BootmanLA

At least in this country - something you may not have to worry with, assuming you're in Manchester England and not, say, Manchester New Hampshire - one of our two major parties very definitely wants to control what you do with your genitalia. I find that I'm rather more inclined to support the party that isn't trying actively to criminalize what I do with mine. Your mileage may vary. As for the idiocy that liberalism is just a coating over fascism: bless your heart.

I'm going to say something here that is not intended to be rude, but merely a direct observation. Bwccummer, I do not know whether English is not your first language; whether you may have less developed written language skills due to some other factor like being hearing impaired (I've noted that some deaf people have varying degrees of difficulty with grammar, etc. because the rules for written (and spoken) English do not correspond to similar constructs in ASL or contracted Braille), or whether you're only writing here in English because that's what this site requires, although you normally arrange hookups in some other language. But I will say that regardless of the reason, your writing is very, very difficult to follow and requires re-reading and multiple passes to come up with a rough approximation of what you're (hopefully) saying. If you *are* arranging to meet using English and it's written or said like this - and that's just an assumption, I could be wrong - then I would not be surprised if the guys you're trying to meet just don't understand exactly what you want. I know that if I were responding to messages as hard to read as your post, I would quickly lose interest because there's just too large a barrier for communication. Might that be part of the problem - that you're having bad experiences because you and your potential partners are, effectively, not speaking with a common vocabulary?

Absolutely. For me, it's tied to the seasons. Cole Porter wrote a song, "Too Darn Hot" about this very phenomenon; the most relevant lyrics (for me) are: According to the Kinsey Report, ev'ry average man you know Much prefers his lovey-dovey to court When the temperature is low But when the thermometer goes 'way up And the weather is sizzling hot Mister, pants for romance is not 'Cause it's too darned hot I will say, though, that my libido also recedes a good bit, though not as much, when it's really cold. But spring and fall, in gorgeous weather? Lordy.

I might be able to give you an opinion of what they're attempting if you actually, you know, described it so that we don't have to download it and sign up just to find out. That said, I start from the point of view that it's highly unlikely, in my view, to be the "World's Largest LGBTQ+ Platform". Per the play store, the Android version has "1,000,000+" downloads, which means it's more than 1 million but less than 2 million. Grindr, by contrast, has over 10 million downloads. Scruff has over 5 million. Obviously you have to add IOS numbers from the Apple store, but I suspect they're nowhere near enough, on net, to overcome Grindr. Unless, of course, they mean that no other site welcomes all the letters of the acronym, which may be true. But for me, a gay man who has zero interest in dating women (and thus the entire "L" portion of that site is useless to me), I'm not sure that makes a huge difference. It's probably nicer if it doesn't allow people to put shit in their profiles like "no trannies", or the like, but I don't think that will make it necessarily the largest anything.

Granted. But "man" is the term for "adult male" (as opposed to "boy"). "Woman" is the corresponding term for "adult female", contrasted with girl. So for me, "man" (and "woman") are terms signifying adults. But my point was that the *phrase* "when you're a man" (as originally used by the OP) to me implies *maturity* - not just adulthood, which is not the same thing. I have cousins, for instance, who are technically adults, ranging in age from 35 to 60, who I would never describe as "mature" because they've never completely grown up.

Then why are you bothering to post in a portion of the forum specifically set aside for politics? I get that you don't want politics intruding into your sleazing around. Please don't let your sleazing around intrude on our political discussions either.

