milkass

I can compare my actions to yours anytime, including now.

I can compare my compassion to your lack of it (which I'm doing now.)

 

You've demonstrated nothing other than your desire to define and target those who "deserve" to suffer.  And history is rife with the horrors unleashed when people like you are able to define others as "deserving" of whatever pain befalls them. 

 

There nothing to feel sorry for you for. You don't have HIV. The only thing wrong with you is your entitlement complex, which, admittedly, is rather pitiful, but that's the whole point. 

My sex life is as publicly funded as yours is, Milkass. I pay my taxes, take my PrEP, and get my STI checkups like a vast many people. I also get my flu shot and my annual physical.

You keep trying to divide up the world into the "deserving ill" and the "undeserving ill", saving your pseudo-compassion for the latter and directing your scorn at the former. Walk you into a ward with people suffering, be it from cancer, Ebola, or HIV, and you won't know which person is which. They're all in pain, they're all dying. 

HIV doesn't care if someone deserved to get it or not. You are the only asshole who does. Your Humanity is seriously impaired.

 

Yeah .. when I'm on a forum  proclaiming my right to charge society thousands of dollars a month for my sex life then you can compare my actions with yours. 

I don't hide behind anything. Victim-mongering? I don't play the victim. Saying I didn't chase doesn't make me a "victim-monger". I take responsibility for my choices in life. But even if I were, that wouldn't change the truth of my posts. Everything I have said is relevant. The same can not be said of you. Again, PrEP is used for anti virus use. Get it right.

I refuse to engage in your hate mongering thread any longer. When you start accusing me of doing things that I'm not, I definitely lose any interest in what you have to say. Your words hold no value. You aren't here to discuss and learn. You can't be reasoned with. You don't want to be educated. You just want to attack and hate. You go right ahead and live in your utopian world. Where everyone should be perfect and be just like you. Life is going to be one huge disappointment after another for you. I'll leave you with this: I've found that people like you that judge and trash others for doing things usually have a lot of things they hide from others. Habits that others would find abhorrent or wrong. Or even be guilty of the very thing they trash others for. It's crazy to quote it here, but I will: He who is without sin, cast the first stone. I'm certain you don't qualify. Go ahead and try and bait me again. I'm not going to bite anymore. I'm done.

No, you ARE victim-mongering, by equivocating  between legitimate cases of victimisation and tragedy, and reckless, self destructive behaviour. If not victimising yourself, you do it indirectly by refusing to acknowledge what's going on in a community you are involved in. Thinking of me as "hateful" might help you avoid certain facts that you are apparently uncomfortable with, but it doeskin change facts.

 You bitch about these people in one sentence yet in the very next sentence you say you would be more inclined to envy them. 

 

Ha. Yeah I bitch about these people the way I bitch about Bernie Maddoff. I envy the richness, not the choices he made to become rich. 

It's really not hard to grasp, Milkass. Flu viruses are asymptomatic in their initial period. It's why it's so easy to spread them. The only way to reduce or eliminate the chance of infection is to 1) Stop the insertion of viral particles into mucous membranes by washing hands frequently, wearing gloves, and facemasks. 2) Only interacting with people who wash / wear gloves / facemasks. 3) Regular inoculations against flu (the flu shot.) 

If you aren't willing to take those precautions, especially if you are interacting with a high number of people in your daily life, I don't understand why I'm responsible then for subsidizing the aftercare required when you test positive for the flu virus. Especially if you wind up hospitalized, why should my tax dollars go to pay for that? You are educated. You know the risks. And if you don't protect yourself, if you get infected with the flu,  it sucks to be you. I want my dollars to go to pay for homeless people or people with cancer -- the deserving types, not the folks who carelessly got infected, despite all the available methods we have of preventing this.

I'm supposed to have sympathy for you, someone who lives a carefree life of interacting with whomever they want, touching surfaces without barriers, and not caring about how they might transmit a deadly pathogen to a child or the elderly? Your moral compass is screwy. Must be nice to be so carefree with your life.

