It's all about consent

[MomentofReflection]

5 hours ago, ErosWired said:

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.

No, actually, the virus isn’t still “gaining ground” in those of us who are on treatment, at least not towards “AIDS” as you describe it.  The overall estimate is that for the “average” HIV+ person, hiv + status decreases life expectancy by two years;   

http://www.aidsmap.com/Life-expectancy-in-HIV-positive-people-in-the-US-still-lags-13-years-behind-HIV-negative-people/page/3040314/

Of course, that figure is significantly better if you remove instances of gross medical malpractice like your own.

As for HIV as somehow still being “fatal” because I take ARV;  no.  That’s not how it works.  That’s not how we describe any disease.  We don’t describe Syphilis as fatal because it is without treatment. We don’t describe diabetes as fatal because it is without treatment.  The only way you can say there’s some special responsibility is to buy into the constant stigma against people with HIV.  And as I’ve said before, I think those of us who are positive deserve better than to be hit upside the head with yet more stigma in a site that pretends to be some kind of enlightened.

Edited February 11, 2019 by MomentofReflection

[whore4poz]

1 hour ago, MomentofReflection said:

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.

It is my conclusion that you're being argumentative. You're creating a problem where there quite literally wasn't one. You're trolling and I'm done talking with you on this, or any other subject. 

[MomentofReflection]

1 hour ago, whore4poz said:

It is my conclusion that you're being argumentative. You're creating a problem where there quite literally wasn't one. You're trolling and I'm done talking with you on this, or any other subject. 

Your own words put the burden of prevention on folks with HIV.  It’s immaterial whether you mean the whole burden or just most of it-both ways you’re arguing a stigmatizing, ineffective prevention line that ruins Poz folks lives and has never been shown to protect anyone.  You don’t just get to shut me down and pretend it’s all trolling just because you don’t like getting pushback on that.  If you didn’t want to have this kind of argument here, you shouldn’t have initiated by sharing your opinion that Poz folks have some Special duty.

Edited February 11, 2019 by MomentofReflection

[Pozlover1]

Do you consider it wrong to infect a 19 year old kid that is begging for it?

My political beliefs say it is perfectly OK.  Laissez Faire. Classical Liberalism that was the basis for the Magna Carta and our Constitution. Personal Rights, Personal Responsibility. 

......but I would not do it. 

[MomentofReflection]

2 hours ago, Pozlover1 said:

Do you consider it wrong to infect a 19 year old kid that is begging for it?

My political beliefs say it is perfectly OK.  Laissez Faire. Classical Liberalism that was the basis for the Magna Carta and our Constitution. Personal Rights, Personal Responsibility. 

......but I would not do it. 

Would I personally do it?  Absolutely not.  Issues with the age notwithstanding, I and most Poz folks are horrified by the idea of “gifting”.  I think it’s absolutely important to recognize that someone in your scenario has no special obligation not to.

But that’s the sort of extreme that rarely applies IRL.  I think the better question is whether someone with an undetectable viral load is actually somehow violating the “consent” of a 25 year old bathhouse patron who demands their randos be “clean”.

Whenever you hear someone talking about “consent” or our “obligations as hiv+ people”, it almost always circles back to these insane, absolutist ideologies that have people with HIV being treated like Frankenstein’s Monster for no good reason.  

Edited February 11, 2019 by MomentofReflection

[ErosWired]

7 hours ago, MomentofReflection said:

No, actually, the virus isn’t still “gaining ground” in those of us who are on treatment, at least not towards “AIDS” as you describe it.  The overall estimate is that for the “average” HIV+ person, hiv + status decreases life expectancy by two years;   

http://www.aidsmap.com/Life-expectancy-in-HIV-positive-people-in-the-US-still-lags-13-years-behind-HIV-negative-people/page/3040314/

 

Dude - If you're going to cite a source, you really ought to read it first. That Aidsmap link opens directly to a page titled "Life expectancy in HIV-positive people in the US still lags 13 years behind HIV-negative people" (I mean, it's in the URL, for pete's sake) and includes these paragraphs:

"One interesting aspect of this study is that death rates and life expectancy in HIV-positive people has tended to be compared with the general population’s figures. But of course people with HIV form part of the general population. Thus, taken over the whole study period, life expectancy in HIV-positive people at age 20 was 49 years; in HIV-negative people it was 62 years; and in the US general population it was 60 years. This means that if the Kaiser Permanente HIV-negative population resembles the HIV-negative US general population, then HIV reduces life expectancy in the US general population by two years.

