By Joseph Couture (London, Ontario) JAN 9 | I don’t understand what is happening. I’ve noticed a clear and disturbing trend with gay men. The guys on the sleazy pick up web site where I spend entirely too much time are behaving oddly. It is becoming increasingly common for men to openly admit and advertise for unsafe sex.
It has been happening for a while, but seemed to be approaching epidemic proportions lately and so I decided to do a survey. Last night I looked at the profiles of every man online in my city at the time. The results were disturbing.
The site asks men to state their customary practice when it comes to condom use. Under the category of “safer sex” you can pick “always,” “usually,” “never” or “rather not say.” You can also list your preferred sexual activities.
Under safe sex 12.5 percent of the men said they usually practiced safe sex and an additional 5 percent declined to answer with “rather not say,” which to me says everything in itself. A surprising 14 percent of men said their preferred sexual activity was unprotected anal intercourse, or “barebacking.”
What is more disturbing is the age of these men. A whopping 73 percent of the men who said they wanted unprotected sex were 26 years of age or younger, the youngest two being only 19.
Those are the men willing to raise a flag and openly admit to the world they either don’t consistently use condoms or actually don’t want to. It stands to reason that there are many more with the good sense not to admit it so flagrantly.
I hear the usual explanations offered for this trend: condom fatigue, a belief that HIV is no longer a big deal, and the idea that young people don’t understand the reality of what happened to previous generations of gay men.
I don’t know what the truth of the situation is and I’m not going to speculate. But the fact is whatever is happening; the reality is that a lot of people (especially young men) are risking their health and well being for reasons known only to them- a fact that should concern us all.
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1 comments:
I'll speculate. Adrenaline rush. They know they are taking a huge chance, and it gives them a thrill. It is the same thing with road racing, shooting up drugs that you don't know what they are, or any other type of risky behaviour. The fact of the matter seems to be that young men need excitement (most, but not all) and they will go out of their way to get it. They used to (cave man days) go off to find a mate, conquering all other males in order to get their sex partner, but that cannot be done these days, so we have this distorted violence/aggression/excitement doing a substitute for what they need.
If you look at the scenes of riots in the streets, protests over political action and inaction, and all sorts of other similar things, the people you see throwing the stones, and acting with little regard for others or themselves are the 17 to 25 year old men.
Even though I don't believe in the draft, there is something to be said for just rounding up all those hormone laden lads and having them work their way through them doing something at least moderately useful. The non violent can work the medical teams, trying to save the truly stupid after they 'do their thing', or maybe they can 'volunteer' to do service in truly poor off areas of the world, rescuing and helping the destitute, injured, and maimed, like Haiti.
I think there is nothing more life affirming than seeing how truly awful things CAN be, and helping to make them better. When you see how hard people try to make things better when they have nothing, you cannot really even think about risking or destroying yourself.
That's my speculation.l
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