Freedom of education? Not on my tax dollar, bub.
The province of Alberta, here in Canada, has opted to make matters of sex, sexual orientation,* and religion OPTIONAL for their students. Parents can yank their kids out of school when they disagree with the premise at hand. [Story here.]
Religion? Okay. Fine. I’ll give you that. Make that optional. I not only understand having strong beliefs on faith, I respect it. I do not, however, understand refusing to listen to other views, not having faith in your children to be intelligent enough to hear more than one viewpoint, or shutting down education when it seems fit, because I feel that teaches children that the teachers and education itself are not credible.
But on matters of sex? Sex education?
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Continue reading
Category Archives: AIDS & STDs
Fuck the Catholic Church Too
Dear Pope Whatsyerface:
I imagine that, if I ever really wanted to know what an “asshat” looked like, you’d be Exhibit A. I mean, what other excuse is there for that ridiculous hat?
And it’s funny, such a big hat for a man who has such an obviously small brain.
You’re now speculating that condoms are part of the problem with AIDS.
Right. Because rubber is so sieve-like.
You prick. Taking another promotional tour across Africa to again preach your message that using condoms is a sin, and now you’re blatantly LYING, you hypocritical fuck, and saying condoms make the AIDS situation worse?
The BBC reports this:
On his way to Cameroon, the Pope said HIV/Aids was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem”.
People die every single minute from AIDS in Africa. On a continent where education is so hard to come by, and society is rife with discrimination against those afflicted, and the governments have, for the most part, abdicated their responsibilities to care for and protect its citizens at large?
How DARE you? Motherfucker.
Love Steff.
*** *** ***
I’ll cut this short, because I think one of my best postings ever (of a political nature) was on this very subject. Without ado, I give you: Fuck the Pope.
A 2009 Wish for Smut Writers
[Note: These opinions of mine are strong. Aren’t they always? But it should be said that I think it’s with irony, too, as the majority of sex bloggers I’ve followed on Twitter tend to speak of condoms as necessity, not options. I believe the sex blogging community is indeed having responsible sex more often than not; this posting isn’t about their personal practice, it’s about the image they’re portraying in their writing, which I would like to see more match their reality.]
I know the perception is that condoms aren’t sexy.
I know it fucks with the cadence in real life, stopping the action to fumble for protection, but putting on a condom CAN be hot. It CAN be incorporated into the play.
So why don’t smut writers include donning protection during casual sex scenes they write?
People are using less protection than they were 10 years ago. In fact, reports in the UK are that a staggering half of over-30 singles regularly have unsafe sex.
How fucking dumb are these people? Well, pretty dumb. If you’re having casual sex without a condom, I think you’re a fucking moron. Continue reading
A Perhaps Controversial Thought About the Birth of the AIDS Virus?
[I would normally post something like this on my other blog, The Last Ditch, but since it’s about AIDS, which is sexually transmitted, I’ve decided to be a little bit of a shit disturber and post it here for a larger audience. I’m interested to hear your thoughts…]
I’ve been fascinated by the history of the Congo for some time now, thanks to the brilliance of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghosts and the history of the first real genocide, the slaying of ten million Congo Africans during the rise of the rubber trade and height of African colonialism at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century.
10 million Africans slaughtered for rubber. Never mind the millions stolen and forced into the slave trade from other regions, or those slaughtered when colonial interests take over.
I’m fascinated by genocides. I’m more fascinated by the horrors of Africa today, though. The legacy of that death and brutality.
It’s sadly funny, the justifications of whites and ‘manifest destiny’, how they felt Africans were “savages” who required a civilizing hand.
Now, Africa has descended into chaos — Somali pirates, Darfur’s genocide, South Africa’s rape crisis, and list goes on and on — and still you hear the pundits saying how Africa’s just a different kind of place. They’re uncivilized and brutal. It’s the African Way, they’ll say, in quiet, hushed voices that don’t get a lot of airplay.
It’s kind of like Bush saying the terrorists were in Iraq, so the war went there. And now, of course, terrorists are in Iraq. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, Africa has become a savage place. Continue reading
Unprotected Sex: What if Condoms Make the Guy "Soft"
I am militant now, in my “old” age, about protection during sex. The question is, why isn’t everyone?
