Researching Non-Heterosexual Sexualities by Constantinos N. Phellas

Author:Constantinos N. Phellas [Phellas, Constantinos N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138253186
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Substance Use, Mood, Sex Partners and Time as Key Situational Factors Related Sexual Behavior among Non-heterosexual Men

While we do not think that they necessarily exhaust the range of possibilities that might be worth considering, we have nonetheless found four especially important categories of situational factors (i.e., factors that may fluctuate from sexual situation to sexual situation and that can be explored in situation-level analyses) in our research on non-heterosexual MSM. They include: (1) substance use; (2) emotion, mood, and mental health; (3) characteristics of sex partners; and (4) temporal and spatial characteristics of encounters (Wilson and Yoshikawa 2004; Wilson et al. 2008, 2009; Boone, Cook and Wilson 2012). Substance use is highly context-dependent and occurs with variability based on situational factors. It is thus important to examine and measure substance use as a feature of situations and not solely examine differences between those who regularly engage in substance use and those who do not, as has been done in most research to date (Leigh and Stall 1993; Stall et al. 2003; Shiffman 2009). By examining substance use as a feature of sexual situations, we can appreciate that actors in a given sexual encounter are influenced by their own and their partners’ use of drugs and alcohol during sex. Our research exploring Black and Latino men who have sex with men in the US has highlighted this (Wilson et al. 2008, 2009). In two studies we conducted, we found that men who engage in drug use are more likely to have sexual encounters that do not involve condom use. However, it was not their drug use that was related to unprotected sex but actually the drug use of their sex partner. In other words, regardless of personal drug use, when men engaged in sex with a partner who was high, they were less likely to use condoms compared to when they had a partner who was sober (Wilson et al. 2008, 2009).

Sexuality researchers have long posited a relationship between the related constructs of mood, emotion and mental health, and sexual behavior. Related to substance use and risk, the relationship between negative mood/distress and sexual risk behavior has been debated, and studies exploring this relationship have been mixed (Crepaz and Marks 2001; Kalichman and Weinhardt 2001; Wilson, Cook and Valera 2012). What is consistent, however, among these studies are the methodological limitations inherent in the approaches used to explore how mood and sexual behavior intersect and interact for men who engage in same-sex interactions (Kalichman and Weinhardt 2001). Like substance use, emotion and mood should be understood and analyzed at the situation level of analysis in order for us to truly understand the roles they play in shaping sexual interactions among non-heterosexual men. Research that we have conducted looking a mood and sexual behavior among gay and bisexual men in New York City has suggested that ways men reported feeling before a sexual encounter predicted characteristics of sexual encounters. For example, using sex diaries, we observed that mood prior to a sexual encounter (e.

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