Practicing desire

For more than a decade, gay men have faced a terrible crisis - the HIV epidemic and its consequence for many: AIDS. The epidemic coincided with the development of visible gay communities, distilled from cultural, political, and sexual activities, and claiming for homosexual men a recognition of the pleasures and prerogatives of same-sex love. These gay communities are substantial subcultures, often with a geographic focus and commercial infrastructure. The same period has also seen the rise in analyses of gay life that challenge conventional configurations of human sexuality and that have wrought profound changes in such fields as medicine, history, literary criticism, and the social sciences. This study examines these developments in the context of the HIV epidemic through interviews of twenty very different men who live in Sydney's gay community, Australia's largest and most visible, and in the provincial town of Nullangardie. The study establishes a framework for examining homosexuality, gay men, their communities, and HIV/AIDS through a systematic scrutiny of sexual practice - its action, structure, and meanings - as an argument for the sexual construction of homosexuality and gay community.