An object-oriented analysis of social apps, syringes and ARTs within gay Taiwanese men’s chemsex practices

Critical drug studies explore the discursive and material dimensions of sexualised drug use to overcome individualised and often pathologising notions such as risk, safety, responsibility and pleasure. This article uses an object-oriented approach—following the use and flow of social apps, syringes and antiretroviral therapy (ART)—to analyse gay and bisexual Taiwanese men’s drug practices. Interview data from fourteen men are used to articulate how objects were brought into gay and bisexual men’s chemsex repertoire in ways that shaped individuals’ safe-sex communication, intimacy maintenance and stigma negotiation. An object-oriented approach scrutinises risk, pleasure and identities in assemblages of the human and nonhuman, and can help identify new opportunities for implementing health promotion interventions and policies.