Dr Manish Sen is currently a teaching assistant at the University of Manchester, and has taught on a range of courses, including foundational topics in sociology, race and ethnicity in the UK, and gender and sexuality.
I completed my doctoral research in 2025 at the University of Manchester, which was on British South Asian gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) men. I found that racism within the ‘gay community’ and British society generally were common themes among my participants.
Interestingly, the more politicised ‘queer community’ was often characterised as a place of solidarity. Moreover, family, ethnicity, and religion were highly important sources of strength, solidarity and belonging. My findings unsettle mainstream perspectives that erase individual agency and characterise British South Asian families as patriarchal, backward monoliths, and GBQ sons/men as their victims.
In light of my findings, I am interested in how ethnically minoritised GBQ men access and experience sexual healthcare. Are cultural assumptions made about them? If so, do they affect their experience and overall well-being?
The NHS plays a crucial role in the overall health and well-being of service users and patients. Despite ongoing underfunding of the NHS, STI testing and other sexual health services provided by NHS staff are proven to be effective and continue to alleviate or mitigate mental health concerns faced by sexual minorities.
The mental health concerns of gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people are linked to sexual health outcomes, and these have been well documented within academia.
At a public level, the discourses around gay, bisexual and lesbian identification have changed over time across legislative levels and at social levels, with an overall decrease in stigma and increase in social acceptability. However, the mental health concerns of sexually minoritised people are compounded, for example, by ‘race’/ethnicity, ability, income, and so on.
With regards to ethnically minoritised people in Britain, there is a growing body of research, particularly within the last 25 years, that has begun to highlight disparities in healthcare.
It is now well known that ethnically minoritised people are more likely to have poor overall health. These disparities are largely due to socioeconomic inequalities and inequities in healthcare access. However, biological essentialism and ‘cultural’ difference are often used to erase or obscure the role of ongoing ethnic inequalities in healthcare in Britain.
Stereotyping, racism and discrimination are some common themes across the experiences of ethnically minoritised people when accessing healthcare. How ‘race’/ethnicity and sexual minoritisation interact within a sexual healthcare setting remains largely under-researched.
For me, these points raise some interesting questions and future research about cultural assumptions and stereotypes GBQ ethnically minoritised men may or may not encounter in sexual healthcare settings, and how this affects access or if it leads to self-exclusion from sexual healthcare.
In addition, this is particularly pertinent with the rise of ‘chemsex’ among GBQ ethnically minoritised men in Britain.
There is a growing body of research about racially minoritised men’s experiences of healthcare. However, there is much research to be done about how ethnically minoritised men access sexual healthcare services in Britain, what the barriers may be and how these can be reduced.
Such research has the potential to enable powerful and inclusive interventions that are culturally competent and can reduce harm, particularly for ‘hidden’ or hard-to-reach and marginalised populations