Biomedical HIV Prevention, Risk, and New Possibilities for Sexual Pleasure

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Abstract

4S Conference 2019 – New Orleans

The emergence of biomedical approaches to HIV prevention has been accompanied by fundamental transformations in how concepts such as sexual ‘risk’ and ‘pleasure’ are conceived of in relation to men who have sex with men (MSM). With high levels of efficacy, these strategies allow MSM the possibility of experiencing sex unmediated by condoms while continuing to take steps to prevent the infection by, or onward transmission of, HIV. Where condoms are used during the act of sex itself, biomedical prevention entails the use of pharmaceutical medications outside of sex, thereby displacing HIV prevention from the sexual encounter. In doing so, biomedical prevention has the potential to decouple sex between MSM from HIV risk, an association that has endured since the first official reports of HIV in 1981 (Treichler 1999). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Melbourne, Australia, this presentation explores the interactions between biomedical HIV prevention, risk, and pleasure. In this presentation, I consider how by displacing HIV prevention and risk from the sexual encounter, biomedical prevention enables new possibilities for sexual pleasure and intimacy between MSM. I argue that rather than an individual’s sexual subjectivity being understood through discourses of HIV risk, biomedical prevention unlocks the potential for one’s sexuality and sexual relations to be framed instead through discourses of pleasure. By doing so, this opens new possibilities for experiencing sex, sexuality, relationships and one’s identity.

Treichler, P.A 1999, How to have theory in an epidemic, Duke University Press, Durham.

Author

• Nathanael Wells, Monash University