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Despite the entertainment value of missing literal rainbow flags, I'll note outright that you did a lot better reading social signals than I did the first three or five times I went to one, and I had about the same level of interest in a casual hookup.
Fair. Not 100% accurately, mostly because some are paranoid enough to have separate phones or be really aggressive about separating files, but yeah, even people who aren't on the meat market'll often have some less-than-audience-friendly photos on their phones.
You might be surprised. I'm not the best person to ask about appearances, but there's a good part of gay society where that'd come across as pretty strong masc top signal.
Sounds about right. My impression's that they were a lot more popular in the 80s, and still had a decent number of strong advocates in the 90s, but even when I was a young bi they'd started to get the same sort reputation whippits did (if far less dangerous). Technically a high, but dumb and risky even by the standards of drugs.
I think there's also some mechanical explanations, in addition to the safety and reputational concerns, though. A lot of by-gay-for-gay literature even into the 90s emphasize them (or similar materials like 'vcr tape cleaner') not for improving climax, but as a muscle relaxant. Improved availability of tools and toys to get certain muscles more trained for certain things, and more expectations for tops to properly manage speed, may have made that aspect a lot less universally valuable.
But they've still got a following for that purpose, and that following has long a litany of first-hand bad experiences (bad headaches) and second-hand horror stories (oh boy, chemical burns).
Huh. Wonder how much of that's a genuine geographic or cultural difference, or something tied to the specifics of how UK bars work rather than US sphere stuff, rather than 'oh, that's just a bidet/enema/lotta shower time, not a douche'. It's always been something some people can't stand at all, and definitely not my idea of fun, but it's something I've been hard-pressed to be comfortable without even when pretty confident about diet control.
From the bi guy side, that's somewhat glossing over the less charitable reasons: there's a lot of gay stereotypes about bi guys as just wanting side pieces, or wanting some fucc in the short time before they settle down with a woman/beard later. But it's not wrong, and people fitting those stereotypes do exist.
You're starting to see that a bit more, but not surprised it's both uncommon and mostly not young gays in your sample. I'm not convinced it's a good decision at larger scales -- a lot of the fresh-out-of-high-school gay guys think it's like complete immunity, rather than 'just' an order of magnitude reduction -- but then again I probably put nowhere near FG's value on sex, so hard to make a serious analysis.
((In the US, they're starting to push it to the point of having advertisements on bus stops and park benches in my local area... and I'm not in an especially gay or even urban space.))
Yeah, they were incredibly rare ten or even twenty years ago, and probably reflected a bunch of conditions that aren't likely to show up again: the whole thing screams of sublimated fears over having to choose between certain infection and complete abstinence not just from sex but even casual exposure in gay spaces. You do still get some people taking incredibly stupid risks, but they're usually more just going 'max bodycount'.
Speaking of which: ugh, that's a sphere I'm glad I have no information about.
In the US, you'll sometimes see jokes about it as equivalent to keeping rent down by firing gunshots off at the street corner. Probably not a turn of phrase that'd be appreciated or understood in the UK, though. I think there's more motivation toward low-grade exhibitionism, since a lot of these habits were common back when (or where) straight guys wouldn't enter a gay bar for a sorority worth of women, but fear of gay spaces getting rolled over by a tidal wave of straights is definitely a thing and not an unreasonable fear.
Oh, boy, that's it's own separate ball of wax. Tbf, there's a lot of complex tradeoffs where the new demographic has some compatibility issues with the standard demos at the same time that it is partly your old clients. But there's also lot of older gay guys that are somewhere between weirded out by and grossed out by trans women as pretty much everything that gay men weren't supposed to do, or just don't like it, and that's a lot more controversial an issue in the field.
I pass a prep billboard on my daily commute and I spend at least a few minutes a week thinking about the demographic/regional dynamics involved and how deliberate it may or may not have been.
Edit: that was unnecessarily vague, I was hurrying.
The billboard is in the ambiguously industrial/lower-working-class/gentrifying border between a mid-size Southern city and one of its slowly-absorbed suburbs/satellites. A "neighborhood in transition," one might say. The area is poorer and blacker than the main city, and socially if not politically conservative on average. The sign features a black guy at the prettier end of handsome without crossing into effeminate, and some phrase about staying safe. Demographically correct but a bit socially off, perhaps in that way of ignoring any stigma by the sign being 'generic'?
Nobody I work with actually lives around here and I'm not going to ask one of the attendants at the nearby gas station or Asian market "hey, what do you think of that sign up there?" so on the ground reporting remains as yet untold.
I assume prep billboards are funded by grants to ‘raise awareness’ and ‘destigmatize’ and have little or nothing to do with the people who view them.
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What is an honest straight man who is a zero on the Kinsey scale supposed to do? Go topless? I suspect that would make things worse, heh.
