The difference with AIDS is that AIDS at the time condemned you to a slow, horrible, visible decline, in which your death was celebrated via a radio talk show host that at the time had an entire regular segment to name and mock the people who died.

Like, this doesn't apply to people who get cervical cancer from HPV or other similarly tragic outcomes of acquiring an STD. The cruelty on the scale is way above anything.

Don't forget Reagan's press secretary mocking the so-called "gay plague"

https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids

There was also Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, who seems to have taken HIV/AIDS seriously and opposed stigmatization:

https://www.hiv.gov/blog/in-memoriam-c-everett-koop/

As painful a read as that was, I think it's really important to understand what the social norms were at that time. Thousands of people had died and the reaction, not just from the press secretary but from the press pool at large, was to laugh and joke. Really the only widely socially acceptable response to even the mere thought of gay male sexuality was complete and utter disgust. If you were a man, to not express disgust at this thought opened the door to "you might be a fairy too", which is why you see so many of these displays of "the banality of evil".

Audio from those press conferences is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzDn7tE1lU

That's revolting. Which radio show was this?

Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh? Or any of the right-wing radio hosts who mocked belittled and laughed at liberal/minority suffering, I'm sure.

The point I try to get across is to separate "promiscuity is inherently bad" from "sex can have serious negative consequences that you should appropriately plan for depending on your risk tolerance."

Another way to think of it: it's also highly likely that if you go to a crowded event that there are tons of diseases you can expose yourself to. Pre-COVID, people used to talk about getting "SXSW flu", e.g. with so many crowded events at SXSW it was nearly impossible to avoid getting sick. Importantly, at some times (obviously when there was a high prevalence of COVID), I think this risk is too great and crowds should be avoided. At other times, though, I think it's utterly reasonable to think that the risk of a cold or flu is worth it to go to a bunch of fun concerts. Nobody ever talks about "You know, there will always be a ton of dangerous diseases associated with concert-going, so you should always avoid them."

So when it comes to sex, I find it totally reasonable to adjust your behavior based on the risk at the time. Currently, e.g. for a gay man on PrEP, lets look at potential risks:

1. HIV risk is extremely low for those who adhere to PrEP.

2. Most bacterial infections can be cured straightforwardly with antibiotics.

3. The biggest risks are then (a) lifetime viral diseases, primarily Herpes, and (b) at this point, multi-drug resistant gonorrhea.

Thus, I think it's important to be aware of #3 and to take precautions, again relevant to your risk level, accordingly. What I don't think makes sense is to say "But you never know what could spring up!" That's true, but if you look at the recent monkeypox outbreak, I think a lot of people had the right approach: when the outbreak was publicized, many people (a) stopped or reduced their number of sexual partners and then (b) got vaccinated as quickly as possible.

The primary point I'm making is to disentangle the real risks associated with sex (and to treat them dispassionately) from the the moralizing around "you're a dirty whore if you have sex a lot."

Regarding concert going, I've certainly met people so risk averse that they don't join a concert mass outdoors, and a lot more that don't do so indoors. This is especially more common before important events like a trip.

That said, the respiratory route is very distinct from the oral, genital and anal route.

On a spectrum of frequency of contact, respiratory is the most frequent, then comes oral/digestive, then genital, and finally anal.

The more frequent and vital a route is, the more natural and artificial resources we can allocate to combat infections.

So infections spread by talking to each other, being vital, gets a vaccine developed in less than a year, and gets diverse natural antibodies.

On the other hand, a disease that spreads among adults who seek pleasure, will be allocated less resources, more so if it spreads preferentially through non reproductive sex.

Aids on the respiratory system would be fucking deadly, but my guess is that it would never spread there because there's more protection mechanisms, respiratory is like a process running unprivileged on an open port 80. Genital is port 22 and anal-genital is rdp or teamviewer with admin privileges on a server.

> but my guess is that it would never spread there because there's more protection mechanisms, respiratory is like a process running unprivileged on an open port 80. Genital is port 22 and anal-genital is rdp or teamviewer with admin privileges on a server.

Dude, considering we're not even done yet with a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly respiratory virus, I'd probably stop with the bad analogies.

Covid is not remarkably deadly. How long will people insist it is? Don’t they teach history in the US?

In 2022, Covid was the fourth leading cause of death in the US.

1.https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm

Lethal respiratory diseases do exist, but they spread too fast to be as impactful. That's another factor to consider.

It's not the 90s anymore. In the developed world HIV primarily and disproportionately effects IV drug users, not gay men.

In the developing world, it has nothing to do with promiscuity but lack of education and access to preventative measures like condoms and PrEP.

No. New HIV diagnoses in the US are 67% male-to-male sexual contact, 22% heterosexual contact, and 7% injection drug use. (BTW, I have no agenda here except accurate statistics.)

From https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html

This is not true. In 2018 in the US, 66% of new HIV diagnoses were in the transmission category of male-to-male sexual contact:

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/library/reports/hiv-surveillance/vol...

