Open access peer-reviewed chapter
GLIM demographics.
Abstract
COVID-19 reminded us of the fragility of human beings once humankind had felt they had mastered health, weather, and natural conditions in the world. For many generations, there was no memory of any pandemic close to our lived experience. During the pandemic, I was waiting to start the interviews for my research on Gay Latino immigrant men in Ontario, Canada. Because of COVID, my advisory committee accepted adding three questions about COVID to be analyzed along with the semi-structured questionnaire focused on sexual health practices among Latino immigrants in interracial sexual/romantic relationships. The findings result in the understanding of the role of sex on Gay Latino men and the strategies they developed to somehow deal with the lockdowns, social distancing, the risk of getting infected with COVID-19, and simultaneously satisfy their sexual and romantic needs.
Keywords
- COVID-19
- HIV/AIDS
- sexual health strategies
- gay Latinos immigrant men
- grounded theory
- sexual desires
- intimacy needs
1. Introduction
At the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, a rumor about a new flu strain started appearing on the news. At first, it did not seem real and was happening in China, so far away for many individuals. For many people, this new disease did not deserve public attention. By January 2020, the news kept pointing out this new disease, called Coronavirus-19, which ended up called COVID-19, due to the year it emerged [1, 2, 3]. The new virus was spread very soon, and helped by globalization and easy traveling, the virus arrived on other continents, making any human relocation a perfect host and carrier; within weeks, the virus was found in every country worldwide. COVID-19 took us by surprise. Non-government would have played an excellent role in how to deal with the new pandemic. It was too much, too fast, too out of control [4, 5, 6, 7].
This article will use two theoretical approaches [8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. The first one is the autoethnography methodology in which the chapter is narrated in—a first-person account—because this section is about how COVID got inserted into the main story, my thesis process. Moreover, taking advantage of the pandemic, my study was able to open the opportunity to expand the questionnaire about sexualities, to ask them about how COVID and the pandemic changed their sexual lives. All along with the new strategies that the participants of “Gay Latino Immigrant Men” [GLIM] used to mitigate, deal with, and survive the lockdown and the social distancing health guidelines. Autoethnography is a methodology that praises ethnography, an approach that was first rooted in anthropology, in which an individual would have inserted himself in the setting −
However, given how COVID got immersed in our lives during my thesis production process, this is the correct approach to situate myself and the reader into the
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2. Gay Latino immigrant men “GLIM” the study of a thesis affected by COVID
In September 2019, I was still working on my ethics
| Num | Country of Origin | Years Living in Canada | Profession | Marital Status | Age |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | 12 | Marketing | Single | 391,984 |
| 2 | Costa Rica | 12 | SW/Lawyer | Partnered | 501,972 |
| 3 | Bolivia | 10 | Bank | Single | 491,973 |
| 4 | Colombia | 12 | Clothing Designer | Partnered, Divorce | 331,990 |
| 5 | Venezuela | 10 | Marketing | Partnered | 32, 1989 |
| 6 | Oaxaca, Mex | 15/San Diego/CAN | Chemical Eng/MBA | Married twice | 501,972 |
| 7 | Mexican | 5 | Management/Programming | Partnered/Polyamory | 431,980 |
| 8 | Mexican | Refuge 1st., Student 2nd. | English Teacher | Single | 311,992 |
| 9 | Chile | 11 | Jewelry | Single | 421,981 |
| 10 | Venezuela | 13 | Finances to Survival | Single | 441,978 |
| 11 | Mexico, Tulancingo | 5 | Project Mang/ | Common Law | 351,988 |
| 12 | Mexican | 19 | Accountant | CommonL/Divorced | 551,968 |
| 13 | Colombian, Bogota | 5 | Fam/counter self-server | Single | 231,999 |
| 14 | Colombia, Bogota | 15 | None particular job | Single | 531,970 |
| 15 | Mex | 12 Poz in Toronto | Cleaning/sex educ | Married | 421,981 |
| 16 | Mexico, Sinaloa | 4 | Machines/Cleaning | Single | 431,979 |
| 17 | Baltimore/Colombia | 5 years student | Chemical Engineer | Single | 251,985 |
| 18 | Mexico | 5 years student | Medicine/Business | Double Marriage | 381,984 |
| 19 | Venezuela | 11 years | Human Resources | Partnered | 421,980 |
| 20 | Venezuela | 10 Years | Programming | Partnered | 421,980 |
Table 1.
