BootmanLA

I've actually had all these cases on my radar since the Court agreed to hear them, except the Warhol one, and tbh I haven't spent enough time on any related issue in recent years to have an informed opinion. In all of the other cases, there's a serious chance of major rollbacks in civil rights and environmental and humanitarian policy. A sarcastic "thank you" to all the people in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania who couldn't bring themselves to vote for "the email lady" figuring she was going to win anyway. Especially considering the cavalier way Hair Furor treated classified information during and following his presidency.

One thing, though, to be fair to newbies: New members can't send private messages to anyone (I'm assuming including moderators), and as such, there's really no way to ask for them. Perhaps a workaround could be a pinned folder in the Tips Forum titled "Where should I post...." with a first post that explains the layout of the forum, and allows members to post questions like "Where can I post about looking for X" or "What's the best place to discuss Y".

For what it's worth: banning is permanent. One can't be banned multiple times because once one is banned, one is banned. That's something that only happens after a number of lesser infractions, or a major one that shows one is not going to be a well-behaved member, period. You may have been suspended (barred from contributing for a set period) more than once. Certain types of infractions (like accidentally posting in the wrong area) don't usually generate suspensions (the moderator will move the post to the correct area), though deliberately posting in the wrong area after it's been pointed out what the correct area is probably *will* earn a suspension. Things like attacking other members (as opposed to debating their viewpoints) will also usually merit a suspension.

While I agree with almost everything in this posting, the first sentence is just not true. "Monogamy" means having a single partner. Literally, it means "one marriage" (ruling out secondary wives or husbands), but in a world that recognizes relationships other than legal or religiously-blessed marriages, "monogamous" is appropriately extended to having only one sexual partner. (Once you extend that to the rest of the animal kingdom, it is often limited to "for the current breeding season" - meaning a male and female pair up for the season, but the following season the pairing may be completely different.) While I support any other variant of sexual partnership one might want, within reason - open marriages, open relationships, don't ask/don't tell, triads/throuples, quads, kitchen table polygamy, or whatever - they're not monogamy. Adhering to established rules within a relationship - again, whatever those might be - is "fidelity" (from the Latin for "faithful"). Fidelity means you stick to the rules for your relationship. Expressed geometrically, "Monogamy" is an area totally inside the area labeled "Fidelity" - that is, all monogamy is fidelity, but not all fidelity is monogamy. Fidelity can mean "we only fuck other people together" or "we only fuck other people when the other is out of town" or "we only fuck other people who aren't friends of either of us" - whatever the rules are, sticking to them is "fidelity". And that's why cheating is, in fact, usually referred to as "infidelity" in formal terms. It's being unfaithful - to the agreement, whatever it is, that you and a partner may have.

As a non-moderator here (but someone with extensive experience as one, elsewhere), here are a few observations I've gleaned from this site. Generally speaking, the site owner (and by extension, his moderators) want as little restriction as possible on the discussion as long as it (a) stays on-topic, (b) fits into the organizational structure of the site, and (c) doesn't run afoul of either legal restrictions or the owner-imposed site restrictions. As for on-topic: even though the site is, at its core, about bareback sex, there are offshoot discussions that can go in a variety of directions. So one might, for instance, in a thread about actors one might want to fuck, discuss a desire to fuck Steve Carell, and from that, the thread might spiral into some discussions of episodes where he was especially appealing. But creating a thread just for fans of the Office to discuss favorite episodes would be off-topic. Fitting into the organizational structure is the source of those "thread moved" notices - and that organization is important for several reasons. One, there are certain topics (like fisting or drug use) that a significant number of people don't want to see. Sometimes that's a preference about what's erotic, and that relegates such topics to one of the fetish forums. Other times it's an issue of being a trigger for people in recovery, and that relegates such topics to the Back Room. But even in general: nothing would be "findable" if the site were one big jumbled folder of personal ads, discussions of porn, health advice, and more. So familiarizing oneself with the topical layout of the system is something everyone should do. Legal restrictions are critical. No site can afford to be a target for a lawsuit from the government, so if advertising for prostitution is illegal (as it is in many jurisdictions), it has to be curtailed here. But there's nothing illegal about someone posting that he has had experience as a prostitute, and in line with the site owner's preference for "as little restriction as possible", those kind of posts are allowed. Likewise, it's not generally illegal to have HAD sex before you were over the age of consent; it's illegal for someone else to have sex with that underaged person. So it's okay to have a post saying "my first time oral was at age 13" but it's not okay to have a post saying you want to have oral sex with someone age 13, nor is it okay to encourage other people to have sex with someone age 13. And that's why posts about your experiences at age 13 need to be simple facts without a lot of detail, because the more detail and eroticization the post has, the easier it is to cast such a post as encouraging that behavior. Finally, ownership site restrictions are just as critical. This is his turf, his rules. So when he says you can't post about chasing STI's (other than HIV), and you can't eroticize advancing from HIV+ to AIDS status, those rules are just as binding as any other. Lastly - a note about complaining about moderation. If you have a complaint about how the rule was applied to you - it should be taken up with the moderator privately. Sometimes they might review their actions and determine there was overreach, and reduce the penalty involved. Sometimes they'll review and realize their explanation wasn't thorough, so they'll walk you through a clearer explanation. But if your problem is that you don't like the rule you're being asked to follow, no amount of foot-stomping and bad-mouthing the moderator(s) is going to get your penalty lifted. If anything, it's likely to merit a new penalty. The moderators don't make the rules; they enforce them, and that means, if you don't like the rules, there's only one person you have to convince: the site owner. It's unlikely, but if you presented a clear, coherent argument why it was more important to allow your preferred post instead of enforcing his rule, you might get the rule modified. But in any event, he's the only one who can do anything to change the rule.