The images, albeit creepy and disturbing, are some very effective AIDS-awareness posters from France. I thought they illustrated this posting well.
A reader named Helen left a great comment today on a posting I think everyone should read, personally, called Getting Laid, Getting Tested, Getting AIDS,* that I wrote two years ago.
(Proof that I see every single comment I get, so start commenting more, peeples!)
Helen wrote:
What really irritates me is that guys still ask for [sex] ‘without a condom’. As soon as I hear that now, it’s such a big turn-off, as I know they’ve done that before, and probably don’t give it the concern I do. Even if we use condoms, yes there’s still a risk of herpes, warts, there’s still contact. And I end up thinking about that too much. Why do they ask?
Of course, the worst is the guys I know who seem to lose it as soon as the condom is on. You’re all turned on, gasping for it, and it’s gone. It’s like being held to ransom. He’s feeling bad, you want sex, it’s all too easy to give in and make it alright. Do you have any tips for this? Because it drives me crazy. I know it sounds weird, but can’t they try to masturbate with them, or somehow try to associate them with sex? I know it doesn’t feel as good, but there’s clearly a mental element too that they could work on.
I just wish they found the prospect of HIV as much of a turn-off as me.
And condoms can break, so even then you’re not guaranteed protection, which is why I “sleep around” very, very objectively, even with condoms. 99% ain’t 100%.
I had a sexual “professional” in the escort biz email me once to say she’d used a condom EVERY SINGLE TIME she had ever had sex, and somehow wound up pregnant. This development left her absolutely terrified to continue in her profession.
As for Helen’s example, I’ve had that happen, that when a guy puts a condom on, he suddenly deflates. He tried to use the “Yeah, well, I’ve been in a relationship for the last 11 years, so I just can’t get used to it” bullshit excuse.
And that’s MY problem, how? “Wear the fucking condom, or we don’t fuck. You can’t wear it? Your loss. I have vibrators. I’m better off without fucking someone like you, anyhow, because now I can’t trust you,” was my response to him, and the night came to a very premature close.
My advice, Helen? Stay the course. If men want to argue against wearing condoms, then fine, let them. But don’t give in. Never, ever give in. It takes ONCE. Just once. See my addendum at the end, because my friend who knows the night he was infected, he’s dying as a result. From once, just once.
You’re absolutely right — the ones who ask for bareback ARE the ones who’ve done it with others. They’re the ones to be concerned about. Just because they’re charming and got that far with you doesn’t mean they’re safe. It’s the excessively charming guys that worry me more, to be frank.
I have a male friend who just recently decided a couple months of seeing this chick meant it was a nice, committed relationship, and he felt he could trust her. They had unprotected sex, and the next day, literally, he happened to see a text message on her cellphone in which a guy texted her “BTW I think I came in you the other night. Too late for a morning-after pill?”
My friend told me he ran to the washroom and vomitted, since he’s never been a promiscuous guy and only recently got out of his 12-year marriage, and has been just gutted with worry the last month.
The day BEFORE he told me that, I’d been to my doctor and was talking about getting tested again, for my bi-annual test, whether I’m sexually active or not. Doc told me rather darkly that he’d just finished testifying in a court case in which a FEMALE patient of his KNOWINGLY infected a male patient of his with HIV.
We want to believe everyone’s as ethical as we are. We want to believe they’re not fucking with skanky people who use no safe practices. But that’s just naivety at its finest.
There are untrustworthy people out there. There are mean people out there. There are people with no scruples nor standards. There are destructive people out there.
Vigilance is the only thing we have to protect ourselves with, aside from condoms, and neither are 100%.
God, since the late ’80s we’ve heard the slogan “No glove, no love” and you’d think people would get it by now. Particularly these men who want to keep asking for bareback sex.
You think condomless sex doesn’t feel better for women, too? Of COURSE it feels better. I LOVE BAREBACK SEX. Love, love, LOVE. I just never have it. Why? Because it’s so fucking 1970, man. Jesus.
Women have more at risk than our random male shags might. We could get pregnant — which often is a greater motivation than protecting oneself against AIDS and other STDs, and is stupid, but there you have it. If that’s what it takes for women — who are the fastest-growing demographic for new AIDS & HIV infections — to start forcing partners to wear condoms religiously, then I’ll take it.
