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This work discusses the health promotion challenges of men who have sex with men (MSM) through the use of data from a conversation circle with people from institutions that provide services to MSM in the Metropolitan Region of Recife. The results allow for the identification of the following challenges for health promotion work, not only for MSM but also for sex dissidents: difficulties with the use of identity categories, stigmatization for providing them with sexual health care, structural racism, the deprivation of liberty, extreme poverty, and literacy.

The text addresses the sociability circuits of 'men who have sex with men' in the Metropolitan Region of Recife during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, with the arrival of the epidemic in Brazil, a first movement was characterized by the shift of interactions to the online dimension. From June onwards, after stricter social distancing, offline sexual interactions, social interactions at friends' houses, the return to bars and sociability on the street were resumed in that order, in the wake of what was happening in the broader society. In the mismatch between the negationist speech of the President of the Republic and the role of the state government in implementing measures of social distancing; in the contradictions generated by the leniency regarding crowding in public transport on the way to and from work and the attempts to contain the crowds seeking leisure activities, a 'new normal' emerged and was marked by negativism, omnipotence and fatalism. Between September 2020 and February 2021, what were most evident were parties, ostensive circulation of people and the lack of mask use, boosting the numbers of the infected and the dead, in the normalization of an unprecedented health crisis in Brazil.

This essay reflects on sexual practices and prevention in the contexts of the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics. It analyses data collected between July and October 2020 through participant observation, as part of an ethnographic research project on HIV vulnerability and prevention among men who have sex with men in the Metropolitan Region of Recife, state of Pernambuco (PE), Brazil. The results point to the relevance of physical appearance and the affective bond between partners in engendering emotions that mediate coping with the risk of infection during both pandemics. It indicates the need to incorporate those communicational dimensions into informational materials to make them more effective.

The article presents the results of an ethnographic study of the gay community in Recife (PE), conducted via participant observation and interviews. It seeks to understand sexual risk conduct among men who have sex with men (MSM) and HIV, focusing on the significance of sexual positions during anal-receptive intercourse (ARI) and anal-insertive intercourse (AII). Those who practice unprotected ARI are subject to a greater risk of infection than those who practice AII. Those who practice both, ARI and AII, are amplifiers (greater chances of receiving and passing on the virus) in the transmission chains. The text addresses the emic categories related with gender identities - pintosa (female gay), boy (male gay), and cafuçu (MSM and with women, non-gay, male, lower social class) - and with gender identities - active (AII), passive (ARI), and versatile (AII and ARI) - in the ways they result in sexual positions and produce sexual attraction. Masculine men are the most sexually desirable. Boys tend to relate with boys, and pintosas with cafuçus. There is a significant number of versatiles, which increases the collective risk within the gay community. By means of the relations between pintosas and cafuçus, there is increased danger for the virus to circulate more among the gay community and society in general.