Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Beyond Prevention: Containment Rhetoric in the Case of Bug Chasing

  • Published:
Journal of Medical Humanities Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Bug chasing, the practice of pursuing HIV positive sexual partners in order to acquire HIV, presents multiple dilemmas for health affiliates in terms of how to address discourses and practices that challenge widely held beliefs about health and medicine. In order to examine how researchers respond to controversial counterpublic rhetorics, this essay chronicles the construction of “bug chasing” in published social science literature. Guided by a theory of containment rhetoric, I analyze how bug chasers are configured in the language of social science used to describe and explain them. I find that social scientific coverage of bug chasing often addresses the behavior using a recipe of rhetorical containment: first, authors gaze upon bug chasers via distanced descriptions of the community; second, authors characterize the behavior as exhibiting an idealistic naiveté; and, third, authors stress the inconceivable, and therefore reproachable, sacrifice that bug chasing ultimately demands of its onlookers and participants. In closing, I evaluate the consequences of this containment rhetoric and offer three rhetorical maneuvers to aid future scholarship that examines the discourses and communities that counter dominant health ideologies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ashford, Chris. 2010. “Barebacking and the ‘Cult of Violence:’ Queering the Criminal Law.” The Journal of Criminal Law 74: 339–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asen, Robert. 2000. “Seeking the “Counter” in Counterpublics.” Communication Theory 10: 424–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aune, James Arnt. 2008. “Democratic Style and Ideological Containment.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11: 482–490.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, Eric J., Deborah O. Erwin, and Precilla Belin. 2000. “Using Cultural Beliefs and Patterns to Improve Mammography Utilization among African-American Women: The Witness Project.” Journal of the National Medical Association 92; 136–142

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Jeffrey A. 2009. Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berg, Rigmor C. 2009. “Barebacking: A Review of the Literature.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 38: 754–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berkman, Lisa, and Ichiro Kawachi. 2000. “A Historical Framework for Social Epidemiology.” In Social Epidemiology, eds. Lisa Berkman and Ichiro Kawachi, 3–12. New York: Oxford University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Boero, Natalie, and C. J. Pascoe. 2012. “Pro-Anorexia Communities and Online Interaction: Bringing the Pro-ana Body Online.” Body & Society 18: 27–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carballo-Dieguez, A., A. Vetuneac, J. Nauremeister, G. W. Dowsett, C. Dolezal, R. H. Remien, I. Balan, and M. Rowe. 2009. “Is ‘Bareback’ a Useful Construct in Primary HIV-Prevention? Definitions, Identity and Research.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 11: 51–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chou, Grace Ai-Ling. 2010. “Cultural Education as Containment of Communism.” Journal of Cold War Studies 12: 3–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, J. Elizabeth. 2004. “(In/Out)side AIDS Activism: Searching for a Critically Engaged Politics.” Journal of Medical Humanities 25: 309–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Hart, Jane Sherron. 1999. “Re-creating Founding Paradigms: The Cold War and American National Identity.” In The Unfolding of America’s National Identity. Edited by Roland Hagenbuchle and Josef Rabb vol. 1. Tubingen.

  • De Hart, Jane Sherron. 2001. “Containment at Home: Gender, Sexuality, and National Identity in Cold War America.” In Rethinking Cold War Culture. Edited by Peter Kuznick and James Gilbert. Washington, D.C.

  • Fox, Ragan. 2007. “Skinny Bones #126-774-835-29: Thin Gay Bodies Signifying a Modern Plague.” Text and Performance Quarterly 27: 3–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, Gregory A. 2003. “In Search of Death.” Rolling Stone 915: 44–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, Vanessa Northington. 1997. “Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care.” American Journal of Public Health 87: 1773–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gauthier, DeAnn. K., and Craig. J. Forsyth. 1999. “Bareback Sex, Bug Chasers, and the Gift of Death.” Deviant Behavior 20: 85–100.

  • Gonzalez, Octavio R. 2010. “Tracking the Bugchaser: Giving The Gift of HIV/AIDS.” Cultural Critique 75: 82–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graydon, Michael. 2007. “Don’t Bother to Wrap It: Online Giftgiver and Bugchaser Newsgroups, the Social Impact of Gift Exchanges and the ‘Carnivalesque.’” Culture, Health & Sexuality 9: 277–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grov, Christian, and Jeffrey T. Parsons. 2006. “Bug Chasing and Gift Giving: The Potential for HIV transmission Among Barebackers on the Internet.” AIDS Education and Prevention 18: 490–503.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grov, Christian. 2004. “Make Me Your Death Slave”: Men Who Have Sex with Men and Use the Internet to Intentionally Spread HIV.” Deviant Behavior 25: 329–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Howard, Ken, and Gavin Yamey. 2003. “Magazine’s HIV Claim Rekindles ‘Gay Plague’ Row.” British Medical Journal 326: 454.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keränen, Lisa. 2010. Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keränen, Lisa. 2011. “Addressing the Epidemic of Epidemics: Germs, Security, and a Call for Biocriticism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97: 224–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leach, Joan, and Deborah Dysart-Gale, eds. 2011. Rhetorical Questions of Health and Medicine. New York: Lexington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Long, Thomas L. 2005. AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mnookin, Seth. 2003, February 17. “Using ‘Bug Chasers.’” Newsweek 91: 10–11.