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3. Exploring sexual practices of gay Latino immigrant men [GLIM] in interracial relationships, a thesis study
This study is based on the higher rate of HIV infections among GLIM when compared with other ethnic-racial groups (Asian, African-Caribbean, others), only second after the White category in Canada at the time (Data correspond to statistics collected before COVID) [27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32]. Few studies, interventions, and programs were focused on Latino gay communities, particularly in Ontario [24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29]. Given my expertise in the field of working as a front-line worker with Latino immigrants in Ontario and having been trained in Adult Education, Community Studies, essential community Statistics and Epidemiology, Qualitative/Quantitative methodologies and after taking some courses about sexualities, I realized that part of the gap in knowledge about HIV and sexualities was related to the role of understanding pleasure, love, attraction and role that sexualities play in the life of Gay Latino immigrants. Added to these factors, a study needed to be conducted taking into account the relationship or interaction between GLIM] and White men in Canada, where – invisible, subjective, and politically incorrect themes – there was a differential power, agency, and status (not only legal/illegal immigration), but also cultural, lack of official languages proficiency in Canada (English/French), large economic gap, and social networks [33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51].
3.1 Grounded theory
GT [52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60], according to Charmaz, is a suitable methodology for researching and exploring issues, topics, and social phenomena that have not been overly studied. For GLIM the semi-structural questions, approved by the University of Toronto’s REB, were central around sexualities, desires, and very intimate questions (some questions even asked about sexual preference, such as: if the individual liked being penetrated or preferred to penetrate, or if they preferred a circumcised/uncircumcised penis, and how much empowerment they felt in negotiating sexual health HIV prevention measurements with a White partner, such as using condoms, avoid anal intercourse, among other relatable topics). Data was collected, transcribed verbatim, and coded using Nvivo-12. GT analysis demands constant comparison, memo writing, and theoretical focusing. In the end, the questions added and focused on COVID-19 ended up being only 3 out of 35.
3.2 COVID-19 questions
The focus of the questions was on trying to understand the social construction of strategies, tools and understanding of how COVID-19 disrupted the life of GLIM in our interview. This aspect was not part of the original research questions. However, my advisory committee accepted my proposal by adding these three questions, given my argument that I thought it would be relevant to know how GLIM sexually adapted to the new pandemic. Two aspects were paramount for me. First, gay men experienced the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the “‘80s-‘90s (not that HIV/AIDS is over in the world, but those interviewed individuals may have belonged to a generation that has missed seeing or knowing stories of people who died at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS) However, the second aspect is that all the GLIM participants were very foremost aware of HIV/AIDS and knew about the basic sexual health knowledge on how to prevent getting infected, or if they were HIV positive, they had knowledge about how to avoid spreading it out the virus to others [1, 8, 11, 42, 54, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77].
As follows, there are the questions inserted in the semi-structured interview guide. Thus, the answers were sometimes answered in a different order or took a different exciting direction, and I decided not to stop the narratives. Questions are transcribed as follows.
27. Tell me about the last sexual encounter you had with a White gay man before COVID. What were your sexual health practices (probing for condoms, only oral, serosorting, U=U/TaSP, PrEP, other)?2
28. Tell me about the last sexual encounter you had with a White gay man during COVID. What were your sexual health practices (probing for condoms, only oral, serosorting, U=U/TaSP, PrEP, other)?
29. How did COVID-19 affect your health and sexual health practices? (Probing for having only sex with current partner/monogamy, fuckbuddies, bubble’s strategies, stopped having sex, requesting for vaccination proof, other)3 [59, 67, 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85].
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4. Narratives
Some categories are relevant and worthy of mention. COVID first challenged people about their sexual lives, the ones who were in a relationship or the ones who were single. Despite new understandings of “modern” families and relationships, the new pandemic confronted people’s understanding of health information. It confronted their prioritization of pleasure and intimacy with the concept of ‘social distancing.’ Finally, it provoked new thoughts and creativity for individuals to create, manage, and support social “sexual bonding” configured by bubbles, rules, and exceptions. Adding to this equation, gay men, without any moral judgment, have relied during the past decade on technology on the form of sexual apps to meet ‘potential sexual partners’, and many times, those “potential sexual partners” are nothing else but strangers [54, 73, 86, 87, 88].
