“The only safe way to find a partner”: Rethinking sex and risk online in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

Despite the Internet’s global importance as a sex-seeking venue for men who have sex with men (MSM) and other sexual and gender minorities, little is known about this topic in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, existing public health research offers limited insight into the socio-cultural aspects of sexuality and how they articulate with patterns in online sex-seeking behavior. In 2015, we conducted survey and ethnographic research with 105 sexual and gender minorities in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Nearly half of survey respondents reported finding partners primarily online. Three quarters reported having found at least one partner online. Interviews with 24 of the survey participants revealed that a primary motivation for using online venues was that they allowed for the preservation and management of discretion and anonymity, permitting users to avoid discrimination and violence. While secondary to their strategies for managing such social risk, participants also reported using the profile features of online venues to filter out partners they perceived as presenting a risk to their sexual health. Though interview participants perceived online venues as providing a degree of protection against potential stigma and violence in offline contexts, survey data showed that over one quarter of participants had experienced extortion and/or blackmail by sexual partners they met online. By taking into account the socio-cultural context of sexuality and sexual activity in Abidjan, these findings highlight the disjuncture between essentialist notions of MSM who use the Internet to find sex partners as a universal, at-risk group and the complexity of sexual and gender minorities’ experiences.

Introduction

Online sex-seeking venues are an increasingly global phenomenon that shape the intimate experiences of how individuals, including sexual and gender minorities, meet and communicate with their potential sexual partners (Brown, Maycock, & Burns, 2005; Davis, Hart, Bolding, Sherr, & Elford, 2006; Gagné, 2012; Gudelunas, 2012; Mowlabocus, 2012; Nodin, Valera, Ventuneac, Maynard, & Carballo-Diéguez, 2011; Race, 2010, 2015a, 2015b). With the increased popularity of such venues, including the proliferation of new mobile applications equipped with global positioning systems (GPS) such as Grindr, public health scholars have explored the relationship between online sex-seeking behavior and HIV risk among men who have sex with men (MSM) (Benotsch, Kalichman, & Cage, 2002; Chiasson et al., 2007; Grov, Breslow, Newcomb, Rosenberger, & Bauermeister, 2014; Mustanski, Lyons, & Garcia, 2011; Rosenberg, 2008). At the same time, epidemiologists and behavioral scientists have focused on online venues as sites for the implementation of online HIV prevention programming (Rosser & Horvath, 2007; Saxton, Dickson, & Hughes, 2013; Zou et al., 2013), namely the promotion of individual behavioral change.

While timely, scholars have pointed out this field’s tendency to pay little attention to online sex-seeking behavior beyond the realm of HIV, framing online venues as inherently risky environments that facilitate an increase in risky sexual behaviors (Pingel, Bauermeister, Johns, Eisenberg, & Leslie-Santana, 2013; Albury & Byron, 2016). Souleymanov & Huang (2016) argue that such research assumes a stable, epidemiological risk category of “men who use the Internet to seek sex with men”, offering little insight into the ways local dynamics – such as issues of discretion and anonymity, the visibility of sexual and gender minority spaces, and manifestations of violence and discrimination – shape motivations for seeking partners online and experiences, including risk reduction strategies, in such venues. Such research places increased scrutiny on individual behavior, whereby choices and behavior put one in harm’s way, while largely ignoring the structural factors that shape risk and vulnerability. Furthermore, despite increased broadband Internet access and use of smart phone technology outside of the global North (Kende, 2014), relatively little research has examined these new forms of communication among MSM and other sexual and gender minorities in sub-Saharan Africa, though some recent work suggests that use of online venues is widespread (Henry, Yomb, Fugon, & Spire, 2015; Stahlman et al., 2015; Stahlman et al., 2016). While research into the relationship between online sex-seeking experiences and HIV vulnerability in African contexts is needed, current paradigms of risk dominant in public health research on this phenomenon in the global North will fall short of capturing the Southern socio-cultural contexts in which risk is understood, negotiated, and managed. As research on the relationship between HIV risk behavior and online sex-seeking venues expands into new contexts, including sub-Saharan Africa, it will be vital to avoid the “standardization of sexual alterity” (Lorway, 2017) in ways that obscure the complex lived realities that could provide a fuller picture of risk and vulnerability and how they vary across socio-cultural contexts.

