A Hidden Factor in AIDS: ‘Real’ Men’s Hypersexuality : Behavior: The epidemic of death among drug users and gays demands a rethinking of the masculine norm that celebrates risk-taking.
As the AIDS epidemic begins its second decade, it’s time to face some unpleasant realities: AIDS is the No. 1 health problem for men in the United States; it is the leading cause of death of men aged 33 to 45; it has killed more American men than were lost in the Vietnam War.
No other disease that was not biologically sex-linked (like hemophilia) has ever been so associated with one gender. And yet virtually no one talks about AIDS as a men’s disease. Americans generally think of it as a “gay disease,” or a “drug addict” disease; some people even refuse to see it as a disease, arguing that it is “divine retribution” for “deviant behavior.”
This dehumanizing has a lot to do with the fact that compassion and support for AIDS patients continues to be in relatively short supply among Americans. Perhaps by looking at AIDS as a “men’s disease” we can put it in a more humane perspective.
In our society, the capacity for high-risk behavior is a prominent measure of masculinity. Men get AIDS by engaging in specific high-risk behaviors, activities that ignore potential health risks for more immediate pleasures.
As sociologists have long understood, stigmatized gender often leads to exaggerated forms of gender-specific behavior. Thus, those whose masculinity is least secure are precisely those most likely to follow hyper-masculine behavioral codes as well as hold fast to traditional definitions of masculinity. In social science research, hyper-masculinity as a compensation for stigmatized gender identity has been used to explain the propensity for authoritarianism and racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, juvenile crime and gang activities.
Gay men and IV drug users can be seen in this light, although for different reasons. The traditional view of gay men is that they are not “real men.” Most of the stereotypes revolve around effeminacy, weakness, passivity. But after the Stonewall riots in 1969, in which gay men fought back against the police raiding a gay bar, and the subsequent birth of the Gay Liberation Movement, a new gay masculinity emerged in major cities. The “clone,” as he was called, dressed in hyper-masculine garb (flannel shirts, blue jeans), with short hair (not at all androgynous) and mustache; he was athletic, highly muscular. In short, the clone looked more like a “real man” than most straight men.
And the clones--who composed roughly one-third of all gay men living in the major urban gay enclaves in the mid-1970s--enacted a hyper-masculine sexuality in steamy back rooms, bars and bathhouses where sex was plentiful, anonymous and very hot. No unnecessary foreplay, romance or post-coital awkwardness. Sex without attachment.
One might say that, given the norms of masculinity (men are always supposed to want sex, seek sex and be ready for sex), for a time, gay men were the only men in our culture who were getting as much sex as they wanted.
Predictably, high levels of sexual activity led to high levels of sexually transmitted diseases among clones. But no one could have predicted AIDS.
Among IV drug users, we see a different pattern, but with some similar outcomes when seen from a gender perspective. The majority of IV drug users are African American and Latino, two groups for whom the traditional avenues of successful manhood are blocked by poverty and racism. More than half of the black men between 18 and 25 in our cities are unemployed, which means that they are structurally prevented from demonstrating masculinity as breadwinners.
The drug culture offers alternatives: Dealing drugs can provide an income to support a family as well as the opportunity for manly risk and adventure. The community of drug users can confirm gender identity; the sharing of needles is a demonstration of that solidarity. And the ever-present risk of death by overdose takes hyper-masculine bravado to the limit.
By now, most men have heard about “safer sex,” the best way (short of abstinence) to reduce one’s risk for contracting AIDS by sexual contact: have fewer partners, avoid certain practices, use condoms, take the responsibility for safe behavior. In short, safer-sex programs encourage men to stop having sex like men. To men, you see, “safe sex” is an oxymoron: That which is sexy is not safe; that which is safe is not sexy. Sex is about danger, risk, excitement; safety is about comfort, softness, security.
Seen this way, it is not surprising to find in some research that one-fourth of urban gay men report that they have not changed their unsafe sexual behaviors. What is astonishing is that slightly more than three-fourths have changed, are practicing safer sex.
What heterosexual men could learn from the gay community’s response to AIDS is how to eroticize responsibility--something that women have been trying to teach men for decades. And straight men could also learn a thing or two about caring for one another in illness, supporting one another in grief, and maintaining a resilience in the face of a devastating disease and the callous indifference of society.
In short, we must enlarge the definition of what it means to be a real man.
Meanwhile, AIDS is spreading, and every day there are more men who need our compassion and support. They did not contract this disease intentionally; they do not deserve blame. We must stand with them because they are our brothers. We are linked to them not through sexual orientation (although we may be) or by drug-related behavior (although we may be) but by our gender, by our masculinity.
They are not “perverts” or “deviants” who have strayed from the norms of masculinity. They are, if anything, over-conformists to destructive norms of male behavior. Like all real men, they have taken risks. And until daring has been eliminated from the rhetoric of masculinity, men will die as a result of risk-taking. In war. In sex. In driving fast and drunk. In shooting drugs and sharing needles.
Men with AIDS are real men, and when one dies, a bit of all men dies as well. Until we change what it means to be a real man, every man will die a little bit every day.
