In this thread, Scott Evil was seeking some advice on his love life, yet all some posters could focus on was his sexuality and HIV. One clueless pile of bantha drool even wrote, “Ever think about AIDS?.”
:mad:
Yes, gay men think about AIDS. Yes, we think about safe sex. Do not clutter up sensible discussions with your dumbass “revelations.” Not all gay men sleep around, and the ones who do, usually do so with their eyes open and their rubbers on. Sure, there are some people who bareback, but they are short-sighted, self-destructive losers as emblematic of gay folk as Heidi Fleiss is of straight folk.
HIV is a virus, a bit of RNA that needs to use living cells as factories to make more copies of itself. It doesn’t ask if its host is straight, bi, or gay.
Not all gay men practice anal sex. If you were to sample the gay guys here, I think most of them can take it or leave it, judging from past discussions. Sex is as much a matter of the intellect and the heart as it is of the naughty bits. Some of you would be amazed what can be done with touching the skin alone.
Some of the hetero posters remind me of a Chick comic: "Ever hear of AIDS? “No, what’s that?” “It’s a fatal disease that is caused by having sex with men!” “Save me, Jebus!”
So please, save me some tsuris and stop dragging HIV into every frellin’ discussion that is even tangentially related to gayness.
Perhaps we could create a new law of debate to be invoke ala Godwin’s Law.
I’m thinking the first time in any thread about gay men some poster mentions AIDS, it should be called Phelps’ Law.
How to define this? Well…
In any discussion that I have seen on here which either involves the sexuality of a specific doper, or gay men in general, the minute the AIDS remark appears all discussion is derailed.
Thus… Phelps’ Law, because whenever that bigot appears, all rational discussion vanishes, so shouldn’t it be the same for debate of this nature.
Hear, hear. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
[nitpick]I wasn’t really asking for advice about my love life. I was wondering if I should keep having sex with my two fuckbuddies if I’m sorting through some emotional crap unrelated to them.[/nitpick]
I’m not particularly promiscuous, although I’ve gone through many a slut phase. But having two friends that I sleep with - as well as do other, social things - on a regular basis does not make me a slut. If anything, I think my sexuality is a healthy one, and I’m free to do whatever I like with my body. However, something I will not do is put myself at risk.
I trust my partners to be honest about their HIV status (both are negative, as am I). But even though we’re negative doesn’t mean we’re going to stop practising safe sex. Hell, I’ve been in monogamous relationships where we still would use condoms even if we both were negative. It’s just become second nature.
I fully agree . . And might I add (listen up, “Sex and the City” writers) that the word “transsexual” should not always be immediately followed by the word “hooker,” either . . .
I know what you mean. I’ve had AIDS brought up in contexts that didn’t even involve sex. I mentioned that I had a cold once, and someone said I should go get tested. Right, because that’s the only reason a gay man could possibly have a cold, is because he has AIDS. :rolleyes:
I was a kid in the mid-late 80’s, when they made the big push to emphaize that AIDS was not the “gay cancer” and it wasn’t spread by casual contact. I remember struggling to have a conversation with my stepmother a few years ago, who still believed that almost all cases of AIDS were among gay men. And she’s fairly open-minded about homosexuality.
(For what it’s worth, I get tested at every physical and whenever I have bloodwork for another reason. Also, I have very little penetrative sex, and when I do - well, I don’t care if you’re Skids DiAngelo, skipping the gift wrap would still not be an option.)
Oh, that was priceless, dear. Can I use that little gem?
I used to be on medication I had to take three times a day, and one of the doses I had to take mid-day at work. All I could think was “the fuckers at work must think I’m on the HIV cocktail.”
My medicine cabinet is a mess of prescription bottles, many of which are empty and I should throw out. If I think I’ll be bringing a guy home, I always make sure it’s closed, because who knows, they might think they’re bottles of protease inhibitors and the like. And jt’s worse if he’s still there the next day when I have to actually take the pills - my bathroom is attached to my bedroom, and the sound of pill bottles is rather distinctive. They’re just bloody antidepressants and tranquilizers, OK?