According to [0] in 2020, MSM accounted for 71% of new HIV diagnoses, while people who inject drugs (PWID) accounted for 7% of new HIV infections. AFAIK similar stats are also for western and central Europe. These are population-level stats, not relative risks, but If we disregard PWID and scale to population size, MSM are still one to two orders of magnitude more at risk than non-MSM, non-PWID population, so they are clearly disproportionately affected.

[0] https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/stat...

Promiscuity does not propagate sexually transmitted diseases. You are working off of a false stereotype which has limited the capacity of your rational thought, and as a result, you imagine a world which does not exist, and propose solutions which will not work. This is a common problem with HN people. They come up with this one idea that kind-of makes sense, and then stop thinking, and shape their whole thought process around this false premise.

Did you take a second to google this idea you had to see if it made sense? No; because if you had, you'd have found that HIV is spread by blood, semen, pre-seminal fluid, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids, breast milk. People who inject hormones, silicone, steroids, and drugs, can get or transmit HIV by sharing needles, syringes, or other injection equipment. It can be spread through pregnancy or stepping on an infected needle at the beach. It's often spread by not using protection during sex. And straight and gay people both get it.

Gay people do not have more sex partners than straight people. Promiscuous people do have more partners than non-promiscuous people. Gay, straight, bi, queer, etc, can all be promiscuous, just like they can all also be monogamous or even asexual. You may not like that de-simplification, but it exposes the flaw in this notion that gay people are sluts and sluts get STDs. It just doesn't work that way. Safe sex, even if you fuck a lot of people, makes you much less likely to get an STD than if you only occasionally had sex and never use protection. In countries with limited access to safe sex, all people across all demographics contract it. It's not just poor Africans and gay men, despite that being the unfortunately common misconception.

> Promiscuity does not propagate sexually transmitted diseases.

Of course not, they are propagated by poneis and unicorns. Nothing to do with having sex with multiple partners.

> Gay people do not have more sex partners than straight people.

You are deluded. Not only gay people have higher median number of sexual partners, but our sexual network is tighter, since fewer people are gay compared to straight. That's a perfect environment for sexual diseases to spread, which was the case with AIDS and more recently MPox.

>Gay people do not have more sex partners than straight people.

On average, gay men will have more sexual partners than straight men. There's no reason to deny this.

https://www.psypost.org/2020/07/lgb-people-and-extraverts-te...

>transmit HIV by sharing needles

The vast majority of new infections are through gay men having sex. IV drug use only accounts for 7% of new infections

https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/stat...

>but it exposes the flaw in this notion that gay people are sluts and sluts get STDs.

Your insecurities don't change the facts. Gay men have more sex and more sex leads to more STDs.

In particular though, anal sex has a higher chance of passing on specific STDs. Gay women have a statistically lower (but not zero) chance of passing on STDs.

https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/sexual-and...

"The vast majority of new infections are through gay men having sex. IV drug use only accounts for 7% of new infections"

In the US.

The vast majority of infections (90%) in Africa are from heterosexual sex:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12665438/#:~:text=Abstract,a....

The primary driver of the enormous epidemic ongoing in Russia is by far IV drug users (and heterosexual sex):

https://www.politico.eu/article/everything-you-wanted-to-kno...

"Although needle-sharing among drug addicts was one of the main reasons the disease spread so quickly, most HIV transmissions in Russia — 57 percent — are now a result of heterosexual sex. Drug use is responsible for 40 percent, while gay sex accounts for around 3 percent, according to Russia’s Federal Research Center for AIDS Prevention and Control in Moscow."

The majority of people living with HIV worldwide are straight women (52%):

https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/hiv-and-aids/facts-and....

I agree with you that the claim from some people to make like sex and number of sexual partners has nothing to do with STDs is ridiculous. It annoys me a great deal.

Gay men are disproportionately at risk and affected due to number of partners and type of sex. But most people with AIDS are straight.

Anyway your LGB link is funny because it claims (I think out of confusion) that lesbians have more partners as well. But lesbians also have the lowest std rates of any group. Making them obviously the best and most morally superior of the orientations.

STDs are spread through sexual activity, and the more partners you have will increase the transmission rate. Gay men are well documented to have on average more sexual partners than other sexualities. Both of these are… obvious and well documented, depending on your experience or understanding of the literature (take your pick).

Obviously HIV can be spread by other vectors, that doesn’t make what I’ve said above not true. This is one of the most illogical comments I’ve seen in awhile, purely wishful thinking. Promiscuity is fine, but don’t be naive.

I'm willing to bet you're a white male, because on average, most HN users are. Given that, would it be okay if I said most white people are imperialistic, colonizing abusers who oppress women and minorities? Because on average they have been exactly that.

Once you're on the receiving end of these "averaged" generalizations, you realize that it's not a great idea to think that way or to try to rationalize using them. It's like the people that say things like "on average, black people commit more crime" and then use that oversimplification to justify racial bias.