In this descriptive paper, we present findings from a survey and ethnographic study of experiences with and attitudes towards online sex-seeking venues among branchés – a local term used to identify a wide variety of sexual and gender minorities in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. While existing research largely focused in the global North has considered how online communication between MSM is related to individual sexual risk behavior, such as a greater number of sex partners or increased condomless anal sex (Bolding, Davis, Hart, Sherr, & Elford, 2005; Carballo-Diéguez, Miner, Dolezal, Rosser, & Jacoby, 2006; Liau, Millett, & Marks, 2006; Ogilvie et al., 2008; Young, Szekeres, & Coates, 2013), we explore how online communication creates and reflects forms of vulnerability that extend beyond patterns in individual sexual risk behavior that have received so much attention as of late. We show that online spaces can be sites of a great deal of caution and restraint, where multiple forms of risk are managed and negotiated simultaneously. We suggest a more nuanced approach to risk where online sex-seeking behavior is not conflated with HIV risk by paying attention to the risks that research participants consider salient (Pingel et al., 2013). In doing so, we highlight the disjuncture between shallow conceptualizations of sexual and gender minorities who use the Internet to find sexual partners and the more nuanced and complex realities of sex and sexuality, HIV risk, and violence. We pay particular attention to the ways in which overlapping forms of vulnerability among sexual and gender minorities shape their experiences of online sex-seeking venues, including their motivations for finding partners online, their partner screening practices, and their experiences with interpersonal forms of violence. By foregrounding these experiences, we highlight the socio-cultural context “in which risk is understood, lived, embodied and negotiated” (Lupton, 2013, 36) and argue for a more contextualized analysis of what constitutes the risk associated with online sex-seeking behavior.

Methods

The setting and study

This paper is part of a larger ethnographic project focused on sexual and gender minorities in Abidjan in the context of the global scale-up of HIV testing among MSM and other key populations. Central to this scale-up has been the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a central figure among the global health institutions that emerged in the era of HIV treatment programs¹. Beginning in 2010, the first author conducted five years of research focused on sexual and gender minority HIV peer educators and activists and the broader community they are charged with counting, serving, and referring in Abidjan (Thomann, 2016b). This research, largely focused in local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and HIV clinics whose operating budgets were tied to international donors, interrogated the enumerative logic of evidence-based interventions and argued that this logic and its material practices have resulted in questionable coverage of sexual and gender minorities in current research and programming (Thomann, 2016a).

Once the center of the epidemic in West Africa, HIV prevalence and incidence are on the decline among Côte d’Ivoire’s general population (UNAIDS, 2016). Prevalence among sexual and gender minorities, however, remains high, with 18% of MSM in Abidjan living with HIV² (Aho et al., 2014; Hakim et al., 2015). Rates of social media and Internet use are relatively high in Côte d’Ivoire (26.5% penetration rate) when compared to other regional neighbors (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2017), and conservative estimates show that 25% of MSM use sexual networking sites to connect with potential sexual partners (Aho et al., 2014; Hakim et al., 2015).

Although homosexuality is not criminalized in Côte d’Ivoire, and Abidjan is considered to be relatively tolerant of sexual and gender nonconformity (Kouassi, 2011), MSM report high rates of stigma and violence, including extortion and blackmail (Aho et al., 2014, Hakim et al. 2015) from sexual partners. Furthermore, sexual and gender minority groups reported a dramatic increase in state-sponsored violence following Côte d’Ivoire’s contested 2010 election, civil conflict, and eventual regime change. This spike in violence included the repeated abuse suffered by travesti sex workers at the hands of the military police and the frequent raids of Abidjan’s sexual and gender minority establishments (Thomann & Corey-Boulet, 2017). While funding from PEPFAR has garnered local NGOs serving sexual and gender minorities legitimacy internationally and domestically, these organizations have also been the targets of violence (Corey-Boulet, 2014).

Data collection

Data collection for this study included an online, anonymous survey [n=105] coupled with semi-structured interviews [n=24] with survey participants. The survey was designed to provide background information on online sexual networks. Interviews were conducted by the first author in French. We chose PlanetRomeo – an online social networking site for “gay and bi males and trans people” (https://www.planetromeo.com/en/about/) of more than 1.8 million users in 192 countries and with over 3,000 profiles in Abidjan alone – as the recruitment site of this study because it is the most widely used social networking site for branchés. A recruitment banner was placed on the Abidjan homepage for PlanetRomeo [Figure 1] and was visible to all online users in Abidjan for eight weeks between June and August of 2015. We also recruited participants offline using printed postcard-sized advertisements [Figure 2], which were placed at local NGO headquarters and two local clinics serving sexual and gender minorities.

Figure 1:

Recruitment banner placed on PlanetRomeo website

Figure 2:

Recruitment postcard – Study flyer reads: All About Me: A study on sex. We are looking for branchés like you to participate in a study about sexuality. If you are interested Matthew Thomann.

