QMJC February 2020 – Party and Play’: on the web hook-up products plus the emergence of PNP methods among homosexual guys

Team: Adrian Farrugia, Duane Duncan, Gemma Nourse and Nyssa Ferguson (Australian Research Centre in Intercourse, health insurance and Society, Los Angeles Trobe University)

Kane Race’s (2015) article ‘“Party and play”: on the web hook-up products together with emergence of PNP methods among gay males’ is really an analysis that is generative of mediated sexual encounters such as medication usage, or Party ‘n’ Enjoy (PNP) practices. The content traces the complex arrangement of technologies, things and surroundings, together understood as ‘infrastructures’, that shape these encounters and also the types of sociality that emerge therein. Even though the article provides an expansive analysis of the infrastructures, we concentrate mainly on Race’s study of the part of medication usage, generally speaking crystal methamphetamine and GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), in these techniques as well as the implications regarding the analysis for health training.

The content is due to an’ that is‘insider-ethnography of changing contexts of HIV prevention in Sydney, Australia.

The broader research features a dataset composed of findings, qualitative interviews and analysis of textual and material that is historical. In this piece, nevertheless, Race mainly works together with data created by his or her own involvement within the culture that is sociosexual research. A lot of Race’s argument will be based upon an analysis of screenshots of discussion between him and potential intimate lovers on hook-up phone apps such as for instance Grindr and Scruff. Although the dataset are unknown to scientists more familiar with conventional social science techniques commonly experienced in liquor as well as other medication journals, the data provide a rich and, certainly, enjoyable encounter with all the subject material associated with the article.

PNP try this methods or ‘ChemSex’ have actually attracted considerable concern in general public health research and popular tradition (see, including the 2015 Vice documentary Chemsex). As Race contends, within these websites PNP is positioned as a site that is pathogenic which dangers related to drug usage and HIV transmission coalesce. Whilst not doubting the potential risks that may emerge, Race implies that a focus that is singular them ignores just exactly how PNP can also be a website for which crucial social bonds, logics of care and community connection can emerge (256). In focussing from the types of pleasure, play, community and care that emerge through PNP, Race concerns theories that are pathologising records of ‘unsafe intercourse’ or medication usage between males that have intercourse with guys. Rather, he takes seriously the kinds of sociality that emerge through PNP aided by the goal of ‘equipping individuals with additional mindful methods of navigating them’ (269).

The intake of illicit medications such as for example crystal methamphetamine and GHB during PNP activities or ‘extended sessions’ is a vital explanation these are generally placed being a general public health concern. Race provides an analysis that is nuanced of usage of these activities, emphasising that they’re utilized to enhance and produce brand brand brand new bodily capacities that play a role in the emergence of unique kinds of sociality and experimentation. For instance, in discussing methamphetamine that is crystal Race indicates:

The drug … delays ejaculation, often indefinitely, which implies that ‘getting down’ is certainly not always the privileged purpose of the intimate encounter. Rather, what’s respected could be the ability to keep give attention to different intimate opportunities and tasks, additionally the endurance or stamina expected to maintain these erotic engagements.

Race presents a picture that is complex of kinds of experimentation or play stated in PNP.

As he argues, extended sessions may be recognized being an enactment that is specific of ethic of experimentality founded through PNP (268). While frequently focussed on play and pleasure, Race is careful to acknowledge that pleasure and desired medication results aren’t fully guaranteed, instead they’ve been experiments that may get array. As an example, individuals may eat crystal methamphetamine but struggle to produce a satisfying intimate encounter leading to loneliness and frustration as opposed to playful social connection. Drug effects then, are comprehended to be co-constituted by the infrastructures that produce PNP – technologies, items and surroundings that really must be precisely accounted for in almost any tries to research or elsewhere engage this sociability that is sexual associated drug consumption.

The content convincingly shows that PNP is best grasped being a ‘form of play and intimate conjecture in which guys try out physical opportunities to make more expansive experiences of enjoyment and masculinity’ (269). The focus on the part of technologies, things and surroundings throws up a challenge for wellness educators and damage decrease more generally speaking.

how can wellness advertising build relationships a completely emergent training co-produced by a complex selection of forces?

For Race, wellness training has to establish mode of engagement providing you with individuals with an increase of capacity that is agential navigate the infrastructures that produce PNP. For Race,

This will indicate a form that is different of education than that which addresses itself towards the sovereign, intentional, rational-choice star, since agency is recognized right here, much less a matter of specific sovereignty over circumstances, but as a thing that emerges from provisional relations and accessories. (269)

This might be a type of wellness training for which individuals become sensitised to your emergent capabilities regarding the forces, including medications, getting back together these infrastructures. Notably, it is a method that does maybe not pre-emptively place non-normative wellness techniques such as for instance PNP nearly as good or bad but alternatively acknowledges and works together with the pleasures and dangers that emerge from their website.

That is a typical example of conceptually and methodologically unique research with crucial implications for scientists, wellness educators and damage decrease more generally. Race efficiently contends that by going to to your infrastructures creating – and forms of sociality growing from – PNP, our company is better in a position to develop effective and responses that are ethical them.