(and yeah, i'm probably gonna be flagged for pointing out the logical fallacies that get propagated to justify systemic racism, misogyny, homophobia and slut-shaming, but i'm not gonna censor myself to avoid pointing out fallacious tropes in common discourse)

I'm not sure this is the GREAT COMEBACK you'd hoped for.

I'm sorry if you're not comfortable with dealing with averages. It's not that I don't understand that the average doesn't define all or most members of a group.

As someone living promiscuously, I'd say it's a correlation.

Some factors that lead people to a promiscuous livestyle also lead them to high risk behaviours, probably because they see promiscuous sexual behaviour also as risky and, in turn, desirable.

I met many that would frown upon condoms, but I also met many that would see them as no big deal.

I for one would count myself as risk averse, and got to that lifestyle through other motivations, and in turn, always ensured to stay safe.

>I think that limiting amount of partners is a vital part to combating sexually transmitted diseases

It's much more important to have safe sex. Condoms and PrEP work.

Every thread on HN about HIV/AIDS seems to attract at least one person who feels obliged to say something about how promiscuous gay people are. I don't think these comments often come from a good place. (For example, you have previously made a rather insensitive joke about 'pozzing' on this site.)

I was super impressed when I went to see my PCP for my annual physical and when I mentioned I'm non monogamous (which apparently triggers a diagnostic code for "high risk sexual behavior") she said, "We can put you on PrEP if you want, just to be sure. Cheap insurance." Cheap insurance indeed.

It's really amazing how much that attitude has changed in a decade or so. I asked my PCP at the time (and this was the last time I saw this doctor, FWIW) about PrEP when it was relatively new, and basically got a "I don't want to encourage dangerous behavior" lecture.

> Every thread on HN about HIV/AIDS seems to attract at least one person who feels obliged to say something about how promiscuous gay people are. I don't think these comments often come from a good place.

Just the one? If only.

Every time there is a story on HN that is even tangentially related to either HIV or LGBTQ+ sexual health, it inevitably devolves into a morass of misinformation and thinly-veiled homophobia. There are different degrees of it - some is presented in a more "civil" veneer, which helps it stay upvoted, but at its core, it's all coming from the same place.

Public health professionals who specialize in HIV and LGBTQ+ sexual health are actually pretty unanimous in their position on this topic, but somehow that never sways these folks (which should be a pretty good sign that they're not arguing in good faith).

I was understating, for sure. Civility (or the veneer thereof) is HN’s major exploit vector.

I think my favorite part is how you don't actually specify what the position is, just that there is one and it's apparently enlightened.

Knowing what public health professionals think about this topic is pretty much table stakes for being able to make any sensible kind of contribution to the discussion. Otherwise it is like arguing the finer points of Rust lifetimes with people who couldn’t write ‘Hello World’ in Python.

In this case I think the relevant position is widely known. Supporting people to have safe sex works, whereas shaming them for having more than some vaguely specified maximum number of acceptable sexual partners does not work.

This is a defensive mechanism to try and prevent your position from being verifiable (or refuted).

HN isn’t the place to argue about public health policy in relation to HIV/AIDS unless you have something new or interesting to add to the topic. Literally every time this topic comes up on HN we have stacks of comments making the same repetitive talking points about gay male promiscuity. Quite apart from the rather odious and obvious agenda behind these comments (which surely don’t stem from any serious concern about gay men’s health), this is incredibly tedious. I might also add that your point, such as it is, has SFA to do with TFA - which is largely focused on Africa.

I've never seen someone use HN guidelines to argue they can't post a link clarifying their position.

The parent comment is poorly veiled moralizing and faux humility.

The reality is that they are generally more promiscuous and generally under worse circumstances.

This is a statement of fact, please stop mistaking it as a moral judgement that we need to fight against. You cannot help mitigate or solve a problem without accepting reality.

Unfortunately you're buying into a lot of propaganda that persists to this day.

Straight sex workers exist. Given straight people outnumber gay people by (let's say) 10:1, there is almost certainly a higher absolute number of straight promiscuous potential superspreaders than there are gay ones.

Even in the middle of the bell curve, nearly 50% of American babies are born to unmarried parents, so it's not like strict monogamy is the norm among straight people [0]

The reason that HIV transmitted so well in gay male populations is because receptive anal sex has a 20x higher likelihood of transmission than receptive vaginal sex and a 40x higher likelihood of transmission vs. incentive sex.[1]

Within the gay community, you have plenty of men who engage in that relatively high risk act of receptive anal sex, who then go on to be the insertive party in another interaction.

Within straight populations, the potential spreaders are just much less likely to contract HIV in the first place.

Sorry to be so specific about something sexual, but I have always found it odd that this very practical information has not been put into the mainstream. I guess it's the imperfect middleground - people who want to shame gay men don't care about the data and people who support gay men don't want to stigmatize receptive anal sex. But unfortunately, I bet it's led to a lot of needlessly risky behaviors.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/unmarried/unmarrie... [1] https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/sexual-and....