More straight people than gay / bisexual people being diagnosed with HIV for first time in a decade according to U.K. health secretary. We’ve been telling you these men are doing too much. Protect your cooch!

herbivorouscarnivore · 2022-02-14T00:30:20+00:00

Every single one of my women friends and acquaintances that I’ve spoken to has heard this line at least once in our lives: “I don’t need to wear a condom. I don’t sleep with that type of women.” Unsurprisingly, many of these have never been screened for STI/STDs because, you guessed it, “I don’t need to because I don’t sleep with that type of woman.”

So yeah. We don’t need a new strategy. We need men to use the one available for last couple of decades.

hopeful_flounder93 · 2022-02-14T00:37:48+00:00

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I mean, I'm sorry but this is what happens when you've got dudes acting like their full-time job is being community dick combined & PickMe's acting like condomless anal with a guy you met 2 weeks ago is perfectly normal. Combined with the fact that we're shamed relentlessly by these types for choosing to wait a few months? Excuse me while my eyes roll all the way into the back of my head.

Do not sleep with a man until several months of consistent vetting.

Oh, and asking to see proof of a full STI panel does not make you "paranoid" or "uncool", and will not scare off anyone worth dating. (Make sure you physically go get tested together; they're faking results now.)

The mask will slip, but in the meantime, don't be stupid. Protect your womb like your life depends on it, because it does.

StrawberryMoon3 · 2022-02-14T01:19:41+00:00

Hook up culture highly contributed to this. Those who participate in it don't get tested often enough, if ever. There's a lot of folks who think a condom will protect them against everything.

whiskey_and_oreos · 2022-02-13T23:49:24+00:00

Love how the author uses the passive "we need a new strategy" line. We don't need a new strategy, we need to take ten steps back and ban porn and stop normalizing unprotected sex. Men aren't entitled to unprotected anal sex as an audition for a ~~first date~~ walk in the park.

spinsterchachkies · 2022-02-14T06:40:12+00:00

Heterosexual men are being disgusting. They out there having unprotected anal sex with everything they can. Oh god get them away from us! Get the holy water!

qazzovuoi · 2022-02-13T23:56:20+00:00

Gay men are given PREP which is a medication that's like an early antivirus to avoid catching AIDS Idk why doctors think the vagina ph is enough or womn believe in their lt scrote fidelity & only worry about birth control Please use condoms

LayanaBravas · 2022-02-14T01:24:58+00:00

I have two stories in relation this one. One is about another woman and one is my own.

When I was in high school (all girls), we had a group called Positive Women visit us. They are HIV+ female volunteers who go to schools to describe how they contracted the virus and what their life is like now. One woman explained to us that she was sheltered, conservative and religious. She never partied and prided herself on being a loyal wife and mother. Many years into her marriage, she suspected her husband of infidelity. After some snooping, she discovered that he was participating in all-male, unprotected, group sex with strangers on a semi-daily basis. A huge portion of the men were married to women and it was seen as their guilty pleasure. She immediately got tested and found out that she was positive for HIV. She said the hardest part was that she never wanted to lie to her children but she couldn’t figure out how to explain to them why she left their father. (ETA: forgot to mention that she didn’t tell her children the reason why she left and they resented her for years.)

My experience was that I went on two dates with a warm, lovely guy who seemed very interested in me. On the second date, he started explaining how he does a similar thing to the ex-husband in my previous story. (I hadn’t mentioned that story to him, he brought it up entirely without my prompting). He explained that he considers himself straight but he loves to get off and these men feel the same way, so it’s not emotional. He lamented to me that women and society in general more or less “slut shame” him for this and there’s no reason why he couldn’t have a happy, healthy relationship with a woman. Honestly, more than angry, I was so grateful that I knew this about him before I risked my sexual health and more. He had, however, invited me to his place after the first date (before telling me about his casual, unprotected sex life) and was quite surprised when I said no. It made me wonder how many sexual partners he had who didn’t know about this side of him.

My point of these stories is not to suggest that STDs are a strictly gay issue, that’s plainly not the case. My point is that we should never assume that the person we’re dating isn’t having extremely risky sex or would be willing to disclose their diagnosis with us.

Stay safe, ladies.

aintshitsweett · 2022-02-14T00:29:09+00:00

Because they be raw-dogging in anal & straight men don’t wash themselves like ever 🤢

LadiesOpinion · 2022-02-14T11:15:47+00:00

I'm a lesbian. Gay men have normalised the use of condoms for penetrative acts. Whereas my straight lady friends are having unprotected sex, because they convince themselves being on birth control and 'trusting him' is enough...

Use condoms.

23eggz · 2022-02-14T02:01:47+00:00

This is where the western notion of HIV being a "gay man's disease" or just a risk to people who inject drugs becomes dangerous. Unfortunately have seen this stigma perpetuated by fds users in the past.

Anyway, if you have the slightest suspicion that you may have had an exposure from an untreated person living with HIV, get on post exposure prophylaxis (ARTs) ASAP. We don't have a cure for HIV now but when we do have a cure, those with the smallest intact reservoirs will be the easiest to cure. I quantify reservoirs and those who start treatment soon truly do have miniscule to near undetectable reservoirs.

ApartmentWeak1953 · 2022-02-14T09:05:54+00:00

HIV spreads most commonly under sexual category from 1 - Male to male via anal route as anal injuries are common in homosexual sex . AND 2 - MALE to FEMALE >> FEMALE TO MALE as semen remains in contact with vagina and cervix for a prolonged time period . So ladies , you are at the highest risk to contract HIV after homosexual men and hence DO NOT TRUST HIM WHEN HE SAYS HE DOESNT SLEEP WITH SUCH WOMEN AS YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY AT A HIGHER RISK TO GET IT AND IT CAN HURT YOUR CHANCES EVEN MORE IN A MALE DOMINATED WORLD . People might believe men got it from other route such as blood transfusions , which are more common forms of transmissions but especially in a conservative countries , women will always be slut shamed even if they didn’t get it from sex .

bowlingforconcubine · 2022-02-14T15:02:28+00:00

Polyamory and casual sex is literally a health hazard, so it seems.

WastingOrchid · 2022-02-14T08:24:33+00:00

Isn’t this… good news? HIV rates aren’t rising among heterosexuals, they’re falling among gay men to such an extent that they’re now (just barely) fewer than 50% of new cases. Still hugely disproportionately affected, though

The article says we need a “new strategy” because, basically, programs have done such a good job at eradicating the disease among gay men that they’re no longer the majority, and new strategies are needed to better target the new main demographic—straight men and women

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