Inclusion criteria for participation in this study included self-identifying as male or travesti/transgender female, being at least 18 years old, having had oral or anal sex with a male or travesti/transgender female partner in the past year, and residing in Abidjan or its suburbs. All survey participants were required to provide informed consent, via an electronic agreement form. At the end of the survey, participants were invited to contact the first author for an in-person, semi-structured interview. The only additional inclusion criterion for the semi-structured interview was that participants must have reported during the informed consent process finding at least one partner online. Interview participants were not required to provide their signature on consent forms, as it would have been the only information linking them to the study. All interview participants have been assigned pseudonyms.

Survey questions asked about (1) demographic characteristics, (2) Internet use, (3) sexual behavior, (4) health-seeking behavior and access to HIV-related services, (5) risk perceptions and management, (6) community involvement, and (7) experiences of stigma and discrimination. Participants also reported on disclosing and asking partners’ HIV status, use of condoms during anal sex, and experiences of extortion or violence from partners found on- and offline. Participants were not forced to answer a question to move on to the next.

The interview guide focused on, but was not limited to, the following themes: (1) motivations for and process of looking for sex partners online and in other venues, (2) perceptions of one’s HIV vulnerability, (3) engagement in safer sex discussions and other risk-reduction strategies prior to the sexual encounter and the role of venue in facilitation of such interactions, (4) level of involvement with local NGOs and other branché venues such as local bars, and (5) experiences with violence and discrimination. During the interview, the first author posed questions pertaining to the motivations for and process of seeking partners online, including: Why did you choose to create an online profile to find partners?, Is it easier or more difficult to find partners this way?, How do you begin looking for partners when you sign into these sites?, and What factors are important in choosing a partner?

Analysis

Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics including frequency distributions and cross-tabulations in Stata/SE 14.1 (College Station, Texas). Interview transcripts were imported into Dedoose mixed-methods software for analysis and coded deductively and inductively to identify salient patterns while allowing themes to emerge throughout the analysis. We began with the following umbrella codes: (1) motivation for seeking partners on- and offline, (2) process of looking for and making contact with potential sexual partners, (3) risk reduction strategies by venue, (4) involvement and experiences with local NGOs and other branché venues, and (5) experiences with violence and discrimination with partners found on- and offline. Codes were applied to each transcript to identify excerpts representing each key topic, with subcodes developing as new themes emerged from the transcripts. Because the survey was anonymous and no link existed between survey and interview data, and limited demographic information was collected from interview participants, we are unable to describe similarities and differences between these two samples. Ethical approval was granted by the Institutional Review Boards of Columbia University Medical Center, Public Health Solutions and the University of Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

Results

Sample

Survey participant demographics are shown in Table 1. Seventy percent of participants were under 30 years of age. Ninety-five percent of participants identified as men, while an additional 5% identified as transgender, travesti, or women. Over half of the participants identified as homosexual/gay, while 42% identified as bisexual, and an additional 7% identified as heterosexual/straight. 10% of respondents reported that they were living with HIV, while another 9% did not know their status. Participants were generally well-educated, with 73% reporting at least some post-secondary education.

Table 1.

Characteristics from an online survey of men who have sex with men, transgender women and travestis in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (N = 105)¹

Variable (N)		Percent (n)
Age in years	19–24	25 (26)
	25–29	45 (47)
	30+	30 (32)
Gender identity	Man	95 (94)
	Woman	2 (2)
	Transgender woman/ male to female	1 (1)
	Travesti	2 (2)
Sexual orientation	Homosexual/gay	51 (51)
	Bisexual	42 (42)
	Heterosexual/straight	7 (7)
Education level	Elementary/primary school	4 (4)
	High school/secondary school	21 (20)
	Apprenticeship/Trade work training	2 (2)
	Post-secondary education/college/university	50 (48)
	Post-graduate education/Masters/Doctoral education	23 (22)
Number of lifetime male sexual partners	1–4	16 (13)
	5–9	23 (19)
	10–24	31 (26)
	25–49	12 (10)
	50–99	8 (7)
	100+	10 (8)
Number of lifetime female sexual partners	0	52 (53)
	1–4	20 (20)
	5–9	15 (15)
	10–24	12 (12)
	25–50	1 (1)
	>50	1 (1)
HIV status	Never been tested	8 (7)
	Positive	10 (9)
	Negative	81 (72)
	Never went back for results	1 (1)
Usually meet sexual partners 2	Online	46 (47)
	Offline	54 (56)
Ever met sexual partners online	Yes	73 (75)
	No	27 (28)
Met most recent sexual partner	Online	41 (36)
	Offline	59 (52)
Among those who ever met a partner online:
Asked last online partner’s HIV status	Yes	26 (20)
	No	74 (56)
Told last online partner HIV status	Yes	32 (23)
	No	68 (50)
How often ask online partners’ HIV status	Never	53 (40)
	Sometimes	20 (15)
	Often	16 (12)
	Always	12 (9)
How often tell online partners HIV status	Never	49 (36)
	Sometimes	18 (13)
	Often	15 (11)
	Always	18 (13)
Ever experienced extortion or blackmail by an online partner	Yes	28 (21)
	No	72 (54)
Ever experienced physical violence by an online partner	Yes	7 (5)
	No	93 (70)
Ever experienced sexual violence by an online partner	Yes	7 (5)
	No	93 (70)
In the past 6 months ever engaged in with an online partner:
Condom during anal sex as the passive partner	Yes	57 (43)
	No	43 (32)
Anal sex with no condom as the passive partner	Yes	15 (11)
	No	85 (64)
Condom during anal sex as the active partner	Yes	53 (40)
	No	47 (35)
Anal sex with no condom during anal sex as the active partner	Yes	13 (10)
	No	87 (65)