In subgroups, the difference was bigger: in men the gap between HIV-negative and general-population life expectancy was five years, in black people three years, and in Hispanic people six years. However, Kaiser’s users are not likely to resemble the general population, so the actual reduction in life expectancy due to HIV in the general population is likely to be lower than this.

There still remains a gap of 13.1 years between HIV-positive and HIV-negative life expectancy in this study, and this did not improve between 2008 and 2011. The researchers then looked at factors that might narrow this gap. In people who started ART at CD4 counts over 500 cells/mm3, the life expectancy gap between them and HIV-negative people was 7.9 years, i.e. it added 5.2 years to an HIV-positive person’s life expectancy. Not having had hepatitis B or C added 5.9 years; not having had problems with drugs or alcohol added 6.5 years; and not having ever smoked added 7.7 years. This still left a life expectancy gap of 5.4 years, however."

Your claim of two years is based on the first paragraph, but the study makes clear that that would only be the case if the HIV+ population were the same as the general population. Their study revealed that there are, in fact, factors that widen the gap between life expectancies, from 5.4 years at best to an average loss of 13.1 years. This is a 2016 report. The thing about science, you see, is that you don't get to cherry-pick the bits you like and ignore the rest. The science you quote demonstrates that your hypothesis that the difference in life expectancy is only "a few months" is false. Thank you for clearing that up with a peer-reviewed study.

 

As to this whole tiresome question of whether a poz Top has any responsibility toward a bathhouse bottom who requests disease-free hookups, the "personal rights, personal responsibilities" argument does not mean "every man for himself" - that would result not in civil society, but in anarchy and the ultimate decay of systems that allow the forward progress of homo sapiens, which are inherently a social species. Personal rights cannot exist absolutely when there are 7 billion of us with often conflicting personal rights, therefore the guarantee of personal rights is in fact a social contract in which each member of society assumes a personal responsibility to exercise his or her personal rights in the context of other people, and much is expected of him to whom much has been given.

Does the pop Top have a responsibility to honor the bottom's request? Of course he does. It matters not one iota whether the Top thinks the bottom is being ridiculous or irresponsible or naïve or "needs to be taught a lesson" - the Top's responsibility is to his social contract that expects that others will honor his requests for a personal right in another instance, and to the greater social responsibility not to risk the spread of disease in the population. He has a moral responsibility in the abstract not to increase suffering in others, as he would expect others not to increase his suffering. Indeed, a poz Top or bottom, who knows he has a viral load, or does not know the status of his viral load, should assume the same level of personal responsibility.

Assuming such responsibility doesn't make us "Frankensteins". On the contrary, ignoring our duty to protect our fellows, wherever we can, is what makes us monsters. Being cavalier about spreading the virus is what promotes stigma, not responsible behavior. I am up-front-and-center about my status and have been from the moment I was diagnosed. Since then I have had exactly four incidents - out of hundreds - where guys have reacted negatively to my status. Two of them told me they didn't want to play because I was poz, thanked me for being honest, and apologized (!) for their reluctance. The other two cases were idiot rentboys who, when I informed them that, no, I was not "generous" and did not have to pay anyone to get my ass amply bred, got salty and started telling me how I must be a filthy disease-ridden whore and should be ashamed to be out spreading HIV.

I'm sure others have turned away from me silently because of my status and I've never known about it, but that's their problem. Did I ask to be given this virus and all the grief that attends it? I did not, but what I'm going to do about it is step up and take responsibility like a man. I absolutely do not play unless I test Undetectable, and I have not missed a single dose of ART since September 12, 2014, because I have a duty to protect those who do me the honor of choosing me to play. Their lives are precious because they are human beings.

 

Edited February 11, 2019 by ErosWired

[Guest FinalDL2021]

Once have had a chance to get to know you first, either we meet online, or else-ware, I like to plan a second get-together. We can talk about what we're into (kinks, vanilla), HIV status  (poz/neg), and personal habits (PNP, 420, drink) If I finally make that decision to go back to your place, or invite you back to mine, then I have consented