Guys, if you’re one of these selfish pricks who has a fucking problem wearing a condom, THEN GET OVER IT. Whiners.
It’s a MENTAL problem and YOU need to deal with it, not US. If it means jacking off with condoms as practice, then do that. I don’t know what you but-I-can’t-wear-a-condom, you-can-trust-me men need to do, but you got to fucking figure it out. We’re your lovers, not your mothers, so figure your shit out without burdening us with the hassle.
And to all the men who are religious about wearing condoms: We love you men for making this easier for us. You have no idea the bullshit every single woman has dealt with over the years from those ignorant, dumb-ass men who are selfishly thinking only of getting off, and not taking our well-being (or theirs) into consideration.
AIDS isn’t over. In fact, the picture is even less rosy than it was just weeks ago. Why? The CDC in America has released a study in which they report that they think their estimates for new annual AIDS/HIV infections are a whopping 40% TOO LOW. Instead of 40,000 new cases a year, it’s 56,000, and growing.
In fact, Ronald Johnson, the AIDS Action Deputy Director, says, “This is not just another set of statistics. There are people behind these numbers. People are becoming infected with a disease that is preventable. We know how to prevent HIV, but we have been fighting this epidemic with one hand tied behind our back, reflecting a disturbing dismissal of HIV-prevention as a public health priority. The new, higher estimate is yet one more wake-up call to our national leaders that they need to do more, starting with developing and implementing a real national AIDS strategy.”
I’m gonna guess that strategy is that of educating ignorant people about wearing condoms.
Personally, I think that, even if you’re in a longterm committed relationship, and you even THINK your partner is cheating on you, you should demand condoms be used. Ain’t a conversation I’d be keen to initiate, but when your life’s literally at stake and trust isn’t what it used to be, that’s a conversation that needs having.
What can I say? The lack of sexual responsibility used by some segments of society leave me absolutely paranoid about who it is I should or should not sleep with, and as much as I trust my instinct… I’m no fool.
Neither should any of you be. Why chance it?
*NB: The friend I’ve mentioned that contracted AIDS from a night he could pinpoint is not doing as well as he was in the posting I originally mentioned. He’s now made a will, has become incredibly depressed, has isolated himself, and his health is spiralling downwards, filling fear in us all, because we think he doesn’t want to fight. While life can be sustained longer than ever with the drug cocktails now prescribed for AIDS, the quality of life is often difficult.
As I wrote in that original posting, a little too presciently for my comfort, “The virus is not the same in everyone. It is a living, breathing thing, and like all evolutionary beings, it can – and will – adapt to new and different environments. Some people will be to HIV like a match is to a stick of dynamite. You really think you’re invulnerable? Go ahead. Roll that dice. But every risk you take, you subject another to, and, that, you have no right to do.”
Teen Sex: The New After-School Special?
The news about teen sex these days just keeps getting more and more alarming. When it all comes down, it’s on Bush’s watch.
Earlier this year, studies showed that an average of one out of every four (26%) of teenage girls are now carrying an STD in the great USA. Never mind the teen pregnancies. These are sexually transmitted diseases, people.
The news is alarming now, but imagine five, ten years from now when the fallout of the STDs exchanged between today’s youths are really felt and known.
It’s been a few months now since the story came out. I’ve been quietly waiting around for the shitstorm to unleash, for when parents start screaming in outrage that their baby girls having a 25% likelihood of carrying an STD, and soon… But the shitstorm never came. The anger never rose. Continue reading
Fuck The Pope.
The Catholic Church continues to dwell in the dark ages. Chillin’ in Rome on Saturday, Pope Benedict has again, and very adamantly, praised Humanae vitae, the 1968 Catholic document that declared the sanctity of human life in all its forms, including sperm and eggs, and thus issuing a Church-wide opposition to use of artificial birth control.
When choosing a new pope after John Paul II’s death, the Church decided against some of the more progressive thinkers who are wondering if, in the face of the epidemic spread of AIDS in Africa, it might be wise to begin using condoms to stem the spread of the disease. After all, Humanae vitae was written and enacted long before AIDS was either discovered or understood. Who could have conceived of a sexually-transmitted virus wiping out an entire generation of Africans in just 25 years after its “discovery”?
