Ethically questionable?Popular media reports on bisexual men and aids

Journal of Bisexuality

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 93-112

  Miller, Marshall ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

AIDS; Biphobia; Bisexual men; Bisexuality; HIV prevention; Media

Indexed keywords

EID: 84967285700     PISSN: 15299716     EISSN: 15299724     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J159v02n01_08     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Martha Smilgis, “The Big Chill: Fear of AIDS,” Time, February 16,1987: 53.
2. Meghan Daum, “Safe-Sex Lies,” The New York Times Magazine, January 21, 1996:33.
3. Meghan Daum, The New York Times Magazine, 32.
4. Meghan Daum Many of the articles discussed in this essay were found using Lexis-Nexis, a comprehensive, computer-based legal and news database. Lexis-Nexis enables a wide range of newspapers and magazines to be searched through the use of keywords. Given the strength of this method, I believe that the articles cited are representative of popular media reports on bisexual men and AIDS during this time.
5. Peter Chvany, “Bisexuality and HIV: An Overview,” slide presentation at “Playing Safe with Both Teams: Bisexuality and HIV Prevention” Conference, June 21, 1999, Boston.
6. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1.
7. John Leland, “Bisexuality: Not Gay. Not Straight. A New Sexual Identity Emerges,” Newsweek, July 17, 1995: 47.
8. John Leland Ironically, Newsweek had proclaimed the emergence of bisexuality more than two decades earlier; “Bisexual Chic: Anyone Goes,” Newsweek, May 27, 1974: 90.
9. In addition to the articles discussed in this essay, magazine stories that portray bisexual men as a major AIDS threat to heterosexual women include Anne Conover Heller, “Is There a Man in Your Man’s Life?: What Every Girl Should Know about the Bisexual Guy,” Mademoiselle, July 1987: 134-135, 153-154
10. Susan Gerrard and James Halpin “The Risky Business of Bisexual Love,” Cosmopolitan, October 1989: 202-205
11. Esther Davidowitz, “The Secret Life of Bisexual Husbands,” Red-book, September 1993: 114-17,135.
12. Esther Davidowitz, The Impact of Homophobia and Other Social Biases on AIDS: A Special Report by Public Media Center (San Francisco: Public Media Center, 1995).
13. Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 249.
14. Debra Kent, “Could the Woman Next Door Have AIDS?,” McCall’s, February1995:63.
15. Bernard Gavzer, “Love Has Helped Keep Me Alive,” Parade Magazine, April 16,1995:4.
16. Bernard Gavzer, Parade Magazine 6.
17. Ann Japenga, “Hidden Dangers: Worried by AIDS Threat, Experts Focus on Bisexual Men Who Put Themselves, Families at Risk,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1992: E1.
18. Gina Kolata, “Teenagers + AIDS,” Seventeen, May 1990: 148.
19. Gina Kolata, “Women and AIDS: What You Must Know Now,” Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1989: 98.
20. Gina Kolata, Ladies’ Home Journal 100.
21. Katie Roiphe, Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century’s End (New York: Random House, 1997), 47.
22. Kolata, “Women and AIDS,” 100
23. Kolata, “Teenagers + AIDS,” 149.
24. Still, what Gertz apparently found attractive about Brown was a sense of risk. “There was a nebulousness surrounding his life, unlike the boys she went to school with who complained about their English teachers, went with their families to the same sort of summer places, and drove the same sort of cars,” writes Roiphe. “What was stirring was the unknown.” Roiphe attributes the unknown and nebulous aspects of Cort Brown to the class differences between them. “For the young Alison Gertz, part of the bartender’s thrill was that he was a bartender. He lived somewhere outside the large, airy, highly upholstered Park and Fifth Avenue apartments of her friends.” Roiphe, Last Night in Paradise, 47-48.
25. Kolata, “Women and AIDS,” 102. Kolata is citing an analysis by Norman Hearst and Stephen B. Hulley, both epidemiologists at the University of California, San Francisco.
26. Leland, “Bisexuality,” 47.
27. Leland, “Bisexuality,” 47.
28. The perceived linkage between bisexuality and promiscuity has also served as a main point of attack against bisexuals by right-wing fundamentalists. For example, in arguing against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Robert Knight claimed that “ENDA is bad legislation because it… [p]uts the federal government officially in support of promiscuity since bisexuals by definition have sex with more than one person.” Robert Knight, “Prelude to Sexual Legal Anarchy?,” The Washington Times, August 22, 1996: A15.
29. Jon Nordheimer, “AIDS Specter for Women: The Bisexual Man,” The New York Times, April 3, 1987: A1.
30. For more information on bisexual men and HIV infection, see Joseph P. Stokes, Kittiwut Taywaditep, Peter Vanable, and David J. McKirnan, “Bisexual Men, Sexual Behavior, and HIV/AIDS,” Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority, ed. Beth A. Firestein (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996), 149. I do not mention this fact in order to shift the blame to injection drug users, but rather as a way of acknowledging how this issue works in a cultural economy where most of the anxiety about bisexual men arises from the fact that they could be anywhere, hiding without track marks on their arms -a visual marker that the dominant society believes can be used to single out and isolate injection drug users.
31. Nordheimer, “AIDS Specter for Women,” A1, D18.
32. Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 249-250.
33. Nordheimer, “AIDS Specter for Women,” D18.
34. Nordheimer, “AIDS Specter for Women,” D18.
35. Nordheimer, “AIDS Specter for Women,” D18.
36. Smilgis, “The Big Chill,” 52.
37. Kent, “Could the Woman Next Door Have AIDS?,” 68.
38. Kent, These incidents took place in Rhode Island in the mid-1990s.
39. Eric Rofes, Reviving the Tribe: Regenerating Gay Men’s Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 1996), 103, 144.
40. See the 1986 Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick. This case is analyzed in great detail in William B. Rubenstein, ed., Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Law (New York: The New Press, 1993).
41. William B. Rubenstein, Recent studies have found that 81% of self-identified lesbians and bisexual women have had sex with a man in the last three years, and two-thirds of young gay men have had sex with a woman -21% in the previous three months. Among the lesbians and bisexual women who had sex with men, 39% had unprotected vaginal sex and 11% had unprotected anal sex. The Lesbian AIDS Project of Massachusetts, Lesbians and HIV (Boston)
42. Lynda Richardson, “Study Finds HIV Infection Is High for Young Gay Men,” The New York Times, February 16, 1999: B4
43. Beryl Koblin, Lucia Torian et al., “High HIV-1 Seroprevalence Among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) in New York City,” presentation at the 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunities Infections, February 2, 1999, Chicago; personal communication with Lucia Torian and Beryl Koblin.