While I agree that we need to have been training new, younger leadership for some time now, I will disagree with most of what you post. First, there's absolutely a big difference between the two parties. Ask anyone who was able to get insurance for the first time under the ACA, even if the cost is higher than we might like - a law passed without a single Republican supporter. Look at the difference between the justices appointed by Democrats - Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, Ginsberg - and those appointed by Republicans - Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas especially, but Roberts too, and almost certainly Barrett will prove to be of the same ilk. I suspect more of these people know the cost of a gallon of milk than you might think. I'll wager the Obamas did; I'll wager Biden does. And back on the age issue: younger people often have bigger, sweeping ideas (though I'd point out the presidential candidate with the most sweeping vision for change is 79, just a year older than Biden is. Age is not necessarily determinative of political vision; certainly Elizabeth Warren, at 71, had a more progressive agenda than Pete Buttigieg at 38 or Amy Klobuchar at 60. What matters is leadership, and that's a skill that sometimes comes with age, sometimes is innate, and sometimes never arrives. Democrats would not have retaken the House in 2018 without the skilled leadership of the Democrats at the head of the party, most especially including Nancy Pelosi, by pushing a clear message that Trump was an unacceptable danger with no checks on his power but otherwise giving the Dem field the power to shape their own messages for their own local races. Most of the seats Dems then lost this past November were swing-ish districts that had voted Trump in 2016 and flipped back to the Republicans in 2020 because the Democratic incumbent was tarred with the socialist brush - a brush that wouldn't be as effective if candidates from more liberal districts hadn't publicly pushed hard for clearly unattainable goals (even though I support reaching those goals). Because in the House, the magic number is 218. If your party can't reach that number of seats, it's dead in the water, effectively. There is no more reaching across the aisle, and no Republican president is ever going to be close friends with a Democratic speaker the way Reagan was with Tip O'Neil. For every AOC we elect from a solidly progressive district to replace a more moderate Democrat, we are likely to lose one or two moderate Democrats in moderately conservative districts, and thanks to gerrymandering there are a lot more of those to lose than there are solidly progressive ones to "liberalize up". But as they say: politics is a game of addition. You build your team, and you pick up seats wherever you can. And a smart leader doesn't let the election of one person who isn't even a flip of a seat into your party become the trigger for losing - or not flipping - three or four more.

To me, it's something else entirely from what most people here have noted. To me, "being a man" means being mature - not as in old, necessarily, but as in owning up to your shit. Men take responsibility. Boys make excuses.

Actually "Taz" is colloquial for "Tasmania". It's an island state of Australia. Normally when I see it, it refers to someone from that place, or occasionally from other nearby parts of Australia. I know of no connection directly with it as meaning "leather".

I think I'll answer the original question first, and then address the previous comment. I certainly understand the perspective of those who say "Before I was diagnosed, I didn't care much about my health; I've had to get serious about it since then, and now (other than HIV) I'm the healthiest I've been in my life." I'm not sure I'm quite that far improved, but I do watch my cholesterol better, my blood sugar's completely under control, my blood pressure is regularly normal, etc. I've got a ways to go losing about 20 more pounds (to improve my stamina, mostly). But those improvements have come at a serious cost. Despite having an undetectable viral load, I'm bound to medication to keep it there for the rest of my life. At 57, with my family history, that could easily be another 25 years (ASSUMING we don't learn that after 20 years on HIV compound medications, your body just starts to break down). That's an enormous amount of money to pour into maintenance of my status (currently, at least $35K paid either by my insurer or my copays). Global travel isn't really an issue for me as I don't have a great desire to travel to Singapore, North Korea, Russia, or most of the Middle East - not because there isn't a lot of wonderful culture and history to explore there, but there are plenty of other places where I'm more welcome. But as you note, dating is an entire topic of its own. I've started just blocking any profile that says "DDF/UB2" on the grounds that rudeness doesn't excuse a blunt statement of that sort. And I'm not even going to touch the topic of those people who think it's a badge of honor to be positive, who encourage anyone and everyone else to become positive, etc. - other than to say that until you're willing to pay their medical expenses and insurance costs and you're willing to foot the bills to compensate if they lose their jobs or family or whatever, then you should just shut the fuck up and advise people to think long and hard about the consequences of their actions. Encouraging people to jump off a cliff and expecting them to discover a parachute mid-air is shitty behavior. In other words: If it were simply a case of turning the clock back to exactly where I was, pre-diagnosis (or even more specifically, pre-infection, whenever that was), and being in the same state as I was then? I might or might not do it. But if I could keep the gains I've made, the changes in my life, etc. WITHOUT still being HIV-positive? In a fucking heartbeat. The crappy side of this sucks, and no amount of "But Ah feel FRAY" like a Lee Greenwood impression gone bad is going to change that.

