Newsflash! Whatever you’re specifically attracted to doesn’t give you an excuse to say whatever you like about whomever you choose.

Racism, femmephobia/transphobia, homophobia, ageism, body shaming, slut shaming, pozphobia, and general douchebagness are NOT excusable under the weak, pathetic defence of “It’s just my preference.”

Better to be permanently isolated and single than ever deal again with another fucked up, ignorant, unevolved, hateful gay male.

ENUF is ENUF, right?

I’ve been thinking about the ENUF campaign lately – specifically those in the gay community in Melbourne who nod in agreement with everything it stands for, but seem completely clueless when it comes to spreading other forms of stigma/discrimination (effeminophobia and racism) around the joint.

ENUF is a Melbourne based challenge to the way many people in the gay community stigmatise people living with HIV. From their website:

“Stigma impairs sexual negotiation between people of potentially different HIV statuses.  Stigmatising language like asking ‘are you clean?’ stops an open discussion about HIV status.  It fuels a fire of resentment and adds another brick into the backpack of the HIV positive person to lug around.”

ENUF is a fantastic campaign and I support it wholeheartedly, 100%. As anyone knows from my blog, I have a major issue with the way gay men use language to discriminate and stigmatise, particularly as they should know better (they really, really should know better!).

I recently met a guy who placed a link to ENUF on his profile, complained bitterly about the way people used language such as “clean” when describing HIV status, but then went on to write a variation of NO FEMMES NO ASIANS. I haven’t placed a copy of his profile here because he’s since changed his language and I’ve become quasi-friends with him. But this all got me thinking.

It seems (most) gay men can comprehend the problem of stigma and discrimination when it comes to HIV, but not when it comes to race and gender-expression. Why is this? They are exactly the same thing! They describe in negative language a particular quality that is (subjectively) undesirable, and they express this undesirableness to the entire city online!

Tell me, what is the difference between broadcasting “clean only” and “no Asians” to all of Melbourne? Both have the effect of making a group of individuals feel crappy about themselves. And as always, nothing bad would happen if they didn’t appear on the profile in the first place – if you don’t write CLEAN ONLY NO ASIANS on your profile, you will not be in any more danger of being sexually molested by HIV+ Asian men than you were before writing such things! It’s not like Asian or Poz men think: “Great, he didn’t write NO ASIANS/CLEAN ONLY – let’s find out where he lives and sexually assault him! GREEN LIGHT!” FFS guys, this is basic stuff. 

I guess the reason I’m writing this is because I see an opportunity to engage with racism/femmephobia online from a different perspective. If you can understand how writing “clean only” can offend/hurt HIV+ men, then you can understand how writing NO ASIANS or NO FEMMES can offend/hurt Asian men or effeminate men (without even having to go into the whole logic about why such statements are also very clearly an expression of one’s own projected internalised homophobia).

It’s ridiculously easy to write a profile that doesn’t offend or cause damage to others. I just don’t understand why so many gay men can’t seem to grasp something as simple as this.

It really is the white trash trailer park of online gay dating.

“Fuck Poz Guys”

I’m certainly not promoting condomless sex here, but I think this is a conversation that should start happening more often. I have lots of thoughts, both for and against this, but I think homo men need to start putting their pozphobia on the shelf and realise that positive men who think they’re negative are the most dangerous. New research is starting to show pozphobia is more and more unjustifiable. Nevertheless, I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ve had safe sex AND condomless sex with plenty of positive men, and I’m still negative. I definitely think its safer than condomless sex with guys who just say “I’m neg”. NOTE: For some (and I mean it – some, not all!) of my North American followers, and for some (and I mean it – some, not all!) of  the younger crowd (under 30), please try to contain your automatic, knee-jerk, hypermoralising after reading this. We all know you guys get easily triggered by the word “sex” hehe

(source: thebody)

Marc-André LeBlanc asks if you’re a neg guy is it safer to have sex with poz guys or neg guys? Limit your condomless sex to poz guys with undetectable viral loads and avoid condomless sex with casual negative partners he suggests.

You heard me. FUCK POZ GUYS!

I’m talking to you, my HIV-negative brethren. Specifically, those of us who have not been able to maintain 100% condom use in the last little while. Either that is happening more and more often, or we’re now admitting it more and more readily. But something’s going on. The rates of condomless sex don’t seem to be going down. They are either stable or even going up slightly in some places.

