title: Paradoxes of an assimilation politics: media production of gay male belonging in the Canadian 'vital public' from the tainted blood scandal to the present.
abstract: Canadian media discourses on gay men's sexuality and political inclusion serve as a rich site for understanding current tensions in debates on sexual citizenship under biopolitical regimes. This paper addresses how public health reporting in one health news media source, Canada's leading newspaper The Globe and Mail, discursively produced contiguous understandings of the moral, social and biological dimensions of gay male subjectivity and sexuality within the context of HIV risk discourses. Specifically, we critically examine the newspaper's coverage of what constitutes the public good when national blood supplies are at stake. Our analysis reveals a profound dichotomy in which gay men - as sexual subjects and subjects of rights - are recalibrated following the political and economic investments of bourgeoisie communities of interest. However encompassing the securing of legal social rights might be, gay men's sexuality is resistant to a reformatting under a heteronormative regulatory regime, as the social traumas caused by HIV continue to cast a shadow on sexual behaviours that purportedly risk leakage of contamination into the body politic.
authors.affiliation: a School of Social Work , Smith College , Northampton , USA.
authors.forename: Rory
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Crath
authors.affiliation: b Department of Sociology , University of Toronto , Toronto , Canada.
authors.forename: Cristian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rangel
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology; D063509:Homophobia / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018451:Homosexuality, Male / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011057:Politics; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D061108:Social Media; D012938:Social Perception
keywords: Canada; Citizenship; HIV/AIDS; blood donation; gay men; responsibility; risk