (Ots, 1995; Rof, 1996). New York social worker Steve Ball (1998) scrib how durg the height of the AIDS epimic HIV-negative gay men often found themselv the role of regiver, mourner/widower, or outsir, due to their not beg fected wh HIV. The dynamics scribed by Ots and Ball are part of the munal and psychosocial reali that early the epimic played a role ntributg to the spread of 1988, I wrote about how fear was one large ponent of what propelled gay men to change how they were havg sex (Shernoff & Jimenez, 1988).
Gay men who were recently surveyed about their failure to e ndoms durg anal sex repeatedly told rearchers that current AIDS preventn msag do not feel relevant to them and do not nvey an urgency about why ndom e is important (Halkis, Parsons, & Wilton, 2003; Carballo-Dieguez & L, 2003; Mor et al., 2003). Brish psychologist and rearcher Michelle Crossley (2001, 2002) wr that one factor might be a crease the effectivens of the "health promotn" mpaign to change gay men's sexual behavr.
Crossley suggts that is impossible to evaluate the efficy of safer-sex msag and of themselv sce ncurrent to when they first began appearg, gay men were overwhelmed by the terror that they might be fected by the then-new disease that was rapidly killg their iends and lovers. They reported beg thrilled to be able to participate a procs that helped them reclaim the joy and fun of gay sex amidst all of the sex-negativy and sex-equalg-ath msag that were undatg them. Factors That Lead to Sexual Risk-TakgThere are numero theori for why gay men engage unprotected sex, and rearch has explored a wi variety of possible ratnal for the behavr.