In this thread about sharing a communal fondue pot with a gay male guest lots of people comment on the ignorance of the outraged hostess, and about how relatively harmless the AIDS virus is unless you are making more or less direct blood to blood or sperm to blood contact.
Here is the CDC’s statement which puts the probability of saliva transmission at near zero unless the saliva of the infected person winds up in the mouth of a person with an open sore.
Having said all this is it really all that crazy or unreasonable for an average person who has been bombarded with “use a condom because AIDS = death” messages for the last 20 years to be apprehensive about the saliva of a gay person getting into a communal food source?
Yes, because even accepting for the nonce that an attitude of “Ew! Gay man fondue AAAAAAIDS!” does not derive from the obvious source but from safe sex messages, if they were paying any attention at all to the said messages, they would have noticed that:
not all, or even most gay men are HIV-positive;
HIV is not spread through activities of daily living such as sharing food.
I would have thought that even the lowest-wattage person would be able to distinguish the relative risks of fluid transmission of unprotected anal sex and fondue. I am beset with disappointment.
Of course it’s reasonable to be apprehensive if for your whole life you’ve been told doing that sort of thing might lead to getting AIDS. What is unreasonable is taking that apprehension completely seriously and actually acting on it. I think that most people occasionally find themselves thinking prejudiced thoughts, but intelligent, considerate people are able to dismiss those thoughts as outdated and nonsensical.
But that’s kind of the point. That distinction between some types of body fluids and transmission vectors being very dangerous vs others not being dangerous has not been made (so far as I know) in any public health service messages regarding the dangers of contracting AIDS, or at least if they have been they have been swamped by the predominant “swapping AIDS fluids = death” messages.
People have been told to use dental dams if having oral sex and condoms if having vaginal sex, is it therefore unreasonable for the average person to have developed the impression/fear that the body fluids of gay people might pose an unusual risk in shared food situations.
As I mentioned in the other thread, unless people have spit-wads hanging off of their food before dunking in the fondue, I seriously doubt the transmission of any saliva-borne pathogens. If it’s an oil-fondue, the chances have to be really really close to zilch. As in, you’d have to come up with some completely unlikely scenario. Chocolate or Cheese fondue might have some non-zero possibility of acting as a vector, but I’d be willing to bet that it’s still safer than your average fast-food joint.
As for any special reason why gay men should be excluded from such festivities, I could not grant you any statistics as to whether, as a group, they are more or less susceptible to disease. However, even if a higher level of susceptibility is found, the low transmission rate would play a larger factor.
So, as far as the original scenario played out, I think the hostess is completely unreasonable.
Again, is it reasonable to expect the average person being told “Unprotected swapping of body fluids = risk of death by AIDS” to start parsing out what counts as a dangerous body fluid and what doesn’t, and then start researching which scenarios might be safe?
I was responding to your specific question about dental dams and condoms, so I’m not sure what the “again” is about, but, yes, it is reasonable for the average person not to assume that kissing transmits AIDS. I consider myself to be an average person, and I have seen no literature, TV ads, pamphlets, etc. that suggest that exchanging saliva with a gay man puts anyone at risk of death. Would you ask for an AIDS test before kissing a new girlfriend/boyfriend? If not, why not?
I’ve kissed gay guys right on the mouth. No tongue or anything, but who can say one of those nasty little saliva molecules wasn’t hanging out on the lips? I’m not worried.
The irrational fear, which derives from many sources, is understandable, though its basis is inaccurate. Acting on the fear is not appropriate. People should be more worried that their friends will sneeze on them across the fondue and give them tuberculosis.
Sure they have. Every message I had when I was growing up, even before I came out, was at pains to emphasize what did and didn’t transmit HIV, and make it clear, as I said, that activities of daily living such as sharing food do not transmit HIV. They also were at pains to point out that not all gay people have AIDS and not all people with HIV are gay men.
A person would have to be unreasonable, by which I mean preexistingly homophobic, to go from that to “don’t have fondue with gay people,” and anybody who tried a stunt like that in my presence would get a pretty severe tongue lashing. (insert obligatory joke about how that would just make it worse)
Does anyone have any statistics about how much more prevalent HIV is in the gay population compared to the straight population today? I know it was slanted heavily in favor of gays back in the 80s, but is that still true?
It’s reasonable to expect the average person to not encounter a gay man and immediately assume they have AIDS. (I assume you mean gay men all the way through this, btw, not gay women).
