It's all about consent

[whore4poz]

We're all swimming in the deep end of the pool on this - and I've always believed that if you're going to be free to make your own choices, you have to take the consequences. Never has that been more true than in this community. 

 

I said in my very first thread here that I'm at the age where I'm not going to question my motivations on this. 

 

Those that have the virus have the larger responsibility -  whether or not to infect someone with a virus that's 100% fatal sooner or not. Those of us wanting to get infected...it's incumbent upon us to all our homework going into it, so we can make an informed choice.

 

The word I'm trying to find is, "Consent" and this site is big on it. Swim as deep as you'd like, even in the really dark waters but just know - and accept - your own actions. The only person responsible for my actions is me. If I'm ever gifted, I'm going to have high and low moments - eleation and despair...and I've already accepted that. Whatever choice you're going to make, it has to be one with which you can live. 

 

 

[Guest BBBoyfromTN]

Amen

[MomentofReflection]

On 2/7/2019 at 11:45 PM, whore4poz said:

Those that have the virus have the larger responsibility -  whether or not to infect someone with a virus that's 100% fatal sooner or not. Those of us wanting to get infected...it's incumbent upon us to all our homework going into it, so we can make an informed choice.

This was such a lame fucking statement, and it really illustrates what’s wrong with this entire website.  First, the difference in life expectancy between Poz and neg is now just a few months.  So no, it’s not “100% fatal sooner or not”.  Second, all that “Poz has responsibility” bullshit is a joke;  There’s no evidence that putting the burden of prevention on Poz folk is effective prevention, no reason to suspect it might be, and no clear reason why HIV should be singled out and isolated above all other diseases without regard to the actual realities of life with the virus-those being that it’s really not a big deal.

None of this even begins to touch on the fact that most people in the developed world who are diagnosed with HIV aren’t even infectious.

Honestly, I know most bugchasers live completely in their heads, rarely leave their mothers’ basements and would run screaming from a partner who actually had the virus IRL, but at least do us the courtesy of googling basic facts about the virus before making broad moral edicts.

Edited February 10, 2019 by MomentofReflection
Added additional perspective

[ErosWired]

1 hour ago, MomentofReflection said:

This was such a lame fucking statement, and it really illustrates what’s wrong with this entire website.  First, the difference in life expectancy between Poz and neg is now just a few months.  So no, it’s not “100% fatal sooner or not”.

@MomentofReflection -

 Wrong-o.

 I’m 52, and  my HIV became AIDS in 2014. By a medical quirk it didn’t kill me then, but my life expectancy is now 70. Not 84, not 80, not even 75 - 70. The difference in life expectancy in some cases can be the loss of more than a decade, not “just a few months”, and barring some other accident or a scientific breakthrough, yes, it is going to kill me sooner rather than later.

You can’t refute what you call a “lame fucking statement” with another lame fucking statement, and if you don’t like “what’s wrong with this entire website”, please accept this invitation to hit the road.

Edited February 10, 2019 by ErosWired

[drscorpio]

Moderator's Note: The only reason this thread isn't shut down is that the topic is worth discussing. The next person to lace their response with personal and/or general attacks at other members of this forum will get a nice long vacation from the site. Feel free to challenge each other's ideas. Personal attacks will not be tolerated. 

[MomentofReflection]

6 hours ago, ErosWired said:

@MomentofReflection -

 Wrong-o.

 my HIV became AIDS in 2014.

***

if you don’t like “what’s wrong with this entire website”, please accept this invitation to hit the road

Perhaps you’d care to tell us how your HIV became aids several years after the window in life expectancy began to close?  It’s unfair to throw out a factoid like that without any context that would allow me to respond effectively.

As for your “hit the road” comment;  no.  I have every bit as much right to be here as anyone else, and as someone stuck living with the consequences of all this “it’s your responsibility” talk, it’s incumbent on me to point out it’s absurdity and unfairness of these statements.  If you’re so offended, maybe you should be the one to leave instead of trying to use your own incomplete life story to refute a premise (“near normal life expectancy”) that has been established for almost a decade now. 

Edited February 10, 2019 by MomentofReflection

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, MomentofReflection said:

Perhaps you’d care to tell us how your HIV became aids several years after the window in life expectancy began to close?