OK well that's absurd. It's not possible to contain the flu, given its asymptomatic, airbourne  nature. The only way would be to quarantine everybody 100% of the time. Since this is absurd, the only practical option is for people to do the best they can not to spread it -immunisation, limiting contact etc. Also flu's don't require a lifetime of expensive drugs to treat. But hey whatever makes you feel better about your publicly funded sex life. 

I never said every cancer was caused by lifestyle choices. Mine wasn't. You don't need to feel the need to educate me on that. I've been there as well. Quit misquoting and making things fit your argument.

PrEP is used to keep people from getting the virus HIV, not AIDS. You show your ignorance by not knowing the difference. The fact that I'm HIV positive but don't have to worry about dying of AIDS is anything but problematic for me. Or any other person that contracted the disease. Nor should it be for the taxpayers since we won't have the costly hospital bills that AIDS brings with it. In that same vein, if PrEP can keep the number of infections lower, then it is a cheaper alternative in the long run. Your numbers don't add up.

Speaking from experience yet again, the ones who have thrown hate my way didn't even know there was such a thing as chasing the bug. While I don't pretend to understand the thinking behind chasing, I don't believe for a second that the chasers are helping create the stigma. The three letters do that on their own. And lack of education. You are a good example. The stigma remains because people are too lazy to educate themselves. Using you as an example: you say having sex only with men who were tested and are disease free is a good way to keep from getting infected. That is ignorant. You don't know who they have had sex with since being tested. They could be poz and not have the symptoms. They could have a high viral load and neither of you be the wiser. A medicated undetectable person has been proven to be less of a threat. How do you think so many have been infected? Because of ignorant thinking such as yours.

When I spoke about compassion, I was referring to your all inclusive statements about people with HIV. Your comments have been harsh and hateful. That said, you are all over the map. You bitch about these people in one sentence yet in the very next sentence you say you would be more inclined to envy them. I'm having a hard time taking you seriously.

I'll say this and I'm done: the more of your posts I read, the more I see how uneducated about the VIRUS and DISEASE (two separate things) you really are. Quit wasting people's time and go educate yourself.

 

 

People who did not who are not trying to catch hiv on purpose have nothing to do with anything I have said .. absolutely nothing. I think you're projecting here with your victim-mongering; You're obviously so used hiding behind victimisation arguments that you deploy when when they have no relevance. A person person who intentionally catches HIV is not a victim of anything but his or her own choices. It is indeed insulting to them for you to say legitimate hiv victims should be afforded the same 'compassion' as people who intentionally got it - either by pointed choice or negligent sexual practices. 

I know the difference between hiv and aids. I use the  the term 'anti-aids meds' because it covers two relevant medications - prep and antiretroviral drugs. 

For those demanding I show more compassion, who am I supposed to have compassion for? What is it about a subsidized cumdump that I am supposed to feel sorry for? I'd be more inclined to feel envy for him. Who wouldn't want  such a libertine sex life? 

You might want to do some research. 

 

Colds and flu are a larger drain on Western society -- economically, socially, mortally-- than HIV is. Most people are contagious for a week before showing the first symptoms, which is how flus spread so damn fast. That, plus the ongoing failure of people to do two simple things: wash their hands regularly and get a flu shot every year.

 

In the abstract, for colds and flu? They're a social disease, fairly easily preventable by limiting the number of social contacts, doing some simple precautions, and getting a regular injection. But people continue to have a high number of social contacts, refuse to regularly and frequently wash their hands, and most people don't get flu shots, especially those most at risk. 

 

And society doesn't care. If you get a cold? Dumb luck. If you get a flu? Dumb luck. But there's no moral censure.

 

Not so with HIV or other STIs. They're spread more or less the same way, have some pretty easy tools to limit the likelihood of exposure, and there are now prophylactic treatments to all but eliminate their spread. Society though morally censures the contracting of an STI, the prevention methods for STIs, and, in some quarters, the education of how to prevent STIs. (STIs include HIV.)

