Hi guys!
I thought that using the blog approach might be an interesting way for us to keep in touch as I continue to work on figuring out what my research findings are adding up to on The Bareback Project (that is, the project of mine in which you participated during 2008 or 2009). It will give me a chance to share information with you from time to time about study-related findings. The blog will also give me an opportunity to pose questions to you guys, and to see if you can help me to make sense of the research data, determine new directions to go with the work, and so forth.
A few weeks ago, I contacted a number of you with a question regarding anonymous sex, and what I, as a social scientist / public health researcher, might consider proposing to the Feds to do in a future study to help reduce the risks associated with men engaging in anonymous sex. A few dozen of you took the time to send personal replies to me, and I want to express my sincerest thanks to each and every one of you for sharing your thoughts.
From those replies, two ideas emerged. From a scientific standpoint, both have "issues" or concerns that would need to be resolved before they could be proposed to a federal grant committee for consideration for funding. But both are interesting prospects that, with some additional work/thought/creativity, might have some possibilities. Here are what strike me as the two best suggestions that you guys made:
1. Create a website which, at first, would be "locked." Men would be asked to complete an interview (either online or via telephone) similar to the one that you previously did with me, Thom, or Gina on The Bareback Project. Then, when that interview was completed, we would give you the "key" to unlock the website so that you could visit it and view its contents. The website would have a variety of information about different aspects of anonymous and semi-anonymous sex, risk reduction strategies, and so forth. Then a few months later, we would ask you to complete one more interview, similar to the first one, so that we could examine changes in beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and/or risk behavior involvement.
2. Contact the proprietors of various businesses--such as adult bookstores--where anonymous sex sometimes occurs, and see which ones might be willing to cooperate with us on an educational / intervention / prevention program. In establishments with cooperative owners, we would put up some HIV/STD information posters and make pamphlets and brochures available in various locales. For the research end of things, we would do interviews prior to and a few months after the provision of the posters, brochures, and pamphlets, so that we could assess changes over time.
So, guys, once again I turn to you for feedback, now that I have this bright shiny new blog to work with. Whatever comments and suggestions you may have in response to the following (or any other related topics) would be most helpful and, as always, greatly appreciated!
>> What are YOUR thoughts and reactions to the two approaches listed above?
>> Do YOU have any other suggestions about things that might be attempted in an effort to target the riskiness of anonymous sex?
>> When you think of anonymous sex, what is it about the practice that makes YOU like it or dislike it?
>> What exactly do you personally consider to be anonymous sex? For example, if a guy meets someone in a gay bar, talks with him for about 5 or 10 minutes, and then decides to go somewhere to have sex with him, do you consider that to be anonymous sex? As another example, suppose you see someone's profile online, and then you chat with him briefly online before agreeing to meet for sex. Do you consider that to be anonymous sex?
>> Do you personally think that it is more likely that men practice safer sex or riskier sex when they have anonymous sex than when they have other kinds of sex? Can you explain what leads you to say that?
I look forward to hearing from you about these matters and to reading your responses. Answer as many or as few of these questions as you like. Any replies that you give will be helpful to me as I try to formulate this next project more fully.
I will be in touch in the weeks ahead as well, as I work more with the project data. Happy autumn one and all!
Hugh
P.S. Don't forget to become a follower of this blog before you leave today. The button/link for doing that is on the right side of the main page. And please feel free to share the blog with gay and bisexual guy friends of yours, too.
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Hi Hugh,
ReplyDeleteHaving a blog sounds like a very good way to keep in touch with your study partipants and others. I hope you have a lot of success with it.
Ken
Hi Hugh,
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a blog. To me your first approach sounds better.
On anonymous sex: I don't really like it. I wish it could/would be otherwise, but it really depends on how long it has been since the last time. From my own point of view, after an introduction--online or in a bar, getting someones telephone number, or address is not anonymous. In a wider definition it might be if it is not a repeat.
Good luck with you research and blog.
Frank
Thanks for following up with the participants in the Project. I tried to respond to your recent e-mail but it kept bouncing back as undeliverable. I like the idea of a blog and think most people would be comfortable with that.
ReplyDeleteTo me, anonymous sex is sex in which you do not know the participant(s) or have anyway of contacting them again. So I would consider contact at a bathhouse anonymous, but when you meet someone online and have (or have the potential to have)a repeat visit, that would not be anonymous sex.
Looking forward to your next post.
A couple of comments, Hugh.
ReplyDelete1. I like the first idea better than the second, but both share a certain vulnerability in that one of the major conclusions in the research study is that men who engage in anonymous sex ALREADY "were substantially more likely to score 100% on the HIV/AIDS knowledge items than men who had not engaged in recent anonymous sex." Unless the site could post significant NEW information, its value would be limited because the prospective audience is already among the most knowledgeable - and engages in anonymous sex anyway.
2. On anonymous gay sex, I suspect you'll get as many definitions as their are men to ask. Unfortunately, it's shades of gray. True, pure, anonymous sex would probably only exist if one man met another in a "black" room at a bathhouse, and never even saw the other man's face and neither spoke to the other. When you have sex and ask the other man his name AFTER having sex, is it anonymous vs. asking his name BEFORE having sex? I think you as a researcher need to define a set of parameters that can be used consistently as a working definition. Let participants on this blog or elsewhere react to your definition and modify accordingly, but to be meaningful I think the definition needs to be consistent - which at present it certainly is not.
