TY - JOUR
AU - Garcia Iglesias, Jaime
AU - Ledin, Chase
PY - 2021
DA - September
TI - ‘Who cares if you’re poz right now?’: Barebackers, HIV and COVID-19
JO - Sociology of Health & Illness
EP - 1995
VL - 43
IS - 9
DO - https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13369
AB - The global COVID-19 pandemic poses new challenges for communities built around certain sexual practices, some of which have responded by using their previous experiences of HIV. In this paper, we undertake an online ethnography of a popular Anglo-American barebackers’ forum to understand how HIV and COVID-19 converge and how these men negotiate COVID-19 risk by adapting previous sexual and disease prevention strategies. Barebackers, aka gay men who eroticise condomless anal intercourse, provide a relevant group to consider given their longstanding negotiation of HIV. We explore processes of responsibility, risk management, and pleasure during the COVID-19 pandemic. We suggest that their experiences of both the AIDS crisis and the current context of HIV frames their decisions around COVID-19. We focus on how responsibility and desire shape discussions of bathhouses and the survival of barebackers’ sexual practices during and after COVID-19.
PB - Wiley
UR - https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/a03b1852-c9ed-42dc-ad69-6d4543377742
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
KW - Sexual health
ER