Poppers, queer sex and a Canadian crackdown : examining the experiences of alkyl nitrite use among young sexual minority men
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Poppers (i.e., alkyl nitrites) are commonly used during sex by gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (sexual minority men). Poppers act as vasodilators when inhaled, resulting in a sensation some users refer to as a ‘head rush’, while also relaxing smooth muscles and facilitating penetration during anal sex. In 2013, Health Canada initiated a crackdown on poppers products. The current study aims to examine the experiences and perspectives of young sexual minority men who use poppers in the context of the federal crackdown. Methods: We draw on 50 semi-structured, in-depth interviews collected from 2018 to 2019 in Vancouver with sexual minority men ages 15–30. We used a combination of both inductive and deductive techniques during data analysis to identify several key themes. Results: Participants’ discussions reflected positive effects of poppers use relating to sexual pleasure and bodily control. Participants used poppers to enhance pleasure, reduce pain and injury (e.g., from tears in anal tissue), and improve their capacity to “let go” and enjoy sex. Conversely, some participants described a loss of control resulting from poppers use, including experiences of dependency on poppers for sexual pleasure. Poppers were also discussed as linked to participants’ personal identities as sexual minority men. In the context of the federal crackdown, uncertainty about the health effects of poppers use was high, while knowledge to safely and comfortably procure poppers in Canada was, at times, low. Conclusion: Poppers play an important role in the experience of sexual pleasure and the ability to reduce harms during anal sex. Unfortunately, the current crackdown restricts access to a safe and regulated supply while creating uncertainty and confusion about poppers use. We call on the federal government to bring the voices of sexual minority men to the forefront in the revisiting of the federal crackdown on poppers in Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".