POD Rainbow Science

PRS#6: Robust evidence that bisexual men exist

The status of bisexual men and bisexual people in general have long and controversial history. Bisexual people were often accused of being promiscuous and untrustworthy, regarded as the ones sitting on the fence, not confident enough to come out as gay. Bisexual men were also considered as those who pass HIV onto women, due to their numerous sexual contacts and countless sexual male-partners. This all caused increased stigma toward bisexual people, even within the LGBT community. Research, especially those based on self-reporting methods, also cast a doubt on bisexuality in men, however those methods are prone to social influence and more valid methods are necessary. In 2020, the paper entitled ‘Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men’ (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32690672/) provided the new approach to study bisexuality in men and supported the hypothesis that they, indeed, do exist. 

Additionally, in this episode I’m talking about self-reporting methods to measure sexual identity such as Kinsey scale (https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/kinsey-scale.php) and The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (https://bi.org/en/klein-grid).

 Music: bensound.com

PRS#5: Healing homosexuality

Conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, reorientation therapy or gay cure therapy is pseudoscientific method, trying to change one’s sexual orientation. Based upon the faulty assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder, it is recognized as ineffective, unethical and harmful, and it's banned in many countries. Even though, there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed, still there are organizations and individuals who attempt to change people’s sexual orientation, utilizing not only brainwashing quasi-therapy, but also humiliating behavioral methods such as electric shock, nausea-inducing drugs or chemical aversion treatment. 

 The paper I’m talking about can be found here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-17979-002

Music: bensound.com

PRS#4: How to tell if you have HIV?

HIV became popular in the early 1980s, when UCLA doctor, Michael Gottlieb, published an article about gay patients with rare type of fungal infections and pneumonia. Since then, all around the world, doctors observed similar symptoms in their patients, especially those who had sexual contacts with other men. Due to this observation, for some time AIDS was believed to be a condition specific to gay men and called GRID – gay-related immune deficiency. After 40 years, understanding of HIV and AIDS improved dramatically, post-exposure (PEP) and pre-exposure (PrEP) prophylaxis are available, ARV treatment enable to suppress viral load to such a low level that it becomes undetectable, and pharmaceutical companies begin human trials for HIV vaccines. However, there are still many myths and misunderstandings about HIV.

In this episode you’re going to hear about ways of HIV transmission, replication cycle, the time course of the infection and studies which gave the basis for “Undetectable=Untransmittable” campaign.

If something in this episode caught your attention, these are the places where you can go to find more information on HIV: Partner 1 & Partner 2 study (https://i-base.info/partner-study/) and Undetectable=Untransmittable campaign (https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/undetectable-untransmittable_en.pdf).

Music: bensound.com

PRS #3: Do we still need Pride Parades?

Pride parades as well as other events set up to celebrate LGBT pride evoke many emotions in straight and gay people. Some people love the idea of celebrating pride, while others are reluctant to participate or even support the idea of celebration. In the 70s and 80s pride parades were held to increase the visibility of sexual and gender minority people and while society and governments started to recognize the rights of LGBTQ persons, pride parades became a way to praise the sexual and gender diversity. In recent years, events such as pride parades converted to huge events for hundreds, or even thousands, of people, offering concerts, debates, drag shows, parades and a lot more. But is it still worth doing? Do we still need pride events? In this episode I’m trying to address this issue by using the collective identity framework and unpacking two papers, one from Hahm and colleagues (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10548408.2017.1357519) and the other one from Rubino and the team (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10538720.2018.1470419).

Music: bensound.com

PRS #2: Transgender athletes and testosterone mess

We’re right after the end of the weirdest Olympic Games, but also the most rainbow-colored Olympic Games in our history. We also had an opportunity to (eventually!) see Laurel Hubbard, the first transgender person to compete in the sex category according to her gender identity, and even though without any medal, she left Tokyo with, impossible to count, signs of support from all around the world. Therefore, I believe it is a good moment to recall a history of testosterone in sport and how it became the underlying issue for transgender athletes. If you want to read more about it, here are the papers to which I refer in this episode: Foster et al.(2014): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270567341_Modelling_Effects_of_Drug_Testing_Procedures_on_Performance_Trends_in_the_Shot_Put.
Patel et. al. (2020): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338330055_007_Trends_in_Serum_Testosterone_Levels_Among_Adolescent_and_Young_Adult_Men_in_the_United_States.
Koziara et al. (2020): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34108108/ 

Music: bensound.com

PRS #1: HIV testing & window period

According to UNAIDS, roughly 38 million people were living with HIV in 2020, still about 6 million of them did not know they were HIV+. In this episode, we’re going to have a closer look at the barriers to testing, different types of tests and the ‘window period’. 

For more information go over to https://www.unaids.org/en.

Music: bensound.com