'Serosameness' or 'Serodifference'? Resisting polarized discourses of identity and relationality in the context of HIV

Abstract

HIV promotion campaigns and common sense understandings of gay men’s identities and sexuality often depict gay men’s lives as being structured around serostatus. One outcome of this is that some gay men may feel the need to engage in practices, such as barebacking, with the intention of seroconversion. Such practices may be motivated by a desire to ‘overcome difference’, the assumption being that this is a useful way to relate to one another as gay men. In this article I examine how narratives of barebacking evidence particular neo-liberal understandings of freedom and control and the impact this has upon some gay men’s sexual practices. By drawing attention to the problems that may arise from relying on an individualized, biologically driven discourse of ‘HIV polarity’, I propose that gay men need to critically examine how a reliance upon such polarities may only feed into stereotypical constructions of gay men’s sexuality. To counter this, I outline the notion of ‘working through difference’ and suggest that it is important to examine how practices such as barebacking may be mediated by access to privilege.