Sullivan on the Barebacking Story

kelley kelley at interpactinc.com
Thu May 31 09:45:07 PDT 2001


At 12:24 PM 5/31/01 -0400, christian11 at mindspring.com wrote:
> >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?

no, i didn't say that. i was saying that the public harm is in sullivans promotion of ideas that end up encouraging rampant stereotypes about gay men's sexuality -- of the sort that mean that some gay men end up hanging of a fenceposts to die from exposure.


> >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?

no, i was bitching about his disingenuous response in the article nathan posted. he hadn't thought through or purposefully avoided thinking through the issue.


>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?

i think that he could have advertised on a non-bareback site and i wouldn't have found him hypocritical at all. plenty of people do it. i see the ads weekly in the st pete times and tampa tribune!


>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.

yes, i don't believe him re getting HIV from oral sex. i have reason not to believe him wrt this recent article then. and, like dd, i found the length he went to riding on the con hobbyhorse "i've been victimized" pathetic and a big sign that he's lying through his teeth.

if gay men want to engage in bareback sex, fine. i don't care. but sullivan sure does or, at least, lends ammunition to those who go off half-cocked in that direction.


>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.

hmmm. well, yeah, but the results are likely to be a reproduction of the stereotypes that 1. gay men are catty queens and 2. that gay men are the ultimate examples of the politics of personal destruction.


>Christian



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