For instance, this is Leo, a 39-year-old Peruvian. He has different reflections about COVID and other people and reflections about himself and how he dealt with the situation:
Then he reflected on how COVID forced people to change their ‘open’ relationship to a monogamous one only because of COVID.
Some others, when they were asked about the strategies they developed to continue with their sexual lives, came up with similar rationales, as mentioned before, such is the case of Adrian, a 40-years-old Bolivian:
Although Adrian agreed to have some ‘exclusivity contract’ with those people, he says he had sex with others outside the bubble he formed. It can be assumed that many people had similar agreements [11, 54, 72, 73, 75, 77]. Some were respected and followed 100%, while others were hard to follow. Sexual desire was burning individuals inside. Despite the Pandemic, sometimes individuals took their chances in a similar way that in the ‘80s, before all we know about HIV, gay men kept having sex. This is what I call—
To the same participant, Hugo, asking him if that decision to ‘rush’ things up did not present further ‘everyday’ challenges, and as natural as one expected, he referred to this situation:
Not all narratives are stories of success; some individuals endure complex relationships, toxic, dependable, and even violent, given the dichotomy of choosing to live alone or suddenly being forced to share the “roof” with someone. As Martin, 31 years old Mexican refers:
Finally, some individuals felt it was tough times during COVID, particularly in year one; as mentioned before, some stopped having sex altogether dating, and some just stayed in ‘their shell’, surviving, hoping for better days, aligned to what Mateo, 42 years old, Chilean:
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5. Results
In Exciting results are coming out of the data. Firstly, COVID has left a scar that would take generations to forget or erase. Depending on the self-intersectionality is how the pandemic will be remembered [58, 89, 90]. Several questions arise: would this be the last time our society will see a new pandemic? Has COVID-19 taught us a lasting lesson? What is the total toll in terms of mental health issues resulting from the “lockdowns,” and what about the more prolonged effect on the economy and education workplace policies?
Furthermore, and finally, for this chapter’s sake, how COVID-19 has reshaped our sexualities? Would we see a surge of HIV cases due to these 2 years in a “lockdown”? Has PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) taken a higher level of importance due to COVID-19?
Data coded, analyzed, compared, and theorized shows further research directions. One direction is to understand better how sexualities are not an easy target that can just get turned off during a difficult situation. Victor Frankl [91], the famous therapist survivor of a concentration camp during World War II, remembered that during the stressful days of “Every day” life in “hell,” sexuality was forgotten by people undergoing surviving stress. He mentioned that sexual desire was gone, women stopped menstruating, and men had minimal libido. Keeping all the proportions (and respect) of two different events, it is true that some individuals in the study shared that they experienced a reduction in sexual desire at different times during the pandemic. Some embraced total abstinence.
During the first years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when ignorance and fear reigned over the gay communities in North America, many individuals chose abstinence as well when it was clear and established that sexual interaction had a relationship with the new virus infection rates [64, 92, 93, 94].
Another intriguing aspect was the different strategies that individuals employed to survive COVID-19 and keep some sort of normalized lives, such as monogamy and bubble clubs (with ‘exclusive’ membership), that, in the end, were very flexible, showing how populations take health information, interpret it in the way seems to make sense to them. Thus, individuals developed their safe codes and made the best decisions to protect themselves from getting infected. Health literacy, health practices, and behaviors during COVID-19 are an open field to delve into individual’s minds vs. infection rate and health practices during the pandemic and in the aftermath [8, 95, 96, 97, 98].
The final finding of this analysis was related to the beginning of the vaccination process. Some participants of the study shared it. It was how social media and sexual apps (e.g., Grindr, Scruff, Romeo, Tinder) helped to self-promote and self-locate “healthy” vaccinated candidates for sex, setting themselves free for an “open market” game. Since the arrival of sexual apps, there has been a very contested and heated discussion about how people use sexual apps, not only to share their sexy pics, sexual practice preferences, and the type of sexual partner sought for an encounter. Moreover, at specific points in time, people use sexual apps to discriminate against particular body types, masculinity behaviors, age, ethnicity, body type, and HIV status. When PrEP came up, that was the new thing to offer or to request in the “meat market” [48, 71, 72, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 99, 100] negotiation. In this regard, the first vaccination was “like” the new PrEP, the factor used for self-marketing to provide an extra layer of safety and lure attraction, allowing individuals who match their vaccination status the sweet indulging of an “exclusive sex,” a new (sense) of an elite, of homo sexualities without barriers. At the very least for a few months until almost every individual had access to vaccination. However, this data reveals room to understand and further question those social dynamics, symbols of status, and signifiers of desire and attraction. At least until the new COVID variant or a new pandemic comes up to mess up with the social hierarchy of social organization of sex.
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6. Discussion
According to Nowaskie [74], your experience as a member of the LGTBQ was related to your knowledge about the HIV pandemic and how to deal with, filter, and manage your sexual needs. I would argue that individuals did their best in the news and information and the intersectional position in which those people were surprised by the pandemic. If they were singles, many study participants stopped having sex or waited until vaccinations started rolling around to feel safer. Some others tried to ‘formalize’ either a relationship or organized a system of ‘bubbles’ with the hope of keeping ‘their fluids’ safe (a serosorting HIV strategy, in which you only have sex with people of your same HIV status) [11]. However, one of the findings of this study was that individuals were weaker, and despite knowing the health information provided by media, some people prioritized the satisfaction of their sexual needs, what I have termed as
Some research stressed using other avenues to deal with sexual desires, such as porn, masturbation, and telephone sex. At the same time, because of the social distancing, there was an expectation of a reduction in HIV/STI infections [2, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44]. However, much analysis still needs to be published for us to understand the actual dimension of what happened with sex during COVID-19.
Other reflections can be drawn in terms of how GLIM or other minority populations [2, 9, 10, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107] behave during another pandemic, either similar to COVID-19 or a sexual one, such as it happened with Monkeypox [108], or with new resisting gonorrhea, syphilis strains, etc. I think there is a lesson for all of us humankind to learn about COVID-19 at all levels
Finally, I want to argue that given the time of events, right at the beginning, HIV Sexual Health Organizations helped in an incommensurable way, given the fact that for years, those organizations had the ‘knew-how’ of communicating effectively with their communities, had enough knowledge in how to deliver science information in a community level, and had been effective in calming down stress, panic, and isolation, that COVID-19 brought to our lives [3, 42, 110, 111].
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7. Limitations
There are several limitations to this study. Firstly, it was a qualitative study with a small sample size (
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank the members of my advisory committee: Dr. David J. Brennan, Dr. Charmaine Williams, and Dr. Barry Adam. Also, I want to thank the Factor-Inwentash, Faculty of Social Work, at the University of Toronto, where I am completing my doctoral thesis.
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Notes
- The table shown at the end of the chapter represents the basic demographic information of the (N = 20) GLIM participant’s study. One of the inclusive requirements of the study was that individuals were born in a Latin American country (Except Brazil since they have a different language). Interviews were conducted in English or Spanish, depending on the participant’s choice. There was a HIV positive category (n = 3) but was deleted from the table for this chapter since it was thought not to be relevant for this chapter. Participants age was in range of 25–55. The table also explains how long individuals have been living in Canada, and what economic activity (job) were doing at the time of the interview. The table they also explain from which country of origin GLIM were from. All of them were gay and "out of the closet" as a requirement for the study.
- Here it is the explanation of the different terms used in the questions, that are related to HIV prevention. A) Serosorting: means to have sex anal intercourse with someone who is the same HIV status than the self (+ or −). B) TaSP/U=U [TASP] means treatment as prevention, and [U=U] means Undetectable equals Untransmitable. Both concepts related to the fact that when an individual who is HIV+ is under retroviral treatment, and his/her/them HIV viral count is minor (It used to be under 50,000 copies, but new evidence is showing that even under 20,000 copies) in blood, an individual is not capable on passing HIV to anyone else. Finally, C) [PrEP] Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis is a relatively new medication that is taken every day (there are other approaches in Europe; it reduces the chances of getting infected with HIV with an over 90% efficacy).
- Note: Three participants were interviewed in Spanish, and the accounts were translated and reviewed by the researcher. Both accounts, English and Spanish, had to be reviewed for accuracy. However, sometimes, the researcher had to edit the narratives for clarity and sense because participants were jumping back and forth in their thoughts, and some narratives needed more work for coherency in thinking in linear ways. One of the early conclusions of why this happened may be the emotional, emotive, and intimate character of the topics participants were asked.