Op-Ed in Xtra West, Vancouver's queer newspaper

[jawnbc]

Some mook named John P Egan published a piece in the last issue of Xtra West.

Which you can read by clicking here.

;)


[so waddya think?]

Comments

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Interesting...although I've noticed the same attitude in other areas of society, as well. I think the generations behind me are more self-oriented. Wasn't there a study done that they're the most narcissistic of the generations living? I wonder if what you've noticed in a change of culture isn't a bigger problem.

[jawnbc]

dunno

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Good to see it in print.

[jawnbc]

he's an opinionated and fucker and no one seems to agree with him all the time, but his heart's in the right place. :)

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

A proper rogering will put him in his place.

[ptownnyc.livejournal.com]

Good message in the background, but yet ANOTHER self-congratulatory "wow, aren't I freakin' amazing" homo preaching his superiority over others. He both recognizes, and dismisses the reasons why men behave the way they do.

I will admit, I don't have "the answer" to how to prevent widescale barebacking. But I am beyond tired of these heroic "sex-positive" examples.

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

I don't follow. How is this self-congratulatory?

[ptownnyc.livejournal.com]

It is the whole "My generation was so SMART about how to handle the AIDS crisis, blah blah blah" - sprain your shoulder to pat yourself on the back about how smart you were.

Know what? Times have changed. That was the right message for then. It doesn't work now. Death is a great motivator.

My current belief is that the only way to motivate the young to do the right thing is to emphasize that live on protease inhibitors is not necessarily comfortable or fun. You do need to make it personal to them, emphasizing physical wasting, neuropathy, and the host of unglamorous side effects that come along with treatment.

NYC (and elsewhere) have done great Crystal Meth ads that show how ugly and disfiguring a pastime it can be. I think that is the only message that will get through. Right or wrong, HIV is not perceived as a death sentence anymore, so why worry? is the mindset. "They've got a pill for that."

Having men our age continue to trot out strategies that worked in 1986 as if they were the right strategies for now is just counterproductive and an example of the older, as per tradition, showing how much better they were than the younger. It's just a turnoff and it is pointless.

Rant over.

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

I don't see the piece as an indictment of the younger generation of men, or even as an indictment. It's a call to care for your community. I don't see that as outdated.

I wouldn't include using condoms with new partners among strategies that worked in 1986 that don't work today. Nor giving a damn about the men we fuck.

As you say, I don't think that we should be shy about being clear that HIV infection and meds are not fun. But it's not, as you say, the only thing that's going to motivate gay men to protect themselves (and probably less to protect their partners).

The message of the article to me is that the writer describes an advantage not that he had but that he was given by the community of men around him, and that we today deserve to have that same advantage getting passed around our communities. I don't think that's high-handed at all.

Quick aside: lest you think that HIV infection disproportionately affects young gay men, my data and others tell me that it's gay men in their late 30s who are most likely to become infected now. Pops.

[poztatt.livejournal.com]

To the aside : depending on how you frame that. Overall or within the gblt community of a specific region?

To a point ptownnyc made about some of the mindset of "a pill for that". Yes, that is a large part of it for some people. I still maintain, however, that a large unspoken component is burnout.

Look, when you've got a generation of people who talk about barebacking not as a "thing" but just as the way things were, and yet you've never lived in a world without latex... at some point it burns out. I know for myself I have had to deal with this whole sense of sex = death. I'm enjoying myself but while riding a ride that doesn't have handrails, is over a cliff and hasn't seen maintenance in 10 years. It's a scary ride, but after a while it's one that pisses you off. You just want to have sex for sex's sake and not think.

Is that right or wrong? It's niether. It is simply what can and sometimes does happen.

Frankly I believe education of fact is important, but using the scare stick isn't necessarily education. (shrug)

In that sense I'm all for the idea of a community message of BUILDING a community up again. And not defining a community as simply those people of similar proclivities and geographic location.

[jawnbc]

All communities have norms. And standards. Often those not living within them choose to go elsewhere. Or choose to do things differently.

