‘Men who use the Internet to seek sex with men’: Rethinking sexuality in the transnational context of HIV prevention

ABSTRACT

MISM (i.e. men who use the Internet to seek sex with men) has emerged in public health literature as a population in need of HIV prevention. In this paper, we argue for the importance of rethinking the dominant notions of the MISM category to uncover its ethnocentric and heteronormative bias. To accomplish this, we conducted a historical, epistemological and transnational analysis of social sciences and health research literature (n = 146) published on MISM between 2000 and 2014. We critically unravel the normative underpinnings of ‘westernised’ knowledge upon which the MISM category is based. We argue that the essentialist approach of Western scholarship can homogenise MISM by narrowly referring to behavioural aspects of sexuality, thereby rendering multiple sexualities/desires invisible. Furthermore, we argue that a Eurocentric bias, which underlies the MISM category, may hinder our awareness of the transnational dynamics of sexual minority communities, identities, histories and cultures. We propose the conceptualisation of MISM as hybrid cultural subjects that go beyond transnational and social boundaries, and generate conclusions about the future of the MISM category for HIV prevention and health promotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Men who use the Internet to seek sex with men (MISM)
• epistemology
• transnationalism
• HIV prevention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘MISM’ is used as an acronym in this paper, primarily for the sake of convenience. The use of the essentialist term MISM in this article is not meant to imply the appropriateness of applying this construct to people in non-Westernised cultures. We also acknowledge that different authors utilised a variety of sexuality labels: ‘MISM’, ‘Internet-Using MSM’, ‘MSM who use Internet for social and sexual networking’ and ‘MSM app users’ among many others.

2. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, which attempts to answer questions about what should count as legitimate knowledge, and what approaches are appropriate for gaining this knowledge. Epistemic violence, according to Spivak (2005), refers to a discursive act of disqualifying the knowledge and voices of a marginalised group within Western context.