BootmanLA

I can't answer directly because I'm not in therapy, but it seems to me that if one isn't honest with a therapist, whatever help he/she provides is going to be limited at best. A therapist needs to understand as much of you as possible in order to help you learn what you need to know about yourself. Kudos to you for opening up to her.

There is a film, based on the play of the same name, called "Torch Song Trilogy". In it, the protagonist has great difficulty with his mother (not a best friend, but still) accepting that he's gay and his life is his own to live. When things reach the boil-over point, he tells her: “There's one more thing you better understand. I have taught myself to sew, cook, fix plumbing, build furniture - I can even pat myself on the back when necessary - all so I don't have to ask anyone for anything. There's nothing I need from anyone except for love and respect and anyone who can't give me those two things has no place in my life.” I get how important this guy was in your life prior to this. But if he can't deal with you "as you are" then maybe he just doesn't have a place in your life going forward. Mourn it, if you want, but it's his loss.

I'd respectfully point out that the First Amendment is what prevents the government from sanctioning you for complaining about the First Amendment - without it, your post might well be criminalized (as it would be in some other countries) for being insufficiently patriotic, or whatever. "Running your mouth off" is *exactly* what it was intended to allow. I agree that the Second Amendment has been grossly misconstrued over the last 40 years after nearly two centuries of a common, shared understanding that it meant something other than what the radical right claims today. I have no idea what your beef with the Fifth Amendment is; it's probably, next to the First, the most important of the amendments in the original Bill of Rights. \ And as for the Thirteenth: you've certainly hit on its weak spot, allowing punishment at hard labor for crimes. And you're spot on about how southern states (Louisiana and Mississippi in particular, but others as well) exploited that loophole for decades to essentially re-enslave a large portion of the black male population. But I would point out that in none of the states after the war were their economies "prison-led". It's true that a small number of people made a great deal of money through convict leasing, for instance, but compared with the numbers of slave prior to the Civil War, prisoners in such cases represented a much smaller portion of those states' economies. In part, that's because westward expansion added to domestic competition for certain crops; in part it's because of mechanization; and in part it's because of overseas competition, where certain goods could be produced far more cheaply without the overhead of owning the slave labor force. And finally, it's in part because although agriculture remained a large part of the economic base, other industries (lumber/timber, furniture making, oil exploration, and more) took hold in the south after the Civil War as well.

To be clear: I do indeed strive to be sensitive. I use the phrase "people on the spectrum", for instance, which recognizes there's a difference among people in that category, rather than lumping them all together as "autistic". I also don't want to assume that any condition - autism, diabetes, impaired cardiopulmonary functioning - will always produce the same results in people, because people are different, and how something like this affects individuals is, well, an individual thing. So I appreciate Eros' acknowledgment that I'm trying - and not always succeeding, I'm sure - to be sensitive.

Likewise, I appreciate your effort to understand NT people, even as you don't quite succeed, either. The difference, as I see it, is that NT people can observe autistic behavior and see how it deviates from what we experience dealing with a majority-NT world, where we have to navigate in part using the emotional cues that are invisible to many autistic people. To use a crude analogy: if I see a blind person walking down the street using a white cane and/or an assistance canine, I can see how his walking differs from those who surround him. Without the visual clues to know when to turn slightly, when to pause because the crowd is slowing, etc., he's going to stand out. He's not going to see how his actions are different, because he can't see them. All he knows is that his canine signaled to stop, or his cane tapped the leg of someone who's stopped in front of him, and hopefully he stops before walking into them. And at least he has assistance in the form of a tool or a companion animal to help him navigate the world, even if it's not quite at the same level of ease as a sighted person. Without the cane or dog to assist, his experience would be radically different. I suspect - and could be wrong - that this is similar to what people on the spectrum experience. They have some sensory input, but not the same full range that NT people do, at least in terms of being able to read emotional responses and understand how NT people may interpret their frankness. It's not just that they respond differently - it's that certain parts of the experience are simply not there. And to think that this can't possibly mean a difference in how a NT vs autistic person might respond to someone lying about HIV status - where one of them can sense there's something off, the other has no clue - is just silly. It's reasonable to ask whether this presents a statistically significant additional risk - whether the numbers bear out that this is a problem. But to deny it exists at all? I call bullshit.

I agree that most of this post is not rational. Part of the problem with it is that while rape is a sexual offense, it's also a crime of violence, and locking up someone's dick doesn't remove the capability to commit violence. That need will just find another means of expression. Thinking of rape in strictly sexual terms, and treating it with strictly sexual-control measures, doesn't do shit. You allude to this, but it's the central point: we should think of rape and similar offenses less in terms of "sex crime" and more in terms of "violent crime". As for the 64-year old man: I get that this young guy killed himself, but it sounds to me like he had mental issues of his own. A rational, healthy-minded person doesn't die of suicide because he found out someone he thought was close to him was a fraud. And frankly, while 64-man posing as 20's-girl is kind of extreme, people pose as all sorts of things online all day long. Look at this site, where hundreds of guys jack off every day thinking about getting pozzed while not actually doing the first damned thing to actually GET pozzed. Now, I will agree that deliberately giving someone HIV without his consent ought to be criminalized - at least, conceptually. It's no different than inflicting any other condition or disease on the person. But the problem is that it's very, very difficult to prove "deliberately". Aside from the credibility concerns of "I told him I was poz" vs "No he never said he was", you have credibility questions for the victim - could it have been someone else who gave it to him? Has he had unprotected sex with anyone else? If he says no, how do we know he's telling the truth? Not many guys who are out to stealth-infect others are likely to leave an auditable trail of messages wherein they confess what they're doing. Separately, though, others have suggested that there are ways for people to protect themselves (ie PrEP). But the problems there are myriad: there's the education issue, where a huge portion of people in this country don't know what PrEP is. Many of those who do assume it's something only gay men need, and for them, only the slutty ones. PrEP needs to become both as non-toxic as a multivitamin and as widely used, so that anyone sexually active in the slightest can get on it. The good thing about condoms - to the extent that we can say "good thing" about them - is that they were already widely recognized as useful for some purposes in the community at large when they began being promoted for safer sex. PrEP needs to be as ubiquitous as condoms before it can really be considered an adequate way for the average person (as opposed to the well-informed gay or bi man) to protect him/herself against HIV.

I can't see the exact wording of the South Australia law in question so I can't answer your query specifically (and neither can anyone else, unless the exact wording is provided). I can only say that in some places, all the examples you cite (tampering with a condom or lying about positive status) would be penalized.

Without quoting and citing lots of specific lines, you make some very broad assumptions in your post that I think are unwarranted. You assume that NT guys who have a suspicion that a guy is lying about his status - or at least something like the vast majority of NT guys - will go ahead and have the fuck. I respectfully suggest that using this forum as even a semi-representational sampling of men out there is just bullshit. I know a bucketload (technical term) of guys who, prior to PrEP, didn't think twice about foregoing barebacking if they had any inkling someone might be lying about his status. One thing that almost universally led to that conclusion: when the guy insisted that he only barebacked. That was a big red warning flag that he was playing fast and loose with his health. And I can assure you that a significant number of men, until PrEP came out, were using condoms any time they weren't sure about someone's status. In fairness to you, based on your exploits you've recounted here, you may be dealing with a much different population than a large chunk of gay America. There's the kind of guy who goes out in the gay community, or what passes for it, in his area (bars, community centers, coffee shops, etc.), meets guys either in passing or through his friends, strikes up a conversation, and ends up eventually (if not right away) having sex with the guy. And there's the kind of guy who sat at home, looking for "taking loads now, hotel room, door ajar" ads on Craigslist or whatever, and responded to those ads. I respectfully suggest that (a) I suspect there were a lot more of the first group than the second, at least in major urban areas, and (b) they were a different sort with respect to their health than the ones who answer those ads - who, I suspect, stand a higher chance of being closeted gay or bi men who want to get off with a man but who would never, ever admit to anyone, much less a doctor, that they had sex with men. And that's not to say guys with autism are more likely to be those Craigslister cumdump types. I'm saying that to the extent that's how your sex life evolved (and I don't mean necessarily Craigslist literally, but the kind of anonymous, come-fuck-me sex you seem to revel in), you're going to have a much different perspective of "what men who have sex with men" are like. Sure, lots of them are desperate and going to go for the bare fuck anyway. But extrapolating from them to "the vast majority of men" is specious at best. Nor do I mean guys on the spectrum are "simpletons". You said it yourself: you're more vulnerable to deception. Why you think that wouldn't play out in real-world consequences, at least some of the time, is beyond me.

Crap. I know better, but my brain isn't fully firing this time of night. This should have said "Contrapositively," instead - the second sentence is the contrapositive, not the converse, of the first one. Logic nerds will know what I mean.

I'm sure they do. But then if they know what "DMCA" means, it negates the post suggesting that the "target audience" for this warning won't understand what DMCA takedown requests are. To simplify: Anyone who sees the subject line about DMCA takedown requests and doesn't know what those are, is unlikely to actually ever file a DMCA takedown request, and thus is not the target audience of the post RawTop made. Conversely, anyone who is thinking about filing such a request undoubtedly knows what a DMCA takedown request is, and thus IS the target audience of RawTop's post. My point is that there's no reason to change the subject to try to grab more people's attention.

I hope your experience went well. I also hope it gives you the courage to live your life authentically, as I can't imagine living my life while hiding such a huge part of it from someone who's supposed to be a life partner. I mean, not to sound too harsh, but it seems to me she's only with a facade of a person - the facade she believes exists as a real man - when in fact the actual man behind the face is very, very different. Now, I get that coming out is a process, that it doesn't always go smoothly, that it can be quite scary, and that it can disrupt your life tremendously. Of course it can. It seems to me that if your girlfriend is detesting cross dressing, she's certainly not going to approve of you having sex with other people, much less with men. So being the real you probably - though not absolutely - means giving up this relationship. And that's got to be frightening. But wouldn't it be worth it, to stop the sneaking around? To not have to hide a substantial portion of who you are from the person you're supposed to be closest to? Right now, there's a big part of your life that's hidden under a bandage. The problem with bandages is that stuff underneath them tends to fester if not cared for. Sometimes it's best to rip the bandage off and give some tender care for what's underneath it.

I wouldn't know whether your experience is typical or not, but I would assume it's not. I've got plenty of friends - gay men, straight men, women - with whom I've never had sex. Now it's true that I would happily have sex with quite a few of the gay men I'm friends with, but there's no interest reciprocated, and that's fine. What your post suggests to me is that you are only willing to be friends with people who put out and in whom you have a sexual interest. Which, if it works for you, is fine - I just would find it sad to be so limited.

FWIW, I would also draw a distinction between online stalking and real-world events, though recognizing that things can cross over from A to B. For online stalkers: Just keep blocking, don't engage, unless they threaten to do something in the real world (like come over, contact your boss, whatever). Eventually, they'll wear themselves out sending messages that end up in the bit bucket and if you block them every time, they'll never know if they got through. (It does mean that responding to unknown senders, especially ones without pictures, isn't possible any more. That's a price I, for one, am willing to pay.) For real-world stalkers, treat them as trespassers. If they show up at your house, warn them through the door that you consider them trespassing and a threat and you're going to defend yourself. Then mace the fuck out of them if they don't immediately leave, call the cops, tell them you had someone try to force his way into your house when you opened the door, and you defended yourself.

I'm going to be contrarian and say I disagree with much of the original post. Not that I don't like assholes, or dicks, but, as the sayings go: HAVE an asshole, don't BE an asshole. HAVE a dick, don't BE a dick. And so on. Even if we take the positive sense of the words (asshole as a source of pleasure for fucking, not as the source of excrement), it's still troubling (to me) to reduce a person's value to this one body part. It's the same reason I have a problem when guys say they were fucked by a "BBC" - which always calls to mind a severed erect penis thrusting into their holes. People are PEOPLE first and foremost. That's separate and apart from reclaiming words like "faggot" the way African-Americans have (to some extent) reclaimed the N-word. But just as that word can be used within the AA community, but not from outside it, I would argue that "faggot" is something that at most, we should use within the community but not redeem it for usage by the general public.

Not to disagree but to ask a question: it is my perception (rightly or wrongly) that at least some people on the spectrum tend to approach things very literally and assume that other people are doing the same. Because they may lack the ability to read the emotional cues on which neurotypical people tend to rely, might they also be more inclined to take whatever people tell them at face value? I ask because of - as an example - white lies. People sometimes tell "white lies" to avoid hurting the feelings of someone else. I've observed that at least some people on the spectrum (again, in my limited experience) seldom or never do this because they simply don't perceive the possibility of hurting someone's feelings with a comment or reply, so they just plainly state what's on their minds. There's no intent to hurt others; they just lack the ability to predict the reaction that their honest answer will provoke. If all that's true - and yes, that's a big if, even if only for *some* people on the spectrum - then might such individuals also be less likely to sense when someone is being less than forthcoming about HIV status? In other words, might someone on the spectrum, being focused on the details, miss the "subtext" that someone might be communicating if he's being less than honest about his status? And that's not to say you're in that boat, or that this is how you got pozzed. But obviously, given that you did, and you say you went in "eyes open", either he told you he was poz (and you let him bareback you anyway), or he told you something else, or he didn't tell you at all (those are, basically, the only options). I guess what I find confusing is that you say you were "reasonably careful" and I'm not sure what that means.

