A vaccine for everyone? Biosexual citizenship, LGBTQ plus health and sexual practice in HPV vaccination policy-settings for "high-risk groups"

Journal article, 2025

In this article we draw upon the notion of biosexual citizenship to examine claims and assumptions about (LGBTQ+) health and sexuality, HPV transmission and the HPV vaccine in policy-actors' accounts about the potential need for men who have sex with men, trans people and people living with HIV to access the HPV vaccine. Building on interviews with public health officials and LGBTQ + health organisation employees in Sweden, the article shows how policy-actors problematise (hetero)normative assumptions about HPV transmission, stigmatisation and "proper" sexuality in relation to young LGBTQ + people and gay men's sexual practices. Policy-actors also articulate "legitimised" forms of scientific knowledge along with community-based practical knowledge and entangle such forms of knowledge with political claims about equal rights. The article contributes to existing research into the HPV vaccine and its sexual politics by showing how policy-actors claim right-based formulations of biosexual citizenship in relation to LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive people and the HPV vaccine.