Our friends over at The Greenhouse is a substance addiction recovery centre for marginalised communities in Singapore who find it hard to seek help out of shame or fear of discrimination. They are conducting this survey in order to understand drug use within our GBQ men community better.
Regardless of sexual orientation, most people, use one type of drug or another. Whether it’s cigarettes, coffee, energy drinks, steroids, anti-depressants, painkillers, alcohol, party drugs, or something else, here’s some tips to stay in control.
Seminar- Coffee, Tea or PrEP/PEP. Registration is open now. Email will be send for confirmation due to the limited amount of seats available.
Many of us have accepted condoms as part of our sex life when we’re having casual sex outside of relationships, but it’s not unusual for guys who usually use condoms to stop using them when they get serious in a relationship.
Whether the relationship is monogamous or not, some guys feel that they’re willing to accept the risk of not using condoms with the person they’re in a relationship with, especially if they have an agreement about what kind of sex happens outside of the relationship. This is sometimes called ‘negotiated safety’.
When you agree to give up condoms, you’re also giving up some control over managing your own risk. That requires having a lot of trust in your partner.
Gay and bi guys have pioneered new ways of thinking about sexual and romantic relationships. Whether a guy wants to be monogamous or non-monogamous, neither is a reflection of his commitment to his relationship. Some guys find it difficult to sustain monogamous relationships over the long-term, so opening up the relationship to other sexual partners can be a way for them to preserve the relationship.
Source: Thesexyouwant
By Roger Pebody
Three-quarters of Australian gay and bisexual men who report unprotected anal intercourse with casual male partners say that they “often” or “always” employ some sort of risk reduction strategy with those partners. Many attempt to select partners who they believe have the same HIV status as themselves (serosorting); a significant proportion use condoms most but not all of the time; and smaller numbers practice ‘strategic positioning’ or withdrawal before ejaculation.
The study shows that a simple, black and white division of gay men into low risk ‘condom users’ and high risk ‘men who don’t use condoms’ is misleading. However that is sometimes the impression given by behavioural surveys.
Martin Holt of the University of New South Wales presented the data to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne yesterday. It is derived from an analysis of the responses to two large-scale, cross-sectional community surveys of Australian gay and bisexual men in 2011 and 2012. A total of 15,615 completed the surveys.
Overall, 38% had no casual partners (and are not included in this analysis, even if they did not use condoms with their partner), 28% always used condoms with casual partners and 13% had no anal sex.
That leaves 21% who reported anal sex without a condom with at least one casual partner in the previous year – this group was the focus of the study.
Moreover as risk reduction strategies differ according to HIV status, the analysis made comparisons between the 2339 men who had tested HIV negative and the 603 men who were diagnosed with HIV. The small number of men who had never tested for HIV were excluded from the analysis.
Holt was interested in risk-reduction strategies the men used “often” or “always” with casual partners, including:
HIV-positive men who didn’t consistently used condoms with casual partners reported serosorting (60%), condoms (22%), strategic positioning (17%) and withdrawal (15%).
HIV-negative men were more likely to report using condoms most of the time, but serosorting was still the most widely reported tactic (44%), followed by condoms (41%), strategic positioning (24%) and withdrawal (22%).
Three-quarters of men reported using more than one strategy; the strategies most commonly combined were serosorting and condom use.
There was a very strong association between using these strategies and disclosing HIV status to sexual partners. This was the case both for HIV-positive and HIV-negative men.
For example, for HIV-negative men, those who disclosed to some sexual partners were almost twice as likely to practice a strategy as those who did not (odds ratio 1.76, 95% confidence interval 1.39 – 2.21) and those who disclosed to all partners were three times as likely to have a strategy (odds ratio 3.43, 95% confidence interval 2.66 – 4.42).
HIV-positive men who always disclosed were seven times more likely to use these strategies (7.11, 95% CI 3.70 – 13.67).
HIV-negative men who had a regular partner were less likely to practice any risk reduction strategy if their partner was untested or HIV negative.
Martin Holt concluded that interventions should aim to improve the consistency with which gay and bisexual men employ risk reduction strategies. Men should be encouraged to disclose their HIV status, to make effective agreements with their regular partners about casual sex and to choose the best strategy in different scenarios. Alternative approaches such as PrEP are likely to be appropriate for those men unable or unwilling to use existing strategies.
Holt M et al. Consistent and inconsistent use of HIV risk reduction strategies by Australian gay and bisexual men who report unprotected anal intercourse with casual male partners. 20th International AIDS Conference, Melbourne, 2014, abstract THAD0101.
