Three men talk honestly about their experiences living on the down low: having secret sex with other men.
DISCUSSION OF A REAL EXAMPLE
I found an interview with Oprah in which she talked to three men and their experiences with living on the down low. I thought that this was interesting because we don’t see a lot of gay black men willing to talk about issues like this. Usually its really hard to get people to come forth because of their fear of rejection by people they love. The men Oprah interviewed were all black men, maybe middle-aged, who didn’t want to be identified; one of the men were shown. All of this shows the extent to which disapproval of being gay means to men in the African American community.
There was a pattern that showed how these men sexually identified themselves. Although they admitted to engaging in sexual activities with multiple men and women, they made it clear that they didn’t consider themselves to be gay or even bisexual. When speaking of the refusal of considering themselves as gay, there was even a different tone carried with the statement. They ultimately believe that what they’re doing has less to do with being gay and much more with being promiscuous. But, the point that they made sure to let the views know was that anybody could be on the down low and you wouldn’t even know it. The amount of promiscuity these men engage in with having this numerous amount of partners while having majority unprotected sex startled me; one of the men admitted that he hadn’t used a condom until he was 40 years old. I don’t know if I was so startled because these men were having sex with both men and women or the fact that they were having unprotected sex in general. That is something that I think we as a society have really stereotyped: If you’re a gay man or a man having sex with men then you must have HIV or will contract it. Thus, if you’re then having sex with women too then you must be infecting them as well whether it be knowingly or not. That is definitely something that society has socially constructed since the era of the AIDS epidemic. This example relates to other sources I’ve read because we see these real life experiences come into play again.