What else do I have in my wardrobe? Hawaiian shirt? I can see where that leads.. Barely worn suits? Probably means I'm closeted and looking for fun on a business trip I'm sure.
I mean, I can't blame them, I was an interloper in a gay bar. That is a strong signal of... something. Poor situational awareness, a liberal worldview, a love of cheap drinks? Pick your poison.
FG framed it in a manner I've heard before: Back in the day, you're all but guaranteed to get it, unless you give up on the gay lifestyle altogether. Why not just get it out of the way?
Hang on, another memory unlocked. He told me that he had met three potential partners who were HIV positive. I think he said two of them were on PrEP, and he might have slept with them. The other wasn't, and thus was rebuffed. I think this is what prompted the tirade about HIV and monkeypox. He said that man was being an idiot, and worsening general societal perception of the gays, as well as being a risk to their lifestyle.
Interesting. I'm not too surprised by the existence of conservative or reactionary gay men. These guys seemed to be very liberal in outlook, they were friends with the trans bartender, so I guess they took the concept of LGBT solidarity more seriously!
[D] All of the above.
No actual D involved, but you're right, all of those seem to be a running theme in my stories.
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You don't look like a big fat party animal to me
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Fair. If I had to come up with the no-gay-guy-would-wear-this setup, it'd probably involve an emphasis on frumpy and especially too-large clothing, but that's neither actionable nor useful advice for anyone in the real world.
Yeah, something like that, but eroticized as someone permanently taking you and making it impossible to go back. Not just for lifestyle-as-in-baths-and-chemsex, but even lifestyle-as-in-meeting-up-with-gays-for-parchessi: remember that it took until the late 1980s for official medical advice to say you couldn't transmit HIV by casual contact, and longer for a lot of people including gay guys to actually believe it.
There's been a long-standing presence of these sorta pragmatists, and while HIV gave them a lot more political capital (even when they were guessing), they've probably had more impact than my respectability politics side. I'm not sure how well the math works out in the long run, though.
I'm also confused about either the specific policies or a communication issue. My impression was that US medical advice is to actively test people for HIV first and never give PrEP to HIV positive people, and that the UK was similar. Are these people using PrEP as a byword for any oral anti-HIV medication, and they're really on ART (but then they're unusually medtechnical group, so that'd be a weird conflation)? Is FG assuming anyone without known HIV status is positive, and these guys are 'just' unknown status, so PrEP is more reasonable? Am I behind the curve on the literature, here? Am I ahead of the curve, and people giving out PrEP doing so in conditions that probably aren't helping?
Some of them are generally-conservative or reactionary, at least by local standards, but I've also seen it from older lefties who just have that topic as their exception, too, in the same way that a lot of TERFs are bog-standard feminists otherwise. But the solidarity arguments are still pretty strong for anyone that's seen a cis crossdresser called a fag, too, even if the actual policy proposals don't necessarily follow.
One of those "Federal Breast Inspector" T-shirts.
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PrEP is definitely not given to people who are known to be positive, I presume FG was using it as a shorthand for any antiretroviral. I was too drunk to notice the issue back then.
Hm. That's the third time in a week I've seen the topics overlap, but at least in my neck of the woods it's not something people treat as interchangeable. Might put some feelers out to figure out of that's just a linguistic change or if people are getting genuinely confused on the matter.
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Don't tell the President!
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Hey, you don't have to call me out like that!
Holy crap, are virginity, the "breeding" kink, and pozzed culture linked psychologically?
If it helps, drawing from personal experience myself.
To some extent and some forms, yeah. Strictly speaking the infection version only ties you to the culture of the infecting actor (whether infection is literal HIV or vampirism or latex monster), where pregnancy or virginity loss draws a permanent connection to a specific person, but I'm not sure they're even distinct on that point from inside the fantasy. You see it a decent amount in kink, even in pretty free-use-styled kink across a variety of genders and orientations: A/B/O with mating bites are female-reader coded and a lot of slavery-themed stuff with these conventions are gay-for-gay-themed, but assigned mate is overwhelmingly het guy-oriented.
In the extreme case, womb markers for pregnancy and biohazard markers for poz-themed stuff has a lot of parallels.
It's not the only driver even for those kinks, and there's a lot that doesn't get remotely near it (eg, glory hole isn't about the tops being interchangeable, but it's definitely about impermanence), but it's a really non-obvious bit that explains a lot where present.
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Okay, now you've piqued my curiosity.
This is kind of a straight person thing too. I recall seeing memes a few years ago joking about "not opening your gallery in front of strangers." And, really, the era we're living in often involves an exchange of nudes for people in an intimate relationship, so it wouldn't be especially surprising for a straight man to have dirty pics of his wife or his girlfriend on his phone -- though probably an order of magnitude fewer of them. Straight women are maybe? less likely, but I doubt it's unheard of. And both of them might just have dirty pics of themselves in their photos, you have to take them to send them!
