1st Edition

Smearing the Queer Medical Bias in the Health Care of Gay Men

By Michael Scarce Copyright 1999

    Discover how gay men’s health care can be improved!

    Smearing the Queer: Medical Bias in the Health Care of Gay Men explores how social prejudices embedded in scientific research and practice often act as a detriment to gay men’s health. This book provides an agenda for addressing heterosexism in the health sciences and in medical care while broadening approaches to gay male wellness beyond the limited scope of HIV infection. This groundbreaking book explore a number of neglected concerns affecting the sexual health of gay men , calling for the recognition of their scientific, political, and cultural significance.

    In Smearing the Queer, gay men, HIV prevention workers, health care providers, mental health professionals, policymakers, researchers, and instructors in related fields will appreciate the in-depth examination of such issues as:

    • research and development on rectal microbicides
    • why many gay men should be receiving periodic anal Pap smears to screen for anorectal cancer
    • an in-depth critique of the problematic diagnosis of “Gay Bowel Syndrome”
    • gay men’s use of the Reality Female Condom for anal sex
    • Viagara’s impact on gay men’s sexual cultures, erectile dysfunction, and recreational drug use
    • a broad-based advocacy agenda for improving relations between gay men and the health sciences
    • the politics surrounding gay men’s restricted access to new and prospective safer sex technologies

      Smearing the Queer challenges heterosexist bias within the health care delivery and health sciences research and calls for the development of public policy initiatives that address gay men’s wellness in more sophisticated and complex ways. This is the only publication that provides in-depth social, cultural, and political analysis of the topics of Gay Bowel Syndrome, gay men’s use of the female condom, rectal microbicides, and anal Pap smears while examining the social forces that direct scientific research under the guise of objectivity.

    Contents Foreword
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction: Fucking with Technology
    • Section I: Smear as Defamation
    • Dr. Kazal’s Ace in the Hole
    • Chapter 1. Harbinger of Plague: A Bad Case of Gay Bowel Syndrome
    • Gaying the Bowel
    • Siting the Bowel
    • Speaking in Syndromes
    • Dual Diagnoses
    • Prevention
    • In the Bowels of the Other
    • AIDS and Gay Bowel Syndrome: Causation, Correlation, and Conflation
    • The Homosexual Menace: Gay Bowel Syndrome As Grounds for Antigay Discrimination
    • Conclusions
    • Section II: Smearing to Spread a Wet Substance
    • The Plumber’s Applause
    • Chapter 2. Gay Men and the Female Condom: Is Rectal Reality Getting A Bum Wrap?
    • Historical Reality
    • Sexual Governance
    • Feminizing Safer Sex Technology
    • Instructing the Anus
    • Queering Reality
    • The San Francisco Controversy
    • The Appropriateness of Appropriation
    • Threadbare Back
    • Chapter 3. Condomless Condoms: The Politics and Prospects of Rectal Microbicides
    • The Need for Rectal Harm Reduction
    • Rectal Microbicide Research and Development
    • Gendered and Anatomical Comparisions
    • Types of Microbicides
    • Prospective Politics
    • Left to Our Own Devices
    • Section III: The Smear for Microscopic Examination
    • A Recipe for Rectal Tarts (or, Just Add Feces and Stir)
    • Chapter 4. Queering the Smear: A Detective Named Pap
    • Carcinogenic Homosexuality
    • Smearing the Anus
    • Behind the Screen
    • Comparative Sex
    • Negotiating the Smear
    • Adviser
    • Chapter 5. Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Viagra Use Among Gay Men
    • Recreational Erections
    • Sex as a Class Act
    • Criminal Aids and Criminal AIDS
    • Conversion Therapy: Bottoms Become Tops
    • How Hard is Hard Enough
    • Real Men Don’t Need Viagra
    • Section IV: Clearing The Smear
    • Immaculate Infection
    • Chapter 6. Heterocopulative Syndrome: Clinico-Pathologic Correlation in 260 Classes
    • Problem and Literature Review
    • Method
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Conclusion
    • Chapter 7. Smear-Resistant Strategies
    • Notes
    • Index
    • Reference Notes Included

    Biography

    Scarce, Michael