Really? "I'm going to stop PrEP without telling my partner, and hope he infects me with his incurable disease, which I know will crush him, but I'm going to convince myself that he'll get over it and bring us closer together as a couple despite the fact that I know he doesn't want this" is "beautiful"? JFC what a fucked up world.

Being on PrEP is not, in any way, "less than full bare". Bare is sex without a condom, period. Being on PrEP, not being on PrEP, being poz on meds, or being poz not on meds, have ZERO to do with "bare". It's bullshit crap like this - decrying PrEP use as "not FULL bare" - that confuses people who already don't quite get U=U, the value of PrEP, and so forth. Chase if you want - but in that case, your post belongs in the Bugchasing area in the back room. This is the health forum, and claiming PrEP isn't "FULL bare" is misinformation.

If someone doesn't know what a DMCA is, they're not about to go filing a takedown request under that law. This is a silly concern to have. The target audience is "people who might be inclined to file a DMCA takedown request", and anyone in that category BY DEFINITION knows what the DMCA is. Now, it's possible that people who are inclined to file such a request might not read the rule about "this will get you banned". But then changing the title to something MORE obscure - that doesn't mention the DMCA - is even LESS likely to reach them and deter them. They're more likely to skip over it as just another rule to ignore.

Because the owner here wants to provide a better environment for his proven, trusted users than most other sites do? Because the owner here prioritizes the experience of his proven, trusted users over newbies who frequently don't understand the rules? I could go on, but the point ought to be clear to anyone who's actually spent any time on this site: the problem postings, the ones that cause the most disruption, are by new members. The members who have the most problem obeying the site's rules are new members. The better question would be, why don't more sites, especially those with content that requires close attention to detail (to make sure it stays within legal guidelines, use a process like this for screening members until they've proven themselves?

My thought would be that guys who list safe/condoms in their profiles may be signaling a willingness to use them, not a requirement that they be used, which would be congruent with your findings. It's also possible that some guys are simply virtue signaling with their profiles, paying homage to the notion of safer sex, while not actually following through on it. And it's also possible that some guys listed condoms as a measure many years ago, have since gone on PrEP, but have never bothered to update their profiles.

Others may chime in, but in doing some preliminary research, I found that the version of tenofovir in the newer oral version of PrEP (aka Descovy), known as TAF, is associated with more cardiac events than for the version of tenofovir in the older pill (aka Truvada). While Descovy is apparently easier on certain organs in your system than Truvada is, that's apparently not the case for heart issues, where the older formulation is apparently safer. Obviously whoever prescribes PrEP for you (your PCP or ID specialist) should be in close contact with your cardiologist. Since PrEP users get lab work done on a regular basis, the prescribing doctor should be made aware, by the cardiologist, of what signs on the lab test results might merit a follow-up with the cardiologist as well.

Exactly. Rather than approach those questions as if they were expecting a reasoned, rational answer, I think the tops in question are asking precisely because they know a muffled grunt is the only response they CAN get.

Guys: PLEASE stop trying to post links to Twitter accounts on here. When you do, you end up creating a post a mile long with the last 20 or so of that person's twitter postings, all rendered in a huge font. Just say "His handle on Twitter is 'xxxxxxx'", with no need to include the @ symbol. People can figure it out.

The primary place they went was Argentina, which took in as many as 5,000 former Nazi officials and their families. Smaller numbers went to Brazil and Chile, and it's likely some went to Uruguay, but as far as I know, it wasn't a particularly targeted spot for fleeing Nazis. Before the war, it's true that Germany had secret plans to invade Uruguay and establish the country as a German colony. Those plans were exposed, however, and the local Nazi-sympathizing conspirators (ie Nazis) were arrested. For most of WWII, Uruguay was a neutral party, though it broke off relations with the Axis powers in 1942; in early 1945, it entered the war against Germany and Japan on the side of the Allies.

I could be wrong, but the tone of this statement sounds like "I don't care if he's in a monogamous relationship - I want him, and I'm ready to work on getting him to cheat because I don't respect his choice." Which, if true (and I'm just spitballing here), would make you a pretty shitty person, or at least a person willing to do something pretty shitty.