I’m also talking to those of you who manage to maintain 100% condom use. Keep it up! It’s not easy, I know. I managed to use a condom every time for yeeeaaars. And that was not always an easy task. So kudos to you. According to some, you should get a parade, and I concur! And by the way, the message applies to you too: fuck poz guys! Keep on reading to find out why.

Now back to the first group: do you have boom-boom sex that doesn’t always include a condom? Do you worry about becoming infected with HIV? Do you try to “serosort,” meaning you try to only have sex with guys who have the same HIV status as you do? Maybe you only do that when you have condomless sex?

If any of this sounds familiar to you, then let me paint you a couple of pictures.

Scenario 1: You ask your prospective partner what his HIV status is, and when he was last tested. You’ve both just assured each other that you’re negative, so you decide to proceed without condoms. In it’s briefest and crudest form, this can sometimes look like the following exchange on a hook-up site or app: “r u clean? yeah? me 2. wanna fuck bare“?

That guy you’ve just decided to have condomless sex with could be negative, as he believes. Except there’s a good chance that he’s done this before. And unless he’s on PrEP and adhering to it and going to his regular check-ups, he might be unknowingly positive. In fact, he could be in acute infection, with sky-high viral load. And obviously, you could be too. How many times have YOU done this “r u poz? no? wanna fuck bare” dance? Maybe YOU’RE in acute infection and don’t know it, even if you get tested regularly.

Scenario 2: You ask your prospective partner what his HIV status is, and when he was last tested. He’s just told you he is HIV-positive. Assuming you don’t run for the hills in a moment of panic, as it happens all too often, you continue to exchange a bit of information. Turns out he is on treatment and has an undetectable viral load. You both decide to proceed without condoms.

If you ask me, in terms of HIV, scenario 2 is a hell of a lot less risky than scenario 1.

Trust me, I understand all too well the fear that goes with the idea of having sex with someone who is HIV-positive, let alone sex without condoms. I’m from the generation of gay men who were just entering adolescence when the AIDS crisis hit. This led to the unfortunate formula “Gay Sex = AIDS = Death” being emblazoned in our psyches. The message was reinforced for me when I watched my father, an out gay man, die of AIDS, gasping for breath right in front of my eyes when I was 20 years old. The fear of becoming HIV-positive was an incredibly effective motivator for me to avoid anal sex for years, and then to use condoms for anal sex each and every time, once I decided to try it.

But not all of us have managed to maintain condom use all the time. For all kinds of reasons, we have sex without condoms. Maybe rarely, maybe hardly ever, maybe sometimes, maybe often, maybe always … And if you have sex without condoms as a negative guy, the risk is probably lower if you do that with a poz guy who has an undetectable viral load than with anyone else.

I know. STIs.

I know. Blips in viral load.

I know. Undetectable in blood does not always mean undetectable in semen or rectal or vaginal secretions.

I know. You know some negative guys that you trust are truly negative.

I’m not urging anyone to have condomless sex who doesn’t already.

I’m not recommending an increase in condomless sex among those who already do it.

I’m not encouraging anyone to ignore STI risks.

I’m not suggesting you should assume that all men are liars.

And I seriously worry about contributing to the increasingly obvious “Detectability Divide,” where having a detectable viral load is kind of like the new positive. Rarely acknowledged, discussed in hushed tones, and more readily stigmatized. It’s kind of the reverse of what a positive guy said in a focus group I recently facilitated in Vancouver: “undetectable is the new negative.” I would be horrified if I contributed to merely replacing serostatus with detectability as the new marker of stigma in our community. So let me be clear: there’s no reason to avoid sex with someone who has a detectable viral load; just an additional reason to be more vigilant about reducing risk through other means, such as condoms and/or PrEP for example. All while having hot, steamy, satisfying sex. J

Yet I still maintain that negative guys who don’t always use condoms should seriously consider limiting that condomless sex to poz guys who have an undetectable viral load.

I understand that it takes time to wrap our heads around this. We have all been told and continue to be told so often that we should fear transmission, which is often presented as nearly inevitable. It takes a long time to wrap our heads around the fact that perhaps in some circumstances, we don’t need to feel that same level of anxiety that we’ve been conditioned to feel.

