Talking about gay sex. And the other kind.
Posted on June 30th, 2008 – 8:15 AMBy Josephine Marcotty
The photo of a naked man covered with tattoos flashed onto the screen. Professor Simon Rosser’s hand hovered above the computer mouse.
“Hot or not,” he asked, looking just a little sideways at me.
“Not,” I said. Click.
Up came another. A rear view of muscled butt cheeks. Simon looked at me again, his little gold earing glinting in the fluorescent light of his office.
Professor Simon Rosser
“Hot or not?”
“Hot.”
Up came another picture, the description of which is not fit for a family blog. Again, the sidelong glance, his finger poised to click.
“Hot or not?”
“NOT!” Click.
I swear he was enjoying this. What was a middle-aged heterosexual woman doing looking sexually explicit photos with a middle-aged gay man in the middle of a work day? Oh yeah, that’s right. I’m a reporter. My friend and colleague Connie Nelson, who does the Inside Out home video feature for startribune.com, always starts her snippets by explaining how she’s a huge snoop and her job gets her into some the best houses in town.
Well, I’m a snoop, too, but my job gets me into some different kinds of places altogether. The thing about snooping in new places is that you sometimes learn something about your self. Rosser, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s school of public health, spent an hour or touring me around, Sexpulse, a prototype he’s developing for a new on line HIV intervention web site for gay and bisexual men. Then he turned to me. “You notice,” he said, “you’ve been here just a bit and it’s gotten much easier to talk about sex.”
He was right. It had gotten easier. (It would be easier yet if it was just the computer and me.) And that’s his point. The HIV epidemic that is growing at a rate of 12 percent annually among young gay and bisexual men will never slow down unless we start talking about sex. That’s also true for the rising rates of all sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancies.
Back in the 1980’s when HIV/AIDS was at it’s peak there was a saying: “Silence equals death.” It’s just as relevant today.
Dr. Gary Remafedi, an expert on HIV and adolescent health at the university last week said, “we have to confront the realities of human sexuality. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that people don’t have sex is not the solution.”
To read more about the web site and the growing rates of HV in gay and bisexual men, click here.
Do you talk about sex? With your kids? With your partner? With your friends?
2 Responses to "Talking about gay sex. And the other kind."
What does gay sex have to do with this blog site?
Welcome to BodyTalk, where you can learn about and discuss how to care for the bodies you love. Reporter Josephine Marcotty and the Star Tribune’s health team post on the latest medical research and fads, invite experts to weigh in, and share insights into what makes Minnesota the quintessentially healthy place it is.
Rosser and Remafedi are right: NOT talking about sex causes many more problems than discussing it openly and often. I often discuss sexual politics, safety, and health with not only my partner but my friends as well. I’ve had many gratifying experiences as someone who is open to talking about sexual issues, and I find it sad that so many people aren’t comfortable talking about them. It’s unfortunate that the Comprehensive Sex Education bill didn’t pass this year, because children desperately need accurate information. However, adults need education too! So many of us didn’t get comprehensive sexual education in school or from our parents, so it’s important that we educate and learn from each other in respectful, fact-based environments and relationships. It’s a central mission of the Sexy Spring Conference (http://www.sexyspring.org), which just completed its fifth year, to create an open environment to discuss these issues (I’ve been involved in planning the Conference the last few years).
We are sexual beings. We are gendered by a complex interaction of social, cultural, biological, and chemical factors. Distress regarding sexual feelings and gender issues causes a lot of people a lot of emotional pain. Lack of accurate information about sexual health and risk reduction (sometimes combined with the aforementioned distress) causes a lot of people physical harm. Whoever you are, wherever you are in your sexual life and identity, try talking about sex with someone you trust (especially if you don’t already or haven’t for a long time); as Josephine found, it gets easier pretty quickly, and you’ll probably learn something!
