Bridging from Bisexual Men to Women
Wives, girlfriends and alibis.

Related Sections

Gay Mundo Africa

Contents

A. Overview 1. Background 2. Literature Review 3. Findings — 3.1 Background of Respondents 3.2 Areas of Operation / Known MSM Sites 3.3 Factors Influencing MSM in Ghana 3.4 STI/HIV/AIDS and MSM 3.5 Health Problems Associated with MSM 3.6 Bridging from Bisexual Men to Women 4. Conclusions and Recommendations 5. Appendix: Terms, Survey, References 6. Acknowledgements 7. Abbreviations and Acronyms

Another important finding is that while 81 or 54% of the respondents described themselves as exclusively gay, 69 or 46% described themselves as bisexual.

Female sexual partners of the bisexual men include wives 16 (10.7%), girlfriends 47 (31.3%), casual sex partners 24 (16.1%) and commercial sex workers 2 (1.3%).

It should also be noted that some of these men also have multiple female sex partners, and some who are separated from their wives still have sex with them.

Some of the men also keep female partners as a way of removing any suspicion that they are gay.

— "I like to have both vaginal and anal sex because two ways are better than one, and people will not suspect what is going on."

While 62 (89.9%) of bisexuals know that they can infect their female partners, and vice versa, only 21 or 30.4% say they always use condoms for vaginal sex.

Table 28: - Use of condom for vaginal sex and gay anal sex

When the use of condoms is compared, respondents in general were more likely to always use condoms for vaginal sex (30.4%) than for gay anal sex (11.6%). By the same token, they were less likely never to use it for vaginal sex (13%) than for gay anal sex (21.1%). These are indications that respondents believe that anal sex is by far safer than vaginal sex. Nevertheless, a very significant number of bisexual men have a very significant amount of unprotected sex with women.