I think anyone who’d display the attitudes mentioned in the thread linked to by the OP would have some trouble making that particular fine distinction.
I think it is reasonable to be uncomfortable sharing saliva with people you do not know well. Even though the likelyhood of someone having a disease which they will share with you by consuming fondue from the same pot (for example) is not based on the degree of separation between you.
I can not judge anyone who chooses not to share saliva by shared fondue pots with someone known to be HIV+ even though I believe that the likelihood that sharing a fondue pot will infect someone is zilch.
To make an extra-special point of not sharing saliva with gay men NOT known to be HIV+ is not reasonable and at least somewhat jerkish.
It’s completely unreasonable, because there’s no reason to assume that a gay man is HIV positive. And also unless you had a brief moment of lucidity in the early 80’s and then tuned out every public health message since, you should know that unless you’re engaged in an activity which is likely to involve transfer of blood, semen, or breast milk, you’re not going to get HIV. And I imagine if it were the type of fondue party that involved swapping blood, semen, or breast milk, then it wouldn’t be an issue.
OK, newsflash!!! We’ve known this now, since the 1990’s, HIV and AIDS are NOT GAY DISEASES!!! Everyone is vulnerable! Gay men are no longer the largest population of HIV positive people so share saliva with anyone you like as no matter their sexual orientation, race, age, nationality, etc. you won’t be infected unless you’ve got a big ol’ open sore in your mouth, in which case, I doubt any self respecting gay man will want to swap spit with YOU!
Quick hijack-open sores: would that include things like bitten lips? Because when I have seizures, I usually end up biting my mouth/tongue/lip up to hell and it often takes a week or two to heal? Now, I don’t have AIDS or anything, but I’m just curious.
Yes. What are we supposed to do, live in a bubble? Treating every gay man as a walking AIDS host is disgusting, discriminatory behavior in the first place. It’s akin to treating every black person you meet as a hypertensive diabetic. “Now, now, Mr. Johnson, are you sure you want to take that cookie? We wouldn’t want to have an ‘incident’ here.”
Not to mention that I’ve shared much more saliva with gay men in my day than a fondue pot entails–I usually don’t wear a dental dam when I kiss, either–and I’m not dead yet. YMMV, of course. Someone from the necrosexual community may have more to say about this.
This is, quite frankly, bullshit. I learned in 6th grade sex ed that you’re not going to get HIV from sharing food with someone who has it.
How many times do we have to answer this question? I guess I’ll try one more time, and I’ll spell it out very carefully so you don’t miss this one:
The assumption that all, or even a very substantial percentage, of gay men one meets has HIV/AIDS is an example of irrational and disgusting prejudice. The gay man in question may never have had unsafe sex in his life, or, in fact, may never have had sex at all. Of course, the issue in the first place is not about gay men, but about men who have sex with men, many of whom identify as straight. (If you don’t believe me, check out the m4m section on craigslist sometime.)
Acting on that assumption is even more disgusting.
Even if 50% of gay men had not just HIV but full-blown AIDS, refusing to share fondue with a gay man speaks not only to the perpetrator’s prejudiced thinking and narrowmindedness, but also to his ignorance of basic knowledge about how STDs are transmitted.
Not all gay men are out, so it’s likely that the average person who shares fondue/pipe/joint/cigarette/cups/forks/whatever with other people has already done so with at least one gay man. This is very common. Yet, somehow, these activities haven’t been linked to the AIDS pandemic.
Even if you* are so married to your ignorance, it’s shockingly disgusting behavior to actually say “I refuse to share this fondue with you, a gay man, because you’re going to give me a disease”. It’s a grave smackdown and a faux pas of the highest order, and it’s a shame that otherwise well-adjusted people would act this way in public.
Let’s be honest; you wouldn’t be defending this so hard if you weren’t the perpetrator of the original discrimination, or at least if you didn’t agree with it.
By the way, here’s some info on the orientation/AIDS question:
In 2006, 50% of AIDS cases were transmitted in situations not involving male sex with males. (6,795 by injection drug use + 11,754 by heterosexual contact + 437 by miscellaneous non-MSM means) / 36,790 total cases.
Also from the CDC: 53% of people receiving an HIV/AIDS diagnosis in 2005 identified as men who have sex with men. Which means, of course, that 47% didn’t.