Go beyond the statistics to discover why many gay and bisexual men take the health risk—and what can be done about it The rate of new HIV diagnoses and other sexually transmitted infections among men having sex with men has increased sharply, especially in men of color. Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches examines in depth the reasons why so many gay and bisexual men indulge in “barebacking,” or intentional unprotected sex. Respected experts reveal the latest studies that explore every facet of this alarming trend that apparently began as a phenomenon confined to those who had already been infected. The mounting likelihood of a renewed epidemic is a troubling public health issue that reaches beyond gays and bisexuals into the heterosexual community. The aim of Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches is to provide clinicians with some insights to foster strategies for addressing these unsafe sexual behaviors. This book presents the studies of researchers working in the field as well as those who can provide both research and clinical perspectives. Thoroughly researched and richly referenced, this book is an essential resource for health and mental health professionals. In Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches, you’ll find discussion and research on: the public health perspective of the emergence of barebacking among gay and bisexual men how the term “barebacking” differs between various gay and bisexual men how club drug use has posed a public health threat HIV transmission risks among men who meet through the Internet barebacking among Internet-based male sex workers assessing HIV-negative gay or bisexual men a treatment model for barebackers psychotherapy considerations for individual gay men and male couples having unsafe sex Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches is an insightful and comprehensive research source, essential for psychologists, researchers, public health officials, counselors, psychotherapists, and anyone concerned with the HIV epidemic in the United States.

This work explores how barebackers think about transmitting HIV, especially the idea that deliberately sharing it establishes a new network of kinship among the infected.

RAW addresses the question of sex without condoms, or barebacking, in the age of PrEP, a drug that virtually eliminates the transmission of HIV. Writing out of the history of the AIDS crisis, the authors in RAW expand the study of barebacking into new areas, such as its appearance within lesbian, heterosexual, and BDSM communities and its implications for teaching critical sexology.

After years of activism, risk awareness, and AIDS prevention, increasing numbers of gay men are not using condoms, and new infections of HIV are on the rise. Using case studies and exhaustive survey research, this timely, groundbreaking book allows men who have unprotected sex, a practice now known as "barebacking," to speak for themselves on their willingness to risk it all. Without Condoms takes a balanced look at the profound needs that are met by this seemingly reckless behavior, while at the same time exposing the role that both the Internet and club drugs like crystal methamphetamine play in facilitating high-risk sexual encounters. The result is a compassionate, sophisticated and nuanced insight into what for many people is one of the most perplexing aspects of today's gay male culture and life style. Michael Shernoff digs deep and forces us to see that the AIDS epidemic is not over. We must now ask the hard questions and listen to the voices that answer. The stakes are too high to ignore.

Jake Taggart's life was almost perfect He'd worked hard to overcome his past, and he loved his job as foreman on a ranch in Arkansas. The only thorn in his side was a dark eyed cowboy named Tornado whose stubborn attitude brought frustration and confusion to Jake's mostly happy existence. A late spring rainstorm brings out hidden passions and unleashes a chain of events neither of them expected--and eventually brings about events that threaten to destroy them and what they worked to create. Strong wills and forceful personalities make for intense encounters...but is it enough to keep love alive? Chris Owen lives and writes in Eastern Canada. Favorite things include shrimp and pasta, soft wool, sunshine through windows, and late nights followed by sleeping in. Conversely, dislikes include waking too late, seeing sunshine only through windows, and being inside during rain storms. This is the Tenth Anniversary Special Edition of the Best-Selling novel, including author's foreword.

This book analyses contemporary gay "pig" masculinities, which have emerged alongside antiretroviral therapies, online porn, and new sexualised patterns of recreational drug use, examining how they trouble modern European understandings of the male body, their ethics, and their political underpinnings. This is the first book to reflect on an increasingly visible new form of sexualised gay masculinity, and the first monograph to move debates on condomless sex amongst gay men beyond discourses of HIV and/or AIDS. It contributes to existing critical histories of sexuality, pornography and other sex media at a crucial juncture in the history of gay male sex cultures and the HIV epidemic. The book draws from fieldwork, interviews, archival research, visual analysis, philosophy, queer theory, and cultural studies, using empirical, critical, and speculative methodologies to better think gay "pig" masculinities across their material, affective, ethical and political dimensions, in a future-oriented, politically-inflected, reflection on what queer bodies may become. Spanning historical context to empirical and theoretical study, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures will be of key interest to academics and students in sexuality studies, film, media, visual culture, cultural studies, and porn studies concerned with masculinities, sex and sexualities and their circulation across an array of media.

This publication from the London-based art collective, Tomato, is a collection of work ranging from writing to drawing and photography, created and compiled by its members - Steve Baker, Michael Horsham, Karl Hyde, Jason Kedgley, Rick Smith, Simon Taylor, Dirk Van Dooren, John Warwicker, and Graham Wood.

In Gothic Queer Culture, Laura Westengard proposes that contemporary U.S. queer culture is gothic at its core. Using interdisciplinary cultural studies to examine the gothicism in queer art, literature, and thought—including ghosts embedded in queer theory, shadowy crypts in lesbian pulp fiction, monstrosity and cannibalism in AIDS poetry, and sadomasochism in queer performance—Westengard argues that during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a queer culture has emerged that challenges and responds to traumatic marginalization by creating a distinctly gothic aesthetic. Gothic Queer Culture examines the material effects of marginalization, exclusion, and violence and explains why discourse around the complexities of genders and sexualities repeatedly returns to the gothic. Westengard places this queer knowledge production within a larger framework of gothic queer culture, which inherently includes theoretical texts, art, literature, performance, and popular culture. By analyzing queer knowledge production alongside other forms of queer culture, Gothic Queer Culture enters into the most current conversations on the state of gender and sexuality, especially debates surrounding negativity, anti-relationalism, assimilation, and neoliberalism. It provides a framework for understanding these debates in the context of a distinctly gothic cultural mode that acknowledges violence and insidious trauma, depathologizes the association between trauma and queerness, and offers a rich counterhegemonic cultural aesthetic through the circulation of gothic tropes.

From tribal religious rituals to the Playboy mansion, and from ancient Rome to Burning Man, Plays Well in Groups explores the phenomenon of group sex. Author Katherine Frank draws on surveys, ethnographic research, participant interviews, and more to provide explanations for both, participation in group sex and our complex reactions to it, from fascination to fear. This book looks at group sex across cultures—who has it, and why. Group sex is almost always taboo and often criminalized, and yet it persists across cultures throughout history. Plays Well in Groups looks at the symbolism of orgies, as well as contemporary manifestations of group sex in bathhouses and public sex venues, at BDSM and swinging parties, on Craigslist, and in political scandals, Tantra classes, reality television, and more. Frank explores the many reasons people participate in group sex, from arousal to spiritual transcendence, in this bold study of subversive sexuality.

Following debates surrounding the anti-social turn in queer theory in recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the role of activism, the limits of the political, and the question of normativity and ethics. Queer Futures engages with these concerns, exploring issues of complicity and agency with a central focus on the material and economic as well as philosophical dimensions of sexual politics. Presenting some of the latest research in queer theory, this book draws together diverse perspectives to shed light on possible ‘queer futures’ when different affective, temporal, and local contexts are brought into play. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural, political, literary, and social theory, as well as those with interests in gender and sexuality, activism, and queer theory.