Last weekend we explored some reasons why so many New Zealand men are so keen to hook-up for unsafe sex on the internet. The NZ AIDS Foundation's research indicating that the internet was a wild west of men seeking frequent sexual encounters with little commitment to safe sex was reinforced by GayNZ.com's website dating sting operation. When an undercover staffer, nicknamed "Scottyboy", made it subtly clear that he was open to unsafe sex, prospective unsafe sex partners to swooped in immediately like bees round a honeypot. There was some debate after our first follow-up article last weekend, centreing around whether or not men seeking sex online are aware of the dangers of unsafe sex. Some feedback suggested that many internet cruisers are naïve about sexual practices, and untouched by safe sex campaigns. Others are sure that the internet has lead to a freer sexual culture, or that men online may be eroticising the ‘forbidden fruit' of condomless sex. BUG CHASING? One New Zealand newspaper had another theory – ‘bug chasing'. A term invented in the 1990s, ‘bug chasers' seem to want to be infected with HIV, and so deliberately seek unsafe sex with partners who are HIV positive. They emerged from socially stressed, predominantly American, sexual communities where a tiny minority of men yearned for the socio/medical status of being HIV positive. Others seem to have wanted to get past the constant fear of contraction of HIV - the 'well I've got it so I dont have to deal with issues surrounding staying HIV free anymore' approach. ‘GIVE ME AIDS PLEA' shouted the New Zealand Truth newspaper's front-page headline, but the paper no real evidence of a ‘bug chasing' trend, just one poorly documented conversation. Some local men “openly flirted with the very real chance of contracting the disease and spreading it,” Truth acknowledged but it's doubtful kiwi men having sex without condoms are seeking to get infected, or trying to infect others. Bug chasing is an aberration that has not caught on in New Zealand, nor in most of the rest of the world. CHANGING ATTITUDES TO CONDOMS AND HIV Auckland University PhD student John Fenaughty is currently involved in a major research project studying sex between men. He thinks people are increasingly assuming wrongly that HIV is not a big deal anymore, and our ‘condom always' culture has weakened. HIV therapy advertising is common in international gay magazines, showing active and happy positive people. “The fit buff guy rock climbing for example – talking about his latest AZT cocktail. It's problematic – I'd heard plenty of critique of those advertisements as not portraying the reality of living with the virus, especially those who don't have positive reactions to the drugs. People that are HIV positive do say that being diagnosed has a negative effect on their lives in lots of ways. “So the idea that HIV is not a problem, or is a minimal or manageable problem, might lead someone to bare-backing behaviour.” Looking at the history of HIV prevention in Australasia, significant changes happened around 1996, when the Australian ‘Talk – Test – Test – Trust' (TTTT) campaign was produced, observes Fenaughty. “That campaign built on what some gay men were doing, which was talking to their partners to see if they both had the same HIV status, testing again three months later to check, and then trusting each other to conduct their sexual lives in the way they'd previously described, so that then they could have unprotected anal intercourse. That strategy was huge in 1996, as a ‘common sense' idea around sex and sexuality – if you both tested negative, you could have unprotected sex.” The problem with TTTT is that, contrary to popular belief, gay men aren't amazing sexual communicators, continues Fenaughty. “They're not always doing things that they want to do, and not always in a position to be able to communicate stuff with their sexual partners. So if someone makes a mistake, or gets drunk and slips up, or ends up having unsafe sex without agreeing to do so, it goes against the TTTT model. “Ultimately what TTTT did for a lot of gay men who'd been brought up with the idea of ‘condom every time', was introduce the idea that there was a way that they could have unprotected sex. So suddenly that entered the sexual landscape for a lot of younger men out there... The idea became that unprotected sex was something special and good, something you could only get with a partner you could trust. So condomless sex became the preferred way to have sex.” The NZ AIDS Foundation has always resisted following this TTTT programme, agreeing with Fenaughty that the risk of opening the door to mass unsafe sex is too great. Their staple message has been "Condoms every time." TARGETING MEN ONLINE New York psychotherapist and author Michael Shernoff explores the internet