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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.
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.
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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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