Today’s pope would have you believe it’s an act of courage to live according to the values espoused by Humanae vitae, but I say it’s an example of uncourageous Church that fails to see that we’re fighting against a horrendous virus that can, and may, mutate, making it even harder to prevent or even eliminate in the years ahead. But a condom is essentially the best weapon we have against AIDS. We can fight it now. Who’s to say what a future strain or mutation of AIDS might have the ability to do against us? Am I scare-mongering? No, but sometimes I get a little scared in the face of such dangerous ignorance.
The Church would rather an HIV-infected spouse have unprotected sex and risk infecting their partner than be safe and still share love without as much fear of death and disease.
JP II actively campaigned against the use of condoms to fight AIDS– in Africa!– by doing a series of speaking engagements throughout the continent in the years before his death, when Africa was already being labelled a hotbed of AIDS that had to be doused. The Church would have you believe that abstinence should be sufficient.
The powers that be in the Catholic Church have lost their grip on reality.
I was raised Catholic and went to both Catholic elementary and high school… Until, that is, it became known that my diocese had knowingly allowed a teacher to continue teaching at my Catholic high school for more than four years after they had discovered he had been molesting boys.
The spring of the year I learned that, when I was in grade nine, a girl committed suicide. The priest then told the school she would go to hell as suicide was a sin. You should have heard the heaving sobs and pained cries emitted by the student body as their grief became uncontrollable with the words “…to hell.”
That September found me going to public school. After three years of arguing with my parents about going to public school, they both were disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Church and I never was made to attend mass again.
So, I’m obviously a little biased.
Still, I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Church now. First it claims it’s the sanctity of human life, in all its possible forms, that drives it to fight for its protection by way of declaring all artificial contraception to be sins. Yet it’s the demise of human life they spread when all that’s needed to prevent more than 90% of the sexual transmissions of HIV & AIDS is the use of a little itty-bitty piece of latex. An entire generation has been wiped out and the Church STILL campaigns against a known way of preventing this horrific endless parade of death.
I mean, they’ve not declared the use of condoms as a sin then quietly looked the other way, like they seem to do to a greater extent with adultery and white-collar crime and other things that actually are sins committed against others. No, they’re out there banging that fucking drum and fighting it on a regular basis, with a microphone and camera, and in places where the education and savvy maybe could use a little helping hand. “Condoms are a sin, don’t wear condoms”?
That’s fucking obscene. That’s a fucking sin. Sanctity of life? Waste of life!
I think it’s a crime to do what the Church is doing. Not only that, it breaks my heart. It really does. When I was a kid, I was absolutely passionate about the Catholic creed. I had a comic book volume of the Bible, seven books I read again and again and again, dog-eared to shit, and I’m still angry at my dead mom for getting rid of ’em on me. I’d preach to the kiddies in the ‘hood about God’s good word. Thought about being a nun. Enjoyed going to mass before school every day, by choice, till I was in grade 5 or so. I was hardcore, just loved my Church.
I’m not religious, not anymore. The Church has disillusioned me time and time again. I dig Jesus. I dig Buddha. I dig Mohammed. They all have beautiful messages, and I believe in much of the values and ethics espoused by pretty much every major faith in the world. I live an honest life. I’m a good person. I’m charitable. I’m everything you should want to be. I just choose to believe that men keep fucking up faith by putting too much of man’s bullshit into something that doesn’t need to be as complicated as we have managed to make it.
Do I believe in something bigger than me? Yeah. But I don’t believe that saving my life when I choose to express the passion that lives in me as a sexual being by using a simple condom that I am being immoral. I refuse to believe that following my heart and libido and enthusiasm for life is wrong. I refuse to believe that using something created to make the act of loving someone else safe from disease and contagion should be a sin.
No moral code in the world can make that make sense to me. Anyone who believes it, I really don’t care their level of intelligence, education, or social importance; they’re a fucking nimrod. Seriously. Welcome to a little place I call Earth, where we have things like “spontanaeity”, “accidents”, and something apparently given by the Creator called “free will”.