You're not the only one. Not that I "prefer" cologne over non-cologne, or deodorant over non-deodorant. In bed, I'd prefer have natural BUT CLEAN scent, but out in public? I'd much rather smell a hint of a light cologne than body odor any day. It's not hard to reconcile the two. Shower before sex, and then clean-up afterward is even easier.

Not speaking for any tops out there, but (a) I suspect this kind of top is rare and (b) I've only known one such in my life. I'd add that there may be some escorts who are "no hole refused" in their professional lives.

It is definitely possible for a particular strain of HIV to become PrEP-resistant. This apparently occurs mostly when people are spotty about taking PrEP (meaning the level in their systems becomes inadequate to prevent infection), become infected without realizing it, and continue to take PrEP for months until they're tested again. The reason is that while adequate blood levels of the two medications in PrEP are generally sufficient to repel HIV infection, they are insufficient, by themselves, to treat HIV infection. As a result, the infection continues to burrow into the newly infected person, with some of the HIV killed off by the PrEP medication, but not all - and what remains is are mutations that are least susceptible to PrEP's medications. Those mutations become the dominant type in that individual. That said, those cases are rare. Not unknown, but rare. As for "severely high vl strain" - there's no such thing, technically. "Severely high viral load" refers to the number of virus particles per given quantity of blood used for the test - in other words, it's a countable thing. "Strain" refers to a variation in the genetic makeup of the virus - in other words, it's a qualitative thing. One can have a high viral load of a drug-resistant strain (rare), a high viral load of an easily treatable strain (e.g. most people shortly after infection), a low viral load of a drug-resistant strain, or a low viral load of an easily treatable strain (including most undetectable guys on treatment). It's true that you if you compare infection odds between bottoming for a guy with a high viral load of a drug-resistant strain, on the one hand, and bottoming for a guy with a low (or undetectable) viral load of a treatable strain, your chances of infection are much higher in the first case. But since you can't do viral load tests for your partners every time you have sex, that's kind of a roll of the dice. One thing's for sure: you're far less likely to get infected if you're taking PrEP, regardless of the details of the HIV status of your partner. If you take it daily, without exception - or at least, if your occasionally missed dose doesn't overlap with risky sexual activity (a missed dose isn't a big deal if you haven't had sex in a week and aren't going to have sex for another week), the odds of infection are infinitesimally small.

Or, as Dan Savage rather succinctly puts it, "There is no settling down without settling for."

