Queer sexual health: The need for inclusive health care and education
By: Joseph S.
I remember the look on the doctor’s face when I told him that I had sex with other men. He quickly looked down at the carpet, as if to compose himself, before he looked back up in my general direction.
He was an older gentleman: a good doctor who I’d seen before, but now he seemed unable to make direct eye contact with me.
After a brief pause, he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and told me that oral sex should only be performed with a condom on. I sat there in an uncomfortable silence while I waited for him to write up the note that would allow me to have a blood and urine test.
At this time, I was a young man of 19, and doing what I had thought was the right thing by going to the clinic in the first place.
Instead, I left the GP clinic that day feeling awkward and embarrassed. Going back in a week’s time to get my test results, let alone returning every three to six months, was the last thing that I wanted to do.
Due to this experience, I didn’t go back to the clinic as often as I should have. The lingering self-disgust that I felt leaving the clinic each time is something that I still remember to this day, eight years later.
How do you promote healthy habits within the queer community when good intentions are met with such obvious discomfort from others?
In 2024, sexual health checks were promoted by the Australian Government through their ‘Beforeplay’ campaign. The campaign received mixed reviews, with some hailing it as a progressive step in comparison to previous attempts. By that, I think people mean that it’s not as cringe-inducing as previous attempts at sex-based campaigns for young people (looking at you, milkshake consent ad).
To me, this can only be seen as a positive. A campaign that promotes sexual health without judgment or stigma is fantastic. According to the Department of Health and Aged Care, rates of syphilis in Australia more than doubled between 2015 and 2022.
Sexual health classes in schools tend to be basic or fear-mongering, and attempts at providing resources, like in the case of the Welcome to Sex book from last year, are met with outrage and death threats from some members of society.
It seems clear to me that the promotion of a healthy attitude towards sex is vital, and a key component to that is ensuring that all people feel comfortable in getting checked regularly.
My experiences of sex education in school were minimal. I didn’t have any sex education in primary school. And in high school, we had a few weeks of health classes that covered sex in both year eight and year nine.
In the first year, we mostly covered STIs: the different kinds and how best to prevent them. In year nine, we talked about the human body and had a lesson dedicated to putting condoms onto fake bananas.
There was minimal mention of same-sex attraction. The teacher tried to talk about it, but all it brought with was a round of jokes and laughter. She said, with the best of intentions, that one in ten people experienced same-sex attraction and it was a normal thing. This only started a round of the loudest kids guessing which two kids in class were gay.
As a closeted teenager, I was very happy that I wasn’t one of the guesses.
As I was writing this article, I asked some of the queer people in my social circle about their relationship with sexual health checks.
Not everyone liked the question, but some were surprisingly honest with me – saying that, while it’s not a pleasant experience, they try and get it done few times a year. Of this small sample, those that attended a queer-run clinic or facility were more likely to book it in every three months.
It’s good to keep in mind that I only spoke to cisgender gay men and in a casual way. I didn’t branch out to strangers, so these accounts are not encompassing of the queer experience as a whole. Also, given the personal nature of the question, they could have flat-out lied to me, and they would have had every right to do that.
Of the people I asked, most attended their local bulk-billing GP for sexual health checks. Their consensus was that this was not always a comfortable experience, but they knew that it was important to get into a regular habit.
Years after my GP experience as a 19-year-old, having moved out of home and a bit closer to the city, I came across Thorne Harbour Health – a specialised LGBTQ+ clinic that, among other things, runs sexual health checks. I arrived with the same trepidation and anxious feeling that I had for other appointments. It’s fair to say that I am not the most confident person, but I found that my nerves were quickly alleviated by the nurse.
The nurse and I could joke around with each other. He asked me the standard questions without a hint of judgment in his voice, and he did an excellent job of distracting me while taking my bloods. And best of all, they have a “no news is good news” policy about getting results. Meaning that if you don’t hear anything after two weeks, then you don’t need to book an appointment to hear your results.
I think that it’s important to sing high praises of places like Thorne Harbour Health because not only does it give them credit where it’s deserved, but it highlights that there aren’t enough clinics like them.
These queer-inclusive clinics tend to be a luxury afforded to those in the big cities, but we all deserve a sense of normalcy around sexual health checks, which enables us to get tested regularly and with relative ease.
I believe that, in order to promote sexual health checks, the experience needs to be as comfortable as possible.
The sexual health check that I had as a 19-year-old was enough to make me neglect going back. It’s easy to say now in my late twenties that I should have pushed through the discomfort, but that’s only in hindsight. Compare your first time venturing into a sex shop, how uncomfortable and awkward you felt, to doing it later in life.
It’s easier for something to become routine when your first experience is pleasant. When you’re dealing with prejudice from homophobic doctors who clearly don’t want to be assisting you, it attaches shame to something that should be accessible to all.