In America, we tend to categorize others and ourselves as a way of identification—she’s a Texan, he’s a liberal, they are golfers. In terms of sexual identity, we’ve done the same, with people generally falling into homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual groupings. But simple categorization often belies behavior. What if the self-identified golfer hasn’t played in ten years? What if the guy who everyone calls a liberal voted for a conservative in the last election? And what if the man who is in a heterosexual marriage sometimes has sex with men?
This might confuse the casual observer (and probably the guy’s wife) and might lead one to conclude the married man is a homosexual or bisexual that has “wrongly” self-identified. Or, the presence of such a person might help blow the lid off of our somewhat arbitrary sexual labels, and thus spur us to come up with new ones. Like MSM.
Save for certain public health and cultural circles, most people haven’t heard of the term MSM stands for Men Who Have Sex with Men. This phrase may seem like a long-winded way of saying homosexual, but it’s not. While many use it to encompass homosexual and bisexual men, HIV researchers created the term when they realized there was a group of men that were having sex with men but not checking off the traditional survey box. These men self-identified, and lived, as heterosexual men.
By grouping all men who have sex with men together, researchers were able to identify those men potentially engaging in high-risk behavior for HIV without having to address the apparent dissonance that occurred between a person’s self-identity and his behavior.
Furthermore, it broadened the target audience for prevention messages, while acknowledging the need to tailor those messages. A 2006 study conducted in New York City found that 10 percent of “straight” men have sex with other men; these straight-identified men who have sex with men were less likely than gay men to report using a condom during their last sexual encounter. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, due to cultural stigma, many minority men do not self-identify as gay or bisexual and therefore, disease prevention messages and resources aimed at the gay community do not reach them. This indicates perception of sexual identity may play a role in perception and actuation of risk.
PREVIOUS PAGE