But I think more and more of us are getting there. And I bet you if all of us neggies who sometimes have condomless sex only did it with poz guys who are undetectable, while being most adamantly consistent about condom use with other neggies and poz guys who have not yet achieved undetectability, this epidemic would be over damn fast. We would avoid the undiagnosed, including those who might be in acute infection. That’s a brand of serosorting that makes sense to me.

How’s that for an HIV prevention campaign?

“Wanna reduce your HIV risk as a negative guy? Limit your condomless sex to poz guys and avoid condomless sex with casual negative partners.“

Go ahead, I DARE someone to promote it.

Scruff: Providing a safe space for the words that make effemiphobia

So I thought I would write about Scruff. Not the hair, the app. It’s a bit of a problem, although it’s not all bad. Soon after I woke up this morning my phone alerted me to a knee-jerky piece of queeny bitchiness from Scruff’s owner and self-appointed community leader, Johnny. He doesn’t like being criticised. Apparently it amounts to hate. Then again, when you take a critical look at most North American discourse, it becomes apparent that anything disliked is labelled as hate and subsequently bombed to smithereens (because slaughter, as we all know, is the most efficient way to spread “freedom”).

So anyways I’m a hater apparently. Cheers Johnny. You keep raking in the gay dollars, positioning yourself as a community leader, feeding your enormous ego (what IS that compensation for, I wonder?), and acting like a general grade-A douche who can’t keep his shirt on. Sad much? But let’s have a look at your own role in all the hate, too.

Scruff, as we all probably know, is a location-based app that has basically inherited Grindr’s position (because these apps, just like the sites of the 2000’s they superseded) have lifespans of about 2-3 years before something else captures the attention of the Faggotry. So yeah, don’t blow all that cash up your nose or on thirty gym memberships, Johnny; it won’t be around forever.

Scruff is a much more robust app than Grindr. Rarely buggy, with plenty of features, although the price tag is hefty (and unjustifiable IMHO) at $13.99 per month here in Oz. It also insultingly places your account on auto-renew, which no doubt has caught out many people who thought they were buying a subscription for a month. Such underhanded sales tactics unfortunately show a clear contempt for the customers who are paying for Johnny’s lifestyle. No matter how much he might cry “hater”, just remember there’s other forms hatred can take, and deliberately attempting to rip your customers off is one of them. (A quick email to Apple results in a refund of this dishonest fee, FYI).

But let’s look at some positives too. The app does a better job than any other in providing a fairly comfortable space for older gay men, HIV positive men, and transmen. There’s no denying this, it’s obvious and it shouldn’t be ignored for the sake of proving a point. Although this doesn’t do too much to stop the ageism, pozphobia, and transphobia that rears it’s head in user profiles daily.

This leads me to the main issue (as always): the sheer volume of internalised homophobia projected onto other users as effemiphobia. Sure. Johnny “and his crew” didn’t create this problem, nor are they solely responsible for eradicating it. But if you are going to create an app and position yourself as publicly as Mr Scruff so clearly has, then you need to be doing something about the platform you created that encourages said effemiphobia. Hiding behind claims of freedom of speech doesn’t cut it. Sponsoring drag shows isn’t the solution either (unless your aim was to make people like me switch off from RuPaul altogether, in which case, SUCCESS!).

Scruff, it is claimed, was started because Johnny didn’t think there was an online space for mens like him. This idea that there’s no place in the “gay community” for hairy butches is a commonly proclaimed excuse that only thinly veils the contempt so many of these butch queens hold for the rest of the community, based purely on an insecurity surrounding their own sexuality and gender expression. It’s the same sentiment you hear from homophobic gay men who complain that pride parades are just full of glittery half naked twinks that bring shame upon all gays, a claim that is curiously blind to all the other non-twinky non-glittery gay men that ALWAYS make up the majority of a gay pride parade. Well anyway, in order to provide a “safe space” online for all these pride-trauma victims, Scruff was born. And you can’t get past more than three profiles at a time without seeing words like “straight acting”, “masc4masc”, “no femmes”, “real men only”.

It would be fab if Johnny spent a little of his energy on attempting to educate his users AWAY from this hateful discourse (since he has such an issue with hate) instead of spending so much of his time taking off his t-shirt and embarrassing himself with naked grabs for attention anywhere he can get it (seriously I don’t need to see you and your friends professionally photographed topless bodies every time I open your damned app; glad that stopped!). I know it would be too much to place filters on this language within the app, and I would be opposed to that anyway since it doesn’t teach people a thing. But certainly he could talk about the negative impact language such as MASC4MASC has on the community in general. See, he’s created a platform that makes it very easy for homo-on-homo hate to proliferate, so he really is the last person to lecture on the subject of hate himself.

