Last night, Thursday April 17, LifeLube and Project CRYSP held a gay men's health forum at the Center on Halsted titled "Good" sex, "Bad sex" - What Do Gay Men Want Anyway?The wonderful and fabulous Feast of Fools moderated, and recorded the event for a future podcast. Stay tuned for that.
Over 100 engaged men (and women) ranging from 18 - 65 years of age of every stripe and flavor came to listen to Drs. David Halperin (author of What Do Gay Men Want), Michele Morales, and Gary Harper (oh, and Jim Pickett snuck in there too) talk about gay men's health, HIV, sex, risk, rectal microbicides, condoms, subjectivity and substance use. There was a lot of interesting debate and opinions shared by panelists and audience members and this post is open to all who attended to share your thoughts, opinions, questions and comments.
If you didn't get a chance to make a comment, here is your opportunity!
If you disagreed with anything that was said, here ya go!
If you wanted to expound on a topic, please, expound away!
Is something burning? Put it out in the comments section below.
Let's keep the dialogue going. And remember, our next forum will be June 12, also at the Center on Halsted.
I thought the conversation was really interesting. One area of concern was the concept that 2 positive individuals do not need to use condoms as the risk of catching a "super bug" was low. This significantly conflicts with my understanding of cross infection and the possibility of transmission of drug-resistant strains of HIV-1. I am ALL for positive sexuality and expression among consenting individuals, however I worry that this may reduce prevention efforts and actually think it was irresponsible of San Francisco to promote this. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI wanted to thank everyone for coming to the "Good" Sex, "Bad" Sex forum last night. I was honored to be a speaker on the panel, and I appreciated all of the comments and questions from the audience. It would be great to hear more questions/comments from folks who were not able to speak last night or who were not able to attend. It was great to see so many people passionate about this topic and so concerned about the health and well-being of gay men!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting all the photos, Jim! Great work at putting it together. Always wonderful to stimulate this kind of smart dialogue in the community.
ReplyDeleteIn general, I have a few thoughts afterwards:
1) I felt like it felt too short! I wanted to hear more from the audience, which was made difficult by the moderators' insistent questioning of panelists.
2) While I think some of what Gary Harper added to the conversation was useful, I was troubled by his seeming implicit argument that youth of colors' performance of masculinity was a tool for gaining social capitol (my interpretation). The implicit argument here seemed to be that one should simply perform masculinity to gain social acceptance... This seems to me to go against the knowledge I've gained from working with queer youth of color who seem to be troubling / rejecting / taking issue with hegemonic masculinity in really incredibly provocative / challenging ways. I think this particular issue might need some more critical thought.
3) Community forums like these often get bogged down in personal anecdotes, which can be useful to a certain extent, but can also hinder critical engagement. In particular I felt like many folks felt the need to add "but you haven't thought about ____ perspective," which is of limited utility (and often failed to engage with the material presented).
4) Michelle Morales is a dream.
5) While I think some people make the assumption that "basic information" about transmission is now common knowledge, I think that in fact there is a great deal of inaccurate myths / rumors / conjecture circulating about transmission. This is reflected in the questions (as the first commenter, Tanya, noted) about re-infection. There seems to be pretty clear data here, but yet this data is poorly disseminated.
Bah - I'm a critic through and through apparently. But I enjoyed the event thoroughly! Looking forward to traveling down to Chicago for more of these critical discussions!
Thanks Trevor for your comments. I would like to respond to your statement regarding my discussion of gay/bi youth of color and masculinity. Unfortunately in a forum that was focused on an array of issues, I was not able to go into more detail on this issue given the larger focus on adult gay men and HIV risk.
ReplyDeleteIn your post you stated "I was troubled by his seeming implicit argument that youth of colors' performance of masculinity was a tool for gaining social capitol (my interpretation). The implicit argument here seemed to be that one should simply perform masculinity to gain social acceptance..." This is not what I was attempting to express, so I apologize if that appeared to be the message. What I have seen in my research, clinical work, and community work with gay/bi/questioning young men of color is that these youth are deconstructing and rejecting expectations associated with hegemonic masculinity, and are creating new and complex ways in which they are "living" their masculinity. I don't think that these youth are simply performing what they view as a "socially acceptable" form of masculinity in order to gain social capital and acceptance by others; but instead I see it as a way that they are creating new ways of "being" men that reject traditional notions of heteronormative masculinity. I see this as a sign of their strength and resiliency in the face of pervasive societal heterosexism and racism. That's why in my opening comments I said that those of us who are a bit older can learn from young men since they have been able to break out of proscribed roles and notions of what it means to be a "man" that I think sometimes restricts gay men's expressions of masculinity and sexuality.
