Can anybody tell me why those of us who made the commitment to stay negative or not to infect others constantly are made to feel like high school geeks for wanting to play safe? And why any posting in which guys who play safe challenge those who bareback is immediately pulled down....

Maybe we are just outnumbered...which is really a sad pathetic commentary. Guess nothing was learned after 20 years of burying our friends and loved ones.

Here is the deal...This is a great topic for discussion, just not in this particular section of the forum. The owners want to keep this section of the forum for people who are cruising for sex only. There are quite a few other forums on this sight dedicated to great topics such as this one. I have moved this topic over to the forum "Sexual Politics". Anyone interested in continuing this discussion should head over there.
TopGun

Guys who like cock should understand the forms that internalized homophobia takes. Practicing unsafe sex during an epidemic reflects an age in which pleasure is condemned and people who enjoy it are punished. This part of the American tradition has re-occurred at intervals since earliest days.

Sexual recklessness is an attempt to re-assert control over our own sexuality. We either internalize the prevailing values of our times or we accept punishment.

I encourage resistance. If you like to suck cock, become a Democrat!

The HIV does not discriminate on the basis of what political party you are affiliated with. A commitment to remain HIV negative and stay that way requires each of us to practice effective safe sex behavior and to influence the sexual behavior of our partners by our personal example. Promoting safe sex practices have never denied anyone control over their sexuality. There is no pleasure in watching someone die from AIDS or from experiencing the physical pain and suffering as a result of having AIDS or the host of other diseases brought on in the latter stages of AIDS.

Oh yeah, barebacking is a totally inappropriate discussion in a cruising forum. Why should anyone talk about it where it occurs? Once again CFS reverts to that early-AIDS idiocy of banishing reality from the sites where it has the REAL potential to make people stop and think.

This board is run by astonishingly stupid people.

Internalized homophobia expresses itself in recklessness, frequently sexual recklessness as in bareback sex in the middle of an epidemic. We have to address the problem at the source.

Many posters here deny a link between the increasingly homophobic political sphere and the increase in unsafe sex practices on the part of people who should know what they are doing.

The right wing has two ways of winning. The more obvious way is to shut you down. The less obvious way is get you to accept their values without being aware that's what you are doing.

Sexual recklessness is the right wing's victory over gays. Politics is a lot deeper than people realize.

Posted by Dwight:
"Sexual recklessness is the right wing's victory over gays. Politics is a lot deeper than people realize."

The denial and dismissive responses that will often greet this topic only validate your point, Dwight. The gays who disown other gays as not being in the right (no pun intended) because of their inappropriate or unsafe behavior are amazingly oblivious to this process. They will often preach about responsibility and "getting over it." Yet, they don't acknowledge the responsibility that we all have in addressing the core of this behavior if we are to effectively confront it and decrease HIV and STD infections. Something is clearly not working -- or has gone drastically wrong. Rather than re-direct the current finger-pointing and shame tactics, the nay-sayers have decided to put the fright machines into high gear.

It isn't working. I don't think it is that HIV awareness or the fear of it has lessened. I sense that there are many gays who have literally become numbed by the constant preaching about appropriate sexual behavior. The result is internalized shame, guilt, defiance, and apathy expressed in their sexual conduct.

Read the responses and reactions in this thread and judge for yourself.

Bongo,I've already said no name calling, period. If you don't like it go somewhere else.

On the far left extreme, you have the neo-Marxists. On the far right extreme, you have the ultra-conservatives. Somewhere in between, beyond the counterculture posturing and extreme ideological rhetoric, you have moderates that believe we need a politics that recognizes the real-world possibilities and limitations of politics. We need a realpolitik that stands a chance of effecting a genuine improvement in the lives of gay Americans.

Horndogg
Moderator posted February 25, 2001 10:09 PM
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"Bongo,I've already said no name calling, period. If you don't like it go somewhere else."

At the risk of being falsely accused of being bongo (which has already been done! LOL!), I have to question your way of handling things and your selectivity in choosing targets, Horndogg. Notice, I am not calling names here. I am respectfully challenging your comments and actions.

