‘They won’t wear condoms, so why would we expect them to wear masks?’: Social media, ‘circuit queens’ and the ‘gay civil war’ during COVID-19

This article examines the Instagram account @GaysoverCOVID which publicly exposed gay men who appeared to disregard COVID-related restrictions during the pandemic. While outwardly concerned to hold these men accountable, the article analyses posts and comments published on the platform to show how criticism focused on the appearance and perceived ‘promiscuity’ of the men exposed. The article draws on the work of Douglas Crimp (1989) to analyse this ‘moralism’ as a symptom of ‘melancholia’, a form of repressed mourning. It shows how the COVID pandemic has brought contested understandings of ‘safer sex’ to the surface, underpinning a set of anxieties concerning the loss of a ‘responsible’ gay subjecthood based on condom use. These anxieties were projected onto the figure of the ‘circuit queen’ in ways that reproduced long-standing discourses of ‘slut-shaming’. To leave this moralism behind, the author argues for greater attention to the affective dimensions of the transition from condom to PrEP-based HIV prevention.