Centuries from now, when we’re all dead and buried, and funky new people walk this plane instead of us, they’ll look at the history and say, “Okay, the Bubonic Plague… I get that, they had no plumbing, hygeine was hard, cities were overcrowded… but, AIDS? A guy in a fucking funny hat says using condoms was a sin ‘cos he thinks God told him that, so Africa doesn’t use condoms and AIDS wipes out entire generations? Fuck, man. That’s just moronic! How dumb were these people?”
Because that’s what it is. These Popes, man. I love how the first pope, St. Peter, was actually on a first-name “wanna get some wine?” basis with Jesus, but Jesus somehow forgot to mention to Pete that he thought popes should be “infallible” — ie, he “is preserved from even the possibility of error” according to the First Vatican Council of 1870, more than 1800 years after Christ apparently walked our world*. Funny how it’s not really until the Church began amassing more and more riches and power (during the middle ages), on its way to becoming the wealthiest organization in the world (think of all the art and real estate) that they decide Popes are to never, ever be wrong. That’s an awfully convenient thing to lay on one of the most powerful men in the world.
Never wrong? Gotta be kidding me! What a fucking joke. Somebody’s been lacing the sacramental wine with LSD again, man.
Fuck the Pope. Fuck the Church. Wear condoms. It’s the new rebellion. And it’ll save your life (most of the time, but not always).
*That’s when it was first written into the Catholic doctrine, 1870, but there was a good many who believed it as far back as the Medieval times, so about a thousand years or so, but a thousand years after Christ still.
AIDS: Another Rant Against the Bush-League
First off, a big thank you to the cute blonde across the way who keeps wandering around in boxers and no shirt. Love those pecs. Welcome to the neighbourhood, neighbour.
Kindness… With Strings
If you attach conditions to kindness, it doesn’t seem to be so much that it’s humanitarianism you’re after, y’know?
So, it was with great amusement – albeit bitter and pissed amusement – that I took note of the sanctimonious stipulations attached to all the “donations” being made by the Bush administration since 2003 in the name of AIDS assistance throughout the world. This was all shown during the brilliant Frontline “The Age of AIDS” documentary I mentioned in an earlier posting.
When it comes to countries like Uganda and Brazil, they’ve stood face-to-face with some pretty grave dangers posed by the horrific disease, and through understanding the culture and society in their nations, they’ve managed to come up with social programs to stem the rate of infections.
In Uganda, they teach abstinence and faithfulness, but they also implore the public to use condoms. There’s an intense movement towards education, and they’ve managed to go from having one of the highest incidences of AIDS to a much more stable number (and I’m too lazy to grab facts right now). The government was providing copious free condoms for the public to use. This proved extremely effective.
In Brazil, they’re not kidding themselves. It’s a very sexual country. They work hand in hand with the sex trades to try and control the amount of unprotected sex going around, and they push condoms onto the public awareness stage. It’s working. They’ve also created a system by which their citizens are ENTITLED to the drug cocktail known to keep HIV in check (most of the time). They’ve struck deals with pharmaceutical corporations and they have in-nation drug-manufacturing plants that allow them to make drugs for their citizens at a reasonable price. This is not a wealthy nation, but they have their shit together.
The US has attached stipulations to both these nations. In Uganda, the government provision of free condoms for the masses has apparently dropped by 80% since the Bush administration intervened, favouring instead the preaching of abstinence. In Brazil, they were insisting the Brazil government condemn prostitution (as it’s legal there), which prompted the Brazilian government to say, essentially, “Fuck you” to the money so they could maintain their autonomy.
Brazil’s aggressive approach to controlling AIDS, which includes HIV treatment, massive condom distribution and explicit HIV education, has produced one of the few success stories in the developing world: In the early 1990s experts projected 1.2 million infections in Brazil by 2000, but the interventions cut that number in half.
Read the source here.
As the Brazilian government rep said to the documentary’s producers, “This year it’s prostitutes, and maybe next year it’s homosexuals. Where do you stop?”
That’s a very good question. Where do you stop?