You have yet to articulate a rational reason for this. Indeed, you have expressed an opinion that finds no fault with this dichotomy. I'd go so far as to say you've articulated that people deserve to get HIV / STIs, as if they've committed some offense against society or the universe at large.

Sex is one of the most interactions a person can have. We have the tools now to allow that sexual interaction to occur quite safely. We even have the tools to mitigate when an adverse situation occurs. What we don't seem to have a lot of? Compassion. People think they're justified in moral-mongering against folks whose choices they disagree with. 

 

For what it's worth? No, you aren't. Your stated opinion is idiotic. It's unreasonable. And it's inhumane. 

I can't believe you would actually say that cold's are asymptomatic and then go on to suggest that it can they can easily be contained all in the same paragraph. How are you going to contain an asymptotic, airborne virus? Are we all supposed to stay in a state of permanent quarantine to prevent the spread of the common cold? Colds and flus are just a fact of live. What does not have to be a fact of life in 2016 is the hiv virus, which is spread 99% of the time by infected semen entering an anus. There are simple ways to contain it: 1 is condoms. 2 is only having sex with people who are tested and disease free. 3 is taking medication that effectively immunizes you from AIDS. Now any of these are valid options. But I can't see how 3 is ethical if you are cannot pay for it. I'm a taxpayer and I'm allowed to express an opinion about what my taxes are paying for. I don't want to pay taxes to subsidize peoples promiscuous sex lives. I'd rather pay taxes to help HOMELESS PEOPLE or SICK PEOPLE. 

People do moralize about kids whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated. The are excluded from schools. 

Honestly they only valid argument that has been put forth against mine in the one about medicines being socialized. In a better world, all medicines would be available for everybody and excluded from profiteering. But the fact is, with the world the way it is, capitalist investment in research is the only way a lot of medicines are produced. In the future I expect that anti-hv meds will me cheap. Amoxicillin is cheap now because it has been around forever. 

A couple of things: chemo costs MUCH more than HIV meds. Yet you wouldn't deny cancer patients the right to have treatment. Nor complain about the astronomical cost shared by insurance holders. Some cancers are preventable yet you would not deny those patients the right to treatment. So it's not right that you single out this disease/virus.

Second, not having to worry about AIDS is problematic? I'm very thankful we don't. Would you rather the drug preventing AIDS (and protecting against contracting HIV) had never been discovered? I understand why you say that, but think of the cost of lives had it not been found. That is rather selfish on your part. And very narrow minded. I don't understand your reason for singling out ONE health issue when there are MANY health issues caused by bad habits. And are far more costly.

Third and last: having HIV, the stigma is already there. You should look up HIV stigma on YouTube and learn from it. They are trying to change people just like you. People are already stigmatizing gays. Hell.. You have. Your comments in the very first post did that. You put us all in one generalized basket. The lame stream media doesn't have to pick up the story to accomplish that. It's already there. I have been told that I'm a threat to society, that I'm a waste of space and air, and that I should eat a bullet. And these were gay people who told me that. So I already deal with the stigma. Having YOU come on here and further that onto a message board that has become a community for me to feel free and accepted and not have to worry about being judged for what I have is very frustrating. To say the least. I already look at the price every damn time I get my meds from the pharmacy and realize the cost others have to share. But there's not a damned thing I can do about it.

Instead of spouting off, go find a big bottle of compassion and swallow it all. We all come from different walks of life on here. Some did get it by chasing, but I'm betting the majority did not. We each have our own story. And they don't belong in the fiction section. Fantasy rarely lives up to reality, and what we are living is not fantasy. It is reality. One that stares us in the face every time we open the pill bottle. We can talk all we want about how people should do this and shouldn't do that, but we don't live in perfect bodies in a perfect world. Humans fuck up. And there is always a price to pay. This isn't Utopia. It's planet earth. So stop the stigmatizing yourself. Some of us beat ourselves up enough about having it. We don't need others helping. I look forward to the day this thread is no longer on the front page. May it be very soon.