I’d have less of a problem with him personally if he didn’t attach himself to this sort of language so closely. He threw his tantrum at me because I criticised his dance party. Poor baby! But let’s remember this is a dance party that is self-described as a party for “scruffy, hot, sweaty, manly men”. If he can’t see how this language polices gender expression, then he really has no business walking his flashy, give-me-all-your-cash walk. This sort of language sits at the foundation of effemiphobia: the idea that a particular type of man is “manly” instantly creates a category of “unmanly men”, and we all know that being shoved into that category are men who don’t fit the mould Johnny Scruff is so eager to promote.

He probably would disagree with all this. They always do. But I say put down the dumb bells for five minutes and start giving some thought to how what you created is helping to perpetuate the internalised heterosexism and self-hatred our entire community (including me and yourself Johnny) have been made victims of. It isn’t hard to choose language that doesn’t divide. It won’t turn you into an effeminate queen. It won’t mean you will attract any more effeminate men than you already do. It won’t mean that you have to have sex with the types of men you find personally unattractive. All it will mean is that the language you use no longer excludes or denigrates (consciously or not) members of your own community. You know, it will mean we are all treated, by each other, with equal amounts of respect.

Sponsoring a drag show doesn’t cut it, especially when you’re running parties that exclude membership into the “men’s club” based purely on the presence of hair. And that’s coming from a big, hot, sweaty, hairy, muscular man who you’ve woofed at more than once yourself, Mr Scruff.

Boy! It’s a soulless white gay man world out there!

Two white gay men have contacted me online today, and both blocked me within a few messages. Must be something wrong with me, right? Er…. Well no, actually….

First one (not pictured) blocked me because I wasn’t available for sex immediately on the spot. Forgetting the fact that I hadn’t been online for an hour before he messaged me, and was 20km away from his house, he messaged me anyways. After a quick chat he asked me to come over, and I said I wasn’t free till the afternoon. BLOCK. See, a lot of white gay men aren’t used to being denied, or even delayed. That’s why so many of them throw tantrums at fast food chains when they have to pull over to the waiting bay for 2 minutes to get a cheeseburger…. But I digress.

Second one is pictured above. He also wanted to fuck. He was about 200 metres away. He asked me if I was “neg and clean” but, typically, didn’t like me advocating for positive men and the stigma those guys have to go through. No doubt this bastard thought I was secretly positive, because in most people’s brains these days you can’t be an ally unless you are actually a victim. It’s like what I was saying earlier, many white people think you can’t be against femmephobia without being a queen, or you can’t be against racism unless you’re black, or you can’t be against sexism unless you’re a woman, blah blah blah. Anyways, his contempt for being challenged for his offensive language was obvious, especially with his sarcastic use of the word “teach” and “rightio”. Just another example of what people, especially a lot of white people, are like these days. They spend their entire lives interacting only with people who have the same thoughts and positions as their own, that they are unused to interacting with different points of view. On top of this uncomfortableness with difference, they are also unable to exist in a world that doesn’t adhere to black and white binaries: if you disagree with me, you are my enemy. The world of grey, the queer space, is the most confronting and frightening of spaces to these people, and they must be blocked. In this little person’s mind, he can say whatever he likes, and it’s not offensive because apparently “everyone finds everything offensive” and therefore everything is rendered inoffensive. Nice little binary doublethink there. However, to point out the logic that is clearly lacking was too much. And to think he is actually partnered! Whenever I see that ignorance has found a partner, I always just imagine two equally ignorant, bigoted fools propping each other up with their lack of education and mean spirits.

Now, I’m sure a bunch of white gay men will jump up in disgust, accuse me of ‘reverse racism’ and say ‘you’re generalising, you’re just as bad as a racist, we’re not all like that’!!! And they would be right: I’m generalising and they aren’t all like that. But let’s not universalise this behaviour today, let’s hone in on the fact that this behaviour, here in Australia, is most often found amongst gay white men, because they tend to be blind to their colour, their invisible whiteness, and are too happy to treat everyone as equals when it comes to the negatives of human behaviour, yet when it comes to the positives they tend to just apply it to themselves. Too often they are just ‘human’ (my mates are great) where people of colour are always racialised (my Asian friend is great). So let’s put the spotlight on the fact that whenever I have negative experiences like I have had today, nine times out of ten it’s a white gay man I’m interacting with. Anyways, that was my experience with white gay men this morning. Same as my experience with them yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and….

