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By: RYAN LEE COMMENTS
 
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on the down low reported
having sex with a female partner within the last 30 days, but only 13 percent
said they had a primary female sex partner. The data also showed that significant
numbers of men on the down low also considered themselves gay and visited gay
bars or events.
“The findings from this study indicate that the early media portrayals
failed to adequately describe the diversity of men who identify themselves as
being on the down low,” said Richard Wolitski, a CDC researcher.
“The majority of DL men, 82 percent, reported they had links to the gay
community, contradicting many media reports that describe all DL men as living
lives entirely separate from the mainstream gay community,” he added.
According to a study of 1,054 gay and bisexual men by the Denver Public Health
Department, men who met sex partners exclusively on the Internet were more likely
to report engaging in unprotected anal sex with their most recent sex partner.
Several studies presented at the CDC conference showed that gay and bisexual
men are increasingly trying methods other than condom use to protect themselves
and their partners from contracting HIV. The efforts range from HIV-negative
men engaging only in oral sex to HIV-positive men being the receptive anal sex
partners.
A 2004 survey of HIV-positive men at the Fenway Community Health Center, a
gay clinic in Boston, showed that some men believed they could not infect their
sex partners if their viral load, the amount of HIV in their blood, is low.
“Many HIV-infected men are using information about viral load, and about
their partner’s [HIV] status, and they’re adapting different sexual
practices in an effort to protect their partners from infection — that’s
the good news,” said Kenneth Mayer, research medical director at Fenway
Community Health.
“The bad news is that some of the information that people are using to
inform their beliefs may still lead to a risk of transmission to a partner,”
Mayer said.
A person with a low viral load can still pass HIV to a sex partner, he added.
The predominant HIV prevention message to gay men is to use condoms always
and forever, a strategy many activists and researchers argue is stale to many
sexually active gay men.
The approach is particularly ineffective among gay black men dealing with a
host of socioeconomic and political issues that may influence their sexual behavior,
said Darrell Wheeler, a professor at Hunter College in New York.
“What folks try to do is numb [the turmoil they feel], and one of the
best ways of doing that is through conspicuous consumption,” Wheeler said.
“We consume in all kinds of ways — in the things we buy, in the
things we do sexually, etc.
A source of inner conflict among some black gay and bisexual men is their perception
of masculinity, said Lawrence Bryant, HIV prevention manager at the Morehouse
School of Medicine&
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