GBTQ+ safe sex entanglements

Finding the bacterial in the age of resistant STIs and prevention innovation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4595413
AutoresChandra (0000-0002-1217-0731, The University of Sydney), Alex Broom (0000-0003-1258-1140, The University of Sydney), Damien Ridge (0000-0001-9245-5958, University of Westminster), K Kenny (0000-0001-9088-5671, The University of Sydney), Michelle Peterie (0000-0002-7182-7246, The University of Sydney), Jennifer Broom (0000-0003-3513-3412, Griffith University), Bridget Haire (0000-0002-0657-9610, UNSW Sydney), Lise Lafferty (0000-0002-8533-2957, UNSW Sydney), Carla Treloar (0000-0002-8230-0386, UNSW Sydney), Stephanie Raymond (0000-0001-8195-0363, The University of Sydney), Catriona S Bradshaw (0000-0002-6643-5678, Alfred Health), Catriona Bradshaw, Tanya Applegate (0000-0002-8657-4261, UNSW Sydney), Reed A Guy (0000-0002-9833-4994, UNSW Sydney), Rebecca Guy (0000-0002-2929-4634)
Ano2025
Volume379
Páginas118162
Data de publicação2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Science & Medicine (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347
EditoraElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118162
PMID40373627
OpenAlexW4410217970
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas44

Few studies have explored community experiences of our increasingly resistant bacterial landscape, and, in the sphere of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) and antimicrobial resistance, there is even greater absence of community-centred research. This is despite a growth in STI transmission worldwide, which, alongside accelerated resistance, will disproportionately affect GBTQ+ (gay, bisexual, trans, queer+) populations. In this article, drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2024 with 49 cisgender and trans gay and bisexual men, trans women and gender diverse people, we explore contemporary GBTQ+ safe sex practices as they relate to the growing threat of antibiotic resistant STIs in Australia. Key themes identified were the pharmaceutical turn in safe sex practices, the tensions this produced, the complexities of condom use, and the influence of biographies on safe sex practices. We illustrate how the turn toward pharmaceutical solutions has reconfigured and continues to reconfigure safe sex, giving rise to pleasures that were hitherto 'off-limits' to many. However, escalating antibiotic resistance threatens to again alter community practices and relationships to STI prevention measures. Drawing on Barad, we develop these themes to theoretically conceptualise safe sex as not fixed, but as an entanglement that is relationally and iteratively (re)configured through the connections between objects, subjectivities, practices, temporalities, and the human-microbial dynamics entailed therein. Findings suggest public health and clinical communication about resistance should speak to population concerns about gut health, resistance vis-à-vis Doxy-PEP, changing definitions of safe sex, and the importance of pleasure

Environmental health · Public health · Sociology · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · Demography · Medicine · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology