What's wrong with young guys that want to bareback but comprehend the risks of STDs?

[asu1117]

What's wrong is lack of education. Our responsibility is not to treat them as "twinks" but to mentor them?

Exactly.



We don't even have sex education in this state, we have "Hunter Safety" instead. It's an abstinence only policy, I can't remember sex ever being mentioned. And then people wonder why the teen pregnancy rates are so high in our High Schools.

 

[blackbeltninja]

How is it that some of us never had the internet, never had Sex Ed, never had a lot of things growing up which people have access to today (condoms in supermarkets are fairly new here in .za) and we are completely clued up on safe sex and STDs, and other people who SHOULD know all this stuff either don't or just don't care?

Mind boggling. To stir the pot a little, it's attitudes as described by the OP which account for my abhorrent lack of empathy for many AIDS victims as described in that thread from a couple of weeks ago.

-d-

 

[SilverWolf]

To stir the pot a little

Here ya go!

 

[spilledhypo]

i wouldn't necessarily say that it is because of lack of sex education. i have had sex ed every year between 6th and 12th grade, in washington and around san diego, and i still feel like people my age and younger, especially gay men, are pretty ambivalent towards hiv. i would say that the increase of hiv cases among the young is occurring because the disease has lost its negative image as those who were infected began to live longer. i remember an older poster around here talking about his fear living through the early days of hiv and the sadness of constantly scratching out the addresses and phone numbers of his friends who had died from aids. but young people now don't see hiv as a danger. they see it as a manageable disease, something you can live with for another 30 years. or as something that they think will have a cure before they die. why wear a condom if hiv isn't that bad?

although i understand that part of the reason that hiv has lost its negative image is in order to protect those who were infected with the virus and the groups that were most like become infected with it, i think that one of the ways to lower new infections is to show how difficult it still is to have hiv. even when writing the latter part of my last sentence, i couldn't think of anything specific, just generalities, like "hiv treatment is very hard on the body." i think hiv campaigns need to be updated from "hiv kills" to show the difficulty of having the disease to the youth that know you can live with hiv for many, many years.

 

[RaKroma]

I'm confused after reading this post. I'm not being obtuse, and I don't expect to have anybody write flaming, aggressive shit back to me, but are you really suggesting that health programmes don't ever exaggerate the consequences of sexually transmitted diseases? THere is a long history of people treating STD's as though we are still living a hundred years ago, even though we most certainly do have meds today that resolve infections quickly and with a minimum of fuss. I'm not saying it's clever or healthy to put oneself at high risk of contracting any funghi, bacteria, viruses or parasites, but let's take the moral posturing away and recognize that most boys and men are designed biologically to have regular sexual intercourse, and also that we're talking about diseases, not going to hell.

Let's also acknowledge that most guys in their teens and 20's go through long periods of extreme risk taking. There are clear correlations with suicidal and also self-harming behaviours. Why seem surprised? I'm certainly not saying this isn't dreadfully important, but I am saying there's absolutely no surprise in boys and young men (or even older men) having unprotected sex and frequently. Are we naive? No, we're not.

And I find it curious that it was written that handsome guys shouldn't be playing with fire, and there appeared a subtext that boys less physically fortunate are more understandably going to be prone to behaviours putting them at risk of sexual infections. While this is an understandable position, it puts notions of elevation upon boys who probably already feel higher expectations to be closer to perfect and well behaved and it also says to less conventionally beautiful boys that they don't matter so much. Looks are a fluke of nature and have nothing to do with what's going on inside or what risks a person should or shouldn't take.

Why is it that here at JUB, where most of us are queer in one way or another and should therefore be more empathetic to the proclivities and predispositions of others, so many stand in moral judgement of those who would have less safe sex? We almost all claim that the governments (representatives of 'The People') have no place in our bedrooms, but here we see so often each other peering into the bedrooms of others to pass their opinions about whether those men are performing socially acceptable sex!!! Fuck off out of other people's sex lives and block advances from those you have no interest in shagging. Who are you people who feel so supreme? Fuck!

Cheers.

You sound like one of those reckless druggies who say "I do what I want and you do what you want." People are not animals; even if you have urges, you learn to control your self. The "anything goes" attitude leads to this destructive behavior that wipes off generations of people from this earth. And no, STDs are never resolved with minimum fuss. There are drug resistant strains of infections; you're needlessly exposing yourself to antibiotics and other chemicals to treat something that you could prevent; you're exposing your body to nasty diseases. And the "don't stick your nose into my life" an--excuse to people's reckless behaviors does affect everyone else around them, including the tax payers who will have to foot the bill to pay for expensive medications to keep these reckless train-wrecks to walk the earth longer.

