Unfortunately, that's the sensationalist media for you. Even when we get true reporting, we still seldom get accurate reporting; and with the first amendment, no one can even shut them up.
It just pisses me off, y'know? There's kind of this lazy attitude towards HIV infection these days, because people have a vague idea that they can 'take a pill' for it. People in the western world aren't dying daily any more, so people think it's nothing to be worried about. I think what frightens me most is that a lot of heterosexual people's instant reaction after having unprotected sex seems to be 'I need the morning-after pill', not 'I need a sexual health check and an HIV screen'. Honey, a baby is the least of your worries if you're not protecting yourself or your partner.
I think in the Western world, most people still see it as a 'gay disease', and that they can't catch it from hetero sex. Well, newsflash - hetero rates of infection have been rising, while gay infection rates have been holding fairly steady over the last couple of decades. And in the third world, people are primarily contracting HIV from hetero sex, not gay sex. HIV is real and that hot, frantic one-night-stand just isn't worth it, people. Use a fucking
That's the biggest reason why my husband and I -- who theoretically have an open relationship and would even welcome a third party in -- have spent nine years now exclusive: we're both clean, completely clean. Neither of us has even so much as had mono. In this current world the thing that stops both of us from venturing out is the fear that the person we venture out with will be one of those careless individuals, and then where will we be? Both of us, possibly putting the children at risk, and knocking me out of the running for any sort of donor -- and I am every sort of donor now.
It's not anything to play around with, even if it's just crabs or something minor. (I've had headlice, I certainly don't want them anywhere else, and I absolutely don't want to share them with anyone else.)
It sounds from my rant just above that I was venting out at a particular person, and I thought at the time that I wasn't, but thinking about it, I sort of was.
I went to college about six years back with a girl who was, to put it bluntly, a bit dense. She was nice enough, but she always wanted me to help her with her homework, which I would, to an extent, but I wasn't going to write it for her, which is what I think she wanted.
Anyway, one day this girl told me, quite proudly, about how she and a friend had tarted up the night before, got drunk, been picked up by a couple of American sailors, and gone and fucked at their hotel room. When I asked if she'd used a condom, she looked at me like I was an idiot. "I'm on the Pill," she said. No amount of explaining could convince her that the Pill wouldn't stop her getting an infection, or that her actions had been entirely reckless. I gave up, in the end.
It wasn't fear of pregnancy that kept me a virgin through my teens. I wasn't stupid enough to think that I was safe from unwanted infections. A baby was in a different category altogether. I have a girl friend that I like that I won't even kiss because she has cold sores and 1) I don't want to catch it, and 2) I don't want to give it to my husband who won't even have had the added benefit of kissing my hot girl friend.
People just don't think about it. I'm not manic about germs, I don't sanitize and over-cleanse, but incurable diseases are nothing to mess around with. At least think about your future partners even if you don't care about your own health.
That's really good to hear. I'm glad somebody is taking notice and implementing education.
I think people have become far too complacent. It's like people think anything you catch through sex can be cured through taking a pill, and that's just not the case. I think this new generation maturing now is going to have a lot more trouble with STIs than the previous one did. I grew up when the notorious Grim Reaper ads were on Australian television (that did little more than spread hysteria, cause a surge of attacks against gay men and women, and didn't clearly inform people as to how HIV was transmitted), but this current generation - to them, AIDS and HIV are just more background noise. It's old news.
People should be worried about HIV, yes, but the reason the Grim Reaper campaign was a poor one was because it basically told people up front who was 'responsible', showed lots of pictures of cute kids and loving mothers getting mown down, then threw in a line at the end about being monogamous and using a condom.
By the time people got to the thirty second mark, they were too wound up to absorb the prevention message - what they absorbed was that gays and injecting drug users were a 'threat' to their families, because they were responsible for bringing in this horrible thing.
As the tag line on the Youtube page says, people saw the Reapers as symbolising gay men, not HIV itself. Hate crimes skyrocketed, and people still didn't know clearly how it was transmitted, and how to protect themselves. There was a lot of confusion - could you catch it by shaking hands? A sneeze? Using the same toilet? Swimming in the same pool? Though it seems more benign now, in the eighties, people were utterly terrified about HIV, and Grim Reaper made
( ... )
Yeah; what sex education I remember getting was scanty, and only covered very briefly. And it was more focussed on hetero sex. I don't think homosexuality got mentioned at all, let alone advice on safe gay sex. I didn't even get the 'condom on a banana' thing. I must have been away that day.