Get tested, then get on PrEP. That's what it was made for.

RawTop (the site owner) answered this in the pinned message/thread:

I see no reason to assume the article is lying inasmuch as it's quoting things Biden has publicly stated. That said, every incoming president has a long laundry list of goals, only some of which get pursued with vigor and even fewer of which make it through into legislation. More importantly: intentional transmission of HIV is a crime under state, not federal, law. In general, federal law trumps state law, but states have broad powers to criminalize conduct UNLESS there is a constitutional prohibition on doing so. That's why, for instance, it's now impossible for states to criminalize non-commercial consensual adult sodomy (because the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution prohibits this level of interference in private non-commercial activities of consenting adults). But as far as *I* can tell, there is no constitutional bar to state HIV laws, and so any federal law passed would largely be suggestive rather than binding. With, however, the exception that the feds CAN make participation in certain optional federally funded programs contingent on passage of state laws that adhere to a federally-preferred standard. For instance, in the 1980's the federal government wanted states to all raise their legal drinking age to 21. They couldn't mandate it, but they made receipt of 10% of federal highway funding for states contingent on states raising the drinking age. Eventually, all of them did, rather than forego that money. There are limits - for instance, the Supreme Court has held that states couldn't have the entire federal portion of their Medicaid budgets contingent on adopting expanded Medicaid. Call this the "sticks" approach. The other option is that the federal government can use a "carrots" approach - offering additional federal funding for, say, HIV health care costs if, and only if, states decriminalize HIV transmission (or rewrite the law so that it conforms to a much less onerous set of provisions. That, too, is a legal tool the feds have to push state policy in a particular direction.

As someone who works closely monitoring the passage of thousands of new laws every year, just in one state, I would reject the notion that legislation is "difficult to pass in this country", unless you *only* mean in Congress. And while it's true that very little makes it out of Congress, it's not because "legislation is very, very carefully considered, debated, and examined". It's because partisan divides ensure that only the few things that the majority party in power wants to see passed and are willing to expend what limited political capital they may have, at that point, will make it through. See, for instance, the passage of the 2017 tax bill (something the GOP was willing to go to the mat for) and the failure of the repeal effort for the ACA (where three GOP senators chose not to throw away what they had left on that dog of a bill. Pretty much everything that does pass these days is has been sneaked "past public scrutiny" - most bills combine hundreds of objects, mostly unrelated to each other, and sometimes not even available in a final printed form before a vote is taken (see, e.g., the combined federal government funding bill for FY2021/Covid Relief bill that was just signed into law). I'm not saying that's a good thing - just noting that *nothing* generally makes it out of Congress unless it's loaded up like a Christmas tree with ornaments for everyone under the sun. No dispute there, but that basically eliminates Congress passing anything on any subject whatsoever. Which is why I said, rather than dismissing the bill out of hand, we need to work on getting workable changes adopted. If all we do is say "Vote against!!!!!", we look as though we are completely insensitive to the victims that (even if only nominally) the bill seeks to protect. If we are to operate in good faith, even if the other side prefers not, then it's on us to very publicly point out HOW to fix the bill, not simply assume no changes can be made. Two hours too short a time? Make it 12 hours. Do you honestly think a company like Pornhub, which has 150 employees and could almost certainly hire a few dozen more, couldn't respond to a few hundred takedown requests each day, within a relatively short timeframe? Revenge porn is already illegal in a very large number of jurisdictions. Here's the problem. It's a criminal offense, so that means *each* element of the crime has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to get a conviction. So in a typical revenge porn law, you'd have the following elements: --a recording was made that --is covered, subject-wise, by the law --that one or more participants therein did not consent to distribute but --the person charged personally distributed the recording. And that last is almost always impossible to prove. "It wasn't me. Five people in my household have access to my computer." "It wasn't me. The upload took place from somewhere other than my computer and I have no idea how they got it." "It wasn't me. I made a legal backup of my computer onto a thumb drive and I lost the drive at a library computer." Any of those is potentially grounds to show reasonable doubt. And the second problem is: you're unlikely to get judges to give serious sentences. Tyler Clementi's roommate and the roommate's friend got THIRTY DAYS for his actions that drove Clementi to suicide, of which he only served TWENTY - and he still appealed his sentence. The US Justice system still does not take sex crimes - of any sort - seriously and especially not ones involving adults and video - even, as in that case, completely non-consensual video voyeurism. Hell, Brock Turner got 6 months, with only 3 served, for drugging and raping a coed behind a dumpster at his frat house. The idea that criminal charges alone against the perpetrators, in this environment, is going to stop anything is spectacularly ill-informed. And at bottom, here's my point: Pornhub isn't a charitable site operating out of the goodness of its heart delivering porn to the disenfranchised multitudes. It's a business. It's making money off all those videos being uploaded. It's not unreasonable to expect them to do some basic verification that the person who uploaded this supposedly amateur video has the legal right to do so and the consent of everyone depicted, as a cost of doing business. And if that cost is too high, maybe it's time to rethink the business model. What we should NOT do is shove those costs off on the person whose private sex life is being exploited by the person who uploaded it (for non-monetary personal gain) and by the site (as a money-maker). Why should THAT person have to bear the costs?