barebacking problem in his recent book ‘Without Condoms'. Since many gay men who engage in unprotected anal intercourse make contact online, it seems only logical to consider the internet as a platform for harm reduction outreach to them, he points out. “This approach in still in its infancy. So far, most such initiatives have been sponsored by local agencies, usually AIDS services or community-based organizations," Shernoff writes. Health departments in Europe and North America have also begun to venture into cyberspace, he says, "delivering HIV prevention efforts via men who have sex with men chat rooms... Many health workers say these programmes can be particularly useful in reaching men in rural areas, young gay men, and others who many not want to identify themselves or visit a gay community center.” Here in New Zealand, the NZAIDS Foundation has experimented with placing people online with profiles to educate men about safe sex. For example, internet health promoter Damian Moore says he answers 600 ‘NZ Dating' website messages each week from their members asking about safe sex and HIV. Shernoff notes that this kind of programme can help to provide consistent and accurate information to men who might otherwise have received it. However, this ‘outreach' has its drawbacks. Men who chat on the internet are difficult to engage, since they are online to meet men for either social or sexual contact. Remarkably, the NZAF's outreach profiles are no longer online. The Executive Director of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, Rachael Le Mesurier, says the biggest New Zealand dating website, NZ Dating, requested their removal. “They say there have been complaints from some users,” she says. “Whilst NZ Dating acknowledge the importance of the work we do, they have questioned whether a health promoter presence is required on the site as they say its primary purpose is for friendship and dating.” Friendship and dating may be the norm for some users of dating websites but for gay men, hooking up for sex is clearly prevalent, as just a couple of minutes trawling through dating sites will reveal. In the early days of the HIV epidemic commercial businesses catering to men seeking sex with men, predominantly gay saunas, were roped in to the battle. They became centres of information and condom and lube distribution. Shouldn't dating sites be used in the same way? ADVERTISING ON LOCAL DATING WEBSITES In recognition of the large numbers of gay, bisexual and bicurious men hooking up online, the NZAF has run two short campaigns of ads on ‘NZ Dating' in recent times Le Mesurier, says these campaigns have been carefully designed to both deliver a prevention message, and encourage users to click through to a website where they can receive more detailed information about HIV risk, send away for free condoms, ask questions of health promoters by email and provide feedback on the effectiveness of the messages. But The NZAF's advertising imagery on dating websites seems tame compared to those seen in other gay media, which have sometimes featured graphic sexual imagery and language. Considering the ‘cocks out' nature of many profiles on the most popular dating websites, could the NZAF could be accused of being too prim? Le Mesurier says the Foundation runs "the same ads on NZ Dating that we run on GayNZ and in other gay media. However, we were asked not to use the phrase “anal sex” in our “Men Seeking Men” ad, because we were told it could cause offence to NZ Dating's wider audience." She says NZ Dating does not allow advertising to be targeted to specific user categories such as men seeking sex with men - ads get seen by all users, straight or gay. "However, we don't feel the overall message of the ad was compromised by this change." The NZAF was advised that NZ Dating received a number of complaints about their first “Men Seeking Men” campaign - both from heterosexual users, who didn't want to have to look at “gay” ads, and other advertisers. But luckily for the Foundation, this hasn't stopped NZ Dating from running their new campaign “Assume Nothing”. Two brief campaigns seems a less than comprehensive targeting of these vulnerable men. The NZAF maintains a round the clock, year long, paid advertising presence for its messages on the most accessed NZ gltb website, GayNZ.com. And GayNZ.com's not for profit Dating section has run a 24/7 safe sex campaign for over a year now, featuring messages crafted by GayNZ.com and the AIDS Foundation and run free of charge as a vital community service. There is no such proactive approach from the more commercial dating sites. In fact, it's the high costs involved with advertising on the most popular dating websites that rule out more frequent advertising campaigns by the NZAF, says Le Mesurier. How costly? “With regards to NZ Dating, where