Men who have sex with men

Men who have sex with men (MSM), also known as males who have sex with males, are male persons who engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, regardless of how they identify themselves; many such men do not sexually identify as gay, homosexual or bisexual.

The term was created in the 1990s by epidemiologists to study the spread of disease among men who have sex with men, regardless of identity. The term MSM is often used in medical literature and social research to describe such men as a group for research studies without considering issues of self-identification.

The term MSM had been in use in public health discussions, especially in the context of HIV/AIDS, since 1990 or earlier, but the coining of the initialism by Glick et al. in 1994 "signaled the crystallization of a new concept." This behavioral concept comes from two distinct academic perspectives. First, it was pursued by epidemiologists seeking behavioral categories that would offer better analytical concepts for the study of disease-risk than identity-based categories (such as "gay", "bisexual", or "straight"), because a man who self-identifies as gay or bisexual is not necessarily sexually active with men, and someone who identifies as straight might be sexually active with men. Second, its usage is tied to criticism of sexual identity terms prevalent in social construction literature which typically rejected the use of identity-based concepts across cultural and historical contexts. The Huffington Post postulates that the term MSM was created by Cleo Manago, the man who is also credited for coining the term same gender loving (SGL).

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