About Staying Negative

Staying Negative aims to emotionally engage, inspire and facilitate imagination in sexual health practices. The campaign profiles the real life stories of gay, bisexual and trans men who have sex with men (MSM). Men talk about all aspects of their life from coming out, relationships, sexuality and a broad range of other topics. While HIV and safe sex is an important part of all stories, it is not the exclusive focus.

Prior HIV prevention campaigns have traditionally focused on providing gay men with information that will encourage them to adopt safe sex behaviours. In reality, safe sex practices are influenced by a whole range of environmental and cultural factors. The campaign also provides an opportunity for HIV positive men to talk about their lives and discuss how their strategies to staying HIV negative were not successful. We understand that there is more than one way practice safe sex and adopt healthcare seeking behaviours, so let's be creative about it!

There are no real criteria for participants other than that they are MSM and happy to have their stories appear as part of the campaign. In addition to the personal stories, the website provides information on HIV/AIDS, sexual health, relationships and broad of the other relevant topics including domestic violence, drugs and alcohol and depression.

Hygiene

Personal hygiene, including grooming, is just that- personal. Some guys are really particular about this but we need to keep in mind that some guys aren’t. You can only maintain your hygiene standards for your preference and respect others for theirs. If you hook up with someone then the most important thing is that you are both having a good time.

 

Keep it clean

It’s a good idea to empty your bowels by taking a shit half an hour to an hour before you have anal sex. Of course, sex isn’t always necessarily planned but guys should understand if you wanted to ‘pop to the bathroom’ before things get too hot and heavy.

Watch out for internal cleaning products as the chemicals can be quite harsh on the inside of your arse. Always wash with a little bit of soap, lots of water and use unscented, moistened adult wipes. Anal sex involves sticking your cock inside someone’s arse (or vice versa) so at the end of the day you may very likely end up with some nasty spunk on your junk. This is going to happen from time to time and is quite normal, so just be an adult about it, clean it up and keep going!

It's also a good idea to trim your fingernails so that dirty doesn't get underneath or to ensure they don't cause cuts or tears around the arse if you're fingering someone. Some guys like to use gloves to keep their hands clean as well as reduce the risk of HIV or STI transmission.

Tell us your story

Tell us your story

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Come and tell us your story! We would love to hear from you! If you want to find out a little more about how it all works, give Jessie a call at VAC on (03) 9865 6700, or email staying.negative@vac.org.au