The limits of promoting pleasure

Desiring-assemblages and HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8133281
AutoresA K Smith (0000-0002-0005-9542, UNSW Sydney), A TAIT SMITH (Curtin University, autor de correspondencia), K Lancaster (0000-0002-2411-7970, UNSW Sydney), Tammy Rhodes (0000-0003-2400-9838, UNSW Sydney), Tim Rhodes, Martin Holt (0000-0002-2586-8274, UNSW Sydney)
Año2026
Fecha de publicación2026-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSexualities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-4607 • E-ISSN: 1461-7382
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/13634607251412218
OpenAlexW7117987736
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas35

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is said to have transformed pleasure and sexual practices in myriad ways. This article draws on interviews with PrEP users in Australia who had paused, stopped, or switched PrEP use in order to explore the varied affects and experiences of PrEP in relation to different dosing strategies. Drawing on the concept of ‘desiring-assemblages’, we considered ‘what can a body with PrEP do?’. Our analysis affirms PrEP as transformative, enabling freedom through reduced or removed fear of HIV transmission. However, participant accounts also suggested that PrEP has been normalised as an ordinary part of sexual cultures, with some indicating that PrEP use was felt as obligatory or ambivalent. Daily and nondaily dosing also potentiated different flows of desire and connections, remaking what PrEP is and can be in participants’ lives in ways that trouble the idea that PrEP consistently facilitates pleasure. PrEP dosing was framed by discussion of changes to one’s sense of self and future priorities, and through ideas about freedom, pleasure, shame, safety, obligation, fitting in, waste, and potential. While PrEP is increasingly promoted through messaging linked to ‘pleasure’, instead of earlier discourses of ‘risk’, a pleasure-centric focus may delimit understandings of how PrEP can produce multiple sexual lives and practices, including the mundane aspects of sex and pleasure. To appeal to a range of potential PrEP users, health promotion should emphasise the different possibilities for PrEP – it’s potential for pleasure, its critical role in preventing HIV, and its normative mundanity

Appeal · Dosing · Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV · Human sexuality · Normative · Pleasure · Pre-exposure prophylaxis · Promotion (chess · HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Sex work and related issues