¹Percentages may total more than 100% due to rounding

²From the survey question “Where do you usually meet your male/travesti/transgendered sexual partners?”

Use of online sex seeking venues was widespread. 73% of survey respondents reported having had sex with at least one partner they met online, while 46% reported the Internet as the primary venue in which they find their partners. 41% reported meeting their most recent partner online. More than than half of the interview participants reported online venues as the primary locations in which they find their sexual partners.

“It’s self-preservation, I preserve my identity”: Negotiating visibility online

Twenty-two (92%) of the interview participants reported that the increased ease of finding potential sexual partners was a motivating factor for creating an online profile. Koffi, a branché in his early 20s explained it this way, “Yeah, it’s easier online than meeting someone in the street and then getting into who knows what. It’s easier online. Because someone who is on there, you already know he is branché…If he isn’t branché what would he be doing there?”

Abidjan is home to a relatively large branché milieu and is recognized regionally as a tolerant and even enjoyable place for sexual and gender minorities. Yet, over a quarter of interview participants reported that their primary motivation for using the Internet was related to their avoidance of offline contact with Abidjan’s homosocial milieu (Nguyen 2010), including two major local NGOs and a few bars and clubs catering to branché clientele. For many, these venues were not mutually exclusive. In the survey, one third of participants who usually met partners online met their last partner offline (data not shown). While the majority of participants in both the survey and the interviews reported experiences in both online sex-seeking venues and these bars and NGOs, these offline “safe spaces” felt like anything but to many branchés who avoided them entirely as they have become increasingly associated with homosexuality to those outside the branché milieu. These participants feared the visibility associated with these spaces and claimed that online venues allowed them to manage their visibility and preserve their heteromasculine reputations and identities. Alain, an unemployed branché in his late twenties, explained, “I am scared that if I go in there [headquarters of NGO] someone will happen to walk by and see me and then tell my parents. ‘We saw your son going into that fag place’ or something like that. So I am scared to step foot in there.” Yao, a branché in his early 30s, who had never set foot in the local NGOs and only begrudgingly went to branché bars, believed that “there are certain gays who ‘overdo’ it.” He explained, “I limit hanging out too much in this group. It’s self-preservation. I preserve my identity. I don’t want my family to be seen poorly or to feel uncomfortable because of me. I don’t want that, so I am very wary.” Fabrice, a branché in his late twenties and a close friend of both Alain and Yao explained this further, “I don’t like to go to branché clubs. I don’t like to go to the branché bars. I go out with my branché friends, but we just go to a straight [hétéro] place, hang out and then everyone goes home. It’s clear that I can’t meet someone like that.” Participants viewed frequenting branché bars and NGOs as having the potential to compromise their discretion, with the underlying concern that being known to be branché might invite multiple forms of violence, including forms of direct, physical violence as well as less recognizable forms of social exclusion and dehumanization. These include the very real threat of familial abandonment and social exclusion that could render young Ivoirians vulnerable to various forms of precarity, including economic instability and loss of social networks they depend on for survival.

These fears are not unfounded. The first author interviewed Alain, Yao, and Fabrice less than a year and a half after a mob of over 200 people ransacked the primary sexual and gender minority NGO serving branchés in Abidjan (Corey-Boulet, 2014). Julien, who as an HIV peer educator was a regular at NGOs and clinics, affirmed the threat of violence associated with these spaces.

Branché life in Côte d’Ivoire is serious. It’s scary. There are no words to describe it. You have to hide, you have to stay scared. Even right now, when I leave [local NGO] I am really scared. I feel like anyone could just come right up to me and attack me. “You just left [local NGO]” and beat me up. So when I leave, I walk fast, I look neither behind me, nor left or right. I look straight ahead with my head down and I walk. I try to be totally discreet.