Certainly. I was entirely unaware of my HIV infection due to an unfortunate series of false negative tests (my GP told me flatly, “Medicine failed you.”). Only when I went straight from double pneumonia to fungal meningitis with stroke in August 2014 did a test finally confirm HIV - and by then my CD4 count stood at 49. I was 47 years old. At that time, my infectious disease specialist told me that with lifelong ART, diet, exercise, and some luck, I could expect to live to 70. At 4 1/2 years later, that prediction hasn’t changed.

In 2016, the median male life expectancy in the U.S. stood at 78.69 years, 82 years in Canada, and 80 years in the U.K. in my own family, men who were non-smokers have tended to live into their 90s. Even my dad, who smoked like a blast furnace for years, will be 77 in August, and I, a drug-free teetotaler who has never smoked in my life, will probably not come anywhere close to his mark when I shuffle off the ol’ mortal coil.

So I’m afraid your assertion that the poz/neg difference in life expectancy is only a matter of a few months is currently simply incorrect, except perhaps for young men whose HIV is caught early and treatment is begun before the virus ravages their immune systems. But even then it only serves to illustrate the larger point that poz men bear a greater responsibility to monitor and take action for their own health and lives, for if they don’t proactively get testing, and keep up with treatment, their own life expectancies may shorten beyond that “few month” difference.

And anyway, who’s to say “a few months” isn’t anything to worry about? When it comes to the end, how many of us wouldn’t give most anything for a few more months with the people we love?

[Pozlover1]

I was diagnosed in 2001 and had a CD4 of 56. I never skip a dose of my meds and I know my physical limits. Sometimes I need to turn the heat up and go to bed early. Overall I am doing great. I just checked the bottom of my foot and there is no expiration date. 

Edited February 11, 2019 by Pozlover1

[MomentofReflection]

2 hours ago, ErosWired said:

 series of false negative tests (my GP told me flatly, “Medicine failed you.”). Only when I went straight from double pneumonia to fungal meningitis with stroke in August 2014 did a test finally confirm HIV - and by then my CD4 count stood at 49. 

Your story doesn’t suggest that HIV reduces life expectancy.  It shows that medical incompetence reduces life expectancy.  The fact that western medical professionals couldn’t guess “aids” in a very sexually active gay man with immune issues in 2014 is incredible.

Thanks for sharing but your story is completely irrelevant to the point.  YOUR life expectancy may have been reduced by gross medical incompetence, but the OVERALL life expectancy remains comparable to the OVERALL life expectancy of people without HIV.  Ergo, it is not accurate to suggest it is “inevitably fatal”.  In real life, the only people I’ve known who have died of AIDS are folks who are pushed into depression and then noncompliance by people like the OP, who make the condition one giant burden on the victim rather than the medical issue it is.

If an overweight person with diabetes wasn’t diagnosed until they’d had digital amputations, developed neuropathy and renal failure, we wouldn’t go around pretending like the disease was a death sentence.  The fact that we do this with HIV-that we never let ourselves acknowledge it as survival and no big deal for most people-is one of the many bizarre things about how we handle the virus.

I was responding to the Original Posters demand that HIV+ people shoulder the burden of prevention.  The reasons aren’t too clear, but there are echoes of the usual blame that society heaps on Poz folks.  We, as people living with HIV, deserve better than this anti-scientific, fear laden moralizing.  ESPECIALLY on a site dedicated to liberated sexual behaior.  It’s a pity that you had to hop on the OPs bandwagon.

Edited February 11, 2019 by MomentofReflection

[whore4poz]

21 minutes ago, MomentofReflection said:

 

I was responding to the Original Posters demand that HIV+ people shoulder the burden of prevention.  The reasons aren’t too clear, but there are echoes of the usual blame that society heaps on Poz folks.  We, as people living with HIV, deserve better than this anti-scientific, fear laden moralizing.  ESPECIALLY on a site dedicated to liberated sexual behaior.  It’s a pity that you had to hop on the OPs bandwagon.

I made no such claim, please re-read my OP. 

[ConversionPiglet]

I just wondering how some folks know that their life span has been shortened due to a choice they made (such as being infected by a disease, ride a motorcycle, eating a certain food, etc).  I am still looking for the life span of each of us (like its stamped on our bodies somewhere).

 

[MomentofReflection]

13 minutes ago, whore4poz said:

I made no such claim, please re-read my OP. 

“Those that have the virus have the larger responsibility -  whether or not to infect someone with a virus that's 100% fatal sooner or not. Those”

i mean, that is quite literally what you said.  