What you're describing is more or less correct, but this may make it easier to understand. When someone first joins this site, he has the ability to make posts and reply to other posts. At first, he can only make a certain number of posts per day. Each post/reply made adds to one's "reputation score," which is an internal system used to determine a member's privilege level. After a certain number of posts/replies, his reputation score rises to the point of being allowed to make more posts each day. That continues to advance until the limit on the number of daily posts, if it exists, is so large that for all intents and purposes, it's unlimited. At the same time, as one's reputational score rises, he gains the ability to "react" to posts - with the "Like" (heart), "Thanks" (trophy), "Upvote" (green up arrow), "Downvote" (red down arrow), and so forth. In other words, "reactions" are a privilege reserved for those who have already proven - by posting and replying above a certain unspecified level - that they're active participants in this site. Additionally, when other people who already have the ability to react to posts post a reaction to the new member's posts, the new member's score may be adjusted. Upvotes and Likes gain a point for the member; downvotes take a point from the member. I'm not sure, but I think "Thanks" and "HaHa" also gain a point for the member (or maybe not). Not all reactions affect the point score. Violations of the rules of the site may or may not reduce your privileges on the site. Inadvertent errors - accidentally posting something in the wrong forum, for instance - doesn't usually affect anything. Deliberate violations - or clearly sidestepping the rules - will almost certainly result in a penalty - which can mean a temporary block on posting, for instance.

To be fair, with the advent of rapid testing and PrEP, there's really no major reason for condoms in gay porn any longer (other STIs being an occupational hazard).

But high HIV rates don't necessarily correlate to high monkeypox susceptibility. For instance, to the extent that HIV levels are high because of drug use and/or M/F prostitution, as opposed to MSM, monkeypox would naturally be expected to be much lower in transmission than HIV. For another, new HIV infections have plummeted nationwide since the introduction of PrEP, meaning that having a high HIV caseload doesn't necessarily correspond to having a high local infection rate; caseload could reflect a legacy of old cases rather than an ongoing infection problem. I think your example about Palm Springs illustrates the state/local issue I was talking about. California got more doses than Maryland to start with, because CA has many times the number of people that Maryland has; and they've undoubtedly prioritized getting doses into areas where there's a high level of partner change, which is where STIs tend to spread rapidly. Places with lots of sex parties and similar events are going to have more infections simply because one infected person is much more likely to spread it to several people, who will in turn spread it to many others. As such, Palm Springs is a hotspot that CA would want to target, and places like CCBC are exactly where they'd want to set up to reach as many of them as possible. In other words, it's not that CA has so much monkeypox vaccine available that they can set up everywhere, even at places like CCBC; it's that places like this offer the state the most bang for the buck, so to speak, in reaching vulnerable people. I'm not aware of any similar place in Baltimore that could/should be targeted by the health department for vaccine distribution, though of course I'm not familiar with all the places one might go there. If there is a place where you could reach similar numbers of high-risk people, though, that's probably something that could be shared with the health department there.

The problem is the limited supply, pure and simple; demand far exceeds supply. As a result, distributions have been prioritized to date based on population of vulnerable individuals, ease of reaching them (via established local distribution channels), and so forth. As supplies increase over the course of this fall, access should become considerably easier. Baltimore is by no means a small city (it's 30th largest in the U.S.), but that doesn't mean its demographics necessarily make it a highest-priority monkeypox vaccination site. That said, it's possible that your state government (which is primarily responsible for determining allocations within the state after the feds make an allocation available to each state) may be mishandling distribution.

Fucking BB with multiple partners who also fuck BB with multiple partners means catching something on a regular basis. It's possible for a monogamous couple to fuck bareback and not contract or share any STIs. In fact, assuming they stick to that monogamous agreement, it would be very difficult for them to contract any STI not already present before they began the relationship. It's possible for a closed sexual loop (that is, a handful of people, possibly poly, possibly not) to fuck bareback and not contract or share any STIs. What introduces STIs into any particular sexual ecosystem is the inclusion of a sexual partner from outside that ecosystem who has an STI. I realize that some people live their lives in such a wash of interlocking sexual ecosystems that it's impossible to maintain any separation between exposures (via the network involved) to hundreds of outside sources, but that's not indicative of everyone who barebacks.

Not always true at all. It may be true that for a bed that's only a foot and a half off the floor, you have to support yourself with your arms as a top; but on many beds, mine included, a top standing next to the bed has his cock about 6" above mattress level. And yes, I'm referring to the bottom being on the edge of the bed. And I think positing unknowns like "often pre-lubed" (not all slings are in a public setting, not all bottoms in slings have already been fucked and bred multiple times before you) kind of defeats the argument - if you have to add a bunch of qualifiers to make a statement true, it implies the original statement isn't necessarily valid in a broad sense even if it's sometimes accurate. Most of all, however, dismissing all sling fucks as "not intimate" is just - geez, I dunno, does that mean every couple who has a sling has made their sex "non-intimate"?

