While this is a hijack, I think I know the answer to the question, or at least can make a reasonable guess, based on what happened to Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. (I have a friend who was doing her doctoral dissertation on gentrification and development of gay neighborhoods, and this is her theory. Hi, Mindy!)
The argument goes like this, IIRC: Back in the 50’s and early 60’s, Dupont Circle was a poor, run-down area. Because of that, however, rents were low, and there were a lack of community organizations. Because of that, gay bars were able to open there, while they weren’t in the rest of the city (because they would be more expensive to operate, and because residents of other areas had the economic and political clout to keep them out). A gay man moving to the city therefore, would gravitate toward an area like Dupont Circle, if only for entertainment, drinking, and pick-ups, because it would the only place he could be open about his sexuality. As time passed, attracted by the low rents (and, maybe to be closer to the bars), some people started moving in. This led to Dupont Circle becoming even more considered a “gay area”, which led more gay people to move in. In a lot of ways, Badz, the ethnic model works. Gay people moved to the area because rents were cheaper, and also to be close to other gay people, because there was less risk of arrest, humiliation, discrimination, and harassment if you were openly gay in Dupont Circle, then if you were in the rest of the city.
I’m also curious about your statment that “gays tend to make more than straights on average”? Could I have a cite? I’m asking because I’ve read studies that suggest the opposite is true.
I wonder about this statistic from the other side. I’ve had one condom break on me, and that was 14 years ago. I’ve talked to several other male friends about this over the years. Most have never had one break, and the most any one person had it happen was three times.
My group of friends aren’t a representative sample, but our combined breakage rate is closer to .02% than 2%. Have we been incredibly lucky, or does the 2% figure overestimate the risks of breakage?
You made a comment here that one is as likely to contract the HIV virus from vaginal sex as they are from anal sex.
I disagreed, and listed CDC figures and reasons why. I still don’t see anything listed that makes what I said incorrect.
Indeed, Africa and other parts of the world are dealing with an entirely different elephant than we are in the U.S. The disease has become so rampant in those locales that men, women and children are all infected in large numbers. There any kind of sex would be riskier. (Hell, any person-to-person contact of any kind would be riskier.)
I am not in the least surprised that the fastest growing group for infection is heterosexual women. That would tend to mean that they were well behind other groups in terms of risk for the 20 or so years previous that we’ve been dealing with this virus.
Does all sex put a person, man or woman, hetero- or homosexual, at some risk of contracting HIV? Yes. Are some sexual activities considerably riskier than others? Very much so.
BTW: Did anyone else hear the recent medical study indicating that using a condom with a spermicidal lubricant may actually increase the risk of contracting HIV? Something in the lubricant can irritate the vaginal or intestinal walls, increasing the potential for blood-to-blood contact (which is what you really want to avoid.
Actually, I’ve wondered about that, too. Does the 2% number include only people who use condoms correctly? Or does it include people who aren’t correctly using them? And, more importantly, is it 2% breakage per use, as I’ve assumed above, or is it something like “2% of the men that use condoms will experience breakage in the span of one year”? That, of course, is quite different.
I don’t have a cite, so accept my apology and take this with a grain of salt.
I believe that “gay people make more money” is partially based on the idea that gay people don’t generally have children. This is changing, and even though many gay people are still childless, I belive that the figure is inaccurate. Gay people fall in all economic brackets.
However, the most visible segment of the gay population has and continues to be middle and upper class white males. Considering this, it’s easy to see how people might think that gay=rich.
Personally, I’m damn poor.
Badtz, I believe that one of the driving forces of gay neighborhoods is because of their vibrant sense of community… as well as strength in numbers. There’s a lot more relative safety and comfort when one is in a heavily gay area.
IIRC, studies have shown that many people simply do not know how to use a condom properly. Even something as simple as keeping it in a warm area (like a wallet) or not pinching the air out of the tip can increase the chances of breaking drastically.
I’d also like to submit that I am utterly sure that a new wave of HIV will hit the gay community. Specifically, the teenagers. By and large, gay teenagers are about as concerned with getting AIDS as they are with getting cancer. I for one am expecting rates to skyrocket among people who are about 13-25 right now. It scares the hell out of me .
“You made a comment here that one is as likely to contract the HIV virus from vaginal sex as they are from anal sex.”