My colleagues and I have a paper in press where we examined this issue in greater depth. We conducted qualitative interviews with an ethnically diverse sample of gay/bisexual/questioning (GBQ) young men between the ages of 15-23. We found that the youth in our study described varied ways by which they negotiated their sense of who they are as young men against the backdrop of a hegemonic masculinity that positions heterosexuality as a core feature. They reported a range of responses to traditional masculinity ideologies, most of which centered on balancing presentations of masculine and feminine characteristics. Negotiation strategies served a variety of functions, including avoiding anti-gay violence, living up to expected images of masculinity, and creating unique images of personhood free of gender role expectations. Our data suggest a complex picture of GBQ male adolescents’ management of masculinity expectations. I would be happy to send you a pre-publication copy of this article if you wish.
I really appreciate your comments and also your work with queer youth of color. We need more people focusing on the strengths and also the unmet needs of youth of color. As Michelle discussed, academic circles often focus on the deficits apparent in LGBT populations, but as you and I have seen young people have many impressive strengths and it is important for our community to highlight these strengths.
Thanks for your comments!
I want to thank everyone for the chance to get together and to talk about sex, risk, and HIV prevention in such a festive atmosphere. Like Trevor, I was sorry there wasn't more time for freewheeling discussion, and I wanted to hear all the things that people wanted to say. Perhaps some of that discussion can now take place in this online forum. The Center on Halsted is amazing!
ReplyDeleteTanya raises an important point about the possibility of cross infection with more than one strain of HIV-1. Here are some studies that seem to indicate that the risk of superinfection (not reinfection, but superinfection) is remote:
ReplyDeleteDavey M. Smith, Douglas D. Richman, and Susan J. Little, “HIV Superinfection,” Journal of Infectious Diseases, 192.3 (August 2005), 438-44.
Matthew J. Gonzales, Eric Delwart, Soo-Yon Rhee, Rose Tsui, Andrew R. Zolopa, Jonathan Taylor, and Robert W. Shafer, “Lack of Detectable Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Superinfection during 1072 Person-Years of Observation,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 188.3 (August 1, 2003), 397-405.
Rose Tsui, Belinda L. Herring, Jason D. Barbour, Robert M. Grant, Peter Bacchetti, Alex Kral, Brian
R. Edlin, and Eric L. Delwart, “Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Superinfection Was Not Detected following 215 Years of Injection Drug User Exposure,” Journal of Virology, 78.1 (January
2004), 94-103.
Would other sexually transmitted infections
ReplyDeletetax the already compromised immune system?...
> One area of concern was the
> concept that 2 positive
> individuals do not need to use
> condoms as the risk of catching a
> "super bug" was low. This
> significantly conflicts with my
> understanding of cross infection
> and the possibility of
> transmission of drug-resistant
> strains of HIV-1. I am ALL for
> positive sexuality and expression
> among consenting individuals,
> however I worry that this may
> reduce prevention efforts and
> actually think it was
> irresponsible of San Francisco to
> promote this. What do you think?
> _ _ _ _ _ david halperin _ _ _ _ _
> possibility of cross infection with
> more than one strain of HIV-1. Here
> are some studies that seem to
> indicate that the risk of
> superinfection (not reinfection,
> but superinfection) is remote:
I was impressed with all panelists and FoF did a wonderful job facilitating.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that much of the conversation centered on HIV and disease. Of course, this was a major reason the forum was held. And as Trevor points out, basic info about HIV is not as commonplace as we might hope it to be.
I wanted to hear more about what gay men want--but wonder if, at least with this crowd and at this time, we have to wade through the particulars of HIV first. On some level, this is the reality for gay men, yes?
It brings us back to Michelle M's point---can we talk about ourselves (in this case, gay and bi men) without talking about pathology and disease?
The event was really fascinating. Kudos to Project CRYSP for pulling it together. I for one wanted to hear more about the normative value placed on heterosexuality in academic research. I think there could be an entire forum devoted to this important and far-reaching topic!
ReplyDeleteI was really disappointed that none of the panelists couldn't explain "how HIV becomes AIDS using the Laws of Physics." I really wanted to know what gravity had to do with the progression of the disease. Just kidding!
ReplyDeleteWasn't that a weird statement though? For those of you that weren't there someone rambled on about how the Laws of Physics would someday explain how HIV turns into AIDS. What is that supposed to mean I don't know.
I didn't know what to do when the statement started going into that strange direction because he had a stranglehold on the mic.
We feel very honored to have been included in this forum and we look forward to many future endeavors such as this.
Thank you all for participating.
All My Best,
Marc Felion
Don't you just want to run up to Gary Harper and hug him? It was so much fun to have this type of event, meet the people and wait until you hear the wonderful podcast (coming next week) which will be heard by thousands of people all around the world.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the opportunity and it was wonderful hearing the great feedback from people afterwards.
Great forum on the Feat of Fools! A nice break from the chatty fun stuff towards a more thoughtful debate on issues that improve our lives! Well done!
ReplyDelete