In looking at the HIV/AIDS crisis as it relates to queer communities, two historical trajectories can be drawn: on the one hand, severe state inaction and neglect, which was countered by patient activism, community self-care, and auto-
education movements. On the other, a call for sexual responsibilisation that, through institutionalization via AIDS Service Organizations, merged with a broader tradition of heterosexist medico-legal state surveillance and normalization; this has been countered by intentionally adopting ‘unsafe’ sex practices. As such, many queer communities experience ambivalence in how to organise, advocate, and resist oppression around issues of sexual health. This article employs that ambivalence to think about how political resistance operates. Using fieldwork conducted in Mon-tréal, Quebec, I illustrate that for many queers, especially those involved in the field of sexual health, the course they navigate between queer political identity and safer sex messaging and materials is a tense and nuanced one. Rather than seeing this ambivalence as a sign of political failure or incoherency, however, we may see these contradictions as a form of iterative openness that Judith Butler suggests is evidence of—indeed, necessary for—emancipatory political potential. Ambivalence ensures and enables a persistent categorical antagonism, so that the boundaries of what constitutes ‘queer sexual resistance’ remain unfixed.

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