So as I take your post (and please correct me if I'm wrong), as long as the supporters of a piece of legislation have bad motivations, the legislation itself, no matter how it's written, has to be bad? I'm not suggesting that motivations don't matter. In the late 19th century, in one of Louisiana's many rewrites to our state constitution, the drafters explicitly denied the need for a unanimous jury in state criminal matters. It was one of many, many Jim Crow era changes designed to make sure that even if a small number of black people managed to register to vote, get called for jury duty, and were accepted to a jury, the white majority would always be able to outvote one or two black jurors. It was later argued that this was really about judicial efficiency, so that one person couldn't derail a trial, force a mistrial, and start the process all over again for a defendant. But everyone at the time knew, and we know now through prosecutorial attempts to block minorities on juries, that it's really all about race and the perception that black jurors might not be willing to railroad through a conviction, being more skeptical of prosecutors. So yeah, of course real motivations matter. But unlike those cases, where we didn't have a record of jury missteps that caused excessive mistrials, we DO have a (very solid and lengthy) record of revenge porn cases, people whose careers (or lives) were derailed or destroyed because someone made a recording of the person having sex and then shared it, without permission, to the world. These are real people, being harmed by real actions, and I'm not going to automatically denounce efforts that might help those people "just because" some of the supporters actually hate all porn. By all means, tighten up the language as needed. Make sure that legitimate businesses can operate and offer porn for viewing. Make sure that if you record something for your own use and you never show it to anyone else without the permission of anyone who's also in the video, that you're not guilty of any crime. But I have ZERO problem with requirements that guarantee that the people in the videos consented to having it recorded and shared - and requiring that documentation to be preserved. I'm not willing to have the Tyler Clementis of this world counted as unavoidable collateral damage of some mythical right to get oneself off to online porn with no restrictions.

Wait - condoms are "play acting" but "impregnating a biologically male person" is ... um.... "realistic"? I agree with the whole "primal instinct" thing for the top. And I have no issues with those guys who want the role playing aspect of "getting pregnant", but to denigrate condom usage as "play acting something fake" while touting something that is (from the bottom's perspective) actually fake seems, well, overblown.

FWIW: For an actual hookup/dating/meet site/app - think everything from Grindr to Scruff to Growlr to Recon to A4A to whatever, when it's NOT focused on BB or HIV issues - I won't even bother with someone who doesn't have a face pic posted publicly, no matter how nice his body shape may be. For me, that's simply affirming that you're "out" enough that you won't freak out in public if one of us does something that could tip off a stranger that we're gay. I came to that decision a very long time ago, when seeing a guy who had bizarre rules for protecting himself in his closet: we could go to lunch together (because buddies do that) but not dinner (because that's for dates). We couldn't go to a movie together but we could go to a sports event. That sort of bullshit. I was coming up on 30 at the time and after that ended, I said "fuck this, never again". I'm fine if other pics are included, if NSFW pics are allowed, but I'm OK with those being privately shared. As for recent-ness, I think it really varies, but as long as you look so reasonably much like your picture that nobody has to look three times to make sure it's you, I'm okay with the picture being a little out of date. Five years is pushing it, but if you haven't changed significantly in, say, 24 months, that's not really an issue if your picture is that old. The problem is the ones who are delusional enough to NOT recognize they no longer resemble the youth in the photo at all.

