On sex panic
Oct. 31st, 2006 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcIn a discussion over in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sunsmogseahorse's LJ (found here), 2fruition asked me to expand on some comments I made about Eric Rofes' work.
First off, I want to say that Rofes did an incredible amount of work for queer men over many years. More recently he chose (as have I) to position himself in the academy. And he never shied away from using the power and privilege that come with being hyper-educated. I fault him not for it either: we need more academics whose research agenda is rooted both in their own experiences and the experience of working in and with community...work that can be both enervating and despair-inducing. I come neither to bury nor praise Rofes. I come instead to critique aspects of his work that I believe to be problematic.
Rofes was quick to critique others' empirical research, yet his scholarship in the areas of sexual health, queer men, and HIV was largely--if not entirely--conceptual or theoretical rather than empirical. He refuted--or rejected--most behavoural research as "the repeated manipulation of statistics and emotions in the name of HIV prevention." (Rofes, 2006a), but didn't use his position to conduct research that could get at the issues he felt were important. He was also inclined " to initiate this conversation" about complex topics like HIV+ persons who fuck bareback with those who might be HIV-...but even as he acknowledges a need for "best researchers, most visionary thinkers, and most compassionate advocates and tackle this profound challenge" he doesn't offer concrete suggestions on possible ways to respond (Rofes, 2006b). Regardlessm describing social marketing efforts to inculcate a culture of sexual care and mutual responsibility for wellness and pleasure as "noise" is neither constructive or substantive (Rofes, 199? [Planet Out]).
A more quibbling point is that Rofes squandered his position and privilege by not having his work scrutinized in the first tier of academic work. His work on gay men's health hasn't populated, well-respected journals or academic presses. One could argue in 1975 that queer academics had a difficult time publishing their work in such spheres. Much of it, in fact, isn't peer-reviewed at all. But not in 1995 or 2005: I also take issue with aspects of the work of people like Judith Butler, Michael Warner and Steve Seidman--all of whom have addressed aspects of queer experience as controversial or untidy as anything Rofes did--in the most prestigious journals and academic presses in the world.
Reducing 15 years of highly effective HIV prevention work in such callow, negative and disrespectful language does not, to my mind, make a positive contribution to what remains a matter of life and death for queer men: how to celebrate our selves, sexual and as a whole, while helping one another remain healthy. Trying to get queer men to soil their shorts out of abject fear is ridiculous--and hasn't been the tone of HIV prevention since the early 1980s--except for the materials put out by homophobic public health officials. The overall message has been to address both the "technical" issues of how to eliminate or reduce HIV transmission (not exposure, transmission), while purposefully and affirmatively expressing one's sexuality with other consenting adults. I remember no message (or hope), a cautious suggestion to try condoms, and a clear message that effective condom use reduces risk to negligible levels during anal sex. All wrapped up in a "have a great time, with whom you choose, with a sense of taking care of one another".
To my mind, that is the piece that's gone by the wayside: mutuality. We've lost the WE. We need it back.
sunsmogseahorse's LJ (found here), 2fruition asked me to expand on some comments I made about Eric Rofes' work.First off, I want to say that Rofes did an incredible amount of work for queer men over many years. More recently he chose (as have I) to position himself in the academy. And he never shied away from using the power and privilege that come with being hyper-educated. I fault him not for it either: we need more academics whose research agenda is rooted both in their own experiences and the experience of working in and with community...work that can be both enervating and despair-inducing. I come neither to bury nor praise Rofes. I come instead to critique aspects of his work that I believe to be problematic.
Rofes was quick to critique others' empirical research, yet his scholarship in the areas of sexual health, queer men, and HIV was largely--if not entirely--conceptual or theoretical rather than empirical. He refuted--or rejected--most behavoural research as "the repeated manipulation of statistics and emotions in the name of HIV prevention." (Rofes, 2006a), but didn't use his position to conduct research that could get at the issues he felt were important. He was also inclined " to initiate this conversation" about complex topics like HIV+ persons who fuck bareback with those who might be HIV-...but even as he acknowledges a need for "best researchers, most visionary thinkers, and most compassionate advocates and tackle this profound challenge" he doesn't offer concrete suggestions on possible ways to respond (Rofes, 2006b). Regardlessm describing social marketing efforts to inculcate a culture of sexual care and mutual responsibility for wellness and pleasure as "noise" is neither constructive or substantive (Rofes, 199? [Planet Out]).
A more quibbling point is that Rofes squandered his position and privilege by not having his work scrutinized in the first tier of academic work. His work on gay men's health hasn't populated, well-respected journals or academic presses. One could argue in 1975 that queer academics had a difficult time publishing their work in such spheres. Much of it, in fact, isn't peer-reviewed at all. But not in 1995 or 2005: I also take issue with aspects of the work of people like Judith Butler, Michael Warner and Steve Seidman--all of whom have addressed aspects of queer experience as controversial or untidy as anything Rofes did--in the most prestigious journals and academic presses in the world.
Reducing 15 years of highly effective HIV prevention work in such callow, negative and disrespectful language does not, to my mind, make a positive contribution to what remains a matter of life and death for queer men: how to celebrate our selves, sexual and as a whole, while helping one another remain healthy. Trying to get queer men to soil their shorts out of abject fear is ridiculous--and hasn't been the tone of HIV prevention since the early 1980s--except for the materials put out by homophobic public health officials. The overall message has been to address both the "technical" issues of how to eliminate or reduce HIV transmission (not exposure, transmission), while purposefully and affirmatively expressing one's sexuality with other consenting adults. I remember no message (or hope), a cautious suggestion to try condoms, and a clear message that effective condom use reduces risk to negligible levels during anal sex. All wrapped up in a "have a great time, with whom you choose, with a sense of taking care of one another".
To my mind, that is the piece that's gone by the wayside: mutuality. We've lost the WE. We need it back.