That's one of those "on the one hand" things. On the one hand, I agree - you're likely to offend/scare fewer people with a simpler plus sign. On the other hand - it's reclaiming, like reclaiming the words "queer" and "faggot" to rob them of their potential for hurt. I'm not sure it really works, in this case, but it's a possibility.

Hovering over your avatar (to the left of your post, above), it says you've made 6 posts since joining March 25. I do not think six posts = "a lot" by any standard.

I don't *think* it's an "average" posting rate (for instance, 10/month), but a raw (but not publicly disclosed) number of posts (for instance, 50 total posts or whatever). That would take into account that some people are just not regular commenters; it might take you longer to reach that status if you only post once in a while, but your previous long-term lurking, for lack of a better word, shouldn't penalize you per se.

I'm not sure about that. Certainly there are some people who actively want that, and probably some more for whom it's not a front-burner issue, but it's one they're okay with. But even added together, I don't think those people are more than, oh, 20% of the voting population. See, for instance, [think before following links] https://www.kff.org/other/press-release/poll-large-majorities-including-republicans-oppose-discrimination-against-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-people-by-employers-and-health-care-providers/ I realize this survey was about employment and health care protection, but how many people do you think would be OK with sending gays to jail for being gay, but also in favor of job protections for them? I'd say if anything, this survey highlights that the vast majority of Americans are OK, if not entirely comfortable, with gay people. The real problem, as I see it, is the people who are very uncomfortable with criminalizing gay sex, but who will stomach that anyway in order to get favorable treatment on some other issue - taxes, abortion, whatever. Because they're not gay themselves, they're willing to sacrifice some number of gay people - not anyone they're close to - so that they can pay lower income taxes. Or so pregnant 13-year-old girls can be forced to carry a fetus to term.

I don't think women "not impacted"; it's more that men who have sex with men are much more likely to spread it among each other. That's because of the much higher rate of partner change we have, sexually. That's also a reason why HIV spread faster and wider among gay men. With an STI, the 3 main factors affecting spread are infectivity (how infectious the bacterium or virus is), prevalence (how many people in the population are infected), and rate of partner change (how often we have sex with someone different). Monkeypox in the gay community spread fast because it's both fairly easy to spread and because of sex parties and the like, which are, epidemiologically speaking, high rates of partner change. For more on how these factors interplay in the spread of STIs in our community, see Gabriel Rotello's excellent book Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men. Parts are out of date because of advances in treatment and PrEP, but the workings of epidemiology are nicely explained and still relevant. It's useful for understanding Covid and Monkeypox both.

Without more context, it's hard to say, as @DarkroomTaker's post outlines any number of possibilities. You don't say where you live, how old you each are (even roughly), what other sorts of information you exchanged - so there's really nothing to go on. If you really want to hook up with him again, tell him you need to see him naked, in person. Not just poking at your ass from behind. If he's not willing, you can conclude there's something - who knows what - that he definitely doesn't want you to know, and that ought to be a red flag. Not that a fuck needs to be an opportunity to swap life stories, but actively hiding something that you'd notice if you looked at his body sounds like a non-starter to me.