Is Discrimination on Grindr Killing Gay Sex?

by Mathew Rodriguez (source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mathew-rodriguez/is-discrimination-on-grindr-killing-gay-sex_b_4558989.html)

Grindr was created, according to its inventors, to make socializing easier. If you didn’t know the man across the bar, you’d simply hop onto the app and find out just enough about him to start a conversation. However, as any movie about science or technology tells us, what is a simple genius invention often runs afoul of the maker’s intent in the hands of mere mortals — and especially horny mortals.

As a queer Latino gay man of size, logging on to Grindr is a casual masochistic reminder that, in the mainstream gay male community, my body is not welcome. Messages like “NO ASIANS,” “NEG U B 2,” and “MASC ONLY” invalidate gay men like me daily. How did a tool that was meant to facilitate conversation become the prime example of the gay community’s — like the rest of humanity’s — worst tendencies, like racism, sexism, misogyny, ageism, ableism, fat shaming, elitism, transphobia, homophobia and serophobia?

What does someone in the 1 percent of Grindr’s sexual economy look like? He has white skin, he has a weight that begins with “1,” he is cisgender, in his 20s, completely able-bodied, has a full head of hair, has either slightly defined or very defined abs, has a dusting of body hair, is masculine and is HIV-negative. These men are what you might call “sexual gatekeepers.” Just as the 1 percent of America’s economy has unlimited access to the services and privileges they need, Grindr’s 1 percent has the privilege of determining who has access to them and when and where they will get serviced.

In literary studies or fiction writing, “round” characters are fully realized characters who jump off the page, while “flat” characters are 2-D, and stand out for the qualities they lack. In the world of Grindr, a landscape dominated by a 2-D square interface, everybody is a victim of personality “flattening,” and, by extension, becomes more and more defined by that which society says they lack. While people used to look into the future and see technology as making fantasies come true — flying cars! teleporters! — the truth of technology in the 21st century is that it doesn’t deal in fantasy. It heightens reality — racism, misogyny, etc. — in all its grotesqueness.

People often confuse “having a type” with taking the freedom to shoot other people down. When one person lists the communities he won’t have sex with in his online profile, he fails to see the person on the other screen who has to read a digital invalidation, written in 1s and 0s. Cyberbullying thrives because it alleviates the executor of any guilt. They don’t have to see the rejection, the shame, the trauma on someone else’s face. Why, in a profile meant to discuss you, do you take the time to talk about the people who can’t have access to your body? Many people would say the very definition of privilege is when you have the luxury of not having to think about something or have it affect you — the luxury of having free and open access to sexual partners is no different.

Many people, gay men included, cling to false notions — “I can’t help it! It’s just what I prefer!” — when discussing their sexual preferences. However, preferences are always socially constructed. The list of characteristics of Grindr’s 1 percent is also a fairly representative list of many of Hollywood’s hottest celebrities, its most powerful men with the most cultural and social capital. These are characteristics we’re told to desire. I don’t know about you, but I hate being told how to think. Sex on Grindr is often sex between sheep. But, sex can be an act of resistance and meaningful exchange — if you make it one.

As more apps that serve more “niche” audiences appear, and the death of sex and intimacy through categorization looms, is there still hope for an online sexual playground that can act as a place of fun and liberation? Many of my older queer activist friends often tell me about sex from an earlier era, sex that had potential, sex that was organic and intimate. If our generation prefers Chipotle to McDonalds, then why are we settling for a sexual terrain that boasts sex as fast food and men as value menu options?

The gay community is only starting to feel its way through the digital era’s sexual landscape, but as we do, I encourage us to use more than just our thumbs. We must be more interested in touching each other than touching our screens. Gay men have a history of being social pariahs, but as some in our community gain “mainstream” acceptance, we can’t repeat history and microaggress those who are deemed to be on a lower rung of society’s ladder. We can have sex that’s more about questions than answers, embraces exploring more than finishing and doesn’t rely on litmus tests for genuine connections.