I don't think I knew anyone who was gay or bisexual (and open about it) until I was seventeen. Five boys that I can think of came out after they left my high school. Don't know about any girls, besides me and one of my friends, but I didn't keep in touch with many people after I finished school.
I didn't know anything about gay people except what I saw on TV, and that was usually in the short interval before my mother turned it off or changed the channel. (We're talking about the woman who taped over my video of the animated movie of The Water Babies because the seahorse 'sounded gay'.)
A bi girl I knew with a Catholic mother had told me about how she raised the subject of alternate sexuality with her mother, hypothetically, and was told, "I wouldn't like it, but you're my daughter and I'd still love you."
I tried exactly the same line on my mother, and got, "I would be absolutely horrified!" followed by a half hour religious lecture about why being gay = wickedness and sin.
Now, I love my mum, and she's a lovely person, but at worst she waged out and out war on my sexuality, and at best (ie. now) she's come to a point where she acknowledges Emma is a part of my life but Does Not Talk about the fact that we're in a relationship.
It's good, though, because whenever she brags about an upcoming anniversary with my stepdad and how happy she is, I get to quietly point out that Emma and I have been together for about a year and a half longer than they have, and that we're happy, too.
Reply
I think in the Western world, most people still see it as a 'gay disease', and that they can't catch it from hetero sex. Well, newsflash - hetero rates of infection have been rising, while gay infection rates have been holding fairly steady over the last couple of decades. And in the third world, people are primarily contracting HIV from hetero sex, not gay sex. HIV is real and that hot, frantic one-night-stand just isn't worth it, people. Use a fucking
Reply
It's not anything to play around with, even if it's just crabs or something minor. (I've had headlice, I certainly don't want them anywhere else, and I absolutely don't want to share them with anyone else.)
Reply
I went to college about six years back with a girl who was, to put it bluntly, a bit dense. She was nice enough, but she always wanted me to help her with her homework, which I would, to an extent, but I wasn't going to write it for her, which is what I think she wanted.
Anyway, one day this girl told me, quite proudly, about how she and a friend had tarted up the night before, got drunk, been picked up by a couple of American sailors, and gone and fucked at their hotel room. When I asked if she'd used a condom, she looked at me like I was an idiot. "I'm on the Pill," she said. No amount of explaining could convince her that the Pill wouldn't stop her getting an infection, or that her actions had been entirely reckless. I gave up, in the end.
Reply
People just don't think about it. I'm not manic about germs, I don't sanitize and over-cleanse, but incurable diseases are nothing to mess around with. At least think about your future partners even if you don't care about your own health.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
I think people have become far too complacent. It's like people think anything you catch through sex can be cured through taking a pill, and that's just not the case. I think this new generation maturing now is going to have a lot more trouble with STIs than the previous one did. I grew up when the notorious Grim Reaper ads were on Australian television (that did little more than spread hysteria, cause a surge of attacks against gay men and women, and didn't clearly inform people as to how HIV was transmitted), but this current generation - to them, AIDS and HIV are just more background noise. It's old news.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
By the time people got to the thirty second mark, they were too wound up to absorb the prevention message - what they absorbed was that gays and injecting drug users were a 'threat' to their families, because they were responsible for bringing in this horrible thing.
As the tag line on the Youtube page says, people saw the Reapers as symbolising gay men, not HIV itself. Hate crimes skyrocketed, and people still didn't know clearly how it was transmitted, and how to protect themselves. There was a lot of confusion - could you catch it by shaking hands? A sneeze? Using the same toilet? Swimming in the same pool? Though it seems more benign now, in the eighties, people were utterly terrified about HIV, and Grim Reaper made ( ... )
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
I didn't know anything about gay people except what I saw on TV, and that was usually in the short interval before my mother turned it off or changed the channel. (We're talking about the woman who taped over my video of the animated movie of The Water Babies because the seahorse 'sounded gay'.)
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
I tried exactly the same line on my mother, and got, "I would be absolutely horrified!" followed by a half hour religious lecture about why being gay = wickedness and sin.
Now, I love my mum, and she's a lovely person, but at worst she waged out and out war on my sexuality, and at best (ie. now) she's come to a point where she acknowledges Emma is a part of my life but Does Not Talk about the fact that we're in a relationship.
It's good, though, because whenever she brags about an upcoming anniversary with my stepdad and how happy she is, I get to quietly point out that Emma and I have been together for about a year and a half longer than they have, and that we're happy, too.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
Leave a comment