Unlike most writers on the topic of barebacking (condomless sex), David Halperin rejects psychology's claim to hold the keys to human subjectivity.
Recent efforts to analyze gay men's motives for sexual risk-taking in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic have led to a revival of medical thinking about homosexuality and breathed new life into punitive clichés about gay men's alleged low self-esteem, lack of self-control, and various psychological 'deficits.' What Do Gay Men Want? offers a different language for describing gay men's inner lives. Are homosexuals sick? Since gay liberation, the enlightened answer to that question has been a resounding no.
