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Safety in Numbers

Safer Sex and Gay Men

by Edward King

Safety in Numbers is my 1993 book on AIDS and gay men. It records three main areas:

1. the initial spread of HIV among gay communities
2. the success of early community-based safer sex campaigns in stemming HIV transmission
3. the de-gaying of AIDS in the late 1980s, when preventing the predicted heterosexual epidemic became the new priority

Two chunks of the book are currently available on this site:

1. the section analysing the risk of HIV transmission through oral sex
2. the chapter which describes the de-gaying of AIDS: what the terms means; why it happened; who did it; and the harm it did to safer sex campaigns for gay men

I have also included full publication information and sleeve notes.

Safety in Numbers can be purchased on the Internet from on-line bookshops by following these links. In the UK, order from The Internet Bookshop. In the USA, order from Amazon.com Books.

Contents

Chapter 1 – Tracing the Epidemic

• Before HIV
• Tracing the epidemic
• Cautions and provisos
• Seroprevalence in San Francisco
• Behaviour changes in San Francisco
• Seroprevalence and behaviour change in New York
• The Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
• Summary: the United States experience
• Seroprevalence in the United Kingdom
• Behaviour changes in the United Kingdom
• Declining levels of STDs
• Summary: the United Kingdom experience

Chapter 2 – Changing Behaviour

• Reduction in numbers of partners
• Reduction in anal sex and uptake of condoms
• Defining safer sex
• The impact of factual information
• The importance of peer norms
• Health education: theory and practice

Chapter 3 – Promoting Safer Sex

• Some general principles
• Defending anal sex
• Unacceptable standards: condoms for anal sex
• Oral sex
• Safer sex versus safe sex
• Eroticism and prevention
• Legal restrictions on safer sex education
• Explicit educational materials and British law
• Notes

Chapter 4 – Sustaining Safer Sex?

• Increasing levels of STDs at clinics
• Increasing unsafe sex and HIV transmission in studies
• ‘Relapse’ theory
• Reasons for having unprotected sex
• Young gay men
• Men in relationships
• Why did relapse theory take off?
• Taking responsibility

Chapter 5 – The De-gaying of AIDS

• The evolution of prevention policies
• Why was AIDS de-gayed?
• The presentation of official statistics
• Public education campaigns
• Gay men and de-gaying
• Statutory sector work for gay men
• The Health Education Authority - a case study
• 'Men who have sex with men' versus gay men
• The voluntary sector
• The Terrence Higgins Trust - a case study
• The international phenomenon
• History rewritten & Conclusion
• Notes

Chapter 6 – Making Myths

• The heterosexual epidemics
• The myth of heterosexual AIDS
• The legacy of the ‘gay plague’
• A class of their own

Chapter 7 – Re-gaying AIDS

• Defining the agenda
• Cataloguing the neglect
• Assessing need
• Gay Men Fighting AIDS
• High-risk groups versus high-risk behaviours
• The global versus the local
• Separatism versus specificity
• Resource allocation: biting the bullet
• The price of funding
• Whose responsibility?