Research participants expressed similar concerns about branché bars and clubs, particularly in the wake of the post-election crisis of 2010–2011. Shortly after the installment of Alassane Ouattara as president, branché establishments became sites of raids by the Forces Républicanes de Côte d’Ivoire (FRCI), former rebel soldiers loyal to Ouattara who manned the militarized checkpoints that dotted Abidjan in the wake of the 2010–2011 post-election. On at least three separate occasions, soldiers carrying Kalashnikov rifles entered a well-known local bar, forcing those they identified as effeminate, including travestis, into a military cargo van parked in front of the bar and insisting they would only be released upon payment of a bribe. This series of raids led many to avoid this and other branché establishments, fearing that they could be arbitrarily detained and subjected to violence, humiliation, and potential outing to their non-branché networks. The increased surveillance of offline venues, such as bars and NGOs, shaped some participants’ motivations for finding partners online. The fear of being seen, and even potentially detained, in these spaces shaped people’s willingness to frequent them.

Though many branchés highlighted strategies to ensure their social and physical safety in offline contexts, participants also developed strategies to maximize their discretion and anonymity in online spaces. Yao, who never posted photos revealing his face, avoided users who post photos to their profile, believing that they are unconcerned with their visibility and thus present a risk he is unwilling to take. He explained it this way, “I don’t like profiles with too many images. I prefer those that are anonymous, without photos because they must be more discreet than people who put [their photos] up. I don’t want to meet some Romeo star.” Yao also used the GPS feature of online venues to ensure that the potential partner did not live too close to his family home. He explained, “There are often small characteristics that attract me to a person. First, there is the distance. I don’t like people who are too close, like less than 2 km from where I live.” In addition to filtering out those who lived ‘too close’ to his home, Yao used profiles features to identify individuals whose indiscretion he found off-putting – those he called ‘Romeo stars’ – and took measures to exclude them from his searches. He explained it like this:

I look at the part where they put sexual orientation. When they put gay I am not interested. I prefer bi. Bisexuals…I figure that someone who puts bisexual goes out with men and women. So he protects his private life. So, for me, I think that he will be at least 80% discreet. Because if he goes out with girls, he will always be looking to hide it [his bisexuality]. So, already, I know he is discreet. On the other hand, when you see someone who puts gay, I figure that he entirely embraces his sexual orientation, in front of everyone. He is not ashamed to identify himself as gay.

Thus, participants who avoided offline branché spaces often turned to online venues to find partners while remaining discreet and anonymous, fearing that their presence in known branché spaces could result in forms of surveillance, such as being observed entering a known branché venue or being detained by security forces. Furthermore, they employed strategies to mitigate potential risks in online spaces as well, using profile features such as location and stated sexual orientation to avoid partners that they perceived as threats to their discretion and anonymity.

Filtering out risky partners: Negotiating safe sex on- and offline

Many participants saw online venues as a way to reduce not only social risks associated with unwanted forms of visibility, but also their risk for HIV and sexual transmitted infections (STIs). While some interview participants did describe in-person encounters that took place shortly after meeting someone online, many explained that online conversations often take place over many weeks, allowing them the opportunity to discuss safer sex and negotiate sexual encounters prior to meeting their potential partner. Furthermore, the site’s profile features enabled users to identify the safe sex preferences of potential partners, including frequency of condom use. In his extensive work on online sex-seeking venues, Race has argued that HIV-negative men have become increasingly adept at using the filtering features of online sex-seeking venues and the new possibilities that come along with such advances in these technologies (Race 2010, 12). For example, the “Safer Sex” category of PlanetRomeo profiles includes three options: “Always”, “Negotiable and “Never.” Interview participants often cited this category as one of the features they looked at on a potential partner’s profile. It provided a key criterion that would determine whether or not they engaged with the user. Yannick, a branché in his late twenties said, “There are people who put [on their profile] that condom use is ‘negotiable’. Negotiable in relation to what? What exactly is it that is up for negotiation? Negotiable because of money? That means you’re a prostitute. So that doesn’t interest me.” While Yannick’s assertion that PlanetRomeo users who suggest that condom use is “negotiable” are engaged in sex work was likely overstated (it could, for example, reference serosorting, the process of selecting partners based on HIV status), it suggests that online interfaces offer possibilities for filtering and sorting partners based on perceptions of risk. Online sex-seeking venues enable new forms of “self-protection” (Race 2010, 12), whereby users gravitate towards particular features of a potential partner’s profile which they use to decide whether or not to initiate contact or respond to advances. As argued in the previous section, these protective factors extend to social risk as well.