The same stereotype works in the opposite direction -- straight women have concerns about bisexual men for the exact same reason. As self_made_human has realized, getting sexual attention from gay men is trivial, and so is both easy to obtain and less valuable per-interaction. So madonna/whoring your mindset and searching for disposable sexual attention from men (whores) while seeking out reliable partnership with women (madonnas) is something you can do, if you're so inclined.
The other thing is that gay men, particularly ones who are interested in companionship more than disposability, often feel trapped by the expectations of gay dating, and are jealous of straight men for whom long-term commitment, exclusivity, and broad social acceptance feel like table stakes. So bisexual men can be "traitors": taking from gay men whatever they can get from them and then fleeing to the arms of a woman when one arises.
This has been somewhat sexualized lately, with the "femboy bf"/"femboy hooters" meme culture which prompts great recrimination in the ongoing femininine-man/trans-woman civil war, but of course that also comes with the corollary memes of "breaking up with my femboy bf because I met a real woman." (I have no idea what the actual prevalence of this stuff is, I'm just way too extremely online.)
Intriguingly, this pattern seems to mirror many complaints about women's sexual behavior from men, and women's complaints about the sexual behavior of extremely attractive straight men: if sexual attention is abundant, using it for temporary affirmation while utterly disposing of your partners' interests and needs is a real possibility. Turns out, sex is not tennis.
I saw a bunch when I visited DC with my girlfriend. Interestingly, they were generally framed as "use PrEP to protect him" not yourself, like that Simpsons meme about Maggie.
I'm afraid it's not very interesting: I was just at the 'willing-to-buy-gay-porn' level of confidence, had completely missed the (then-much-rarer) high school and college actually-social gay environments like whatever-they-called-GSAs back then or marching band, didn't drink alcohol or go to straight bars, and was pretty terminally clueless, so fish out of water is understating things. Absolutely unprepared and uninterested in a hookup, no actual gay friends, and no clue what the expected behavior was beyond hanky code horror stories, and I've got a face for radio and so little self-confidence I wasn't even bring that well. The whole train of logic was just 'gay and bi guys meet in bars, I'm a bi guy, so if I want to talk with other gay and bi guys I should learn how to go to bars'.
First time I showed up alone ten minutes after opening, bought a whole pizza and a diet coke, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. Nobody else there but the staff, and in retrospect they thought either I was stood up by a cheap date or about to run away from home, but about the only context I had was a couple years in high school having worked a family diner so took a hovering and constantly-asking-if-I-was-ok waiter as trying to get an extra dollar tip on a bad night.
The second was later enough in the day there were actually other clients there, but I'm still absolutely clueless and after how badly the first time went I brought a book, so when a guy sat next to me and ordered me a drink I said nope, and while I'd like to pretend that's to avoid leading someone on, I also still genuinely had trouble with the taste of beer and wine, and also had all the various then-prominent stories about never accepting drinks from strangers. And then went back to my book when he didn't start talking anything else. And then went on like that for a good thirty-plus minutes. Third was pretty much the same thing. In retrospect, some of the people on try three were probably trying to flirt, but in terms of social skill I’m not just answering how my day was with actual details of my actual day, but I’m not following up with questions back. I remember one guy complimenting my shirt, and telling him where I bought it.
Fourth was karaoke night. So you've got all that, and now people are much more drunk, and it's loud enough I couldn't hear most of what was going on anyway. Fifth was quieter (though not as dead as the first time) and finally had someone on staff read me the riot act/facts of life.
In some ways, I was pretty lucky that it went that particular failure mode -- despite a pretty subtle appearance and name, the place both oriented toward older crowds and was... much more high-energy than I would have been ready for, so to speak: karaoke night was the shallow end. But I'm glad that there's other options on both 'dating' and homosocial environments options now.
Yeah, that's fair. There's a lot of gay guys -- even gay guys that self-identify as sluts -- that want their (primary) relationships to be a lot more serious than a lot of natural equilibrium ends up, and that's a hard problem to solve and an easy problem to get jealous over.
Heh. I have a rough time telling how much of that's bisexual or closeted gay rather than prescriptive when it comes to its heterosexuality or just trans chaser, but it's definitely a thing with variations on both sides of the orientation aisles (for an undeniably gay version: himbo hooters). And there's definitely a whole variety of stuff that's spread around the fantasy of either being so attractive or fucking so well that you redefine what's desirable for someone. ((for furries, jarlium has some great stuff on those themes.))
And, of course, top shortages definitely don't help.
... I'm still a bit weirded out by that variation. I dunno if it's just my misreading it entirely, or if it's intended as a statement for people with open relationships to protect their primary partner, or what, but it seems like it's inviting people to bad understandings of what PrEP does. But probably something the CDC expects to be more effective.
