So gay guys go on having unprotected sex after they are diagnosed with HIV, a new descriptive study of gay poz guys at a clinic in Boston tells us. Nothing new there, although it’s sobering to be reminded that one in two of the men who know they have HIV choose to bareback with someone [...]
Last Friday, I went to a deeply depressing “is feminism dead” type discussion. The normally male bastion of Prospect Magazine rang with the sound of high heels, and… Oh, wait, most of the people there were feminists. Scratch the high heels, then. Yes, yes, I’m playing to completely unjustified sterotypes. Except that they are not [...]
As promised, data on women, autonomy, partnerships and HIV. It’s quite true that I have not developed some magic indicator of “autonomy”. But the World Economic Forum has. Or at least its Gender Equality Index is as close as damnit. Let’s take the sub-Saharan African countries at either extreme, and set their equality index against [...]
The other night, I was dining with someone who didn’t know their acronym from their elbow. I had to explain MSM (mice that have sex with mice; no, wait…) and had a special rant about LGBT. For the unitiated that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. It just trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? And it [...]
Though I work in a world of addictions, I try and keep mine in the closet. But with others springing out of the closet right left and centre, I’m going to come clean. I’m addicted to rugby. Rugby is said (largely by people who see no glory in the bad haircuts and hystrionic dives of [...]
At breakfast in Bangalore this morning, I was greeted by news of Bollywood’s first on-screen gay kiss. When they’re puckerd up like this, wouldn’t you want to? But the Indian censors may not share my enthusiasm. I am Omar will be screening at the Rotterdam film festival. Check it out and see if the kiss [...]
Many Europeans think American beer is gnat’s piss. But the maker of the pissiest “Lite” version is turning our mind to another orifice. Anal sex, or the slang for it at any rate, appears to going mainstream in the US. Buy your lube stocks now. Thanks to IRMA, the bottom line in HIV prevention, for [...]
I’ve been roused from my long summer torpor by a row over a German ad that tries to make Hitler the face of AIDS. Predictably enough, activist groups immediately yelled “stigma”! What we should be yelling is “dinosaurs!”. In Western Europe, AIDS is no longer the “mass murderer” the ad claims. In fact, it is [...]
The day before the UK release of Bruno, Sasha Baron Cohen’s swish along the catwalks of homophobia, the UK’s House of Lords voted to allow Brits to criticize homosexuality. Gay groups are painting this as a victory for homophobia. Christian groups say it is a victory for free speech. I say, on balance, that it [...]
There’s enough divorce in the world without forcing it on people who want to be together… “Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo. On the subject of America’s extaordinary relationship with homosexuality, I urge you to see Milk, an important film about an important era, which reminds us rather vividly that we have not [...]
New HIV-infections among gay men are rising everywhere they are measured, with the sole apparent exception of Sydney. That’s in part because Sydney has not dropped the ball (and the budget) on prevention. It hasn’t swallowed the “Treatment IS Prevention” mantra that seems to be behind the rise in many other places. If we want [...]
Tuesday evening. I spent it with baited breath sitting at the bar in Baltimore airport, surrounded by boys with buzz-cuts and camouflage who were headed for Iraq. They seemed strangely unconcerned by the drama that was unfolding in red and blue on the screens in front of us. I, for my part, nearly missed my [...]
A little while ago, CDC estimated how many people were newly infected with HIV in the US in 2006. They told us it was a disease of gay men and black people. Now they’ve done more detailed analysis: It’s not just a disease of gay men and black people. It’s increasingly a disease of gay [...]
Thailand has been much (and rightly) praised for its pragmatic approach to cutting HIV in its illegal but vast heterosexual sex trade. Of course when the tide of brothel-caught infections goes out, the rocks of ongoing infection in jails, among drug injectors and between men who have sex with one another are left exposed. And [...]
New York likes to think of itself as ahead of the rest of the US on many fronts. It certainly is on the HIV front. In most of the world, we’ve got precious little idea how many people get infected with HIV each year. Generally, we report HIV prevalence — the number of people who [...]
The New York Observer has crowned Jamie Clayton the second most beautiful woman in New York. (It doesn’t tell us who the most beautiful woman is.) The always engaging Broadsheet deems this a triumph for transgenders, since Jamie was born a boy. Quite understandably, Jamie relates her “education sentimenale” to her past with a penis. [...]
So Britain’s spy services are growing up. According to the Financial Times, the domestic spy service MI5 is looking to recruit more gay men and women to the service. MI5 has hooked up with gay rights lobby group Stonewall to try and get more gays to sign up to stick their noses into other people’s [...]
Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban leader Raul Castro, has been a crusader for the rights of gay men and women and for transgenders in Cuba. One result is that Cuban hospitals will soon begin offering sex change operations. (Perhaps Bangkok’s sex change clinics should start worrying). I am honoured that Ms. Castro has cracked open [...]
Still on the subject of the multiple meanings of masculinity: whatever your identity, you’ve got to pee. But if you’re a person with a penis who dresses as a woman, where should that be? There’s a debate about this over at The Lost Boy, continued at by Roger Tatoud at Peripheries whom I thank for [...]
Further to yesterday’s post, I find myself in California at a happy time. Same-sex marriages are a huge step forward in undermining the absurd qualms that our society still has about who has sex with whom. I notice that the qualms are still reflected, though, in reports of the happy day. My New York Times [...]