You stop when it’s your moralizing that is limiting the potential for other nations to save the lives of their citizens. You stop when it’s your failure to realize that husbands and wives get AIDS and, thanks to their marriage vows, they should expect to be able express their love in physical terms, and telling them to abstain, and not to use a condom is something that will get you laughed out of most bedrooms. You stop when your vision is so narrow that you’re not even seeing the dangerous ramifications of your moralizing. You stop when the disease has afflicted more than 5 million people in a single year (2005). You stop when the total number of dead now exceeds 25 million in just 25 years. You stop when more than 40 million people are living with it worldwide.
You stop when your sanctimonious beliefs mean you’re being a hypocrite to the very faith you profess to believe in. It’s about saving lives. It’s about letting people live, helping people live, and, if you happen to believe in an afterlife, letting God do the judging at the end of those lives.
You just fucking stop. You help. You do whatever the fuck you can to end the deaths. Because that’s what a good person does. They help in the face of all adversity. They help when they’re called upon. They don’t put conditions on it. They don’t judge those needing help. They just help.
If, in fact, AIDS (as Pat Robertson and his ilk believe) is an epidemic unleashed by God in an effort to punish the immoral, then why has “He” given man the tools to treat it even the least little bit?
I despise hypocrisy. More importantly, I despise the knowledge that 40 million people on this planet will more than likely die from this disease that we seem unable to find a cure for, but that many of them will die far sooner than they need to, and more will contract it than are necessary, all because of to many governments who have been too ashamed to admit they need help, or those who are too fucking sanctimonious to offer help without strings.
The United States wants to be a world leader? Then fucking lead from the trenches, not the pulpits. Get in there and get dirty, and don’t worry how the fuck it looks. Be like Nike, and just do it.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I just read this, and it blows my mind. YOUTH, AGED 15-24, ACCOUNT FOR MORE THAN HALF OF ALL NEW HIV INFECTIONS WORLDWIDE. More than 6,000 are infected daily. Wear condoms, kids! Fuckin’ hell!
Did Somebody Say "Test"?
It’s early on Tuesday, I’ve essentially been up since 5:45. The morning’s awash in this tepid glow. It’s sunny, but there’s no direct sun on me yet. Give it 40 minutes, then it’ll have risen over the low-rise apartment building in front of my place. Summer’s virtually here. It’s been three days in a row of good, good bike rides, and Sunday I even got to do some crusted-earth trail riding and hit a few puddles along the way. Sweet! A fine time to be alive. And a great time to be in a good relationship.
Yesterday was test day. See that? Ugly fucker, isn’t it? The blood pooled under my flesh a bit, just by the needle’s merciless prick. Crimson skin’s there now. Friday, I’ll have my results. HIV, yada, yada. Testing sucks. But it’s a good time in a relationship. Didn’t I just say that? Here we go. Got the testing, baby. Naturally, I just sprung it on the Guy. Funnily, the very day he broke his leg, he planned to go get the full-meal deal of testing done. That was over a month ago. Freaked the shit out of me. “Eager, aren’t you? Jesus!” was essentially my line of thought. But I’m catching up, the fear’s ebbing, and I’m entering the “comfortably committed” mindset that usually eludes me for much, much longer.
So, it’s done like dinner, Martha. Oh, I hate needles. With a passion. As a kid, I was always unhealthy. I had needles drawn every single Friday for about five years. A variety of mystery illnesses plagued me back then. What can I say? I’m enigmatic. Even professionals think so.
But this wasn’t so bad. It was one of those medical people you look at and you think, “Hmm. She’s either really awesome at her job, or she’s gonna suck eggs.” She was awesome. Took seven — yeah, count ’em, seven tubes — for everything from diabetes to HIV and it barely even registered. Well done, nursie-girl! I nearly smooched her.
Y’know, as cool and collected as I sort of am about all this, there’s always something freaky when you see a vial of your blood sitting on a counter with a “CDC” sticker applied to it. (Centre for Disease Control for you off-continent types.)
There’s a reward though: The possible future of condomless sex. More moments, less hassle. A fine thing. Spontanaeity? Check. Throw down and get it on, any time, any where? Check. I’ll have me some o’ dat, thankyouverymuch!
Friday, the good word comes down. Me? Worried? Not at all. I’m a responsible girl and I have higher standards than it may sound like from time to time. Should be just dandy.