  • Moskowitz, David A., and Michael E. Roloff. 2007a. “The Existence of a Bug Chasing Subculture.” Culture, Health and Sexuality 9: 347–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moskowitz, David A., and Michael E. Roloff. 2007b. “The Ultimate High: Sexual Addiction and the Bug Chasing Phenomenon.” Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity 1: 21–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nadel Alan. 1995. Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peek, Monica E., Rita Gorawara-Bhat, Michael T. Quinn, Angela Odoms-Young, Shannon C. Wilson, and Marshall H. Chin. 2013. “Patient Trust in Physicians and Shared Decision-Making Among African-Americans with Diabetis.” Health Communication. doi:10.1080/10410236.2012.710873.

  • Pezzullo, Phaedra C. 2003. “Resisting ‘National Breast Cancer Awareness Month’: The Rhetoric of Counterpublics and Their Cultural Performances.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89: 345–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pfau, Michael William. 2006. “Conventions of Deliberation? Convention Addresses and Deliberative Containment in the Second Party System.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9: 635–654.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poirot, Kristan. 2009. “Domesticating the Liberated Woman: Containment Rhetorics of Second Wave Radical/Lesbian Feminism.” Women’s Studies in Communication 32: 263–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratcliffe, Krista. 2005. “Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness.” Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ritter, Gretchen. 2009. “Domestic Containment or Equal Standing? Gender, Nationalism, and the War on Terror.” Journal of Policy History 21: 439–447.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. Blake. 2003. Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segal, Judy Z. 2009. “Internet Health and the 21st-Century Patient: A Rhetorical View.” Written Communication 26: 351–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shernoff, Michael. 2006. Without Condoms: Unprotected Sex, Gay Men & Barebacking. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shilts, Randy. 1987. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: Penguin Books.

  • Singer, Ross. 2011. “Framing of Elite Corruption and Rhetorical Containment of Reform in the Boeing-Air Force Tanker Controversy.” Southern Communication Journal 76: 97–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Michelle. 2010. “Containment Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Imagining Amana, Inscribing America.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40: 128–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sontag, Susan.1989. Illness as metaphor and AIDS and its metaphors. New York: Picador.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stall, Ronald D., Robert B. Hays, Craig R. Waldo, Marla Ekstrand, and William McFarland. 2000. “The Gay ‘90s: A Review of Research in the 1990s on Sexual Behavior and HIV Risk Among Men Who Have Sex With Men.” AIDS 14: S101-S114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Charles Alan. 1997. Defining Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

  • Tewksbury, Richard. 2003. “Bareback Sex and the Quest for HIV: Assessing the Relationship in Internet Personal Advertisements of Men Who Have Sex with Men.” Deviant Behavior 24: 467–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tewksbury, Richard. 2006. “‘Click here for HIV’: An Analysis of Internet-based Bug Chasers and Bug Givers.” Deviant Behavior 27: 379–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Treichler, Paula. 1999. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomso, Gregory. 2004. “Bug Chasing, Barebacking, and the Risks of Care.” Literature and Medicine 23: 88–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warner, Michael. 2002. “Public and Counterpublics (abbreviated version).” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88: 413–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weldon, Rebecca A. (2001). An ‘Urban Legend’ of Global Proportion: An Analysis of Nonfiction Accounts of the Ebola Virus. Journal of Health Communication 6 (3), 281–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weiss, Meredith L. 2009. “Intellectual Containment: The Muting of Students in Semidemocratic Southeast Asia.” Critical Asian Studies 41: 499–522.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yeshua-Katz, Daphne, and Nicole Martins. 2012. “Communicating Stigma: The Pro-Ana Paradox.” Health Communication. doi:10.1080/10410236.2012.699889.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Jennifer Malkowski

Authors
  1. Jennifer Malkowski
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jennifer Malkowski.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Malkowski, J. Beyond Prevention: Containment Rhetoric in the Case of Bug Chasing. J Med Humanit 35, 211–228 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9280-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9280-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation