ABSTRACT
To love, to want, to have sex with someone of the same sex is a gendered risk. To understand how this is so, it is necessary to approach gender, not as a biological property of bodies, nor merely as the social expression of certain biological characteristics, but as a regulatory system organized around the presumption of heterosexuality. This presumption, which queer theorists have termed heteronormativity (Berlant and Warner 1998), entails certain naturalized beliefs: that there are two sexes, male and female; that men are sexually active and not passive; that women are nurturing and receptive; that sex is private, conjugal and procreative; and that desire follows from biological sex and is directed toward the opposite sex.2 The threat of violence, abuse and ridicule – as well as more mundane forces, like everyday prejudice and administration – constrain the range of relations, affective formations and futures that are available to gendered subjects.3 In this sense, HIV is not the biggest risk that impacts gay life, nor necessarily the most physically threatening, but the regulatory system of sex/gender certainly makes HIV more of a risk than it ought to be.
