Recently in sexuality Category

It feels like it is time to start on the list of "only in San Francisco" moments I have had.

1. Be careful when you hug a friend that you usually hug - he may just have been have been whipped at a show.
2. Be careful when you hug a friend that you usually hug - he may just have gotten a new tattoo all over his back.
3. The man you have a coffee with may have a second career in gay adult movies. Still not sure if he got upset that I didn't recognize him... My ignorance!
   

Yesterday I decided to get out in the sun and sit and read.

I decided eventually to return to one of my favourite gems of this city: the National AIDS Memorial Grove. I hadn't been there in some months, maybe a year, but it always strikes me as a such a tranquil and centering place. And it was just as nice this time with beautiful flowers, the maple trees. I just have to remember this place more often than I do.

In these times when the California economy struggles and the Governator wants to slash the HIV preventive money and money for the medications (ADAP) to support the people that cannot afford their HIV medications, the urgency of this memorial grove feels even more important. To some of my close friends in this city the removal of ADAP is a potential death sentence.

Today I attended the Chancellor's Award for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and/or Transgender Leadership. As always this is a very powerful and touching event.

Having served on the selection committee for the last two years, I am aware of the phenomenal work that is done within the community by LGBTIQ individuals and our allies. But listening to the speeches from the awardees I was crying because of the powerful stories they shared with us present. Thank you all, and congratulations!

And in all of this, I cannot help to wonder over the ostracism, homophobia, and ignorance they have met - and that we as LGBTIQ women and men continue to face. Living in San Francisco it is so easy to get lost in the protected world, the bubble we live in. The flag over the Castro often feels like a beacon of hope, but at the same time also like an opium...

And the stories shared today become even more thought-provoking as I am - at the same time - reading about queer theory and describe that theory for my qualifying exam. It feels so strange to write about concepts like the heterosexual matrix and performativity, and then see its presence in and around myself.

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• Affirming Movies (bilerico.com)

Today, my thoughts go to friends and former patients that are living with the disease. I also get reminded of the men that I interviewed for my pilot study during the past year and the experience they had when HIV/AIDS hit the gay areas of San Francisco and New York City.

On a day like this I cannot help to think that HIV has been one "part" of my (sex) life from the age of 12 (well, 9 if one thinks of the first publications). From even starting thinking about other men, the reality of HIV has been around. The scare tactics have left me with an in-erasable awareness of a potential third party being involved.

In today's SF Chronicle there is an article about "Ward 86" that was the first ward for patients with AIDS in San Francisco that opened at the San Francisco General 25 years ago. It reminds me of the ward 53 at South Hospital in Stockholm that was closed after the introduction of the new, anti-retroviral combination treatments.

The treatments has allowed HIV/AIDS to be illnesses also for the older adult. Some of the problems regarding that was described in an article in the New York Times three weeks ago: "Speaking Out for a Group Once Unheard-Of: Aging With AIDS". That the medical community recognizes this - albeit gradually - is evident in that NIH has several research grants now that deal with the medical care for the older, HIV-infected adult.

In the aftermath of the passing of Proposition 8, that defines marriage in California as the one between a man and a woman, still torments me and the LGBTQ community and our allies in. The blaming has in many cases focused on the role of the Mormons - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the critique has focused on the involvement in another state's internal affairs, being involved in political issues (that an organization with their tax exemption shouldn't) - etc. Issues that have been raised is to question the tax exemption, boycott of business from Utah and a boycott of the Sundance film festival.

Today, the SF Chronicle - finally - brings out the role the Archbishop of San Francisco, George Niederauer, has played as the former Bishop of Salt Lake City: Catholics, Mormons allied to pass Prop. 8 Salt Lake City in Utah is the headquarters of the Mormon church.

I am sickened, angered, frustrated by the role Niederauer may have has played in this. This time he stabbed the members of his diocese by "ecumenical work" with the Mormons. A year ago, he visited Most Holy Redeemer parish in the Castro. He was all happy and nice then - until it was leaked to the conservative media that two Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence had been present. He then turned around and was appalled.

It's time that the Roman Catholic Church and the California Catholic Conference starts paying for their involvement and being 'pleased' about the Prop 8 passing, and a definition of "traditional marriage".

