I’ve heard that line during consultations in both general and gay men’s clinics. Not that her faux surprise was anything new to me. I’m comfortable in my identity and in that label as an accurate descriptor of my own sexual behaviour.
“Oh! So, you’re bisexual…” a receptionist rasped down the line. It too has its rituals, power dynamics and interrogative methods.Ĭalling up a sexual health centre in Edinburgh to make an appointment a few years ago, they asked me whether I was “straight or gay?” Feeling decidedly excluded, I said, in between. The moralising, dogmatic spirit is so deeply ingrained in this aspect of medicine that going to many clinics without symptoms is a bit like going to confession. Yet in my own personal experience, straight people are just as promiscuous and far less likely to reach for a condom. It’s a sad fact that until recently straight men weren’t routinely offered HIV and hepatitis tests. As such, faulty assumptions around both the higher promiscuity of gay men and the prevalence of riskier practices among them abound. But these services rely on a form of risk assessment that treats the population as if it falls neatly into two categories.
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Attending a run-of-the-mill men’s walk-in clinic, I found myself having to ask for an HIV test – not because I considered myself particularly at risk at the time, but because I wanted the full MOT and the resultant peace of mind. Yet, what has been clear in almost every case is that I, as a bisexual man, didn’t quite fit.