ABSTRACT
In 2004, author and activist J. L. King appeared on the Oprah Winfrey TV show to discuss a phenomenon that was beginning to appear more and more in the mainstream media: the down low or DL. King introduced the down low to Oprah and millions of her viewers across the country as a startling new subculture of black men who had sex with other black men, but still identified as exclusively heterosexual. King based much of his information concerning this phenomenon on his own experiences as one of these men. He also relied on a report issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released in 2001 that estimated a 30 percent HIV infection rate among black men. The majority of men who comprised this 30 percent reported that they had engaged in sexual intercourse with other men. However, many of these men still self-identified as “straight.” Suddenly, newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times started running full-page spreads on this new and alarming sexual subculture of black men. Women who had been infected with HIV by their “down low” spouses began to surface in cover stories and exposés, and men like J. L. King began talking to the media about their lives on the down low.