Cancer is not only a lifestyle problem. People get cancer for genetic reasons The causal link between environment, genetics and cancer is impossible to disentangle. When a lifelong smoker gets lung cancer a lot of people might say "Oh well, he brought it on himself". That's not fair ether but you can't pretend it doesn't not happens. 

Not having to worry about AIDS is problematic if society is paying for it. If there was a drug that immunized me from lung cancer but it cost $1500 a month and I shifted that cost onto insurance companies and tax payers so I could smoke carefree I believe people would be justifiably upset, if they new. 

Whatever HIV stigma is there is is being made worse by bugchasing.Really people who contracted the disease accidentally are affected as much as anyone. 

Whereas sexuality is easy to grasp and clearly understood by everyone.

Look, objectively and logically you're right. Having random bareback sex with total strangers in a world with all kinds of potentially deadly STDs is unwise.

And it does impose costs on the larger society.

Why do we choose to do it? I really don't know. Sophocles, the ancient Athenian playwright spoke of the lessening of sexual desire with old age as a kind of liberation, and I think that must be true. It was common for the ancients to speak of being enslaved to our sexual desires.

Our feelings and desires are things we cannot control directly. I have no idea why I am attached to things I am. I can learn to detach myself from those things with effort and time, but that is the work of a lifetime (Christianity and Buddhism both are in large part all about this process).

Nor can I understand the attachments of others. I have no desire for a big house with a BMW in the garage and a gazillion dollars in the bank. But many people do, and the pursuit of wealth or of status symbols can be just as destructive as the pursuit of sex or romance. Their sins are not my sins, but we are all sinners together, to put things in religious terms.

So perhaps, borrowing again from religion, it's best to extend a little grace to those out there whose motivations you don't understand.

Remember too, we're all on a journey here. Just because a man wants HIV today, finds part of his identity in a disease, wants to go out in a blaze of sexual glory today doesn't mean that he will always be that way. Preserving his life now gives him an opportunity to grow. I personally think society is right to offer as many of those opportunities as it can.

I show grace by being happy to pay taxes to support people who are unlucky or underprivileged. I'm not going to be gracious about paying taxes so some entitled person can be a whore. 

So you you take no steps to prevent getting a cold or flu but seek treatment (if you are taking anti-biotics for the flu, your doctor is an idiot) once you get it. 

And you are complaining about people who take no steps to prevent getting HIV -- or people who do -- who then take anti-HIV meds once they are infected? 

Irony, much?

"I pay cost..."

No you don't. You still pay a rate sold to you as cost, but it's actually a negotiated price that your government organization / health insurer / pharmacy chain has been able to negotiate through its collective buying power. It's not as steep a discount as other people get based on the level of insurance they pay, but it's also not the full value of the drug.

 

You don't understand the system you are a part of.

I meant for a cold .. not a flu. But anyway your egample is silly. No reasonable person would expect you to stay put on a gasmask or biohazard suit to stop transferring a cold. The usual cold/flu etiquette is you stay home from work if youre too contagious, otherwize don't share people's cups, sneez in their face, avoid hugging them etc. That is a reasonable expectation. It's also a reasonable expectation that you don't ask society to pay $1500 a month so you can  have anonymous sex. It's not even just you, honestly. In the scheme of things I don't care what you do. It doesn't effect me. But this general attitude now that "we don't have to worry about AIDS any more" is problematic. I'm surprised the mainstream media haven't cottoned on yet, but soon they will, and people will be stigmatising gays. 

Do you pay a tax every time you shake someone's hand? Decide not to wash your hands? Go outside without a mask? Decide to forgo a flu shot? No, you say?

 

Congrats, you are now at risk of catching a cold or a flu. And you are -far- more likely to catch a cold or a flu than you ever are for catching HIV. (Statistically speaking.) And the impact on society in lost wages, medical care, and, yes, even death, is freakishly high for some colds and flus, higher than from HIV. 

