How Do We Define MSM?

It seems like the most straightforward of definitions.  We’re not talking about whether a man identifies as bisexual, gay, straight, etc., just men who have sex with men. 

But this question arose for me today at the MSM pre-conference.  I attended a session wherein results of a survey among MSM in Britain were presented.  Among criteria that had to have been met to have been included in the survey data, a man had to answer “yes” to one of the following two questions:  Have you had sex with a man in the last year? and/or Have you ever had sex with a man?  If the answer to one or both was “yes,”the data was admissible.  If the answer was “no” to both, the participant was excluded. 

Important to note that another criterion was that aparticipant be 18 years of age or older. Most of the participants hooked into the survey through the website Gaydar.  Others, to a significantly lesser extent, were found through clinics and community organizations.

So, in a hypothetical situation, if a man had sex (and “sex” was not clearly defined as far as I could tell) with a man once in 1996 and had previously and since had sex only with women (or no sex at all), his survey would be included.  But if a man, say, identifies as gay but has never had (or has not yet had) sex with a man, his survey was not counted. 

It is not my intention in any way to call this survey flawed.  The surveyors defined their parameters, seemed often and acutely aware of the limitations of the survey, and the results (not yet analyzed) were very interesting.  But I think it poses an interesting question about a label - MSM - that maybe seems otherwise more straightforward than straight, gay, bisexual, etc.:  How do we define MSM and does a young gay man or a man who has only relatively recently identified as gay, who has not had a sexual experience with another man but intends to eventually (whether sooner or later), not count in that grouping? And, of course, this question engenders other questions along similar lines.

Also, two moments of the day that stuck out for me:  

1.  David Wilson, of the World Bank, used the phrase “remorseless execution focus.”  I think I like it.  It’s kind of appealing.  Highly rhetorical (significantly detracting from its sexiness), and I’m not sure exactly what it means, but it stuck in my head (and I’ve already started using it myself).

2.  Peter Piot,the Executive Director of UNAIDS, said, “AIDS is opening a small hole in this wall of homophobia.”  This gave me pause.  Is this true?  For whom is this just the opposite?  Is it cause and effect like that?  Is it AIDS itself?  Is it activism that has arisen around AIDS?  And temporally, if this statement was far from true 20 years ago, is it true now…or vice versa…and for whom?