Is this what we’re arguing about? There are so many variables that I can’t see this ever having an answer - rates of condom breakage for vaginal vs. anal vs. oral sex, the infection rate among the population sample you’re looking at, the condom USAGE rate among the population you’re looking at… I’m not really sure where you’d get in this sort of argument.
If every single person always used a condom - correctly, with lubrication - I kinda think there would be very little difference between infection rates between vaginal and anal sex. I can’t imagine that a lubed-up anus is all that much more of a threat to a condom than a vagina. If you’re skipping the lube for the anal sex, obviously that would change, but you probably wouldn’t be able to sit down and read this post then, either.
The differences in infection rates you’re getting look like they are due to people who are not using condoms, and/or not using them correctly. Judging from the frequent numbers of “Who My Baby Daddy?” Maury Povich topics, I tend to think the hetersexuals are not placing condom usage on top of their list of concerns, but that’s obviously completely anecdotal.
Was there some point where you were going, “Gee, I’d like to engage in anal sex with this man, but that’s riskier than vaginal sex. I think I’ll go find a vagina to engage in intercourse with in order to reduce my chances of HIV infection.”
Hee hee…
RE: the 2% breakage. If the condom breaks 2% of the time, that does not mean 2% are then infected with HIV. That just means that the formerly “protected” intercourse has become “unprotected” and the rate of transmission is now higher.
SueSponte - Following each act of intercourse, have you then examined the condom for small rips or tears? I’m guessing the 2% might include such small breaks that you and/or your partner might not notice, but one in which fluid can escape the condom. But I’m just theorizing this as I type it, so take that for what it’s worth.
Barebacking has apparently helped to fuel another epidemic of sorts- the syphilis (spelling?) rate among gay men is skyrocketing, according to a report I heard on KNX 1070 radio the other day. I guess that we were all so worried about AIDS that we forgot about the more pedestrian (by comparison) STD’s.
And excuse me if I sound ignorant, but how the hell does one use a condom incorrectly? I mean, it appears to be shaped like a dick, so it would be hard to miss where it goes. I assume that without prepackaged lubrication, it won’t matter if it’s inside out or not (or is that where I’m in trouble?). Maybe if the damn thing is so old that it’s dried out and brittle, it might break.
I have been sexually active for many years now, using condoms during several of those years, and I have never been aware of a break or tear. Granted, I never looked that hard at it afterwards.
Using incorrectly: not squeezing air out at the tip to make room for the ejaculate in a non-resovoir-tip condom, or putting it on backwards - which makes unrolling it near impossible, and then flipping it around so that pre-cum is now on the outside of the condom. Also not putting it on at all - also a biggie. Not pulling out after ejaculation, so the penis shrinks and ya leave the darn thing in there. Lots of ways to screw up.
If you didn’t look at it, how would you know if it broke?
Sorry about this, Esprix - looks like you’re wrong, at least for unprotected sex:
I can think of two times in my life where I’ve had a condom break on me. One when just putting it on, and once when switching positions.
The first was either a manufacturing defect, or the really strange fact that the darn thing was too small. (There was no indication on the package that it was for smaller than average size, so no clue there, but it was nearly painfully tight before it broke.)
The second I’m going to assume was due to a lubrication problem involved with shifting around and the lubrication on the condom basically air drying.
I wondered about that, too; I’ve never had one break.
I would suggest, though, that they mean a 2% failure rate, not that 1 in 50 completely bust open. It may be that 2% of condoms fail at a barely noticeable or microscopic level, allowing some fluids to pass through but not enough that you’d notice.
Actually, relying on what I happened to come across last night for personal data, I have something to add.
When I was on IRC last night, I made a joke about lubricants. No one else on the channel knew what KY was… or Astroglide… or Wet. All of the women said they were perfectly self-lubricating, have never needed a lubricant, and thus did not know what they were by brand name.
One even thought I was a pervert because I did know.
What I found out was, they didn’t need extra lubrication because they don’t use condoms. The women are either on depoprovera(sp), some who still have Norplant, or they’re on standard birth control. So… today at work I asked around.
None of the women were using condoms. None.
Contrast this with my gay male friends. All of them use condoms. And beyond people who will respond with: yeah, sure they do… I’ve been to a few play parties, and seen these friends use condoms and put them on correctly.
So, just from my little section of Oregon, I can see that around here, heterosexuals think that birth control is enough and they don’t think about STDs of any kind.
I would venture a guess that this is why HIV is rising in the heterosexual population. But, this could be considered apocryphal data… so I’ll just leave people to say it’s a ‘gay disease.’
