Introduction ‘Sometimes I end up doing it [sex under the influence of drugs] on a midweek afternoon with maybe just one bloke from Grindr, sometimes it’s ten people on a weekend … there are drugs and Viagra, you know it’s gonna be fun.’ (Ben, 55–65, Manchester) The use of recreational drugs to enhance and facilitate sex, mostly among men who have sex with men is now commonly referred as ‘chemsex’. Despite originating in the London scene in relation to the use of GHB/GHL, often referred to as ‘G’, crystal methamphetamine, often referred to as ‘tina’ or
Following the development of anti-retroviral therapies (ARVs), many people affected by HIV in the 1980s and 1990s have now been living with the condition for decades.
Drawing on perspectives from leading scholars in Bangladesh, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ukraine, the UK and the US, as well as research from India and Kenya, this book explores the experiences of sex and sexuality in individuals and groups living with HIV in later life (50+). Contributions consider the impacts of stigma, barriers to intimacy, physiological sequelae, long-term care, undetectability, pleasure and biomedical prevention (TasP and PrEP).
With increasing global availability of ARVs and ageing populations, this book offers essential future directions, practical applications and implications for both policy and research.
While there has been a gradual increase in scholarship on men, ageing and masculinities, little attention has been paid to the social relations of men in later life and the implications for enhancing their social wellbeing and counteracting ageist discourse.
Bringing together scholars in social gerontology and the social sciences from across Global North and South nations, this collection fills the gaps in key texts by foregrounding older men’s experiences.
It provides new perspectives across the intersections of old age, ethnicities, class and sexual and gender identity, paying particular attention to older men from seldom heard or marginalised groups.
Pussy grabbing; hot mommas; topless protest; nasty women. Whether hypersexualised, desexualised, venerated or maligned, women’s bodies in public space continue to be framed as a problem. A problem that is discursively ‘solved’ by the continued proliferation of rape culture in everyday life.
Indeed, despite the rise in research and public awareness about rape culture and sexism in contemporary debates, gendered violence continues to be normalised.
Using case studies from the US and UK – the de/sexualised pregnancy, the troublesome naked protest, the errant BDSM player – Fanghanel interrogates how the female body is figured through, and revolts against, gendered violence.
Rape culture currently thrives. This book demonstrates how it happens, the politics that are mobilised to sustain it, and how we might act to contest it.
This volume, third in a series of five on sexuality in later life, brings together the experiences of women, gay men, trans women and hijra from around the world as they describe what it means to live with HIV and navigate the often fraught areas of sex, sexuality, intimacy and relationships in later life. New drug treatments have transformed the lives and expectations of people living with HIV. In this book we hear from people living in Aotearoa New Zealand, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom who are not only living with HIV but also facing stigma imposed on them by others. Too often they have learned to stigmatise themselves. Since no single approach or way of writing can capture the richly diverse experiences of people in later life living with HIV, the book includes a variety of empirical research as well as personal accounts, poetry and other forms of writing from an array of perspectives and academic disciplines. As always with HIV, we find that poverty challenges our notions about the length, expectations and quality of life.
This volume, third in a series of five on sexuality in later life, brings together the experiences of women, gay men, trans women and hijra from around the world as they describe what it means to live with HIV and navigate the often fraught areas of sex, sexuality, intimacy and relationships in later life. New drug treatments have transformed the lives and expectations of people living with HIV. In this book we hear from people living in Aotearoa New Zealand, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom who are not only living with HIV but also facing stigma imposed on them by others. Too often they have learned to stigmatise themselves. Since no single approach or way of writing can capture the richly diverse experiences of people in later life living with HIV, the book includes a variety of empirical research as well as personal accounts, poetry and other forms of writing from an array of perspectives and academic disciplines. As always with HIV, we find that poverty challenges our notions about the length, expectations and quality of life.
This volume, third in a series of five on sexuality in later life, brings together the experiences of women, gay men, trans women and hijra from around the world as they describe what it means to live with HIV and navigate the often fraught areas of sex, sexuality, intimacy and relationships in later life. New drug treatments have transformed the lives and expectations of people living with HIV. In this book we hear from people living in Aotearoa New Zealand, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom who are not only living with HIV but also facing stigma imposed on them by others. Too often they have learned to stigmatise themselves. Since no single approach or way of writing can capture the richly diverse experiences of people in later life living with HIV, the book includes a variety of empirical research as well as personal accounts, poetry and other forms of writing from an array of perspectives and academic disciplines. As always with HIV, we find that poverty challenges our notions about the length, expectations and quality of life.
), sexual practices, experience with substance use during sex (‘chemsex’) and experience of sex in saunas. We informed potential participants verbally and in writing about the study, and asked for their informed consent. The information made clear that we would ask them to play a VR-SG. For data generation, we conducted semi-structured in-person interviews (again, problem-centred interviews [see Witzel, 2000 ; Witzel and Reiter, 2021 ]), in which we integrated the VR-SG. In the first phase, we opened the interviews with a narrative interview phase, explored the topic
medical providers is essential, but these researchers found instead that these older women living with HIV were wary of discussing their sexual lives with their physicians. In the United Kingdom and Italy, Cesare Di Feliciantonio interviewed 25 gay men living with HIV who participate in chemsex – that is, the use of drugs such as GHB, GHL, crystal methamphetamine and mephedrone to enhance and facilitate sex. He found that participants framed their engagement with chemsex as driven by the quest for sociality combined with a rediscovery of sexual pleasure and an
country, which has come to call AIDS the ‘gay plague’ ( Galvão et al, 2018 ). Among the sexual practices reported by MSM are those with the highest sexually transmitted infection transmission potential: group sex (three or more people); chemsex (sex with or under the effect of drugs); and sex under sexual-performance-enhancing medications. The combination of those practices generally allows MSM to experience ‘challenging’ sex practices such as fisting, footing and double penetration, among others. These factors are well established in the scientific literature as
