Deconstructing the Outreach Experience: Renegotiating Queer and Latino Masculinities in the Distribution of Safe Sex Materials

Abstract

This study explores the dynamics of outreach activities, specifically the renegotiation of Latino and queer identities, in the distribution of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention materials. By way of participant observation over the course of 9 months, the underlying discourse of creating and fostering a queer identity along with shifting masculinities by host organizations and sponsoring programs to discuss, arrange, evaluate, and disperse safe sex materials was assessed. The organizational imposition of queer identity was common for outreach workers when dealing with Latino men who have sex with men, whose acceptance or rejection of prophylactics conflicts with the existing “tacit subject,” or the Latino male who operates from both “in and out” of the closet. In doing so, I examine how the ways that we think about identity, or multiple identities, must be reformulated to be more inclusive of variation, recognizing queer Latinidad, homo-thugs, and simply Latino MSM.