Fluid-Bonding and Feelings Condoms: Ambivalent Technologies of Queer Safer Sex

Abstract

There is an abundance of scholarship on knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes related to safer sex technologies and practices, including a growing body of work that analyses the politics of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). However, there is comparatively little research that applies a queer feminist science and technology studies lens to safer sex technologies and practices other than condoms and PrEP. This paper draws on archival research and thirty-two in-depth interviews with queer- and trans-identified adults about how they make sense of safer sex practices and technologies, in particular gloves and dams as barriers. I argue that the social world of queer safer sex is marked by ambivalent technologies. For users and non-users, the main affective investment in using gloves and dams is one of ambivalence as they attempt to make sense of their own bodies, relationships, and communities while navigating discourses around risk and sexual health. Ambivalent technologies are also entangled with discourses of risk, governmentality, and community care. Attending to the social worlds of queer safer sex technologies provides insights that are not attainable through behavioral or epidemiological research.