 

[RaKroma]

Well he certainly sounds irresponsible.

However, let me ask you this:

Do you ever travel by car?
Do you or have you ever smoked cigarettes?
Do you ever binge drink?
Do you ever j-walk?
Do you ever eat fast food?

Any one of these are more likely to kill you either instantly or slowly over time, than responsible unprotected sex.

Tell me which part of this kid's story sounds like "responsible unprotected sex"? I feel like a gay man has higher risk of dying from HIV/AIDS when barebacking with men off gay "dating" sites than j-walking, eating fast food, and traveling by car.

There are certain acceptable risks one takes in life and certain risks that are insane to take. J-walking is bit less risky than flying a plane with it's engine on fire.

 

[TourDeFrance]

Tell me which part of this kid's story sounds like "responsible unprotected sex"?

None of it. Hence my first sentence.

I feel like a gay man has higher risk of dying from HIV/AIDS when barebacking with men off gay "dating" sites than j-walking, eating fast food, and traveling by car.

Actually, more gay men die from cigarette smoking and obesity than die from AIDS related illnesses. Yet, I can't pass a gay bar patio without seeing it stuffed full of people puffing away, or a bear bar packed full of men who are on the verge have having a heart attack because of their weight and lack of fitness.

Anyway, to use your example of "barebacking with men off gay "dating" sites", yes that could definitely be considered irresponsible.

 

[healingduck]

I wouldn't necessarily say this is limited to young guys, at least from what I've seen.

 

[MJEH89]

Do you ever travel by car?
Do you or have you ever smoked cigarettes?
Do you ever binge drink?
Do you ever j-walk?
Do you ever eat fast food?

My thoughts are similar to these examples.

How many people who preach to others about safe guidelines for their lives, engage in OTHER life-threatening habits?

Cigarette/pot smoking--illegal drugs--speeding while driving--excessive alcohol consumption--unhealthy food diet, etc.

No one ever starts a thread regarding the dangers of these actions.

I'm not condoning bareback sex, I'm just saying...

 

[menRsexii]

This is ridiculous. I mean, it is this guy's choice and all but he is also giving the rest of us a bad image. I'm 19 and would NEVER do this! I'm way too paranoid! I'd even have a hard time going bareback with a guy I've been with 2-3 years! Hope this guy wise's up

 

[MoltenRock III]

Education isn't the problem. Let's face it, when it comes to nutrition and diet information there's been an avalanche of it, yet in America and a few other western nations obesity is still skyrocketing. It's not like people don't know eating fatty food, junk food, etc is going to make you fat. Same goes for these morons barebacking thinking they aren't at risk. The lessons just don't apply to them, that's why.

You can see the same jaded, insane, denial about global warming / climate change. People will expend a lot of effort to reinforce their desired belief system.

*shrug* The only thing that will wake them up is they themselves or a close friend being in a hospital dying a needless death from HIV/AIDS.

 

[bankside]

...and from this we learn that you don't need a mental health permit to post a personals ad.

this all gets a lot easier to accept when we understand that crazy people are, for some bizarre reason, allowed to pick up strangers. it's not their fault. crazy people are crazy.

 

[blackbeltninja]

i would say that the increase of hiv cases among the young is occurring because the disease has lost its negative image as those who were infected began to live longer.

but young people now don't see hiv as a danger. they see it as a manageable disease, something you can live with for another 30 years. or as something that they think will have a cure before they die. why wear a condom if hiv isn't that bad?

although i understand that part of the reason that hiv has lost its negative image is in order to protect those who were infected with the virus and the groups that were most like become infected with it, i think that one of the ways to lower new infections is to show how difficult it still is to have hiv. even when writing the latter part of my last sentence, i couldn't think of anything specific, just generalities, like "hiv treatment is very hard on the body." i think hiv campaigns need to be updated from "hiv kills" to show the difficulty of having the disease to the youth that know you can live with hiv for many, many years.

Agreed. I never liked the ad campaign which ran here about "HIV is no longer a death sentence."

Yes, this is true - you can manage the disease comparatively well and still live a long and productive and fairly (all relative) normal life with HIV. But it's not like it just goes away and you won't have it any more. I think this is the part which needs to be stressed.