[whore4poz]

19 minutes ago, MomentofReflection said:

“Those that have the virus have the larger responsibility -  whether or not to infect someone with a virus that's 100% fatal sooner or not. Those”

i mean, that is quite literally what you said.  

That's not the same as 'shoulder the burden of prevention"

I even made that clear in the same post - that we all accept the responsibility for swimming in the deep end of the pool. It's about consent. I talked about both parties being responsible. That's literally the point of the thread. 

Thank you. 

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, MomentofReflection said:

 We, as people living with HIV, deserve better than this anti-scientific, fear laden moralizing.  ESPECIALLY on a site dedicated to liberated sexual behaior.  It’s a pity that you had to hop on the OPs bandwagon.

It’s not a pity at all - I simply agree with him.

Anti-scientific? Rubbish. Here’s the science. HIV isn’t fatal as such, because the virus itself isn’t what kills you. It’s the opportunistic infections that strike if your CD4 count is below a certain level, or even if it isn’t, the constant and unnatural state of inflammation the body endures predisposes it to a range of potentially life-shortening ailments including certain cancers for which we otherwise wouldn’t be at risk.

You have indicated that you yourself are HIV+; one gathers by your remarks here that you consider your health so negligibly affected by the incurable virus in your body that you need not concern yourself about it - after all, you would have us believe you’re going to live the same span of life one way or the other. It’s not, you disingenuously insist, a fatal disease... it’s “no big deal”.

But - do you take your ART? Daily? Without fail? If so, why? Because you know that if you do not, you will suffer and then you will die. That isn’t speculation or hyperbole, it’s an accepted scientific fact, because, empirically, that’s what’s happened to practically everyone in whom the virus gains traction. The disease progresses to its final stage, every time. Even in those of us on the latest meds, the virus is still gaining ground, it’s just doing it much, much more slowly. Make no mistake - we can’t stop it, we can only slow it down, and the end result of having it, by one cause or the other, is the death of the host body. Thirty years of scientific research attests to this.

But you know this perfectly well. You know perfectly well that the disease is fatal more quickly untreated, so you take the personal responsibility to medicate yourself every day so the Enemy Virus has no chance to mutate into something worse that the meds can’t stop. Perhaps it irritates you that the rest of the world also benefits from you taking that personal responsibility - perhaps you’re one of that sort of people who can’t stand to do the right thing if you think someone has told you to do it; I really couldn’t say - but the reality is that they do benefit.

And those if us who carry the disease within us do bear a greater responsibility toward our fellows, just as those who carry firearms bear a heightened responsibility for their actions. We have a potential for harm that our negative brothers do not - that is fact, and indisputable. I find your arguments to the contrary wholly unconvincing, and to be candid, the condescension with which you present them gains you neither ground nor goodwill.

[MomentofReflection]

8 hours ago, whore4poz said:

That's not the same as 'shoulder the burden of prevention"

I even made that clear in the same post - that we all accept the responsibility for swimming in the deep end of the pool. It's about consent. I talked about both parties being responsible. That's literally the point of the thread. 

Thank you. 

LMFAO.  You’re being overly detail oriented in an attempt to wiggle out of what you were clearly saying.  If a Poz person has “the most responsibility” and something about consent, that almost always alludes to some obligation to do the following;

-always use a condom

-always disclose

-be undetectable anyways just in case 1 & 2 wasn’t enough protection for whomever wasn’t scared off

-know all facts about HIV to help randos who have “anxiety”.  

Whats the burden that you’re placing on the hiv-?  Typically we hear some combination of;

-get tested

-take prep

-always demand to know other people’s status even though you’re not actually at risk (see item one).

so IOW, the duties that befall a Poz person are infinitely more burdensome and totally not in their own self interests.  The duties that befall a negative person are of no real burden and are also coincidentally aligned with their own interests.  But yeah, sure, since you’re trying to be pedantic I’ll concede to you that there is technically some small and relatively minor expectation on the negative in how this equation works.  I don’t think yours was a valid rebuttal as it didn’t get to the heart of what we’re really discussing.

My point was that these expectations are not effective, and they are inherently unfair to the Poz person as they impose a set of horrendous, crippling duties with not accompany utility.  That Poz people further have basic human rights-to privacy and dignity-that are violated to by this “larger responsibility” that exists for no reason other than the coincidental production of antibodies.

Edited February 11, 2019 by MomentofReflection