Love in activism

care and biosocial activism in a serodifferent gay relationship

Abstract

This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a serodifferent gay relationship and its social dynamics entangled in family and mutual aid networks, secrecy, care and biosocial activism. Moving beyond biomedical conceptions of risk management and HIV prevention, without necessarily denying them, I propose to make the discussions about these marital experiences more complex through other nuances. I mobilize ethnographic data with activists from the HIV and AIDS movement in Rio Grande do Norte, specifically, from a couple of serodifferent interlocutors. I realized that the double moral burden involving homosexuality and HIV produced different dilemmas and reconfigurations of the interlocutors' marital experiences with their social and affective networks and, mainly, through the resignification of concepts such as care and biosocial activism. Therefore, recognizing the particularities of this form of relationship four decades after the epidemic continues to be relevant, above all, due to the recognition of its complexity in multiple social dimensions.