 

So, I'll tell you what. When you are advocating for a tax on people who get colds and flus -- because they obviously didn't protect themselves using all the methods known to modern science -- then I'll get on board with a tax on people who get HIV. In the mean time, I'm going to keep taking my PrEP, which my taxes (and Giilead's co-pay program) already pay for AND getting my flu shot every year. 

You can continue to be sanctimonious.

Actually I work so I pay cost price for antibiotics when I get a flu once every second year. I remember the last time I paid $64. So even if your analogy wasn't absurd it would still not be applicable. 

Ok... We don't like the generalizations made about gay people, right? So why do you feel the need to be hypocritical and make a generalization about "bible bashers"? I guarantee you that the vast majority of obese people never step foot in a church nor read a bible. While I agree with your point, I don't think pinning it on "bible bashers" is a fair thing to do. Are there Christians who are obese? Definitely. Is every obese person a Christian? No. Is every Christian obese? No. Is every gay person poz? No. Did every poz person chase? No. So generalizations aren't beneficial to an argument. They take away from the real issue. Attacking others only takes us down to other attackers level. And does nothing to encourage tolerance.

I agree. Whole heartedly. But I think there's a better way of doing it than attacking people. I don't believe for one minute the OP had any good intentions for posting. His statements make it out that everyone on here wanted the virus. To put it in a term everyone will understand: bullshit. That said, I have felt from the beginning that those who chase or deliberately infect have self worth issues. Or don't have any regard for their well being or anyone else's. I have found from experience that if you try to educate a chaser, more often than not, he just moves on to someone else that will infect him. I've also found that they can be extremely uneducated. They think it's a pass to fuck with anyone they want with no fear. That is a foolish notion since it cuts your pool of men who are willing to fuck a poz guy down quite a bit. I've had far less sex since being poz than I did before being poz. And they also don't think of the ramifications of being poz when it comes to one's health. But while I think education is key, I still believe it's something deeper emotionally or mentally. But again, I don't think the OP had any of this kind of conversation in mind when he posted. He was purely attacking. While I don't dwell on having HIV every moment of every day, I don't need some asshat coming on here and making me feel even less human for having it.

Thanks for posting that. You have a very well rounded perspective. I know exactly what you mean about trying to "educate people". You are 100% correct that I should not generalize. I think I just overreacted when I saw some rather nihilistic thread titles. Sometimes I get the sense that it is more of a fantasy than a reality. I hope it is to be honest. 

Apologies for being disrespectful. 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously I'm not talking about people who didn't intentionally catch HIV. 

 

I'm not going to defend smoking but smokers do pay a massive tax on cigarettes.. in australia for example 70% of a pack of cigs goes straight to the government ... and insurance companies will ask you if you are a smoker as well .... you don't pay a tax every time you risk getting HIV by having bareback sex 

Thanks for whoever it was that clarified "deviance" ... there's nothing essentially wrong with being a deviant. But you know I mean if cannot afford to pay for the costs of your deviance then it's like saying to society "hey ... i'm gonna  go out and have this awesome carefree sex life and you are going to pay for it"

It's true you can make analogies with welfare moms and obese people etc ... but I mean what's your point? That you are ethically comparable to an obese welfare slob? Being a sloth should not be subsidized by society but Imean eating disorders can be complex. Eating is a necessary part of life and it's easy to overeat / under-eat if you have depression or anxiety issues metaolic issues, some fat people are perfectly healthy. I'm not saying it's good to be overweight, but eating addiction is a thing and I'm not convinced that your insatiable need to have random cum up your ass is really comparable .... smoking yeah but I mean smokers at least pay taxes on their cigarettes whille they are alive ..catching HIV intentionally safe in the knowledge that there is a medical safety net would be like if tax payers were paying you to smoke...

Obviously I'm not talking about people who didn't intentionally catch HIV. 

well the truth often hurts.

there's much cognitive dissonance involved in glorifying having hiv and then taking mediation to repress said hiv. do you want hiv or not? clearly you don't because you take medications to suppress it. almost all of you rely on insurance to pay for your medications meaning the rest of us are funding your deviant lifestyle with our taxes and insurance premiums.