Posted on 07/02/2003 10:25:09 AM PDT by presidio9
Figures newly released show HIV infection rates in NSW have increased for the first time since 1994. The only surprise, perhaps, is that the rise did not come sooner.
AIDS lobby groups are blaming declining federal government funding and leadership. They are acknowledging a rise in unsafe sex among homosexually active men, the largest group affected by the virus in Australia. They are also pointing to foolhardy youth, and the false belief the virus has been cured.
What they haven't got their heads around is the use of language.
American culture soon sweeps the world. And so the verb "barebacking" - a euphemism for sex without condoms - has sped from the US to Australia via the internet and international visitors. You can now be a "barebacker", as in noun.
In the US, barebacking sometimes has political overtones. Gay men in big cities are fatigued by safe sex. High infection rates over there have collided with a cavalier fatalism for some: you'll be infected anyway, so why not claim your right to have all the unprotected sex you want?
At the extreme end of the barebacking phenomenon in the US is "bug chasing", in which a small (though unaccounted) subset of gay men desire and actively seek out HIV infection as a type of identity.
In January, the US edition of Rolling Stone ran a story justifiably condemned for exaggerating the incidence of bug chasing. Barebackers, by contrast, appear much more common, and increasing in number, in the US and in Australia.
There is nothing new about unsafe sex, of course, and the term barebacking was initially a symptom of what was already occurring. The globalisation of gay chat and pick-up rooms in the past two years has given voice to a taboo. No one used to say, let's have unsafe sex. But some now say, "Do you bareback?"
In the Australian context, barebacking is about taking risks and denying consequences. The word seems to have shifted from a symptom to a cause of unsafe sex; more gay men are proudly posting on their profiles that they "bareback", with a touch of alluring sexual outlawry.
Certainly, just being human - slipping up, poor choices, being depressed, consumption of drugs and alcohol - plays a big role in HIV seroconversions. But so, too, does language that glosses over danger, promulgating a culture of denial. The myth of barebacking needs to be confronted in community campaigns and educational material. Most often, the campaigns ignore the word.
It is true that Australia has had success in containing the virus. Most gay men do use condoms most of the time. And barebacking may not be a problem if two men having sex are of the same HIV status - both negative, or both positive. Increasingly, it is said gay men are making choices about whether to use condoms based on risk reduction rather than elimination.
But how well informed can gay men's casual unprotected sex choices be? Sydney's Health in Men study, by the National Centre in HIV Social Research, recently showed 55 per cent of gay men did not disclose their HIV status to casual partners during the six months before the survey. A shot in the dark, undoubtedly.
Periodic surveys, meanwhile, have shown steady rises in unsafe sex among gay men with casual partners in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide since the mid-'90s.
NSW has just announced a rise in HIV diagnoses of 12.8 per cent in 2002 - 386 diagnoses, compared with 342 in 2001, a figure significantly higher than anticipated. The spike coincides with a 20 per cent rise in Queensland last year, and a 7 per cent rise in Victoria, the third annual increase down south.
Grim Reaper shock tactics were never going to influence gay urbane sophisticates but nor, it appears, do the current complex, ambiguous and confusing safe sex posters circulating in the gay press and in gay venues.
AIDS educators argue it is a more complex world, requiring complex messages. But if we were so sophisticated, HIV figures would be falling.
The shifting language seems to have left the educators behind. It's time for a new national campaign to demystify barebacking. It's time to listen to what's being said.
Also, gay men reduce the competition for women, IMHO. Not an entirely bad thing, for a guy like me.
There are counselors out there who specialize in this. Has he sought out any of those?
I also think it's learned behavior. I suspect something happened by the time he was 10, that caused him to associate sexual feelings with males. It may have even happened before he was 6 but I suspect the choices he made as an adolescent reinforced those desire patterns.
It worked before. You (via no choice)subsidize abortion. It is a very strong motivator for not behaving well.
What we, as a society, do not stop to realize, is that it is society that forces that path of learning. We are responsible for it, not those that follow the only path they see.
For explanation:
Just because a male has effiminate behaviour, does not mean his preference sexually (initiated by a rise in hormones) should be for males. SOCIETY MAKES THAT ASSUMPTION. IT IS TAUGHT on TV, in SCHOOLS, DURING JOKES. (Remember the gay male hairdresser jokes?)
Since effeminate behaviour does not jostle the hormones of the females, they shy away from believing such a person would even want to have sex with them.
SO, Everyone wants to be wanted. When females don't want you, where do you turn for love. And I believe it is love that is the real driving factor for homosexuality on both sides of the human sexual equation. Love, not sex. Or I should say, the need to be needed by someone, anyone.
Sex, or the drive to complete the sex act can be ignored, or relieved.
The need to be wanted, to be needed, to feel like someone cares about you, can not. No one makes fun of you for not having sex. (well, amongst the jr. high and sr. high crowd, it can be an issue, but that isn't what causes homosexuality)
BUT, you can't get away from yourself. You want someone to care about you, to love you. I have seen examples over and over of the extremes humans go to to BE LOVED. Even to ignoring sex,if doing so means THEY GET LOVE, COMPANIONSHIP.
Another important, although less driving influence is just that it is so popular these days. Society, once again, is making rules telling kids they have a right to he homosexual. Our government likewise. Is it a wonder those that think they are homosexual, want to believe they have no choice?
I think that may be a very valid observation. No matter how big the difference between males and females there are always going to be those males who are more effeminate than average. And given human nature those are going to be picked on or shuned by some.
And while there are women who would find those attractive, group think sets in and they tend get shunned by women too. Women seem to be particularly bad about the group think thing too. JLo could date the ugliest most effiminate guy and girls would be lining up behind her. What's that about?
But I also think a good portion of homosexual males are introduced to homosexual sex at an early age. One of the reasons I think that is because one of my best friends in the second grade (that would be 7-9yo) propositioned me and said that he and a cousin had done it and it felt good. I didn't know much about sex at that age, but I knew I didn't want any part of what he was proposing. And several other gays that I've talked to admit to having experiences at a very young age.
Human beings are very complicated and there is never just one answer, to anything.
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