Importantly, PlanetRomeo does not include a profile category for users to disclose their HIV status. As shown in Table 1, 26% of survey respondents reported asking the HIV status of their last partner met online and 32% reported disclosing their own status with the last partner they met online. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they “never” ask about the status of online partners and 49% said they never disclose their own status with partners met online. This did not strike interview participants as incommensurable with self-protection, as they explained that their consistent use of condoms mitigated the need to ask about potential partners’ serostatus and to disclose their own. As shown in Table 1, only 15% of respondents who had an online partner in the past 6 months reported having condomless anal sex as the passive partner and 13% reported having condomless anal sex as the active partner. Interview participants viewed HIV disclosure and condom negotiation as redundant, as they “always used condoms anyway.” When asked if he asks his potential partners about their HIV status, Alain explained that he did not ask the question because, “I am already asking the person if they use condoms or not to be totally healthy. When I see that someone says that they use condoms, it’s reassuring.” He went on to explain this further:

I’ve never really had to negotiate “do you use condoms”, because for me, it’s obvious that I am never going to sleep with someone that I hook up with online without condoms. It’s a hook up! You can’t take the risk. At the beginning, I wanted lots of hook ups. So I had to protect myself. Even if he doesn’t have AIDS he could still have a STI. That will mess me up for two weeks. So normally, I show up and we use a condom. If I get there and the person doesn’t like condoms and says that they don’t want it, we don’t negotiate. I just say “I can’t.”

Instead of explicit discussion and negotiations of condom use, HIV-negative participants reported that they used PlanetRomeo’s “Safer Sex” feature to filter out “risky” partners. Julien explained it this way, “If I see ‘never’ [for condom use] I just keep going. I don’t even bother.” Philippe, an HIV-negative branché in his late 20s explained,

Those aren’t the type of things that you negotiate. Even before you see them in person there is no need to discuss that. When I arrive, the person has already asked me what I am looking for. They know that it’s an active [top] that is coming. And I don’t think I have to say that we are going to use condoms. After we’ve messed around, I take my condom out and I put it on my dick. That’s it. I don’t negotiate. If he doesn’t want it, we stop. There is no negotiation.

Patrick, a 36 year-old HIV-positive participant reported that he and other HIV-positive individuals openly identify themselves as positive in online venues, sometimes in the pursuit of finding another seropositive partner with whom they can have unprotected sex.

In Abidjan, I have met two people who put their name and then HIV-positive next to it. And they are searching for a partner. And I talked to them and I realized that they put it because they think that they might meet another HIV-positive person that they have can have unprotected sex with. So, I educated them on the idea that this can create other complications and I think they understood. We talked about it for like a whole week.

Patrick explained that he believed PlanetRomeo should continue the practice of not asking about HIV status as part of its profile features, fearing that it would lead to increased stigma against people living with HIV. “No, that [adding HIV status to online profiles] would be discriminatory. It would be very discriminating for people who are HIV-positive I think. Not everyone is ready to announce their HIV status.” Instead, he disclosed his status and counted on others to disclose theirs before they would meet up for sex. “I never ask. I always tell them. And I figure that if they have it too they will understand that they can tell me too. So I don’t need to ask every time.”

While recent research has paid some attention to the protective factors associated with online sex-seeking behavior, including serosorting, it has more consistently emphasized the inherent risk associated with finding partners online, namely number of sexual partners and condomless anal sex. HIV-negative participants reported filtering out partners based on their stated preferred condom use, exercising caution and restraint when they perceive partners as presenting a risk to their sexual health. As shown in Table 1, 71% of survey respondents reported that they rarely or never inquired about the HIV status of partners they met online and most interview participants explained that HIV status disclosure was not a key part of their self-protection practices; rather they highlighted that their insistence on condom use outweighed their need to know their potential partner’s status.

“The only safe way to find a partner”: Internet, blackmail, and violence

In their research on Internet use and HIV risk among young gay men in the United States, Bauermeister and colleagues have suggested that concern for sexual health was secondary to the more primary concern of physical safety (Bauermeister, Giguere, Carballo-Diéguez, Ventuneac, & Eisenberg, 2010). In our study, participants generally saw online sex-seeking venues as playing a protective role in their sex lives, allowing them to filter out partners who could present a risk to their discretion and their sexual health. These perceptions about risk mitigation extended to threats of violence as well. While many interview participants found partners online because they believed online venues facilitated discretion and anonymity, and therefore safety, more than one quarter of survey participants who had ever found a partner online reported extortion or blackmail and 14% reported experiencing sexual or physical violence with a partner they had met online (see Table 1). The first author’s ethnographic research (Thomann, 2016a,b; Thomann & Corey-Boulet, 2017) among branchés between 2010 and 2012 revealed similar patterns. The following narrative is from field notes recorded in October of 2012.

While having dinner with Fabrice and Maurius, we saw Ahmed pass the maquis [open air bar] and called him over to share our meal. Ahmed seemed agitated – wringing his hands, glancing over his shoulder, and speaking in halting sentences. Pulling up a chair, he launched into a story about getting mugged by someone he met on PlanetRomeo the night before. He’d been speaking with his attacker for approximately six months but had been hesitant to meet up with the man. He too had heard the stories of scammers on the site, citing the warning that a local NGO had posted on Facebook the month before about the dangers of online hook ups. He told us that the only reason he’d decided to meet up with the man that evening was because he had begun providing information that only a branché would know to reassure Ahmed. The man spoke of a local NGO and said that he knew “le presi,” [the president] as many refer to the organization’s Executive Director. “It worked,” Ahmed said, shaking his head. When he met the man in a public garden where they’d planned to hook up, three of the man’s friends came out from behind some bushes and approached Ahmed aggressively. Ahmed looked to the man for some reaction and received only “a cold, empty stare” in return. The men pinned him up against a wall, fished in his pocket for his phone and wallet, and ripped his chain necklace off his neck. “I wanted to fight back,” Ahmed said, but the men told him that they would slit his throat if he screamed. “They said that I was lucky,” he told us. The men told Ahmed that they usually “beat and strip fags” and leave them in the street, alone, naked and beaten.

Stories like this have been ubiquitous in Abidjan since the first author began his research in 2010. Despite the fact that many interview participants cited the anonymity and relative discretion of the Internet as a motivator for finding partners online, many of those same participants, as well as others who did not or were not currently finding their partners online, saw the Internet as a site of social risk. Wilfried, a university student in his late twenties explained,

You never know who you are going to meet. You could end up meeting someone from your family…I am afraid to meet someone I know. Especially to meet someone I know who may not even be branché. Because there are a lot of scammers. There are people who pretend to be branché but who aren’t. And imagine that you fall upon a friend, or someone from the neighborhood. They are going to say, “Well look here, he is branché.” And then he can start to blackmail you. To say give me this thing or I am going to go and tell your family. Or, go around the neighborhood saying, “That guy is a fag.” I couldn’t stand that.

So, on the one hand, branchés see finding partners online as a way to reduce the likelihood of being victimized and on the other, they recognize that the Internet provides a platform for blackmail and violence. Rihanna, a travesti in her early twenties who often came to the headquarters of a local NGO to meet with friends and to access the Internet, including her online profiles, had experienced such an attack.

I met someone on [Planet] Romeo who wanted to see me the same day. I took my taxi and we met up…We talked and then another guy came and I thought that was weird and they jumped me. I struggled with them because I wanted my wallet. They hit me, and took my bag and my telephone but not my wallet. And they left me somewhere nearby.

Many participants reported not having access to safe spaces for sexual encounters, such as one’s home. The public nature of the online hook ups described by many interviewees further compounds the vulnerability and lack of safety they experienced with their online partners. Ange, an NGO employee, had also heard of many of these stories and was always on guard for possible attackers. He relayed a story about a friend who had found himself in a situation strikingly similar to Ahmed and Rihanna.

My friend met this guy on Romeo and when he met up with him the guy said, “Let’s find a spot where you can go down on me.” So the guy took him down this dark alley, that wasn’t visible to the street, and there he took his telephone and called a friend who was nearby and they robbed him. They had it all planned. They took his phone, they stripped him, they took his shoes and his money. They took everything and they left him without [money for] transportation. Nude! They left him in his underwear. This guy and a lot of guys on Romeo are on the site without a photo. When you chat with them, they tell you where to meet them and then they jump you. I don’t mess with profiles that don’t have photos.

Similar to the ways in which participants filtered out “risky” sexual partners to reduce their risk for HIV, participants used features of online profiles to filter out and reduce their risk for violence, extortion, and blackmail. Some participants believed that online venues allowed them more power over the management of their own identity. Julien explained that meeting a partner online allows users to collect background information on their potential partners.

On the Internet, I am able to talk to people first. I get his contact information. And then I try to get his Facebook. Most of the people I meet [on PlanetRomeo] I’ve also seen their Facebook. If they won’t share their Facebook I don’t mess with them because you don’t know what is going to happen after. This person could rob you, beat you up, hurt you and then you don’t have any information on him. But now at least you’ve got something big on him. You have some information on him. Things like where he lives, these are his parents, his family. That’s my strategy at least.

Perceptions of risk among research participants were not uniform. For example, Ange was a frequent user of online sex-seeking venues, and employed the strategy of only meeting people with their photos posted. While Yao looked for people without photos, assuming that this would lower the risk that the potential partner is effeminate and a “star”, Ange felt that hooking up with partners who do not have profile pictures constituted a greater risk. Still, many users like Yao took it for granted that other users created online profiles to look for sex with other men. “I figure that everyone who is on this site is gay [homo] so there is no problem. It’s the ideal place to chat, to find a partner, because we already know your sexual orientation. In the street, on the other hand, you can’t know someone’s sexual orientation.” Others like Alain, called the Internet “the only safe way to find a partner.”