-d-

 

[freefall]

I'm confused after reading this post. I'm not being obtuse, and I don't expect to have anybody write flaming, aggressive shit back to me, but are you really suggesting that health programmes don't ever exaggerate the consequences of sexually transmitted diseases? THere is a long history of people treating STD's as though we are still living a hundred years ago, even though we most certainly do have meds today that resolve infections quickly and with a minimum of fuss. I'm not saying it's clever or healthy to put oneself at high risk of contracting any funghi, bacteria, viruses or parasites, but let's take the moral posturing away and recognize that most boys and men are designed biologically to have regular sexual intercourse, and also that we're talking about diseases, not going to hell.

Let's also acknowledge that most guys in their teens and 20's go through long periods of extreme risk taking. There are clear correlations with suicidal and also self-harming behaviours. Why seem surprised? I'm certainly not saying this isn't dreadfully important, but I am saying there's absolutely no surprise in boys and young men (or even older men) having unprotected sex and frequently. Are we naive? No, we're not.

And I find it curious that it was written that handsome guys shouldn't be playing with fire, and there appeared a subtext that boys less physically fortunate are more understandably going to be prone to behaviours putting them at risk of sexual infections. While this is an understandable position, it puts notions of elevation upon boys who probably already feel higher expectations to be closer to perfect and well behaved and it also says to less conventionally beautiful boys that they don't matter so much. Looks are a fluke of nature and have nothing to do with what's going on inside or what risks a person should or shouldn't take.

Why is it that here at JUB, where most of us are queer in one way or another and should therefore be more empathetic to the proclivities and predispositions of others, so many stand in moral judgement of those who would have less safe sex? We almost all claim that the governments (representatives of 'The People') have no place in our bedrooms, but here we see so often each other peering into the bedrooms of others to pass their opinions about whether those men are performing socially acceptable sex!!! Fuck off out of other people's sex lives and block advances from those you have no interest in shagging. Who are you people who feel so supreme? Fuck!

Cheers.

The fact that most infections can be cleared up rather easily these days make people think that the diseases are exaggerated, while in fact, they don't. True that most STIs like gonorrhoea and warts can be easily resolved, but some diseases like syphilis are hard to cure, not to mention HIV/AIDS and herpes, which are incurable (yes, herpes is incurable though treatable). Also, how long can antibiotics help us in these fields? The more people get infections, the more antibiotics are used, and in some point in the future, regular antibiotics won't help us anymore since the bacteria are resistant. Even the same thing has happened to HIV/AIDS. This is the purpose of sex education: to put in mind that the diseases are not only contagious but also morbid and handicapping if not deadly or lifelong, and even though treatment is possible for some diseases, there are also burdens for the diseases that are so important that limitation of infection is important, thus the practice of safe sex practice.

The focus here is not just contracting the disease too. I wouldn't care much if someone got a disease and kept it to himself. What is not right is giving the disease to other people, and that is even more dangerous when the particular contractor has no idea of what he has in his body. If you would say, "I don't give a shit," imagine you are in public and people who has undetected avian flu (or other highly contagious respiratory diseases, perhaps TB or pneumonia) just sneezed everywhere and cough everywhere. You certainly would not want that to happen. You would rather have people who is coughing and sneezing nevertheless close their mouths, take medicines, and/or check themselves to the doctor to see if they're having something contagious.

I'm not saying that physical attribute has anything to do with the level of sexual knowledge and awareness of an individual, nor do I state that level of education or anything else also matters. I don't also feel overly supreme over people who do things against my values. I'm strictly pointing out that sexual education lacks motivating people to see the importance of it and implementing it on their daily lives, which is a shame, because if we can prevent people from acquiring it, then less burden is required for curing and treating the condition, and I'm judging random barebacking with people whose sexual health is questionable as dangerous and decapitating to those who engage with it, not as someone disgracing or hideous---if you're married for like 45 years and do not have multiple sex partners during that time, I don't give fuck how many times you fuck without condoms and cum in your partner's body and you have your partner cum in you, because that is safe.

So, if you're going to play it, "I don't care about others as long as I don't do it," have it your way. Unfortunately, I can't, not only because I'm (going to work) in medical field, but also because life is too good to be spent on fifteen minutes of bliss to be continued by sadness and remorse or perhaps sense of anger on some people who don't learn and wants other people to share their bitterness (thus the bug gifters), and I certainly do not hope other people have that no matter what the circumstances. Call me hypocrite or anything if you like it. Still, I would like to know if you would keep silent if you know your close relatives or close friends perform unsafe sex practice, knowing they're running with scissors, knowing they're going to ruin not only their health, but also their other aspects of life and possibly the lives of the people around them.