You have closed down TWO threads in this forum (Sexual Politics). Your explanation for the first one being closed down was that you did not like the direction it was going (Keith's selectivity and actions regarding the closing down of another thread were being challenged). The second time you mentioned that you did not approve of the silly name calling and joking that you felt was taking place in another thread. Now, you are telling one cruiser that he can "go somewhere else" for confronting the way he feels that this site misguidedly directs its posting priorities.

Do you see where I am going with this? It might be wise to carefully -- very carefully -- examine the pattern that appears to be developing here. Whether or not anyone agrees with Keith, or bongo, or you, or me should not be the issue. Yet, threads in which Keith (the owner of this site) is challenged and lefties confront right-wingers somehow get bolted closed. May I respectfully suggest that this does not present an image of unbiased behavior?

Names have been thrown about these forums many times over from many different individuals on all sides of the political spectrum. It is only in this forum specifically established for "Sexual Politics," in which the site owners and moderators take considerably more heat for their actions, that I have seen TWO threads closed and heard a moderator invite someone to leave.

You have the right to do this. But, others have the right to draw their own conclusions as a result of it.

Is this on keeping on the topic? Damn right it is! This thread points to control issues regarding gay mens' sexual behavior. It has been suggested that trying to control people too much avoids effectively dealing with the issue. That is also what may be going on here.

Oh, mea culpa, Hornndog. I didn't mean to say anyONE was stupid. I meant to say a policy that forbids cautious talk, such as discouraging injurious behavior like barebacking, in a cruising forum is stupid.

And it is. I'll repeat what I said before about this:

A. It is fundamentally treating US as stupid -- as unable to handle reality in the place we do our cruising. You don't for one analogy of a thousand possible, tell people not to warn others about the police in a cruising forum, but -- how DUMB can you get?? -- you warn them not to question unsafe behaviors.

B. It is identical to the practice of bars early in the epidemic to not permit the dissemination of safe-sex materials because they thought it would ruin people's party.

C. It's controlling expression in order to protect the fantasies of the board's managers. It serves NO useful purpose.

If it's not a stupid policy, it's not, um, very well thought out. It's thinking with your dick without a condom on.

Thanks for the invitation to go elsewhere. Mainly I do, but I"ll continue to stop in and comment. Maybe YOU should move to a new medium, since your suggestion that I go away is ANOTHER example of the way you would rather control expression ...on the freakin' internet of all places.

Perhaps you should lock this thread.

A lot of guys think decadence is sophisticated, so they do boorish things like throw wine glasses against the wall. But that's not sophistication, it's just drunkenness. Not everything over the top is fin de siecle, some of it is just crude.

Many people who need permission to act out sexually would probably be better off staying in the closet. Repression isn't the worst thing than can happen to you in this nasty world, my friend.

We are seeing an increase in gay mortality, and we ought to address it. I relate it to the rise of the right wing, and some right wingers object. No surprise there! But they are obviously wrong not to see the menace in things like the Ashcroft nomination.

By all means, let us discuss these things. When we use the term "politics" let us not limit it to elections and voting, etc. It's larger than that.

Gays and lesbians continue to make progress toward legal and social equality despite politics and the results of elections. Politics has a very limited and declining impact on shaping social changes and attitudes. What shapes social changes and attitudes are fundamental social, cultural, and economic factors that encourage liberty or equality for gays and lesbians. These factors shape politics. Politics can only adjust to changes that have already begun at deeper levels in our society. Increased gay visibility, natural demographic changes, gay affirming psychology, religious protestantization, and the new techno-economy shape the political landscape. Politics can hasten or hinder these changes, but it cannot alter the course of direction.

Huh?

Politics can be reactionary. And a political structure is a means of extending or diminishing power. Political structures are notorious for scapegoating minorities and then attempting to eliminate them through government-sanctioned means. That's one reason the Constitution was written to protect minorities.

I think you better check in with Bosnia and South Africa, maybe read some of the Truth and Reconciliaton transcripts, before you claim unilaterally that politics are only an effect and not a cause. Perhaps I misunderstand you.

All I have done is to keep the forums in line with the topics. There will be no name calling or personal stabs as long as I am the mod. I never said or wrote that barebacking was a bad topic and if a thread gets out of line I will close it down.