| Beyond Condoms: Let's Talk about
It
Sex involves more than slogans, and staying safe from HIV is more
complicated than just saying, "use a condom every time." Effective
HIV prevention helps men, both HIV positive and HIV negative, think
through the values we attach to our specific sexual practices and
relationships, as well as the risks and supports efforts to form
realistic and individualized harm reduction strategies. Rather than
wishing away the idea that anyone could have unprotected anal sex,
for example, this means helping men describe in vivid detail both
the pleasure and the risks of that kind of interaction. Who was
your partner? What was happening between you, both on the verbal
and non-verbal level. Where were you (the environment in which a
sexual encounter takes place often shapes its choreography).
Becoming conscious of these details of thought, emotion and action
can make the difference between transmission of a deadly virus or
a sexual union between two men in which no virus passes. Among the
important issues men at GMHC have found it important to talk about:
- What assumptions about other people, or ourselves and our HIV
testing history, are we making when we say we know our own or
our partner's HIV status? What does such knowledge "look like"
and how are we coming to decisions based on it?
- What factors are leading us to decide to be on the bottom with
someone whose HIV status we don't know? Is this happening in the
context of committed relationships? Anonymous sex? Are there patterns
to what kinds of feelings or events precede such sexual intercourse?
- What are the different meanings of "risk for HIV transmission"
for men who are positive and men who are negative?
- What is the complex and variable relationship between drug use
and risky sex? Are people having risky anal sex because they're
high, or getting high because they want to have risky sex?
Want to talk about it?
GMHC's calendar
of workshops includes many for men, both positive and negative,
to move beyond slogans and get down to the difficult and rewarding
work of coming to consciousness. For more information, call about
GMHC's HIV Prevention programs for gay men at 212/367-1353.
© 2003 Gay Men's Health Crisis |
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