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The COVID‐19 pandemic led to the widespread adoption of virtual care—the use of communication technologies to receive health care at home. We explored the differential impacts of the rapid transition to virtual care during the COVID‐19 pandemic on health‐care access and delivery for gay, bisexual and queer men (GBQM), a population that disproportionately experiences sexual and mental health disparities in Canada. Adopting a sociomaterial theoretical perspective, we analysed 93 semi‐structured interviews with GBQM (n = 93) in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, conducted between November 2020 and February 2021 (n = 42) and June‐October 2021 (n = 51). We focused on explicating how the dynamic relations of humans and non‐humans in everyday virtual care practices have opened or foreclosed different care capacities for GBQM. Our analysis revealed that the rapid expansion and implementation of virtual care during the COVID‐19 pandemic enacted disruptions and challenges while providing benefits to health‐care access among some GBQM. Further, virtual care required participants to change their sociomaterial practices to receive health care effectively, including learning new ways of communicating with providers. Our sociomaterial analysis provides a framework that helps identify what works and what needs to be improved when delivering virtual care to meet the health needs of GBQM and other diverse populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical scholarship has illustrated how COVID-19 public health policies can enact racism, classism, and cis-heteronormativity, perpetuating harms among vulnerable communities. We sought to examine the accounts of gay, bisexual, and queer men (GBQM) in Canada on how normative ideologies played out in COVID-19 directives and what impacts these orders had on their lives. Two rounds of semi-structured interviews with GBQM in Montreal (n = 30), Toronto (n = 33), and Vancouver (n = 30) were conducted between November 2020-February 2021 and June-October 2021 (N = 93). Our reflexive thematic analysis drew on the frameworks of cis-heteronormativity and intersectionality to examine how normative assumptions about kinship, sociality, and privilege in COVID-19 public health directives were understood and experienced by GBQM. Our participants explicated how cis-heteronormativity was pervasive in COVID-19 public health messaging, noting that stay-at-home orders and limits on social gatherings reinforced heterosexual forms of kinship. The privileging of cis-heteronormative sociality had detrimental effects on the sense of belonging and identity formation of many participants due to restricted access to queer spaces during the pandemic. Others indicated that stay-at-home orders failed to account for the heterogeneity of queer people's experiences of homelessness and structural racism. These findings provide valuable insights into how public health efforts to control COVID-19 infections have overlooked the complex forms of kinship among GBQM, the importance of queer spaces and community organizations, and the varying vulnerabilities of diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, jurisdictions across the globe, including Canada, enacted containment measures that affected intimacy and sexual relations. This article examines how public health measures during COVID-19 impacted the sexual practices of sexual minority men— gay, bisexual, queer and other men who have sex with men—and how they adopted and modified guidelines to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We conducted 93 semi-structured interviews with men (n = 93) in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, between November 2020 to February 2021 (n = 42) and June to October 2021 (n = 51). Across jurisdictions, participants reported changes to sexual practices in response to public health measures and shifting pandemic contexts. Many men indicated that they applied their HIV/STI risk mitigation experiences and adapted COVID-19 prevention strategies to continue engaging in casual sexual behaviours and ensure sexual safety. 'Social bubbles' were changed to 'sex bubbles'. Masks were turned into 'safer' sex tools. 'Outdoor gathering' and 'physical distancing' were transformed into 'outdoor sex' and 'voyeuristic masturbation'. These strategies are examined in connection to the notion of 'reflexive mediation' to illustrate how sexual minority men are simultaneously self-responsibilising and resistant, self-monitoring and creative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2020, in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, Canadian provincial governments instituted a variety of public health measures that included social distancing and isolation, which may have had unintended consequeses. According to the Loneliness and Sexual Risk Model, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (GBM) often cope with loneliness through risky sexual behaviors. Previous studies have demonstrated that COVID‐19 measures such as social distancing and isolation led to increases in loneliness; thus, these measures may also have led to elevated sexual risk‐taking among some GBM. Participants were recruited from an ongoing cohort study on GBM health and well‐being, and were included in the current analysis if they had completed relevant study questions (n = 1134). GBM who reported lower levels of