"Stigmatisation for poppers use is a sexualised mode of governance": Lived experiences and counter-narratives of gay men who use poppers in mainland China.

BACKGROUND: Poppers (alkyl nitrites) are widely used within the gay male community and recently gained more academic attention. In mainland China, poppers users face a mutually constitutive stigma, including administrative enforcement, public health surveillance, and moralised discourse. Existing research has predominantly examined poppers use through epidemiological and biomedical lenses, leaving the lived experiences of users and their response to the broader governance underexplored.

METHODS: This qualitative study employed a narrative-based ethnographic approach, drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 gay men living in four major Chinese cities. Interviews explored participants' experiences of poppers use, interpretations of legality, engagements with public health discourse, and encounters with stigma. Data were analysed using thematic narrative analysis to identify how participants constructed counter-narratives in response to legal ambiguity, medicalised risk framings, and moral labelling.

RESULTS: Participants articulated three interconnected sets of counter-narratives. First, they navigated legal ambiguity by rejecting assumed illegality and interpreting regulatory scrutiny as selective and sexualised governance rather than clear law enforcement. Second, they contested public health assumptions that equate poppers use with loss of judgement or inevitable HIV risk, emphasising controlled pleasure, sexual competence, and situated risk management. Third, they resisted stigmatised labels such as addiction, abuse, and promiscuity by foregrounding intentionality, moderation, and relational accountability. Across these narratives, poppers emerged as symbolically overdetermined substances through which gay male sexuality was rendered visible, governable, and stigmatised.

CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that the stigmatisation of poppers in mainland China operates as a sexualised mode of governance rather than a response to pharmacological harm alone. Poppers-related stigma is inseparable from the regulation of queer sexuality under conditions of legal ambiguity and moralised public health discourse. Recognising users' counter-narratives highlights the limitations of risk-centred and pathologising approaches, and points toward the need for culturally informed, non-stigmatising drug policy and public health interventions.