I remember getting into some internet fistacuffs here awhile back. And it had to do with the gay community and HIV. The basic gist from some male gay folks here was this. You always practice safe sex (unless you’ve settled down maybe). Thats fine as far as it goes. But, because you’ve practiced safe sex you under no obligation to tell the other person you have HIV, because you know, its SAFE. And if its SAFE, why should you have to tell?
Which I thought was total BS, but a gay man or two here disagreed. Personally, I thought it was a bunch of baloney so that HIV positive people could still get laid.
Now, thats not to say a bunch of straight people might not also think that way. But, I’d bet their mostly the ones with a known disease that also wanna get laid.
If you have reason to believe you’re likely to have an STD (positive test result, extensive contact with someone else you know to have been positive, have slept with 273 hookers since your last test, whatever), then you should disclose that. If you know someone well enough to have sex with them, then you know them well enough to tell. When precisely you tell is up to you, as long as it’s before sex (or whatever other activity is likely to transfer what you have).
Quoth Skald:
It’s not like you to arbitrarily exclude possibilities like that. Maybe you go back in time to become your wife’s first. Maybe she has her consciousness transferred into a new cloned body as part of an immortality treatment. Maybe you haven’t actually slept with her yet, and your memories to the contrary were all implanted last Thursday. There are plenty of scenarios where you might have sex with a virgin that don’t involve death, divorce, or infidelity.
You guys are such an impressive crew I had to make sure I wasn’t crazy, so I just checked in with a buddy of mine who has the largest network of friends imaginable (we used to joke about her being the touchstone for everyone on earth, like a real world Kevin Bacon) and is also a lifelong student of people. We affectionately refer to her a The Profiler, because she is. It’s both handy and creepy.
I didn’t give her any background whatsoever, I just said, “Do you think that the vast, vast majority of good and decent people in this country who also have STDS, always, without fail, disclose their status to every potential sex partner in every situation?”
She paused for a second and said: “I think it is a rare person who does that. From my intimate knowledge of so many people, people whom I otherwise consider extremely ethical in every way, I have learned that it is a very rare thing, so rare as to be nearly non-existent.”
Which matches my far smaller sampling of people I know. So at least I know I’m not imagining things.
So like I said… you guys are a truly impressive group of people. I salute you.
This may be a function of my age and general innocence, but don’t the majority people spend the bulk of their lives in largely monogamous relationships? One, lots of people are married for much of their lives, and many people who do not marry follow a sort of serial monogamy model, and then of the remainder I’ve always sort of assumed that many are close to functionally asexual.
I just really think that the percent of Americans who had 5 or more–heck, 3 or more–sexual partners in the last 12 months would be pretty small.
Now, I am totally willing to believe that there are subcultures where this is not the norm, where people who settle into monogamous relationships tend to leave the subculture. But I would also not be surprised if the social norms regarding sex were different, as the context is so different.
No, actually, I’m not. If I was questioning it, I would question it. I didn’t. I accepted it. I always assume people are telling the truth until they demonstrate to me that they aren’t. Sometimes even after. I’m not at all comfortable with assuming that people lie.
I live in LA, I’m 52 so my sexually formative years were the 70’s. I have often noted that my Me Decade Hollywood perspective can be markedly different than the perspective of other people, other ages, other locations.
But I guess I was thinking that if someone had made the decision not to tell, that rather than acting against what they believe was genuinely the right thing to do, that they genuinely believed that scenarios existed where it was, if not “Right”, so to speak, it is at least not wrong. Which is why I used the word mandatory.
When a friend of mine was diagnosed with HPV she freaked and assumed she had to call everyone she ever slept with, tell everyone she ever would sleep with, and her doctor looked at her like she was nuts. He told her no, you don’t. I assume you use condoms, there are no lesions, calm down.
I dont’ think I’ve known a lot of people who act in ways that do not align with their personal code so much as I’ve known people to have different codes.
I’m kinda surprised you haven’t scratched this poll. You say to vote for all that apply, but this poll doesn’t allow multiple selections.
I’m pretty sure I’d say that the moral thing is to tell no matter what on all of them, but I did think that “no detectable virus load” would be allowed by more people here. Instead I pedantically followed your directions, and therefore wound up voting for the last option.
I think you should re-do this and check the box that makes it a multiple choice poll, then ask that the two threads be merged or this one closed. As a single-choice poll it’s pretty wothless.
Considering how many threads there are here that basically boil down to people whining about how they can’t get laid, just how many dopers do you think have actually been in the position of needing to disclose an STD?
Horsehockey. You’re either extremely good at supreme passive-aggressive bitchiness OR you have no clue how basic interactions work. If you ask people something and then continually say things like
wow, how INTERESTING! So many people responded A, though the stats clearly show that B is actually what people choose in the actual situation!
*then you are passive-aggressively saying you believe they are all lying, but lack the balls to actually say that to their faces. *. And if you claim that isn’t your intention, please refer to the beginning of my post.
Almost certainly the latter, then - My disconnection from so many “normal” reactions and responses has been a topic in my life for a long time. My friend mentioned earlier calls me Aspergershead.
Plus there’s the whole freaky-honest thing, which absolutely plays both ways in my world. I’m freaky-honest, so I default to believing others are too, even though I know better intellectually.
