Editing Bugchasing (section)

== Group dynamics ==
While barebacking and bugchasing are both centered in risky sexual activity, they are distinct activities. Bugchasing is a subculture of barebacking, and intent is a distinguishing characteristic between bugchasers and barebackers: most barebackers do not intend to be infected (or infect others) with HIV, which is the apparent focus of bugchasing behavior.{{sfn|Moskowitz|Roloff|2007a|p=348<!--|ps=: "Bug chasers comprise a certifiably real subculture".-->}}

In the view of ethnologist Jamie García-Iglesias and researcher Tim Dean, bugchasers circulate several metaphors that distinguish their identity from other MSM communities: insemination, pregnancy, and paternity.{{sfnm
|1a1=Dean|1y=2008|1p=86
|2a1=García-Iglesias|2y=2020a|2p=229
|3a1=Klein|3y=2014|3p=56
|4a1=Reynolds|4y=2007a
}} According to Dean and the psychological researcher Hugh Klein, since HIV is able to spread and reproduce through the sexual activity belonging to bugchasing, its cultural dimensions—institutions, norms, practices, and forms of kinship that, taken together, form a community situated around HIV status—may be transmitted through viral infection, similar to cultural propagation through birth and paternity.{{sfnm
|1a1=Dean|1y=2008|1p=86
|2a1=Klein|2y=2014|2p=56}}

<!-- {{Quote box|quote=I don't pull out of his torn cunt until I'm sure my poison sperm is well into his bloodstream, invading his DNA to begin reproducing baby strains of death.|author=— Member of a bugchasing community{{sfn|Reynolds|2007b|p=259}} |align=right|width=30em}} -->
Similarly, bugchasing spaces may reinforce certain notions of masculinity. The sex researcher Ellie Reynolds writes that HIV-positive men who purposely seek out others to infect with HIV—known as giftgivers—are constructed as [[hypermasculine]] through a [[Sexual penetration|penetrative]] sexual role, while bugchasers are understood to lack masculinity: penetrated (rather than penetrating), having their rectums described with words relating to women such as "pussy" and "mancunt", they occupy a feminine role in the social order.{{sfn|Reynolds|2007b|p=262}} Whether giftgivers continue to exist is uncertain, given what García-Iglesias calls their "statistically rare" population and "biological implausib[ility] (on the basis of widespread successful treatment)".{{sfn|García-Iglesias|2022|p=103}}