I did wonder about some of the responses. Scott was asking about an emotional issue, and people leapt in to blurt AIDS warnings? Either that, or they read the thread title and ignored the OP - in which case, they shouldn’t have bothered to post.
I can’t imagine that those posts would have appeared if Scott were straight. And that’s just fucked up.
Mmmm…excellent rant, and a point that strongly needs to be made.
However…
If I were giving advice to a young gay man contemplating starting an active sex life whose prior experience and knowledge of risks I did not know, I’d definitely mention AIDS, along with gonorrhea, syphilis, and hepatitis, as something to be taken into consideration.
If one has at all followed scott evil’s posts since his, uh, explosive debut here, one would be aware that that is not the case. However, many of the people on that thread may not be that aware of who scott is, and hence some may have thought they were issuing a useful warning, not “preaching to the choir” as it were.
AIDS is definitely a concern to be taken into consideration for anyone sexually active and not in a long-term monogamous relationship – and even then, given the long latency, there may still be concerns.
But, dammit, although I’m being a bit contrarian in this post, somebody needs to make it clear to the Teeming Millions that “gay” and “AIDS” are not particularly related. (For the record, the one person I’ve known who actually had AIDS, as opposed to non-symptomatic HIV+ status, was a totally chaste married woman – because her husband was not. [Last I knew before we moved, she was in cocktail-induced remission, praise God!])
It’s probably because I used the term “casual sex,” which, in the 80s, we were told was the worst possible thing you could do unless you want to be infected with HIV. Umm… the worst possible thing you can do is to have unprotected sex. End of story.
And I also made it clear somewhere in the thread that I wasn’t about to go out and fuck every orifice I come upon (insert joke here). I was talking about two specific guys, regular partners of mine.
According to my wife, a bio-statistician who does a lot of HIV research, the majority of the HIV+ people in the US are gay (or bisexual) men, intravenous drug users, or their sex partners.
Yes, that is as may be, but not all IV drug users are gay or bisexual, are they? I mean, you could be perfectly straight and be an IV drug user, yet you could get HIV or AIDS by simply being careless and sharing IV needles! While I’m sure that some gay men put their partners at risk because of not being cautious towards their own sexual health, Scott has said that he is very careful about his sexual health and that of others.
Scott Evil made it clear in his OP that he practiced safe sex. The AIDS comment was inappropriate and out of line.
The truth is that the AIDS virus doesn’t care about sexuality. The reality is that more gay men have been afflicted with AIDS than straight men, at least in this country. AIDS was called the gay cancer and even if the number of straight victims becomes greater than the number of gay victims, AIDS will still be associated with gay men. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.
I just have to say, I am a straight female, but that post reminds me of something I read in TeenMag about 10 years ago…“Can I get pregnant from a toilet seat?”. This is absolutely ridiculous. The AIDS epidemic will continue to spread until everyone realizes how it is acutally contracted. You dont have to be a gay man or woman, it can happen to straight people too. So all of you out there who think that gay people dont practice safe sex, your wrong…Most of the gay community IS practicing safe sex…I just read an article today on CNN about two guys who got arrested for KNOWINGLY & INTENTIONALLY infecting people with the HIV/AIDS virus. Thus, they didnt go into the sexual orientation of the people, but I would venture to say, any of the people involved could have been on either side of the fence. The point to my post, dont assume that you are safe because you are straight - you could simply get AIDS from a blood transfusion. Everyone should be using protection until both parties have commited the rest of their lives together and have both taken tests to validate their state of condition. Thank goodness we are in the BBQ Pit, cause this pisses me off!!!
The case gaining a lot of attention lately is the 18-year-old young man from Chicago who is in college in South Dakota. A month after getting back a positive HIV test, he had unprotected sex with his girlfriend several times. Last I heard, they were testing dozens of people who might have had exposure, and I don’t think they know yet where he got it or when he really knew.
Can I use that little gem?