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

by Michael Scarce

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781560239260
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/13/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.38(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

Jennifer Terry

Challenges the common habit of assuming biomedical science is beyond the influence of social and cultural phenomen. Provocative, instructive, and politicized, this book analyzes gay male sexual health using methods that range from postmodern critique to tawdry limericks . . . Scarce revels in the intellectual perversity of debunking heterosexism in the health sciences.
Associate Professor of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, author, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine and Homosexuality in Modern Society

Editorial Reviews

Smearing the Queer remains an innovative, in-depth look at the issues facing homosexual men and, consequently, their health care providers. Its sensitive and thorough approach to the scientific, political, and social issues involved in this provocative topic, as well as its useful suggestions for work to be done in the future, are enough to overcome its shortcomings. If one can acknowledge its dual purposes of drawing attention to the topic using shock-value techniques and educating with scientific inquiry, it makes a very interesting and recommended read.

Journal of the American Medical Association

This volume explores the ways that social prejudices embedded in scientific research and practice have come to harm gay men's health. Scarce, coordinator of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Resources at the University of California, San Francisco, provides a specific plan for improving health care for gay men, specifically through addressing heterosexism in the health sciences and by broadening the scope of wellness for gay men beyond HIV infection. He addresses issues such as prevention and screening for anorectal cancer; alternatives for safe sex, including the use of the Reality Female Condom; and the problematic diagnosis "gay bowel syndrome." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Smearing the Queer is just what the doctor ordered -- or should. A work of subtle analysis and great originality, this display of what's antigay in the health sciences manages also to be funny, sexy, moving, and above all, necessary to guide the future of gay men's health. Scarce is a visionary.
— POZ Magazine

Walter Armstrong