Abstract
Responses to chemsex have largely fluctuated between punishment, moral censure and indifference and have been weaponised to justify anti-drug policies and to protect established norms of gender and sexuality. As drug prohibition and heteronormativity interlock, men who engage in chemsex are finding themselves at an intersection of multiple systems of oppression that produce feelings of exclusion and rejection both from society in general and within growing numbers of LGBTQ+ spaces. This article explores specific notions of homonormativity performed by gay men as a way to advance their own recognition and respectability among society, resulting in the isolation of those who engage in chemsex who are ostracised simply for the way in which they have decided to express their sexualities. Such homonormative articulation of an open rejection of chemsex in exchange for social recognition and legal protection appears to have become an easy bargaining chip to show how “good gays” have moved away from historical markers of stigma, including drugs and HIV, making chemsex the most recent currency to publicly prove their disavowal of those who remain outside of the kinship norms of marriage and ‘normal sex’.
Published Version
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