I don't disagree at all. But burnout as a reason why it's hard to be vigilant isn't at all the same as burnout as a reason to not give a fuck about anyone else.

[poztatt.livejournal.com]

(nod) Yep, but since I'm not sure what the first comment is in reference to so I can only say on reading it on its own, yeah I'd agree.

And to be clear, I wasn't specifically saying that burnout had anything to do with not caring. In reference to ptownnyc's comment about some people being into bb is due to lack of concern over the effects of the potential result of HIV, I wanted to point out that is not the ONLY reason. Some of it, for me at least in my conversations here in BC, comes from burnout over being scared.

Dropping fear, not dealing with it but simply giving it up, can lead to some monumentally dangerous actions. That has nothing to do with caring about others. It has about self care. If the sole focus of a person is its Self's pleasure, rarely is some one else or consequences for ANYONE taken into account. It isn't an excuse, just an explanation. (shrug)

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

I believe education of fact is important but using the scare stick isn't necessarily education (shrug)

Where in that article is he using a scare stick? I'm concerned that any mention of safe sex or HIV is automatically dismissed as a scare tactic.

And what does (shrug) mean?

[poztatt.livejournal.com]

(smile) My tone is fairly neutral and I'm hoping your's is as well, but in case I'm not being clear I thought I'd put that up right front.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was referencing the article directly when I mentioned tactics for education/improvement. I was referencing the discussion topic as a whole. In addition to the article, but not about the article. Basically an article is limited in length and usually to a point, expecting John to write the definitive essay on the topic is ludicrous. And I'm not expecting him to. As, however, other points of people's opinions came up I threw in one of mine. As long as we're talking education and prevention, I feel it important to point out that I don't think scare messages work as effectively as people would like to think.

(shrug)? In this instance it's in place of an emoticon. Back in the day of usenet I wrote more descriptive comments to add in a kind of body language or tone to give a context to my mood. A hold over would be my occasional (shrug) or (smile) or (handwaving) to add in a physical component that reflects my normal speaking pattern. The blessing and curse of being a writer is that I tend to want to add in some way to modify the language beyond simply saying "I'm laughing as I tell you : blah blah blah". I'm far more aware than I'd like to be that a minimum of half of the process of communication is some one else. That means, for me, trying as often as possible to narrow the potential interpretations of what I intend down to those within the same general area as I intended. But it's imperfect.

[jawnbc]

If it were young guys, that might make sense. But it's largely men my age (40s) who are the aggressive barebackers. NY might well be different.

I'll be sure to share with Dr. Egan your perspectives ;)

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

Tell 'er shayz a koont!

[ptownnyc.livejournal.com]

LOL

I don't go to sex clubs, but in my sexual history, I have found that it is the younger ones who don't even ASK the question; older men may bareback, but they will ask you if you do or don't. The young ones just spread and wait for you to stuff it in.

[sunsmogseahorse.livejournal.com]

Think you can get a grant to study that more extensively, stud? :)

[jawnbc]

That's pretty much the point I that Egan guy is trying to make: older guys here in Vancouver not only no longer ask, they aggressively try to bareback people.

[poztatt.livejournal.com]

For the most part... good article. But then... I'd disagree with some of the statements around the culture here in town today. Or at least its history.

Frankly the sense of each group and collection of people under the banner of GBLT slowly separating from each other as in the 80s people tried to find blame or cause for HIV is present in my wanders around here. I, conversely to this piece, find myself thinking that people cared for people but ultimately started to find ways to separate themselves from each other during the 80s. NOT bond.

Those links have been severed. And we're seeing the result here... continuity and strength, support and commonality are traits I find missing. (shrug)

But then we each experience a different city, all of us. I just got this one.

[jawnbc]

I hear you. I am largely speaking to the tubs and the like, not the larger community of queer men. Do you ever go? I'm not speaking for anyone but myself here, but this is something a lot of my peers and I have been discussing for a really long time. Raunchy isn't something new: dark, mean-spirited selfish "getting my needs met fuck you" used to be not only rare, but challenged as out of order. Not by management, but by peers.

Of course the divide between the "nice" homos and my ilk hasn't really shifted in the last 2 decades...

[poztatt.livejournal.com]

I used to go every Friday and Saturday to the tubs. For years. I always got that response. I either managed my response or I left early.

These days I don't go. Mainly because I find that I just don't have it in me to wade through it to get off. I'd rather do that at home on my own. When in strength I can handle it and deal with the dross, enjoying the rare moments of fun when I get them. But I've not been in that kind of strong space for a while and I don't need to reinforce it with asshats who's idea of raunch is to mentally and psychologically piss all over you for not being their fantasy fulfillment.

But I've ALWAYS run into an underlying sense of being a posable cardboard cutout for other people's re-creations of their one "perfect sex" moment that they'd had five years ago. (shrug)

[jawnbc]

I'm sorry to hear that. :(

[poztatt.livejournal.com]

(smile) I'm better than I was. I once got run out F212 by two stick figures. They were wandering around talking loudly, obviously friends who'd run into each other at the tubs. And they were running everything down. At the point that they came to my door, and stopped, they were saying "..and some of these guys who think they are hot.." "or look good at all" "and they DON'T!". The silence as they looked at me was a bit much, but the shared look and peels of laughter did me in. I left.

Today, not so much my reaction. But that's kind of my point. I've always found myself more inclined to believe in the rarity of truly good sexual encounters and a lot of frogs being kissed between them. (shrug) Vancouver is a great place... if you like standard gay-missionary positions and acts. Otherwise, we don't want to know you and we CERTAINLY never appear outside our own homes.

Whiiiich would be why I'm leaving.

[jawnbc]

That sucks. But I'm still a closet NYer: I'd beat off into my hand and wipe on one of their faces. :D

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

Well you know I'm fan of the guy.

Maybe that's why I found the article good ... naw it was well said and well written ... and an important formulation.

Good job!

[jawnbc]

:)

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Spaces that were a fantastic balance of raunchiness and camaraderie are now much darker.

I find much the same thing, and I have a particularly hard time knowing how to respond as a third party when I see something going on that appears stupid.

This past year I've found that maintaining reasonably safe practices in group settings is basically impossible. Things like people trying to finger my ass when their hands are all slimed up with someone elses' jizz. Yum! Obviously this requires a kind of defensiveness that is incompatible with fun.

I don't know how much of it is me changing and how much of it is the culture changing. I'm definitely not as wild as I was ten years ago. But I feel increasingly unable to participate in sexual culture at all.

I wonder what would happen if I really went off on someone who tried to do something stupid to me in a group environment. It would kill the mood, to be sure, but perhaps it would have a beneficial long term effect.

[jawnbc]

I wonder what would happen if I really went off on someone who tried to do something stupid to me in a group environment. It would kill the mood, to be sure, but perhaps it would have a beneficial long term effect.

I sorta did once SOMA. Some guy tried to mount me raw, I pulled back and handed him a condom. He put it on, started fucking, then pulled out and took it off (it snapped like a surgical glove being unsheathed). I clenched to keep him out, reached back and dug my fingernail deep into his foreskin and yanked.

He was so loaded on crystal it didn't seem to garner any sort of reaction. I went home.

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

i think Dr Egan has stated his thoughts nicely! i appreciated the reference to women, which drew me in further to relating to what you were saying. as i say to my teen: "mate, a baby would be the LEAST of it!!". i wonder how many parents educate their children appropriately, regardless of their sexual orientation?
judging from comments here, at the very least it is bound to get people talking... always a good thing. :-)

[jawnbc]

I love you

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Great article - and important as well.

Me, I'd have thrown some stuff in about doxa and habitus but hey ;-)

[jawnbc]

Would you like some ras malai with your doxa?

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I really liked it, but then, you can probably guess that.

Great hexis there btw ;-)