I am in complete agreement with you about this, and it is not a point that is lost on me by any means. Ultimately, it will come down to a measurement issue AND to making it a point of being very clear when asking guys questions about anonymous sex what, exactly, we're including/excluding in that.
ReplyDeleteI expect that this next study will have both a quantitative (i.e., survey interview) and a qualitative (open-ended discussion-style interview, where people can just talk about various subjects while being guided by the interviewer to discuss various subtopics) component to it. That should help to deal with the definitional issues that you raised here.
Also, just to address your first point about knowledge and risk . . . A lot of the published research in the HIV field has shown that knowledge is either unrelated OR related only weakly to risk practices. That is part of the dilemma that I am currently facing, as I try to figure out what to consider doing in a future anonymous sex-focused study. But for the time being, I continue to ponder the dilemma, and am finding the comments and suggestions that you guys have been sharing with me (both here on the new blog and in private emails) to be interesting and helpful.
Hi Hugh! I am glad you have set up this blog so that we can further exchange ideas. Both of your approaches for further study have drawbacks but I would be curious if you could find any bookstores that would be game to be a part of the study. My limited observations here in NYC are that most of the stores are owned by straight men who are only seeing profit and allow just enough sex to get customers to return but still be under the level of notice for the SexNazi police here.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that most guys who participate in anonymous sex do know the HIV/AIDS issues but still act out sexually because we can. As to what is anonymous, I looked at my list of guys I have played with over the past 90 days [yes, I *do* keep a list - colour me anal] and I did have a name for each guy I had met and played with. Some were guys I ran into online and hooked up with after a very short IMing back and forth so I knew little about them and some I knew I would not see a second time either because the scene was less than satisfatory OR because they were out of towners passing through. So, a working definition of anonymous would be in order so we can all agree if our partners were anonymous or not.
I do look forward to seeing more postings here as the topic certainly is of interest to me.
Ultimately, I think that a distinction will need to be made between "anonymous" and "nearly anonymous" or something to that effect. Perhaps "nearly anonymous" could be referred to as "not well known to you" or "barely known to you" or "guys about whom you know nearly nothing" or something like that. For questioning and interviewing purposes, I would certainly need to address that issue in order to get meaningful and usable research data.
ReplyDeleteFor my current purposes, though, when I'm just trying to get some ideas about what, if anything, I might be able to try to do with respect to anonymous/nearly anonymous sex, the distinction is less crucial.
Hi Hugh,
ReplyDeleteI think the more anonymous the sex, and the more guys that are involved, 3 or more, that unsafe sex is more likely to happen. Personally, I'm less likely to bareback in a 1-on-1 sex situation. But at a sex party or at the baths, barebacking seems to be kind of expected. Although, I admit that the last time I was at the baths I saw more condoms being used. But who knows, maybe they were just for "show". Thanks for the blog. I look forward to following it.
Giving your best estimate/guesstimate . . . what would you say was the percentage of guys you saw using condoms the last time (or the last few times) you visited the baths? Just curious
ReplyDeleteHugh
About 50 percent of the guys I could actually see having sex were using condoms. And there were a lot of used condoms all over the place.
ReplyDeleteThat's really interesting to me, since it is quite different from what most of the guys I've spoken with recently have said. It's also an intriguing aspect of the scientific literature: Some of the published studies talk about condom use rates being near zero in the bath houses; others report it to be nearly 50%. The authors of the different studies suggest that there are different expectations for condom use in bath houses located in different parts of the U.S., and they attribute it to the locale.
ReplyDeleteHugh
I know what you mean, Hugh. My impression of the situation where I saw more guys using condoms at the baths the last time I was there was like this: The guys were younger, more physically fit, and didn't seem like regulars. Maybe the 50% that were wearing condoms were committed to someone else, or had never been to the baths, or just wanted to be wild without catching something. Maybe they heard about a local outbreak of gono or something else, and they were being careful. Or maybe those particular condom clad guys were only safe with certain guys at the baths, but barebacked others. It would be interesting to interview all of the sexually active guys at the baths, and ask them what their motivation was for using or not using condoms. Not a survey taken outside of the bathhouse, but a survey taken right outside the darkroom or steamroom or gloryhole booths. What a picture. A survey taker, dressed only in a towel, holding a clipboard and pen, chasing down guys who've just had sex in various parts of the bathhouse. But you know, the responses might be more clear in that kind of situation.
ReplyDeleteI rather like the mental image of trying to do something like that: Me and/or one of my staff members wearing next to nothing (already NOT a pretty sight), trying to hide our questionnaires inside of our towels. With my middle-aged eyesight, I can just imagine how challenging it would be to try to do the interview in a dark room or a steamroom. These are the kinds of logistics that they do NOT teach us in graduate school. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou are probably right about one thing, though: Responses given inside of the bath house probably would be more accurate than they would be if they were given elsewhere . . . provided that the guys being interviewed felt that they could speak openly yet privately/confidentially during the interview.
Hugh
Hi guys,
ReplyDeleteI am posting this note/question on behalf of STXBAREBACK, who is one of the followers of this blog. He asked me to pose a short note for him, with the hope that others of you would respond. His questions/comments are as follows (all in caps):
WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HAVE FROM ANONYMOUS SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS? ARE THOSE EXPECTATIONS USUALLY MET AFTER SUCH ENCOUNTERS?
IT'S OPEN-ENDED, BUT I WILL BE INTERESTED TO SEE WHERE THE ANSWERS LEAD.
As with STXBAREBACK, I too will be interested in reading your replies and hearing your thoughts.
Hugh