Bucking Convention
condoms. jpg, originally uploaded by haileydai.
Well, I must say, this story is definitely one of the most intriguing I've read in a while. There's a gay therapist in the UK who is running workshops that teach gay men how to prevent the spread of HIV without using condoms. (And, no, abstinence is not what he's teaching, thank god.)
It sounded absurd at first, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. He admits that condoms are always the best way to prevent the spread of any STIs (STDs, whatever), but the statistics show that many gay men simply don't use them all of the time. I'd wager that a lot of these gay men also know the risks and are relatively well educated about the transmission of HIV and yet still indulge in risky behaviours. It sucks, but it seems that many men would agree: it feels better without a condom.
I don't advocate going without a condom, and neither does Michael Shernoff (the therapist running the workshop). But if someone isn't going to wear one, here are some of the things he says gay men should do to help prevent the spread of HIV (and, for the record, he suggests doing more than one of these at any given time):
• serosort (have sex with those who have the same HIV status as you do)
• if you're negative, be the top; if you're positive, be the bottom
• don't cum in your partner
• be open about your HIV status and always ask your partner for theirs
He's got a few other tips, and, as I've said, a condom is always the best option. But it's interesting to think about. As Shernoff said, it's perhaps not that the AIDS awareness campaigns aren't working... maybe it's that they're not evolving.
Read more from uk.gay.com here.
posted by Hailey Dai @ 12:37 p.m.
1 Comments:
At 2:19 a.m.,
figleaf said…
Interesting point, Hailey.
Maybe 10 years ago there was an interesting article in, I think, The Atlantic Monthly magazine about the effects of the zero-tolerance approach to HIV prevention.
The author rattled through the list of advice and said it all boiled down to: a) if you don't use condoms 100% of the time you'll get HIV. And even then you'll get it. And even if you're with a long-term HIV-negative partner either you or he'll cheat anyway so you'll get it. Oh yeah, and since you're going to get it you should wear condoms 100% of the time.
His point was that the message back then was so dour that people threw up their hands, believed they were just going to get it, and went off barebacking.
Instead the author, quoting someone else (possibly Shernoff?), said that if/when you're tempted to cheat you should still... basically follow the rules you outlined in your post.
The big one in this guy's book was unprotected receptive anal sex. He cited evidence suggesting that while, yes, it was technically possible to contract HIV from, say, performing fellatio or being the top in anal sex, the vast, vast majority of transmission was from receptive anal sex with an HIV+ partner.
He felt that even if you were drunk or overwhelmed or otherwise incapacitated you could at least negotiate for a condom if you were going to be penetrated, or negotiate some alternative otherwise.
It sounded pretty compelling, especially in light of the alternative message which was "try all you like but you'll still get it."
I was thinking a nice watchword like "Cover your ass" might reach people when they felt like wavering.
Oh yeah, the other thing the author said is that overall transmission rates for (non-intravenous) HIV infections are so low that something like just a 10% reduction in new infections a year would actually knock it out of epidemic status in just a couple of years.
I don't really know about all that -- it's been 10 years and this is the first I've heard of any kind of follow up at all -- but it seemed plausible. Glad to see someone's thinking about trying *something* to reduce transmission rates among folks who won't use condoms. (It was horrible watching colleagues, friends, and relatives die of it back in the 1980s.)
Take care,
figleaf
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