Black gay men having sex with women
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The agency then found signs the disease was spreading more broadly among male and female blacks: In 2001, the CDC issued a report citing rising rates of HIV and AIDS among gay black and Latino men.
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"We must focus our efforts on fellow citizens with the highest rates of new cases, African American men and women," he said. In his State of the Union address, President Bush pledged to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS in the African American community. The CDC's findings, along with those of other researchers outside the agency who are also studying the down low, will be important to efforts to counter AIDS among blacks, the only racial group in which the disease's incidence is rising. Millett said some of the CDC studies will conduct random sampling of men to find those who identify themselves as being down low and ask them what the term means to them and whether they have sex just with men or also with women.Īnother way to study a secretive group, he said, is to enroll a wide array of men in studies on general health issues like diabetes or prostate cancer, and ask a few questions about the down low as part of the overall study. The longer these men lead double lives, health officials say, the higher the risk for their partners. And when they do venture into gay communities like San Francisco's, which are predominantly white, they feel unwelcome, according to several studies of gay men of color.īecause these men have so much at stake in keeping their sexual activity secret, it is unknown how many there are and it is difficult to trace the sexual history of their female partners. They don't identify with gay culture, which they see as white and effeminate. Being gay risks rejection by family and friends. Many down low men find it difficult to see themselves as gay because of the stigma attached to homosexuality in the black community, said Phil Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. As adapted by a subculture of black men, being on the down low describes men who have sex with other men but appear straight, have relationships with women, and don't acknowledge being gay or even bisexual. The term comes from the world of hip-hop and R&B music, where it means an illicit relationship. The definition of down low depends on who does the defining. "We need to take a step back when we look at the down-low phenomenon," said Gregg Millett, a behavioral scientist with the CDC division on HIV/AIDS. Most black women with HIV say they were infected through heterosexual contact, but it isn't known how their male partners were infected - by sex with other men, or by using contaminated needles to inject drugs. At a time when black women are being diagnosed with HIV at a rate 20 times that of white women, five CDC studies will be among the first to try to learn how many white, black, Asian and Latino men fit the down-low profile identify how, if at all, being on the down low differs from being "in the closet," and determine whether down-low men have a role in infecting women with HIV.