Testing: The New Measure of Monogamy. Yep. Gettin’ tests. There’s a plateau. Goin’ steady — and we mean it, dammit. Yep. All ready for the Spontaneous Throw-Downs, soon. Turns out the Guy’s never had outdoor sex. Well, well, well. He claims he’s more of a “winter” guy than a “summer” guy. If he’s never had outdoor sex, I could maybe see how that would be. But I know a trick or two to edumacate him on the finer points of warm nights and dewey grass. And maybe there’ll now be one less hassle when I get my schoolin’ on with ‘im. He’s so game. Lovely.
That’s all the writing you get today. I’m pissed off I’m up, so I’m smoking a little dope (sue me) and rolling back under the covers. It’s the first time this spring that ALL my windows and doors are ajar with a nice spring breeze blowing gently through my place, and I’m sitting around naked, and not freezing, and I love it. But I’d rather be under the covers. So, back to oblivion I shall go for an hour or two.
HIV: Are You Shitting Me?
Africa is the canary in the coal mine, folks. AIDS is an epidemic on that continent, and this Western perception of “it can’t happy here” is bullshit. AIDS was born there (arguably), it spread around the world, and it’s growing faster in Africa than any other place.
But it will continue its spread. Things will get worse. COUNT ON IT. The only weapon we have against AIDS is education, but we all know that ignorance is as epidemic as the virus.
More than 6,000 people die of AIDS each day on that continent, where 25 million people presently suffer from its wrath. In two years alone, the portion of adults in South Africa with AIDS jumped from 13% to 20%, from 1997 to 1999. There is no country in the world facing a greater threat from AIDS than South Africa, and ignorance of the problem has not disappeared.
In this BBC story from today, we see how a political power-broker in South Africa is accused of raping a woman known to have HIV, in which he did not use a condom. He instead showered after the encounter, believing that would negate the virus’s ability to infect him.
This is an “educated” and “successful” man, and he believes this shit. This is a continent in which education is nowhere near where it needs to be, where superstition and age-old cultural beliefs trump modern knowledge. A place where the Catholic Church (fuck them and the horse they’ve ridden in on) is still militantly campaigning to not have condoms distributed freely in an attempt to stave off the spread of AIDS & HIV, which some experts say might well have spread to a quarter of the continent’s population by 2020.
We in the West are far too ignorant of Africa’s problems. We like to think this disease’s problems will stay confined to the jungles and savannahs of the Dark Continent. But they won’t. In this day and age of world-wide air travel and international immigration, this disease is coming to a body near you, if it hasn’t already.
Educate yourself. Have protected sex every time. The few people I know with AIDS or HIV can tell me almost with certainty which encounter they believe caused it — calculated risk? Not so calculated, it would seem.
Test yourself and your partner, and demand to see the evidence, before engaging in “bareback” sex. I’ve never been promiscuous mainly because AIDS and HIV scare the living shit out of me. And rightfully so. The Dark Continent tells of a dark future for us all, if vigilance and education aren’t increased.
America is taking ignorance to new levels — allowing for states to have “opt-in” sexual education, like in Kansas, where if a student has not received a signed permission slip from a parent, they will not be taught sexual education. Ironic, isn’t it, when it’s the students whose parents won’t consent to such education who are most in need of it?
It’s time we put our so-called quest for morality away, and focus instead on educating ourselves about the possible transmission of this disease. Just the other day, some fuckhead politician in the States was talking about the transmission of the virus through tears. (Not likely to happen, Bubba.)
The topic of AIDS and HIV are ones I’m very passionate about. The ignorance of Africa as a problem on more levels than one is another I’m passionate about (one word: Darfur). But they depress me and I avoid writing about it, because I want to do it well, and to do it well means finding the facts and figures that can be used to shock awareness into people. I will, however, aspire to it over the coming weeks. It’s time people get their fucking heads out of their asses and learn about this. The spread of AIDS here in the West IS increasing as the spread of education has been reduced in the past half-decade or so. Teens are more ignorant than ever, and it’s the politicians’ faults. Women are contracting the disease faster than they ever have, and the dangers are not diminishing.
Use condoms. Always get tested. Be aware. Educate yourself. Never, ever touch blood without protection provided by latex gloves or what have you. Be vigilant. And stay uninfected.