I'm sorry, George, but your actions have denied me equality with a "separate but equal" decision, and you want me to support and respect you?

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Today, the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, today declared that the government will present laws and propositions for a new marriage law in Sweden from May 1, 2009. All parties in the parliament, but one - that also is part in the coalition government - are supporting it. [Link to the Swedish news paper dn.se][The Local's report in English] To avoid the problem with the Christian Democrats, the remaining three parties in the government will present a bill starting in parliament.

It's ironic to see that happening the same day as the Prop 8 looks to pass, and bring a ban on same-sex marriage into the Californian constitution.

I'm happy that we got a chance to get married in California - as party A & party B - the chance to tick a box for bride or groom wasn't there yet. Groom-groom, bride-groom, bride-bride - and it didn't say that the sex had to be the same as the gendered name. :)

"Using 'queer' is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world". It was true for Queer Nation in 1990 - and it seems likely be just as true in 2008.

Today's the day - will the proposition 8 pass, or not..? I do hope it isn't! The so-called Prop 8 "eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry", and adding the definition of marriage as between man and woman in California.

I spent a few hours at noon today on the corner of 19th Ave and Noriega St with signs that said "Vote NO on PROP 8!". I volunteered with the No on 8 campaign. It was great funk have the cars driving by honking at or waving to us.

We also had people shouting less pleasant stuff; "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve", faggots etc. The most charming though, was an older Asian woman that was supporting a yes for this initiative and used the argument that there wouldn't be any babies - and no sex (sic!) - if same-sex couples were allowed to marry.

"Gene in men decides if they are faithful" is the headline in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that males with the gene variant "allel 334" are more likely to be infidel/have problems in their marriages. And, if the men had the variance on both chromosomes they were twice as likely to have a "crisis" in their marriages.

The comparison is between men and two species of voles, where the voles made them look for the vasopressin. Good that one can blame ones genes for more and more things! If one wants to feel like a vole, that is!

It is fascinating that a socially non-acceptable behavior is construed as a problem that one needs to find biological correlates to it. No one seems to think about what the construct is beneath this research: the nuclear family, and where other family constructs must be wrong. And what is the hip thing now? Yes, genetics.

Sigh, this is the second time this summer there have been some odd research on human sexuality from KI published in PNAS. The last time it was a brain structures that were similar between gay men and heterosexual women [PNAS][PubMed].

I am not against studies being done about biological correlates to sexual orientation or behavior, but I think it is time that both researchers and journalists start to think about what they are stating as facts. What are the certainties and uncertainties? The article by the Swedish psychologists Kurt Ernulf and Sune Innala still has its importance: "Rats are hardly sexually oriented! Generalizations on animal behavior is too far-fetched"
 

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• Is fidelity in our genes?

 

The is the National Coming Out day is coming up on Thursday. This "marks the 20th anniversary of the unfurling of the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall during the March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in 1987" from the UCSF today.

In a classical book, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, from 1975, Laud Humphreys described the story of men having sex with men. Its importance for today has been pointed out, especially after the events in Minneapolis (that BTW now has a new tourist spot! ).

The book is often presented as an example of very poor research ethics, based on the methodologies used by Humphreys. What he did was that he pretended to be a "watch queen" at a Tearoom (<T-room<toilet room - is that true?), i.e. preferring to watch others in action to participating. He later wrote down the license plates of the cars, checked ownerships with the DMV - and sought up the men and asked them if they were gay... This is, they say, not the way to conduct your dissertation work...

That public restrooms and other public scenes have been the meeting points and venues for men having sex with men have been described in several works. In Sweden this has mostly been described as a historic phenomenon by Associate Professor, Dr. Arne Nilsson, PhD, in his book "Såna och riktiga karlar" ("Such and real men") where the term "såna" were used as a label by the homosexual males themselves.

The book is based on interviews with older men in Göteborg, Sweden, describing the social lives in the era of 1930s to the 1950s. Dr. Nilsson relates it to the societal developments and the modernism that then had its break-through in Sweden.

It seems a bit interesting that all these events in the US coincide with the publication of a report from the National Board of Health and Welfare on how safer sex should be presented for MSM in Sweden (from QX, in Swedish).

For those wishing to explore the issue of senatorial tearoom trades there is a FAQ at slate.com.