 

[rawTOP]

Some guys just like risky anonymous sex. It's what turns them on. They're adults, it's consensual and they know the risks. What I don't understand are the guys who enjoy curable STDs like gonorrhea - I mean how is it enjoyable to have burning pain when you piss? Yet there are guys like that out there. Fortunately they're fairly rare.

BTW, smoking kills 5 times more gay guys than HIV. If you want to show outrage about something - start with smoking.

 

[kallipolis]

^ Most gay men celebrate their sexual, and love life by observing safer sex practices.
.
Suicidal behaviour should never be recommended.

Prevention is the cure for a premature death, preceded by years of misery.

A self imposed death sentence evidences insanity.

 

[AllMan]

Actually, more gay men die from cigarette smoking and obesity than die from AIDS related illnesses. Yet, I can't pass a gay bar patio without seeing it stuffed full of people puffing away, or a bear bar packed full of men who are on the verge have having a heart attack because of their weight and lack of fitness.

How many people who preach to others about safe guidelines for their lives, engage in OTHER life-threatening habits?

Cigarette/pot smoking--illegal drugs--speeding while driving--excessive alcohol consumption--unhealthy food diet, etc.

No one ever starts a thread regarding the dangers of these actions.

I'm not condoning bareback sex, I'm just saying...

BTW, smoking kills 5 times more gay guys than HIV. If you want to show outrage about something - start with smoking.

hahahaha, VERY true......yet those people who are also "reckless" (from one extreme to the other) in their own lives never preach about the "stupidy" of smoking/DUI/obesity, because they, themselves, are smokers/fat (unhealthy)/drinking and driving, etc!!! Yet, if someone does something that THEY don't do or don't agree with, then it automatically becomes "reckless"....smh. That's society and it's small, closed-minded, selfish brain for you.

 

[kallipolis]

hahahaha, VERY true......yet those people who are also "reckless" (from one extreme to the other) in their own lives never preach about the "stupidy" of smoking/DUI/obesity, because they, themselves, are smokers/fat (unhealthy)/drinking and driving, etc!!! Yet, if someone does something that THEY don't do or don't agree with, then it automatically becomes "reckless"....smh. That's society and it's small, closed-minded, selfish brain for you.

Reckless, and risky behaviour that endangers our well being, and good health, even our life is always unacceptable

This includes deliberately becoming infected with HIV.

The issue of bug chasing is not one of one risk being greater, or lesser than another but of deliberately choosing to play Russian roulette, with a pistol where all six chambers are loaded with a cartridge.

Most DUI drivers are not involved in a car accident. Not all smokers contract heart disease, or lung cancer. Not all obese people die from being too fat. In all three cases the guilty party can, and often changes the way they live their life by not repeating their risky acts of stupidity through quitting smoking, changing their diet, or driving with respect for their life, and the lives of others.

When a bug chaser becomes HIV+ there is no way of learning from their mistake, by choosing to live their life in a much more life affirming manner. There can be no return to their previous HIV- status. Their HIV+ life is filled with sickness, misery and the sure, and certain knowledge of a premature death.

There can be no justification for the advocacy of bug chasing, and deliberately exposing oneself to the risks of contracting a sexually transmittable infection, when safer sex practices will reduce, even eliminate such a risk.

 

[rawTOP]

Reckless, and risky behaviour that endangers our well being, and good health, even our life is always unacceptable

Last I checked that was fascism. What's unacceptable in modern democracies is telling people what they can and can't do with their own bodies in the privacy of their own homes.

 

[kallipolis]

Last I checked that was fascism. What's unacceptable in modern democracies is telling people what they can and can't do with their own bodies in the privacy of their own homes.

If you want to kill your self then please retire to the wilderness and kill your self.

The vultures, and the wolves will eat your carcass, and no other human person will be involved in taking care of your daily needs. You will not have imposed your self on human society to assist you through your many years of suffering, as a result of your insane decision to become HIV+.

Tragically an HIV+ person will be obliged to depend upon expensive treatments, and health services which involve people whose skills might well be better used to assist people who have not deliberately infected themselves with HIV.