RickJay and Davis - your arguments about microscopic tears make sense. I withdraw my statement.
Esprix, come back, baby! I’ve learned something already in this thread.
And overall, let’s combine the 2% percent breakage rate of condoms with the stats about transmission rates cited by Davis. Even if you have (anal or vaginal) sex daily, when you combine the low breakage rate of condoms with the low transmission rates of HIV, yeah, wearing condoms all the time leaves you with an extremely low risk of catching HIV.*
Sua
*Someone else do the math. It’s been ten years since my only stats class, and I forget how.
Another alternative would be to admit you were wrong, at least as far as the comparative risk between homosexual anal sex and heterosexual vaginal sex.
Not likely to get rousing applause from the politically correct crowd on this board if you did that, though.
I stand by everything I’ve said. If everybody wants to nitpick every single point and skew every single statistic, I can play that game, too - point is, when we do, nobody wins.
Just play safe. Keep everybody happy. That’s all I want.
When I look at this quote, and the link, one thing strikes me. It appears to be comparing HIV-infected men (in both asymptomatic and primary stages) to “long term heterosexual couples”, without saying if the long-term couples have one partner that is necessarily HIV infected in any way. Maybe I am reading this incorrectly. Also, it does not say that it is comparing men in long-term realtionships, only heterosexual couples in long-term relationships. I’m not certain I’m reading this right, but it does not seem like an equal comparison. Comments?
Una, who will readily admit she is wrong in the interest of the truth.
I just wanna defend ol’ 'Sprix here by pointing out that the classifications of the CDC seem pretty generalized, and even vague. I mean, Good God Damn, this thread was made as a response to some painfully erroneous comments in another thread, not as the End-All Be-All Authoritive Response to AIDS Questions. If you want certainty, ask Cecil.
A while back I read the book “Plauges and Peoples” as best I could (I don’t have much of an aptitude for science, just an interest in human nature, and the image of the Mongols catapulting their infected dead comrades over the walls of Trebizond is a classic study in human nature) But from what I understood of the scientific part, the Bubonic Plague was never cured - the black rats that carried it were displaced by the larger brown Norway rat. And as for the Plague in Europe: it ended when all the people who caught it died, and those who didn’t catch it lived. But the virus, though rarer, has stayed lethal throughout the centuries.
Compare that to the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1919. The virus mutated into a lethal form, and then back to a suvivable virus within two years.
After all these years of the AIDS plague, it looks like HIV is more long-term like the Bubonic Plaugue, and not a transient mutation like the Spanish influenza, and its means of transmission via human sexuality has no “brown rat vs. black rat” prospect of being crowded out. Bad news
Also to add to the misfortue, there’s less a chance of its victims dying and taking it with them. With pharmacological cocktails now available, people with HIV are living longer and longer. Because these drugs are so expensive, they are now mainly the privilge of the well-educated, well-insured people. Those poor, AIDS-ridden Africans who can’t come up with the 600.00 a month for drugs are a real scandal to be addressed.
Okay, now bear with me as I draw the conclusion that might piss you off: lets say we address that scandal and place all of our trust in science and charity. We give everyone HIV+ 600.00 a month, and even more millions to the labs in their race to find a cure (20 years and still running). All we’ll get are more people living longer lives, enabled to infect more partners, with “quarantine” as dirty a word as “pogrom.” I am a deeply cynical person and I expect that’s exactly what will happen.
I can’t help wondering where this thing is going to end. I don’t expect science to cure HIV. I don’t trust people HIV+ or negative to take precautions, even if you rained condoms from B52’s and played safe-sex porno 24-7 on all the major networks. This plague will not end until everyone who has it dies. You will probably not be one of them if you practice safe sex.
And yet, in Uganda, where there is no money for expansive programs, and no super drugs, and no other huge support programs, and also the worlds worst epidemic of AIDS they have posted the reported case where new infections are decreasing. How did they do it? The president of the country got on TV, and Radio, and explained all the facts. He talked about condoms, chastity, anal sex, condoms, heterosexual promiscuity, condoms, traveling businessmen, drug use, condoms, young people having sex, sex outside of marriage, condoms, and, oh yes, condoms.
Pretty much what Esprix has done here.
Use condoms. Get tested. Talk with the people you have sex with. Get them to get tested. Use condoms.
Monogamy is nice. Viruses can’t tell if you’re usually faithful, though. Or even if your are heterosexual, or just bi.