Rethinking Risk, Culture, and Intervention in Collective Sex Environments

Abstract

This article provides a narrative overview of research on HIV/STI risk and collective sexual behavior based on an inclusive analysis of research on environments where people gather for sexual activity-sex clubs, swingers' clubs, bathhouses, parks, private sex parties, etc. The aim is to analyze how collective sex has been approached across disciplines to promote conversation across paradigms and suggest new lines of inquiry. Attention to context-such as the location of sex-was a necessary redress to universalizing models of sexual risk-taking behavior, leading to insights rooted in the particularities of each environment and its users. However, the identification of ever more precise risk groups or environmental idiosyncrasies eventually becomes theoretically restrictive, leading to an overestimation of the uniqueness of sexual enclaves, and of the difference between any given enclave and the broader social milieu. Using a theoretical framework of transgression to interpret the interdisciplinary literature, similarities in the spatial and social organization of collective sex environments are identified. Insights generated from this complementary perspective are then applied to understandings of collective sex: first, the example of male-female (MF) "swingers" is used to illustrate the need to establish, rather than assume, the distinctiveness of each non-normative sexual enclave, and to broaden the conceptualization of context; second, questions are raised about the practicality of interventions in collective sex environments. Finally, new lines of intellectual inquiry are suggested to shed light not just on collective sex but on sociosexual issues more generally, such as increasing protective sexual health behavior or negotiating consent in sexual encounters.

Sex/Gender/Sexual Science Research 24/7

“…Under Paul Vasey's leadership, we inaugurated the by invitation Target Article series (Vasey & Zucker, 2016). To date, we have published 7 such articles (Blanchard, 2018;Breedlove, 2017;Brotto & Yule, 2017;Chivers, 2017;Frank, 2018;Seto, 2017;Walton, Cantor, Bhullar, & Lykins, 2017). Each Target Article is accompanied by penetrating commentaries, which are also reviewed by Vasey, with a response by the author(s).…”

Collective Sex Environment And It’s Intervention: ACase Study Of Indonesian Online Prostitution

“…The 'customer' easily choose a menu tabel contains of such as group sex event, public sex venue, sex on premises venue, condomless anal sex, condomless vaginal intercoruse, protected anal intercourse, unprotected anal sex, unprotected vaginal sex, gay bisexual men, etc. Indonesian population perform a new unsafe sexual behavior and could be associated with 'high-risk' sexual environments [1].…”

“…Collective sex environments created a cultural risk [1]. There is not specific venue but only where the customers frequently or recently find their sexual partners [1]. It is a new threat for Indonesia as a biggest muslims country, where religious dan moral ethics are standards of life.…”

“…Collective sex environments always reproduced that cultural risk. It is caused by a networks [1]. On the case of online prostitution, those environments are effects of massive using of smartphone.…”

Sex-on-Premise Venues, Associated Risk Behaviors, and Attitudes toward Venue-Based HIV Testing among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Lima, Perú

“…sex clubs, pornographic movie theaters, and most saunas/bathhouses), the term also encompasses commercial establishments where sex is permitted or encouraged, even if not explicitly endorsed as its reason for being (e.g. hourly hotels and bars/discos with dark rooms) (30,31). Studies from high-income countries (HIC) with concentrated HIV epidemics affecting MSM, including Australia and the United States, have demonstrated an association between SOPV attendance and high-risk sexual behavior (32)(33)(34)(35)(36).…”