social support pre‐COVID‐19, were younger, and lived alone each reported greater loneliness during the first year of COVID‐19. Although feelings of loneliness did not predict sexual risk‐taking within the first year of COVID‐19, loneliness did predict greater sexual risk‐taking 6 months later. Additionally, younger GBM and those living alone were more likely to engage in sexual risk‐taking at both COVID‐19 data collection points. These findings offer some support of the Loneliness and Sexual Risk Model; however, it is possible that the unique circumstances of the COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in a temporary suspension of this association, as many GBM took steps to protect themselves and partners in the context of COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Our objective was to understand what gay, bisexual, and queer men (GBQM) who had experience using pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) thought about the 'Undetectable equals Untransmittable' (U=U) message and how it informed their sexual decision-making over time. Methods. We conducted annual longitudinal qualitative interviews (2020-22) with 17 current or former PrEP users as part of a mixed-methods implementation science study examining barriers and facilitators to PrEP awareness, access, and adherence. Over 3 years, 47 interviews were conducted with GBQM in Ontario, Canada. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded in NVivo following reflexive thematic analysis. Results. Participants' sexual health decision-making was informed by their confidence in biomedical HIV prevention and the person taking medication (i.e. themselves using PrEP versus a real/imagined person living with HIV (PLHIV)). Longitudinal narratives of U=U clustered around four overarching themes: (1) U=U confidence (i.e. increasing trust in U=U irrespective of their PrEP use); (2) PrEP confidence (i.e. accounts of self-reliance and PrEP as sufficient HIV protection); (3) combination confidence (i.e. trusting U=U and PrEP as a package); and (4) partner confidence (i.e. potential 'distrust' of U=U due to uncertainties about partners' medication adherence). Overall, men described increased sex with PLHIV over time, including some participants who, during earlier interviews, said they would 'never be comfortable' with serodifferent sexual partners. Conclusions. GBQM's use of PrEP shaped how they thought about U=U and sex with PLHIV. Although many GBQM embraced treatment as prevention/U=U as significant to their sexual lives, longitudinal analysis revealed its varied and uneven adoption across participants and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many reasons why individuals engage in prosocial behavior; communal sexual altruism is based on the notion that some practice safer sex in the interest of promoting the well‐being of their community/in‐group. Given that definitions of what constitutes "safer sex" have changed with advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention, we investigated the importance of communal sexual altruism (herein "altruism") among urban gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority men (GBM) in the contemporary context. Using a sample of 2449 GBM we examined the association of both safer‐sex‐related attitudes (e.g., HIV treatment optimism–skepticism) and behaviors (e.g., condomless anal sex [CAS]) with altruism scores. Higher altruism scores were associated with a lower likelihood of CAS and a greater frequency of discussing HIV status with new partners. These findings demonstrate that many GBM are motivated to engage in several kinds of behaviors that improve the well‐being of their in‐group (i.e., the GBM community). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I expand Adam Green's theory of 'erotic habitus' by thinking performatively about the racialised desires of Asian men who are attracted to white men, and vice versa. By using Bourdieu's concept of habitus, Green explains desires as the objectification of the social order forced into the unconscious. However, I argue that the theory simply attributes social structural forces as the cause of racialised desires but does not account for how racial identities and markers of racialised desires are constituted and constructed. By drawing on Judith Butler's theory of performativity, I consider how race and racialised desires are produced through the repetition of acts drawn from Orientalism: a system of knowledge that delineates Asian men as the antithesis of white masculinity. Orientalism shapes erotic habitus, brought into consciousness in texts such as Daniel Gawthorp's The Rice Queen Diaries: A Memoir and personal ads from Toronto and Montreal's Craigslist. By analysing these texts, I argue that the repetition of norms associated with 'Asianness' and 'whiteness', as effects of Orientalism, produce subjects as 'Asian' or 'white', and 'potato queen' or 'rice queen'. These stereotypes are also displayed as erotic capital, a consequence of erotic habitus, to attract their objects of desire. I conclude this paper by reflecting on the possibility of considering 'self- Orientalisation' by Asian men as subversion: a means to contest norms about race and racialised desires by creatively and actively playing out stereotypes about them to undermine the rigidity of power relations often associated with Asian/white racialised desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]