My point about population wasn't regarding the covering of the glory holes. It was about the lack of sufficient people to make availing oneself of the facilities there worthwhile. If there were a lot more people in Montana, you can bet there would be more alternatives, some perhaps more discreetly located. If you think the fact that Montana's sparse population density (it's not just that it's got very few people, it's that it's very few people in a HUGE fucking expanse of state) has zero to do with the number and quality of ABS's and such, I don't know how to explain the law of supply and demand to you. Reasonable point. Nonetheless, I'd point out that if the demand were so high, it's surprising the owners couldn't rebuild in the more discreet location. I suspect, rather, that the low usage (even the "tons of action" that used to be there) meant the money wasn't there to rebuild and they had to take what pre-built space they could get. Also a reasonable point. But my somewhat educated guess would be that guys plopping down 50 cents into a video machine, getting blown, and leaving (making no other purchases, because the wife/girlfriend might find out) is not the model for a thriving business. Especially if there's the one guy who comes in, doesn't even pony up the quarters because he's just there to blow other guys who are happy to spend 50 cents to get sucked off, spending hours generating zero revenue himself and only pittances from the horny truckers/cowboys/whatever. I don't know why any particular individual makes a decision to live somewhere unless he tells me, that much is true. I do know the macro view of it - too many people who have emotional investments in family or property there, who like living in that kind of landscape, but who hate the lack of ability to enjoy same-sex relations. There's the married men who want to get sucked and can't get the wife to do it, there's the closeted men who don't want to risk getting beaten to a pulp, and so forth. Those are (broadly speaking) the kind of men who patronize ABSs in rural areas, along with the gay man everyone knows and tolerates because he keeps his head down and doesn't acknowledge knowing that 9 out of 10 of the guys he blows at the ABS are "straight" and/or "married" and/or "Christian" so they don't want to hurt the only sexual relief they get. Now - as to why people don't leave - sure, I'm open to reasons other than "I own land here and this is my livelihood" or "My family has been here for X generations and it's home." I'm sure there are a not insignificant number of men who've moved there to work in natural resources extraction (mining, forestry, etc.) but I'd be shocked to find that there are migration waves because Montana schools are world-class or because the cultural scene is so lively.

That's simply untrue. For starters, Trump and Pence ran as a ticket, so nobody was asked to vote for Pence separately from Trump. Secondly, in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, both Trump/Pence tickets got fewer votes their opponents (Clinton/Kaine and Biden/Harris), and far fewer than "half the US voters". In 2016, Trump/Pence got 46.1% of the votes cast, compared with 48.2% for Clinton/Kaine. (The remaining 5.7% was squandered on third-party candidates with no hope of getting any electors whatsoever.) In 2020, Trump/Pence got 46.9% of the votes cast, compared with 51.3% for Biden/Harris. (A much smaller 1.8% was wasted this election on third-party candidates.)

This site, this site's rules. If you don't like them, you don't have to stay. You are posting within the "HIV/AIDS & Sexual Health Issues" forum - on a site called "Breeding Zone". The site is not "Spreadingdisease.com" or "HowToGetHIV.com" - it's a site about, at its core, sex without condoms. If the point of the site were solely about chasing HIV - an acceptable but by no means mandatory topic - then discussions of PrEP, etc. would be off-limits as contradicting the point of the site. For the record: I'm 58 years old, soon to be 59. As such, I fall squarely into that group of men RawTop was posting about - someone who had received the earlier doses of the smallpox vaccine, but because I turned 10 *after* the vaccines were taken out of the general routine for kids in 1972, I never got the doses recommended for 10 and 15 year olds. I'm EXACTLY the kind of person who might think he was vaccinated against smallpox (and thus probably monkeypox) but who isn't completely covered, and this information was and is very useful for people like me. I realize that people under the age of, say, 35 probably think people approaching 60 are "old" and "mostly dead". Let me be among the first to disabuse you of that ageist and idiotic notion. And as for the layout of this website: it's pretty damned clear, if you bother to read the topics/posts labeled "READ THIS" pinned at the top of various folders here. Posts about bugchasing and sex with drugs go in the appropriate forums within the "Backroom" area. I'm not sure it could be much simpler.

That is a side effect primarily due NOT to repressive health officials, but to the fact that Montana has the third-lowest population density in the nation, only behind Alaska and Wyoming. And yes, it's true that we don't have control over where we're born, and to some extent, that can dramatically influence where we live as adults. If you inherit a spread of land in a state like Montana or Wyoming, it can be daunting to sell that asset and move to a more densely populated area (which presumably has a higher percentage of gay people as well). But that's still something largely within the control of the individual. In many respects I loathe the state where I was born and live to this day. Looking back from the perspective of being out of high school over 40 years now, my first mistake was not working harder to go to an out of state college or university; and the second mistake was not leaving once I finished school and made a go of it elsewhere. And I could blame it on any number of external factors - all of which impacted things - but the bottom line is, I was too insecure to trust that I could do well elsewhere without the safety net of multiple generations of a large extended family right here. And I could blame my parents for instilling in me a sense that I wasn't good enough - because nothing I ever did was good enough for them - but ultimately, I made choices and my life, as lived, is the consequential result. So be it.