Do you remember what it felt like the first time you got an STI?

I was sitting in my GP's office when she told me. I cried. I was scared. She was amazing about it though. She wasn’t judgemental and only later did I learn that she worked at a sexual health clinic. (A story for another time involving a medical student)

She reassured me. She calmed me down. Then she sent me on my way with a 7 day course of doxycycline

Moral panic around gay sex

You often hear how queer men are 'having sex without protection', or 'using only PrEP'. But what I also hear in the same breath is:

  • There are other things you can get you know?
  • Do gays even care about their health?
  • Antibiotic resistance rising we can't be playing fast and loose.

I take issue with this. These arguments moralise queer sex. They feed into the toxic narrative queer sex is dangerous. And our sex lives become pathologised.

Stop for a second. Because we need to unpack that.

Public health is not a morality test

Yes, of course public health is important.

But public health is a combination of medicine and public policy. It is only capable of looking at what is high risk vs. what is low risk, and how we can lower infection transmission. It does not advocate for equality or improving sexual health.

When we take medical insights out of context we can misunderstand their meaning. We spin personal and moral judgments onto public health information. The equation being:

  • high risk sexual activity = bad
  • low risk sexual activity = good.

When we moralise our sex lives we blame people for getting infected just for engaging in a very human way. Where you become a 'bad person' for engaging in high risk activity.

From my perspective, we’re just being human, and connecting our human sexuality with each other.

To illustrate this, it would be silly to say to someone who got COVID:

"Do you not care about your health walking around the shopping centre on a busy day without a mask".

But when it comes to sexually transmitted infections we throw shame and stigma around.

Is shame and stigma really going to stop us from getting sick?

Give us more options not more shame

Our focus should be on giving queer men more options to lower risk and prevent infections. Focusing on tools that add to your pleasure. Because that is how you influence behaviour change.

When it comes to STI prevention, the reality is some men:

  • avoid using condoms but use PrEP
  • use only PrEP and DoxyPEP
  • use condoms, PrEP and DoxyPEP.

You get the picture.

What truly matters in a public health sense is giving people as many tools that work for them. Focusing on what actually lowers transmission rates.

Without moralising behaviour. Without shame. Without stigma.

You should never feel shame for how you connect with other men. And you deserve more tools to protect your health.

So when people complain about STI rates going up as some moral failing of gay men, I say

Fuck off, and give us some better fucking tools!

Because our sex lives are not dangerous.
They’re revolutionary.