Sullivan on the Barebacking Story

christian11 at mindspring.com christian11 at mindspring.com
Thu May 31 09:24:57 PDT 2001



>fact is, he was advertising for bareback sex and that means that there are a lot of people out there who actually find it sexually exciting to have bareback sex. they _want_ to expose themselves to HIV. (nathan's ignorance aside: this is a fetish and it's no diff from others). given that, sullivan advertised at a site that promotes bareback sex, and not so that HIV+ men can have sex with one another.

So, would this be a bad thing? Two consenting adults having bareback sex? Where's the public wrong?


>furthermore, altho he might have wanted to only have sex with other HIV+ men, he could never know that they were for sure, could he?

And he's responsible for that?

Whether or not you can still call Sullivan hypocritcal depends upon whether you believe his account of his interest in unprotected sex. He turns it into a kind of incipient monogamy. If he's telling the truth--and I haven't gone back to read the Signorelli article that started all this, so I don't know how much is plausible--then so what?

On the other hand, if he's not telling the truth, then it could be something else entirely. He claims that he got HIV from oral sex, which is _extremely_ unlikely. If you don't believe him, you might suspect that this episode is the kind of encounter that he's been having for a long time. I mean, why long for unprotected sex only after you're positive, as he claims? He was probably longing for before he was positive and his infection is a result of that. In which case, the barebacking as monogamy story doesn't hold up.

I'll have to go back and look at S's story. But I fear the consequences of a media brawl about this for gay men in general more than I fear the consequences if we believe him and go back to pointing out his other flagrant stupidities.

Christian



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list