Mostly true. But: a) PrEP and most HIV treatments *overlap* but are not "the same stuff". Virtually all treatment regimens, even the single pill ones, involve the two medications that are in PrEP and at least one, sometimes two, in addition. b) You can have people who lie and say they're taking their treatment meds responsibly but they are not. You can also have guys who are just sloppy, missing doses. When I first when on treatment, I was manic about taking my pill every single day because my VL had been so high (and my t-cells so low) when I was diagnosed. As the numbers improved rapidly in just the first few months, for a while I got careless and sometimes planned to take the pill with lunch, but forgot it when I went out to eat, and then by the time I got back to work, it would have slipped my mind entirely. It took concerted diligence to train myself to bring my medication case with me everywhere I went, just in case pill time came around and I wasn't at home or at my desk. And I'm sure it can happen to others.

It happens, but it's not always successful. Any number of large, popular companies drop advertising on, say, Hannity or Carlson but keep right on spending a fortune on other Fox timeslots. And most of the companies that advertise on porn sites are other adult businesses - toy shops, other porn sites, adult events, etc. - not nearly as likely to be scared off by sex controversy. I have absolutely no problem with allowing lawsuits against uploaders who don't have express permission from everyone in the video clip. Legitimate amateur self-porn shouldn't have any problem with that, and if other people are spreading one's works far and wide, you'd think the copyright owners would prefer to maintain control. If you're uploading a video, you know damned well whether you shot it or not, and whether you have permission from everyone in the video to share it. And if you don't, you ought to be liable for damages. As for the speed of takedown and 24/7 customer service staffing requirements, that could well be too onerous. But those are details that can be negotiated, whereas the principles underlying them (that people who own an interest in the video, either as a performer or videographer, can force its removal until it's sorted out; that there needs to be *someone* who can handle take-down issues, etc. before a revenge porn video gets spread across the globe, etc.) are in themselves reasonable. Again - details may need to be hammered out - what sort of documentation is required that you have permission to upload a particular clip, for instance, or how you prove that person A, who appears in this video, actually gave permission for THIS video and not (as he/she might claim) some other, less explicit one. And perhaps those details will make it unworkable and the bill should be killed on that basis. But the principles - that nobody's adult video/pictures should be shared without his/her explicit, documented permission - does not seem like "prohibition" to me.

EVERYTHNG these days seems like a covert drug reference. The oldest references I recall for this term is from the early 80's, and Rick James' song "Superfreak", about a sexually adventurous woman. Unmodified, I took it to mean not so much something itself extreme, just indulging in the pleasure of sex. Adding a fetish (rubber freak, leather freak, dildo freak) suggests someone very into that particular fetish or interest. I just wish the drughead crowd would stop appropriating useful words from the language and corrupting them so that you can't make even casual references ("it was a cloudy day yesterday") without some junkie wanting to know who your dealer is.

RawTop may want to address this but as I understand it, location doesn't matter; vast sections of this site are not geographic-specific and anyone can participate in them, so the fact that there are few local personal ads near you shouldn't inhibit your ability to participate here. If all you're looking to do is hook up with others in your area, yeah, it's probably going to be a long time before you get full posting/reacting/messaging privileges.

Forgot to mention: Maybe if you didn't post shit that looks, smells, sounds, feels, and tastes like a conspiracy theory, people wouldn't accuse you of posting conspiracy shit.