Uff da, been there with the book.
I'm glad that on a couple other "just how oblivious can I be" occasions I had thoughtful friends nearby that recognized how dire the situation and coached me before it was too late and the opportunity lost.
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My God man, showing up right after open and buying a whole pizza. I literally laughed out loud.
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Good god, the level of obliviousness was off the charts haha. If it's not too late, I can send you an autism diagnosis in the mail.
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Maybe I'm just too sheltered, but I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating here.
I have no clue, either. But my read is that the "I'm a femboy and I fuck better than your girlfriend" is a strikingly common fantasy. Yeah, that line may have been used on me once. My take is that straight men are unbothered.
That said, the "I'll just go gay/date a femboy/date trans women" thing seems to have a little purchase, but only in the way that Trump wanting to buy Greenland is. It's a memetic negotiation tactic, a way of asserting "I have power over you no matter what you do!" I don't think the femboys or the trans women have actually been consulted. (But neither was Greenland.)
But also straight men need to be real careful lest they start assuming that twinky femboys are drama-free sex machines.
I also thought it was weird, and commented on it at the time. Apparently this wasn't a CDC thing, it was Montgomery county public health. So in the NIH's backyard, though not with any affiliation.
I thought I had taken pictures of the posters, but I guess I took fewer pictures in Maryland than I thought. I did find Montgomery county's website for the overall HIV public health program, though, which has a similar banner, depicting two men and reading "Do it for HIM". Weirdly, the FAQs page for the program has a man hugging two elderly women with the phrase, "do it for THEM" which is mildly funny but also kind of seems to rebut the interpretation that this is advertising PrEP for protecting your partner. ("Do it for your mom?") Another page has a banner with a lesbian couple reading "Do it for HER" -- is HIV a big issue for lesbians? I remember seeing all of these variations at Metro stations in Maryland.
What's particularly strange is this seems to be the overall campaign for HIV prevention, treatment, and testing, but the banners I recall specifically were advertising PrEP. So maybe this was a situation of a generalized campaign being applied to a specific health intervention in a rather silly way -- "get tested for your wife, get treated for your mom, get PrEP for yourself" I guess seems reasonable, but the way in which all the posters I saw were about prophylaxis in particular just didn't make a lot of sense.
I mean it pretty literally: an employee sat down, explained what I was doing wrong, what the expectations for that specific space was, what likely failure modes I'd encounter if I continued as I was doing, and some alternative approaches.
I dunno what the guy's specific job was, but one of the older employees sat down and gave a ten or fifteen minute spiel, starting with the simple stuff like explaining what someone buying you a drink meant (only strictly speaking requires a conversation, but impolite to accept if you aren't looking for something more, with expectations of reciprocity, and how the tab worked under those circumstances) and how to handle it if the drink was unacceptable but the company wasn't (tell the bartender or waiter when you order your first drink that you're a teetotaler, even if you're not), that customers purchasing less than two beers worth were going to unspecified issues (hint hint), normal don't leave drinks unattended and know your limits for alcohol when you do drink. Eventually, what I'd missed about the name (a marijuana reference), what event nights were active for 'mostly' social stuff (poker or
betting onwatch football) and which were much more heavy on either hookups or otherwise might be a little too ribald for me (here's a flier; yes several include drag and/or guys in glorified speedos), and other spaces that might be easier to get friends to go to the bar with (admittedly, not very helpful given three of the recs were explicitly political orgs).I have no idea how many of those conventions were even common back then and I'm sure many aren't common now.
Uh... yeah. One of my first crushes was on a straight guy, and it wasn't the only such crush, add in a general shortage of tops, and there's a lot of reasons it works as a fantasy. And while I've never pursued it, you only really need one or two closeted guys for it to feel like it could work.
Maybe? I dunno how much of it's kidding on the square. A lot of soccons have looked at the number of younger generations self-identifying as bi and then not doing anything about it, but there's other explanations for that behavior that could end up changing pretty fast.
But that may just be me assuming many other people share my interests, and there definitely are starting to be people who try to take that approach and get surprised to find out exactly how poorly it works in practice.
Hah! Fair point. Even 'always up for sex' isn't anywhere near realistic, and that's assuming a lot of frot that straight or 'straight' guys aren't probably gonna be feeling. And it's very much just a different sort of drama, and not even that different, rather than as overt a difference in quantity as a lot of straight guys expect.
Hell, some of the times you don't even avoid the shoe-explosion.
Interesting. I'll have to put some feelers out; this seems like the sorta thing where everyone involved was sure they were just presenting the most palatable experience, but by the end of the game of telephone it's somewhere between useless (like dental dams, PrEP for lesbians is probably not a high impact field: I think there's been literally one case of cisF/cisF HIV transmission through oral sex documented) and actively counterproductive (expecting partners to use a drug they can't get and wouldn't be helped by).
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