Chemical practices: transformation and experimentation as part of LGBTQ Australians’ drug consumption

• In Event: Producing Transformations: Drugs, Bodies, and Experimentation 1

Abstract

The use of drugs for a wide range of purposes is an increasingly prominent feature of both pharmaceutical markets and lifestyle practices. This trend is particularly evident in sexual and gender minorities where licit and illicit drugs have become key technologies for transforming sexual and gendered experience. However, despite the connections between sexual and gender experimentation, and substance use, much remains unknown about drug consumption among sexual and gender minorities in Australia.

Through in-depth, qualitative interviews with LGBTQ consumers and service providers in New South Wales and Victoria, we examine the connections between sexual and gendered experience, and drug consumption. Drawing on insights from STS we demonstrate how the sexual and gendered effects that consumers attribute to particular substances are produced in relation to various other actors, arrangements and networks. By including a broad range of chemicals (including illicit drugs, antiretrovirals, hormones, and performance and image enhancing drugs), and focusing on practices of self-experimentation, and on the framing of service provision, we draw attention to the innovative cultures of care that emerge outside the terms of professionalised public health discourses. Recognising that pleasure, risk, care and intimate experimentation are significant features of LGBTQ cultures, we explore how these phenomena shape each other across a range of different settings with implications for how LGBTQ communities are governed. We conclude with observations about the relevance of our findings for LGBTQ health policy and practice, noting both the successes and the limits of existing responses to substance use amongst sexual and gender minorities.

Authors

• Dean Anthony Murphy, University of Sydney

• Kiran Pienaar, Monash University

• Kane Race, University of Sydney

• Toby Lea, UNSW