First, even if the virus is 99% survivable, if it spreads to everyone in the country, that's over 3 million dead people. It's true that underlying conditions make it worse, but that doesn't equate to "would be dead anyway even without the virus". Even if we assume that most deceased Covid patients would only have lived another, say, 5 years, that's still 15 million man-years of living wiped out from this disease. Second, even if *you or I* might survive infection, we're likely to infect someone else who will NOT. Or someone we infect will in turn infect that other person. The idea that "I have a great chance of surviving so I don't care if I get this easily transmissible disease that I'm also clearly unwilling to do anything to prevent spreading" translates to "I am a selfish asshole." Lastly, you're simply, factually, WRONG about the death rate not being higher. This is false. Masks, WHEN WORN CONSISTENTLY AND PROPERLY, combined with appropriate social distancing, are indeed effective. As long as you're flapping your ignorant gums - something I suspect you do all day - you're spreading micro droplets of saliva everywhere you go. Masks prevent you from spreading those to other people - or at least cut down that spread dramatically. Yes, I know a lot of you conspiracy nutcases have seen videos from "medical professionals" claiming it isn't so. Any jacklegs can make a video and claim anything he wants. I'm personally going to put my trust in actual medical organizations and not some crap from some unknown dick online. No respected epidemiologist or virologist is speaking out. It's whole-earth fruitcakes and nutcases pushing "alternative health" shit. Like the asshole doctor Trump planted on his "Covid Task Force" - who it turns out knows NOTHING about virology or epidemiology but was willing to kiss Trump's ass and support his complete lack of leadership, so he got a very public role. There is no "cure" for this disease. There are only treatments that help support the patient and give him the strength to develop the resistance needed to fight it off. Ivermectin is NOT approved for treating Covid, mainly because the concentration levels needed to actually have any effect on the virus are more than 100 times the approved level for human dosing, and while it has been tried in a few cases, there are no conclusive results showing it has any effect. Free speech is a right - that is, the GOVERNMENT is not allowed to censor your speech except in certain limited circumstances. There is NO "free speech right" with respect to private companies - NOBODY is required to give your looney tunes ideas a forum in which to speak. If you want to spread your theories, you're free to find a hosting company, pay them to host a website for you, and post to your heart's content. That doesn't mean RawTop has to give you space here to blather with your nonsense, just like you can't demand that Random House publish your crapola in a book, and you can't demand Time Magazine give you editorial space to push your "ideas". Incidentally, if you knew anything about this site, you'd know that you can't paste links into posts here, the way you clearly tried to. Maybe you should learn something about the environment in which you want to exercise your speech.

First - the reason you haven't been tested is that there is no reliable test for HPV at this point. Speaking as someone with a close friend who contracted HPV and is now dealing with oropharyngeal cancer, you need to be upfront with anyone with whom you have sex. The idea that people can just hide a disease that is easily sexually transmissible and not have any compunctions about it frankly shocks the hell out of me. Yes, that likely will cut down on the number of people you have sex with, because some people won't want to take the risk. Those who were vaccinated as older children or young adults are least likely to have problems develop, but the reality is a majority of sexually active people have probably been exposed to HPV already, and most people remain asymptomatic. And yes, in one sense, it's preferential for people to manage their own risks (seeking the HPV vaccine before they've been exposed, just as people who engage in HIV-risky sex should get on PrEP). That doesn't mean people get off the hook for telling partners and explaining the risks. As someone who himself was exposed and who has developed at least one complication, I think you'd probably have wanted to know, from the guy who passed it on to you, right? Assuming he'd known. So, golden rule time: Do unto others as you'd want them to do unto you. Let them make an informed choice.

Normally I start this kind of response with "With all due respect" but since that amount is fast approaching a negative number, I won't. You don't have the faintest concept of what Bruce Jenner could or couldn't see himself as. You can't see past your own transphobic little tiny unimaginative universe, which seems to consist of approximately one individual, and you keep posting on and on and on displaying just how completely ignorant you are about this entire topic. Just admit you simply are incapable of understanding a concept like transgenderism and shut up with the ignorant, ill-informed opinions as to what it "really" is. Because (with all due respect) you're making yourself look like a complete moron.