Discussion

Despite the Internet’s importance as a networking and sex-seeking venue among sexual and gender minorities worldwide, there has been a dearth of research on online venues outside of the global North. Furthermore, research largely conceptualized in the global North assumes a certain amount of uniformity in risk among MSM who use the Internet to find sexual partners, obscuring the way sex and sexuality are embedded in particular socio-cultural contexts. We have paid attention to the particularities of the Ivoirian socio-cultural context and political landscape that shape perceptions of what constitutes risk and the decision to seek sex partners online. This study is one of the first to foreground the experiences of African sexual and gender minorities with online sex-seeking venues and how they understand and manage risk. We have explored the motivations for seeking sex partners online – namely the avoidance of known branché spaces – as well as the strategies used in online contexts to reduce multiple forms of risk, including loss of discretion, HIV, and the threat of violence.

This study has some limitations. First, there is a substantial amount of missing data in survey responses because participants were not forced to answer one question before progressing to the next. In addition, because there was no link between the survey and interview data, we were not able to establish similarities and differences across these two samples. This may have resulted in an over representation of certain perspectives and behaviors among interview participants. Furthermore, because we did not systematically ask about the length of time during which online communication took place before an in-person encounter, we are unable to say whether these “slow” communication strategies were the norm. All data are self-reported and potentially subject to inaccurate recall or social desirability bias, particularly participants’ reporting of consistent condom use with partners they found online. Despite these limitations, we argue for a deeper privileging of the way people narrate online space and place themselves in it, including their privileging of non-HIV related risk such as physical safety and anonymity.

In Abidjan, use of online sex-seeking venues was common among sexual and gender minorities, with nearly half of our sample finding their partners primarily online and nearly three-quarters having found at least one partner online. This is higher than studies among MSM recruited through respondent-driven sampling in southern Africa (Stahlman et al., 2015; Stahlman et al., 2016) and convenience sampling in Cameroon (Henry et al., 2015). Branchés did not share the same perceptions and experiences as MSM in other socio-cultural, economic, and political contexts. For example, research participants explained that their interactions in online venues took place over several weeks, allowing them to spend more time discussing safer sex practices and negotiating the sexual encounter prior to meeting a potential partner. This is in contrast to the way online sex-seeking venues are used in the global North, where individuals are often motivated to use such venues because of the ease and rapidity they offer in meeting a sex partner. Furthermore, participants cited online venues as facilitating discretion and anonymity that were not afforded in other known branché spaces, particularly since the crack-down on such establishments in the aftermath of Côte d’Ivoire’s political conflict. Similar to findings from other recent research on this topic about MSM in the United States (Pingel et al., 2013) and Australia (Albury & Byron, 2016) participants’ concerns about HIV risk were secondary to their concerns regarding the risk for “outing” and its ramifications and their risk for violence and extortion. While more than a quarter of participants reported that their primary motivations for going online were discretion and anonymity, more than a quarter of survey participants reported violence and/or extortion and blackmail with partners they met online.

These findings have implications for HIV research and sexual health promotion. Scholars must extend their focus on HIV risk to consider other perceptions of safety and corresponding strategies that sexual and gender minorities prioritize. Research focusing on online sex-seeking behavior should also highlight the role of social context in motivating users to go online in the first place. To study online hook up culture without taking into account the social context that facilitates motivations for and experiences with seeking partners online and that shapes perceptions of risk, would be to miss a crucial component of this phenomenon. In Côte d’Ivoire, homosexuality remains largely stigmatized and cases of violence often go unreported. In addition to the threat of interpersonal violence, branchés also face the threat of extortion and blackmail and the potential isolation and exclusion from their non-branché networks. The social context of Abidjan – its heteronormativity but also its post-election security apparatus and resulting forms of surveillance – constitutes a risk in and of itself that would be overlooked should issues of context, place, and history be ignored. As Souleymanov and Huang argue in their overview of existing research on MSM who use the Internet to find sexual partners, “different processes of negotiating identities, desires and behaviors” (2016: 889) are likely to complicate HIV intervention approaches designed in the global North.

Use of online venues for seeking sex partners may be perceived as a barrier or facilitator to HIV risk and violence or blackmail. The popularity of websites such as PlanetRomeo and, increasingly, mobile applications could be leveraged to conduct further research and deliver health interventions to sexual and gender minorities. As demonstrated in this study, in a context of political instability and homoprejudice, interventions require knowledge about not only HIV risk behavior, but also attention to the socio-cultural nuances of sex and sexuality if they are to be effective.