Posted on 04/20/2007 7:27:33 AM PDT by presidio9
A MELBOURNE man who fantasised about catching HIV before he contracted the virus has spoken out about a gay subculture in which infection is seen as desirable.
The young professional, who does not want to be named, told The Age a combination of complacency about the virus and the wish to have unprotected sex with an HIV-positive man he loved led him to become infected.
"I wasn't actively seeking it, but maybe there were parts of me, dark corners, that wanted it, that were thinking, 'Let's just do it and get it over and done with and then it won't be an issue'," said the man, who is his 20s.
He is the first to speak publicly about taking part in behaviour that is known in the gay community as "bug chasing" — seeking to become infected with HIV. The phenomenon was described by witnesses at the recent committal hearing for Melbourne man Michael Neal, who was accused of deliberately spreading the virus.
One HIV-positive man told the hearing "bug chasing" was "a big thing out there" and that he had been pursued on the internet by a man who wanted to catch the virus from him.
"I just kept reminding him that it was not glamorous," the witness told the court.
Dawn Wilcock, the director of Positive Women Victoria, a support and lobby group for HIV-positive women, said yesterday that such accounts confirmed the need for leaders of Melbourne's gay community to stop dismissing claims of the subculture as an urban myth.
"There's a lot of defensive and protective behaviour going on that is not addressing the potential repercussions of this," Ms Wilcock said.
Her organisation was extremely concerned about other kinds of HIV recklessness, including the behaviour of heterosexual men who have sex with other men and do not tell the women in their lives. Such men do not think of themselves as gay or even as bisexual.
"It's a real problem. We know that 75 per cent of Victorian women infected with HIV are contracting the virus from long-term male partners, so the health campaigns targeting gay men need to target others in the community who would never publicly identify themselves as being gay, too," she said.
The HIV-positive man said that some negative men who attended group-sex parties with positive men might want to "join the club" so they could have unprotected sex more freely. His own intermittent desire to catch the virus was more about wanting intimacy with his partner than a "tribal membership or a rites of passage sort of thing".
He also believed modern treatments for the virus meant life for HIV-positive people was now reasonably good, and that contracting the virus "wouldn't be as catastrophic as it might have been 10 years ago".
While it was difficult to tell how many men who fantasised about the virus actually tried to get it, he said, some men certainly advertised for it on the internet and asked for it during sexual encounters.
"I have had an extremely intoxicated person claim that he wanted it once," he said. "I fobbed him off and he never came asking for it again."
Many gay community leaders and spokespeople for HIV and AIDS lobby groups last month dismissed claims of "bug chasing" and "conversion parties" — group-sex parties where positive men have unprotected sex with negative men to give them the virus — after the concepts were aired during Neal's court case.
Mike Kennedy, the executive director of the Victorian AIDS Council — the peak body representing gay men living with HIV and AIDS — this week again told The Age it was an urban myth.
"You will find one of everything you look for," Mr Kennedy said. "But the notion that this is a big scene, absolutely not. The language of 'gift givers', 'bug chasers' and 'conversion parties' — it's something that's come off the internet."
An HIV worker who did not want to be named said there was a party line offered to the outside world on the issue of reckless HIV behaviour in Melbourne's gay community.
"The party line is that it's not happening — 'What? Us?' " the worker said.
The worker agreed with Ms Wilcock that heterosexual men who had illicit sex with gays were the conduit for the virus into the wider community. The worker said that when such men were diagnosed with the virus, they rarely started using condoms with their long-term female partners, "because she's going to say, 'What's this?' "
Ms Wilcock said that gay male organisations were not doing enough to confront this and the "bug-chasing" issue.
He also believed modern treatments for the virus meant life for HIV-positive people was now reasonably good, and that contracting the virus "wouldn't be as catastrophic as it might have been 10 years ago".
While it was difficult to tell how many men who fantasised about the virus actually tried to get it, he said, some men certainly advertised for it on the internet and asked for it during sexual encounters.
"I have had an extremely intoxicated person claim that he wanted it once," he said. "I fobbed him off and he never came asking for it again."
Many gay community leaders and spokespeople for HIV and AIDS lobby groups last month dismissed claims of "bug chasing" and "conversion parties" — group-sex parties where positive men have unprotected sex with negative men to give them the virus — after the concepts were aired during Neal's court case.
Mike Kennedy, the executive director of the Victorian AIDS Council — the peak body representing gay men living with HIV and AIDS — this week again told The Age it was an urban myth.
"You will find one of everything you look for," Mr Kennedy said. "But the notion that this is a big scene, absolutely not. The language of 'gift givers', 'bug chasers' and 'conversion parties' — it's something that's come off the internet."
An HIV worker who did not want to be named said there was a party line offered to the outside world on the issue of reckless HIV behaviour in Melbourne's gay community.
"The party line is that it's not happening — 'What? Us?' " the worker said.
The worker agreed with Ms Wilcock that heterosexual men who had illicit sex with gays were the conduit for the virus into the wider community. The worker said that when such men were diagnosed with the virus, they rarely started using condoms with their long-term female partners, "because she's going to say, 'What's this?' "
Ms Wilcock said that gay male organisations were not doing enough to confront this and the "bug-chasing" issue.
Those zany sodomites! They sure are normal.
Bizarre.
It is completely understandable. Liberals love to be victims.
ping
Hey it’s their culture, who are you to criticize it. /s
The self loathing required to be a liberal is very similiar to the self loathing required to be a gay man ‘bug chasing’.
This only happens because those mean old Christian Fundamentalists won’t let them marry, you know! /sarc off
Deathwish.
Some very sick people.
This is a nonsensical statement. Once you've had sex with someone who is gay... you're pretty much not a heterosexual in the first place.
Someone who does this is no different than Cho.
But their view is tolerated.
Let me try to understand this. Rather than be troubled to use a condom and perhaps lose some spontaneity and pleasure, these guys would prefer to get a virus that's likely to knock them off in a few years. I knew a man who died from AIDS years ago. It wasn't a good death.
If there are any psychiatrists out there, maybe they can explain for us how homosexuality is not a mental disease.
Liberals love scum and germs, this just proves it.
Like the Diceman says, "There is no in-between, you either SD or you don't. It's as simple as that."
It makes you sick to think we are working to cure people who desparately want to be cured of AIDS, and these idiots are trying to get it. This is just disgusting. When men do this and proceed to have sex with other men and women, it’s easy to see how this disease has spread.
This is crazy. I set aside some time right now to do some pinging, and my computer is acting very weird and I lost the toolbar that has copy and past and edit and all that.
GRRR. I am a tech-idiot and it will take me a while to figure this out. I was all revved up for a pingathon.
If I can’t get it tonight, I’ll get it tomorrow!
The problem is that AIDS has been politicized and given the level of priority associated with breast cancer or Alzheimer’s. Talking about the disease honestly opens one up to derision and charges of being “hateful.” No wonder why politicians keep throwing money at the problem. All taxpayer funding related to AIDS treatment or cures should be abolished, except in cases where the patient contracted the disease through a blood transfusion or through no fault of their own. Take the money out of AIDS, and I bet guys will think twice before sticking their thingy into another guy’s exit hole.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.