HIV disclosure as practice and public policy

Responses to the largest surveys of HIV-positive people in Ontario show that most either disclose to or do not have partners who are HIV-negative or of unknown status. Non-disclosure strategies and assumptions are reported by relatively small sets of people with some variation according to employment status, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, and having had a casual partner. Interviews with 122 people living with HIV show that disclosure is an undertaking fraught with emotional pitfalls complicated by personal histories of having misread cues or having felt deceived leading up to their own sero-conversion, then having to negotiate a stigmatized status with new people. In gay communities, constructions of the self as individual actors in a marketplace of risk co-exist with the sexual etiquette developed throughout the AIDS era of care of the self and other through safer sex. Among heterosexual populations, notions of responsibility show some divergence by gender. The findings of this study suggest that the heightened pressure of criminal sanction on decision-making about disclosure in personal interactions does not address difficulties in HIV transmission and is unlikely to result in enhanced prevention

Resilience pathways, childhood escape routes, and mentors reported by gay and bisexual men affected by syndemic conditions

Investigation of the social and psychological antecedents of the HIV epidemic has identified a syndemic of conditions associated with risk behavior and seroconversion. This study inquires into the resilient practices and developmental processes of gay and bisexual men at the nexus of syndemic conditions to understand the pathways that lead to health problems or well-being. Interviews with 40 men identified branching pathways from home environments into schools that either offer refuge or a regime of gender discipline and bullying. Some found escape routes from hostile environments in worlds of books, pop culture, or internet chat. In adolescence, one set of men identified the development of sexual relationships with older men as a lifeline that brought a measure of emotional growth. This study points to resilience pathways and social resources that could make a difference in the lives of those deemed to be ‘‘high risk.’

Neoliberalism, masculinity, and HIV risk

Health science research on HIV risk focuses strongly on psychological traits of individuals as determinants of health and vulnerability. This paper seeks to place these findings in a larger social context marked by neoliberalism to provide some insights into the arenas of vulnerability to risk. These arenas are shaped by shifts in the environing political economy which generate subjectivities concordant with the pressures of the neoliberal turn to increasing marketization, individualization, and responsibilization. These pressures create cultures of expectation that accentuate particular trends defining success, masculinity, and risk in contemporary societies. In other words, the ‘risk factors,’ identified in the now voluminous research literature on HIV, cumulate in particular social locations that, at least in part, articulate with masculine gender performance in marketplaces. These intersections affect the expression of sex between men and vulnerabilities to risk, providing an alternative understanding to the deficit models current in health science research

Migration and sexual health among gay Latino migrants to Canada

This paper enquires into the nexus of migration with sexual health among gay Latino migrants in Canada. Interviews with 25 Spanish-speaking interviewees are examined in light of models developed from studies of Latinos in the United States. Canadian immigration policy appears to result in a somewhat different selection of immigrants compared to the United States. Migrants come from a wide range of national and regional backgrounds intersected by race, generation, and social class that influence their perceptions of and adjustment to Canadian society. Pre-migration HIV knowledge varied strongly by generation with older men recalling public panic concerning HIV and younger men receiving formal education about it. Migration enters into the mix of conditions as kin ties can be less confidently relied on among gay men compared to their heterosexual counterparts and by exacerbating vulnerability among those seeking to develop new social and sexual networks

Infectious Behaviour: Imputing Subjectivity to HIV Transmission

This paper examines the sometimes implicit models of human behaviour circulating in science, government, and media that assign agency to HIV transmission, and contrasts these institutional ideas with the narratives of people at risk as they go about their everyday lives. Three kinds of risk talk, arising from interviews, show the limitations and paradoxes of leading constructions of the subjectivity of HIV transmission. The first shows a lack of fit, when the social conditions and presumptions that hold up the leading discourses are missing, and so choices and actions correspondingly follow alternative logics. The second type concerns “semiotic snares” that lead risk calculators to increase their vulnerability to transmission, and the third concerns the explicit use of discourses of individual responsibility to postulate a sexual marketplace governed by the principle, “buyer beware.” The conclusion considers how people are both influenced by, and slip away from, the “calculating, rational, self-interested subject,” that Barry Smart identifies as the paradigmatic subject of contemporary neoliberalism

“HIV-related syndemic pathways and risk subjectivities among gay and bisexual men: A qualitative investigation

