Without Condoms:

Unprotected Sex, Gay Men
and Barebacking
Michael Shernoff, LCSW

Published October, 2005

Routledge Press

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Taylor & Francis

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"With true compassion and broadness of vision, Michael Shernoff has faced head-on the complex and provocative topic of unprotected gay sex and its possible health consequences. Utilizing many voices, Without Condoms reaches a wide audience with its sex-positive stance and enduring humanity. This is a necessary resource for health professionals, those studying sexuality, gay and lesbian studies, and for all gay men interested in this urgent and timely topic."
Eli Coleman, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Program in Human Sexuality, University of Minnesota Medical School

"For the last quarter century, the AIDS epidemic has forced upon gay men a horrible entanglement of sex, love, intimacy, and death. Our response to this situation has too often offered rationalistic prescriptions that uncannily ignore the complexity of human emotional life. Michael Shernoff has managed to step well outside such rote response and return the subject to the complex, sensitive analysis it desperately requires."
Walt Odets, clinical psychologist and author of In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS

"Michael Shernoff's book provides much-needed insight and comprehensive discussion of the most provocative and difficult aspects of sexual behavior and HIV. Shernoff's writing is clear, direct, and unforgiving in its brutal honesty about sexual identity, behavior, and culture. Any clinician working with people infected or at risk for HIV should make this required reading."
Marshall Forstein, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Table of Contents Foreword: Dr. Perry Halkitis PART ONE GAY MEN, SEX AND CONDOMS: AN OVERVIEW 1. Introduction and Overview 2. Gay Men's Sexuality and Psychotherapy: From Cure to Affirmation 3. Why Do Men Bareback? No Easy Answers 4. Trips and Slips: Drug use and Barebacking 5. Cruising The Internet Highway PART TWO TAKING OFF THE CONDOMS: RAW SEX IN RELATIONSHIPS 6. Love in the Time of Plague: Male Couples, Sex and HIV 7. Love, Sex and Trust (Part 1): Seroconcordant Male Couples Love, Sex and Trust (Part 2): Serodisconcordant Male Couples

PART THREE ROLE OF THE PROFESSIONAL AND THE COMMUNITY 8. Can Barebacking Be Curbed? What (If Anything) Works? 9. Conclusion: Sexual Freedom and Sexual Responsibility Appendix 1 A Sample Negotiated Safety Agreement Appendix 2 Safer Barebacking Procedures Appendix 3 Squashing the "Super-Bug": An Open Letter to Gay and Bisexual Men