My research involves a critical analysis of the sexual cultures of young heterosexual Australian men. This research is driven by the need to understand and prevent the heterosexual sexual transmission of HIV/AIDS. I focus on young heterosexual mens understandings and experiences of condom use and non-use, given that condoms are a key means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV.
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I conducted in-depth interviews with seventeen men, using these to explore sexual practices and the meanings and sociosexual relations through which these are organised. This close-focus qualitative approach is oriented to assessing the interplay between mens personal experience and the social relations of sexuality and gender. I draw on empirical feminist investigations of womens relation to HIV/AIDS, the critical scholarship on men and masculinities and masculine sexualities, and sociological scholarship on sexualities.
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My research finds that young heterosexual men emphasise five themes in accounting for their non-use of condoms. First, men stress the risk of pregnancy rather than the risks of HIV or other sexually transmitted infections, and they respond to the former risk by relying on their partners use of the Pill. Second, men perceive that wearing condoms decreases their penile sensation and that condoms are difficult to use. Third, men find that the heat of the moment of sexual episodes, their spontaneous and passionate ambience, makes it hard to incorporate condoms and, indeed, condoms destroy this moment. Fourth, men privilege trust as fundamental to their sexual involvements, and they quickly define involvements as relationships and therefore as trusting and monogamous, such that they abandon condoms. Fifth, men believe that they are very unlikely to contract HIV because they see their social circles, institutions, the heterosexual community or heterosexual sex per se as safe and free of HIV/AIDS, so there is no need to wear condoms.
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I compare these findings with the argument in the AIDS literature that heterosexual mens use of condoms is limited by several understandings associated with masculine sexuality and masculinity. I argue that these understandings do not appear to be widespread as the literature claims, some work in contradictory ways and are compatible with safe sex, and other sets of meanings are more influential in heterosexual mens unsafe sex. Men do not represent wearing condoms as feminising or homosexualising, nor as masculine. I conclude by exploring how heterosexual men could be encouraged to use condoms through appeals to notions associated with masculinity and masculine sexuality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216705 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Flood, Michael, mflood@familyplanningact.org.au |
| Publisher | The Australian National University. Faculty of Arts |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.anu.edu.au/legal/copyright/copyrit.html), Copyright Michael Flood |
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