First Published By: aidsmap.com on 25 July 2014
New Coalition to Provide Community-Led Technical Support in Novel Approach to Addressing HIV among Key Populations Globally
The Community Leadership and Action Collaborative (CLAC) has launched a new global technical support hub, helping communities of men who have sex with men (MSM), injection drug users, sex workers, transgender people and people living with HIV (PLHIV) to engage successfully with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Launched at the 20th International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Melbourne, Australia, the new hub provides access to tools and resources for building and strengthening community systems and a database for technical support concerning the HIV response. The hub also serves as a portal for communities to access direct technical support provided by the CLAC’s seven member organizations: the Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF), the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), Global Action for Trans* Equality (GATE), the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+), the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD), and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC).
“We are excited to announce the launch of the CLAC’s new technical support hub at this year’s IAC, following the conclusion of the MSMGF Pre-conference,” said Dr. George Ayala, Executive Director of the MSMGF.
“The CLAC offers an important opportunity to ensure the meaningful engagement and empowerment of all key populations in the HIV response. We know that we cannot successfully respond to HIV without the full meaningful participation of communities, and that is what the CLAC strives to do.”
The CLAC is committed to the provision of technical support that is hands-on, interactive and occurs in an environment of mutual trust, respect and sharing. Rather than conducting one-off trainings, the CLAC reinforces ideas and actions by linking them with technical assistance and ongoing mentoring. This includes facilitating opportunities for formal and informal knowledge sharing and joint actions, which promote recognition and appreciation of the unique experiences and expertise of community stakeholders. This is particularly important for PLHIV, MSM, people who inject drugs, sex workers and transgender people, for whom human rights are routinely contested.
The new technical support hub can be accessed at http://www.clac.cab.
It’s been called, simultaneously, a medicine to “end the HIV epidemic” and a “party drug:” Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP for short, refers to a daily antiviral treatment that prevents HIV.
That’s right: People who don’t have the virus can take a pill a day to save themselves from getting infected.
Haven’t heard about PrEP? You’re probably not alone. The drug-maker, Gilead, doesn’t advertise Truvada (its brand name) for prevention, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only endorsed it this past May—two years after it hit the market.
Going forward, however, you’ll be hearing a lot more. This month, both the International Antiviral Society-USA and the World Health Organization—opinion leaders in medicine—backed the antiviral, recommending all HIV-negative at-risk individuals consider taking it as part of a strategy to reduce the global incidence of the disease. But there’s a lot more to the story. Here’s what you need to know:
Click to read more about the above 10 points
First published on vox.com – 21 July 2014
Sure, we know that condoms significantly reduce the risk of HIV transmission, but it isn’t always as easy as it sounds to have safer sex, even if you want to! Sometimes we don’t ask or insist on what we want because we’re afraid of rejection, or we might have other reasons.
Every relationship has power imbalances, which can change from time to time. Maybe one partner feels less attractive or smart than the other, or one has less money or education. One partner might experience more privilege in society as a result of his race, ethnic background, age or gender identity. One partner might have more power in one area and less in another.
These imbalances can make it more difficult for you or your partner to express what both of you want, including condom use and other risk reduction strategies. If the imbalance is preventing you from saying what kind of sex you want, consider talking to a professional about it.
You deserve the kind of sex you want, and there are ways for you to get it.
Source: The Sex You Want
We have learned a lot about how HIV is transmitted. When AIDS first hit our community, no one knew why gay and bisexual men were becoming sick, or how it could be prevented. In the absence of knowledge, people came up with their own theories and prevention methods. Some of them turned out to be useless, and some of them ended up working.
Now that we have much more scientific evidence about HIV/AIDS, we can make decisions about our sex lives that are based on the real risk of HIV transmission, not fear or misinformation.
Here’s what we know today…
You can be infected with HIV if you do something that allows enough of the virus to get into your bloodstream from the body fluids of a person who is HIV-positive.
There are only five everyday body fluids that have enough HIV in them to infect someone:
In order for transmission to occur, one of these fluids must come into contact with an entry point into the bloodstream in the HIV-negative person: a cut or abrasion on the skin, or the mucous membranes (internal lining) inside the body.
* What are rectal fluids and why have I never seen this before?
Rectal fluids are the fluids that cover the inside of the ass, and are the body’s natural form of anal lubrication. You may not have seen this listed before, because it’s only recently that research has demonstrated how HIV infection happens inside the ass.