the largest numbers of gay and bisexual men are meeting, our campaign costs $3,500 per week,” she explains. “We ran three weeks worth of advertising for the “Men Seeking Men” campaign, and will run five for the new “Assume Nothing” campaign staggered over the next 4-5 months. Our ads run all year round on GayNZ.com." On the NZAF's limited budget these commercial dating site costs are crippling. “We feel the message is getting out there significantly - the “Men Seeking Men” campaign, which ran for three weeks (one week on, one week off), received just under 17,000 click-throughs from NZ Dating to the “Men Seeking Men” site. The “Assume Nothing” campaign has received just under 1,000 click-throughs per day in its first week online. Just as bars and clubs promote responsible drinking, and fast food outlets are beginning to provide lines of healthier food options, Le Mesurier thinks it would be great if dating sites could be encouraged to promote safe sex off their own bat, without leaving it to their commercial advertisers. “Large international [gay-specific] dating sites such as Gaydar have taken on a very strong community commitment to safe sex and provide the Australian AIDS organisations with advertising for as little as $4,000 per year,” she says. “We feel it would be in the best interests of the NZ Dating site's business to not only look after the health and wellbeing of their users, but to be seen to be doing so.” So how eager are the big NZ-based sites - GayNZ.com Dating is a popular but somewhat smaller player - to discuss the issue of their facilities enabling men to hook up in the presence of a deadly HIV epidemic with minimal support for safe sex messages? GayNZ.com emailed two of the most high profile local dating websites, NZDating and Find Someone, three times each over the past week, politely requesting comments from them about our initial online sex research which indicated as many as 25 out of 30 men hooking up on the net were uncommitted to unsafe sex. An NZDating administrator emailed back simply saying “We would be interested in your findings”, but no other responses were received. That was it. We forwarded direct questions without receiving any response. We wanted to ask whether they felt any responsibility to be proactive in assisting their users avoidance the deadly HIV virus, what role their site might play as part of a problem and part of a solution. The silence from these straight businesses providing a service to, and profiting from, gay and bi men in danger of destroying their health and eventually their lives, was deafening. CHANGING OUR SEXUAL CULTURE Bill Logan is a Wellington-based counsellor, Civil Union celebrant, gay activist and a co-founder of the AIDS Foundation. He says it's time our community worked together to make sure there are as many messages of safety and no bare-backing as possible on every profile. “We cannot afford the necessary intervention in cyberspace - advertising is just too expensive,” he observes. “Therefore we have got to have a major campaign in the gay community, saying that putting safety messages in your profile is the right thing to do.” Logan's idea involves holding workshops that are attractive to our community: “A lot of us are having difficulty adjusting to the world of internet sex. So you can have workshops on how to get the best out of out - you can help people take photographs of themselves, and all sorts of things, but into those workshops you can put safe sex messages. “You can have the old-fashioned ‘how to have sex safely' workshops, which the AIDS Foundation did really well in the late ‘80's, updated into the age of the internet. That's absolutely crucial.” Logan is challenging the AIDS Foundation to change the sexual culture of our community, “but it's a different kind of alteration than they're used to. They're simply used to spreading safe sex messages. “What we need to do now is use people in the gay community as advertisers. Getting them to put out messages for the people who are not in the community's reach." “There are already some safe sex messages on dating profiles, but we could increase that by a factor of ten," suggests Logan. "We've got to make it so that your average person, that perhaps doesn't have any connection with the gay community, thinks that safe sex is normal.” KEEPING THE INTERNET DATING ISSUE ALIVE Although this is the final in our series addressing the prevalence of unsafe-sex hookups lined up through the internet we believe community discussion of this problem and possible ways of addressing it are essential. We encourage discussion in our Message Board, and are assured that health promoters will keep an eye on such discussion threads. GayNZ.com staff writers - 25th November 2006
Credit: GayNZ.com staff writers
First published: Saturday, 25th November 2006 - 12:00pm