Life history interviews were conducted with 40 gay and bisexual men to identify modes of syndemic experience and risk practice. Out of the interview narratives emerged one major and two minor modes of developmental pathways whereby syndemic conditions are navigated and expressed: (1) a combination of adverse childhood events with later episodes of depression and/or substantial substance use, (2) personal disruption that led to periods of depression and anxiety associated with the stresses of migration, and (3) a disorientation and an unravelling of life trajectory in the transition from family of origin to college or work. Risk practices fell into three high-risk modes: active and frequent engagement in condomless sex; unassertive deferment to a partner’s initiation of condomless sex; and episodic risk combined with a risk reduction strategy. Three low risk modes were also identified: no recent condomlessness but multiple risk history in interview; a trajectory over time from high to low risk; and consistent low risk practice. These different modes of syndemic experience and risk management may have implications for identification of the effective HIV prevention tools that work best for different sets of men

Care, Intimacy and Same-Sex Partnership in the 21st Century

The paper addresses the emergence of same sex relationships as a public policy issue in contemporary society. Historical and cross-cultural evidence shows how same-sex relationships have been an integral part of the kinship system, household economies, and iconography of many societies, and that desire and relationship are produced in diverse ways at the confluence of kinship, gender, and life stage expectations circulating in different societies. Recent history of the advanced, industrial societies is characterised by sharp shifts in the conceptualization of same sex relationship, from sin, sickness, and crime to a patchwork of “relationship recognition” forms in just a few decades. Relationship recognition and “gay marriage” are just the beginning of a process of documenting and affirming relationship innovation among LGBT people. On the horizon are looming new debates over reproductive rights, child raising, the (over)valorization of the couple, and social service provision throughout the life course

Epistemic fault lines in biomedical and social approaches to HIV prevention

This paper raises the question of how knowledge creation is organized in the area of HIV prevention and how this concatenation of expertise, resources, at-risk people and viruses shapes the knowledge used to impede the epidemic. It also seeks to trouble the discourses of biomedical pre-eminence in the field of HIV prevention by examining the claim for treatment as prevention, looking at evidence constructed through the biomedical frame and through the lens of the sociology of science. These questions lie within a larger socio-historical context of lagging worldwide attention and funding to prevention in the HIV area and, in particular, neglect of populations at greatest risk. Much contemporary HIV prevention research relies on a population science divided over an epistemic fault line from the communities and individuals who must make sense of the intrusion of a life-threatening disease into their pursuit of pleasure and intimacy. There are, nevertheless, lessons to be learned from prevention success stories among sex workers, injection drug users, and gay and bisexual men. The success stories point to a need for a robust social science agenda that examines: the ways that people are socially organized and networked; the popular strategies and folk wisdoms developed in the face of HIV risk; socio-historical movement of sexual and drug cultures; the dynamics of popular mobilization to advance health; the institutional sources of HIV discourses; and popular understandings of HIV technologies and messages

Are there spurious temperature trends in the United States Climate Division database

The United States (U.S.) Climate Division data set is commonly used in applied climatic studies in the United States. The divisional averages are calculated by including all available stations within a division at any given time. The averages are therefore vulnerable to shifts in average station location or elevation over time, which may introduce spurious trends within these data. This paper examines temperature trends within the 15 climate divisions of New England, comparing the NCDC\u27s U.S. Divisional Data to the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) data. Correlation and multiple regression revealed that shifts in latitude, longitude, and elevation have affected the quality of the NCDC divisional data with respect to the USHCN. As a result, there may be issues with regard to their use in decadal- to century-scale climate change studies

The post-migration sexual citizenship of Latino gay men in Canada

The Cuéntame! Study interviewed 25 Spanish-speaking gay and bisexual men in Toronto. Their migration experiences are traversed by economic rationales, security concerns, and the embodied experiences of race, gender, culture, and sexuality. Most express narratives of empowered opportunity in distancing themselves from restrictive sexual regimes of their place of origin, but at the same time, many migrants trade a new sense of social acceptance as gay for marginalized statuses defined by diminished social and economic capital. The social participatory rights of citizenship are particularly affected by sexuality and social class. The need and desire to establish social and sexual connections in a new environment often characterized by economic vulnerability shape experiences of social capital and citizenship rights