The US Has an HIV Epidemic — and Its Victims Are Gay Black Men

Treatment and education keeps losing funding too. Some people think pulling out is enough,and others have no resources for testing.The epidemic is being ignored,and passively encouraged.

 

It seems like a lot of black gay men don't care about HIV until they acquire it. As Judge Lynn Toler from Divorce Court says you have to be an active participant to be sure you don't get pregnant. The same logic applies to gay men and HIV. You have to take an active role in doing what is needed to avoid acquiring it if you don't want it.

So if half of black gay men will acquire it according to these trends, can we then blame black men who only date or have sex with white men or non black men? I really don't think that's the main reason for B4W gay men, obvi, but I'm just pointing this out.

Education about HIV is something that I think is really lacking in the black community. While I'm not sure if teens of the last generation have been having sex any earlier, they definitely have more and easier access to porn and sex than we did. We'd find one or two 'flicks' and it would be passed around or dubbed to death. These kids have access to A LOT and wide variety with just a few key strokes in full HD. Hell, I'd probably never leave my room if I was my junior high self in 2018 with porn selection like this. Lol

So I mention that to say that porn clearly is not concerned with safe sex, just the sex. So if you don't know any better as a teen, you see what they do on the screen and you'd just stick it in and go. Porn doesn't show you that the actors/models got tested for a battery of STIs. Porn doesn't show the condom being slipped on. Porn doesn't show the actors/models getting testing after the sex is over. Porn does show the cum shot, the facial, the train..etc.

If black households are being lead by mostly single black women, they are the ones responsible for conducting some sexual education. I think that many black women wait until it is too late to start talking about sex and the difference between boys and girls to their kids, doesn't even have to be about gay sex, just sex in general. However, you have to KNOW about something to teach people about it yourself so if you didn't get educated on pregnancy prevention or 'that package' then how are you going to tell someone else about it? "Don't brang no babies up in my house and don't be no faggit" is not sex ed.

What we can do as gay, bi, and non heterosexual men is try to educate our like minded brothers. Though I do think that there is some "HIV fatigue" in our community as we have condoms being being handed out and testing tents at almost every club on the weekend. However, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink. I just know I usually grab condoms even if I don't need them from these tents and when I go to the doctor just to have them on hand.

I can say that for me, once I get a few more things in place in my personal life and career, I'd will look into ways I can volunteer to help out. I think it is on all of us. As someone who was in college in the mid 90s and made it through that HIV free in a state and city that is in the top 5 for HIV positive gay men per capita, and I have definitely did some things I probably should not have sexually, I think I'm one of the luckier ones and my body count/age ratio isn't even high.

I think "we" will just have to look out for "us" on this issue because no one else is.

 

i don't agree that blk gays don't care about contracting hiv. i think that would be a superficial read of the alarming rates. i hear similar arguments like this in my field all the time: blk families don't value education/blk kids don't care about school. in reality, most research strongly suggests blk families harbor greater belief in education than white families at equal levels of family income. i suspect similar research on blk gays would reveal deep concerns about hiv.

i don't want to downplay the point about individual responsibility for one's own sexual health. but i also don't know anyone gay or str8 who has not had unprotected sex. i hesitate to assume it means folks care more about their health b/c they remained negative in those circumstances or that others didn't care b/c they are positive.

one issue is what i'd summarize as aids as gay predestination, the idea that you're destined to get aids b/c you're gay. hiv is smthng we're socialized to believe you're supposed to get for being gay. it is smthng we're taught is constantly lurking around the corner as judgement. on some level, it can make many youth and adults, especially the most vulnerable -- aka rejected by family, homeless, fucking for housing -- question: if this is smthng i'm supposed to get as punishment anyway, if this is smthng predestined for me, then why do i need to use a condom to prevent it? why resist the inevitable? unfortunately so much of (blk) gay life is lived on the margins, in darkness. there is a frightening kind of logic to how stigma shapes sexual practices of men who have sex with men.

i think the whole public health discourse needs to be revamped. the repetitive "use a condom" stuff is simply not working. more than anything, i think more needs to be done around shame/stigma and understanding why ppl don't use condoms consistently.

 

Please get out there and volunteer when you can.

I do think for some people, it's not a reality for them until they actually do contract and for some people, they're like fuck it, there's treatment. One thing that you kinda hit on was the idea that our population exists on the margins. We struggle within the black community for being gay and then struggle in society at large for being black and gay. At the heart of this struggle within the margins, many young, black men grapple with the idea of self-worth. When you're continuously shown externally that you have no value/will only attain a certain level in life and when you look around there are plenty of folks in your daily life that go through the same shit, that idea becomes reinforced. You start to engage in risky behaviors that satisfy the now foregoing the future implications of your actions.

You see the same thing with black youth in general who were raised in neighborhoods where broken homes were the norm and nobody is well-off. You have your outliers that make it out but for the vast majority, your environment is your reality and the only way of life that's feasible, no matter how fucked up it is.

In terms of intervention, it's hard because you have to address community attitudes and also find a way to connect with the folks who are living on a day-to-day basis. "When I'm grinding my basic ass 9-5 for chump change, maybe have a college degree but can't find work in the field, have little to no support from my family, maybe have other psychological trauma from my past, and just wanna escape it all on the weekends, my health isn't a priority if I'm not obviously sick....and no I didn't come to the club to get tested..."

 

Meh...


...and Big Pharma can't fatten that cash cow fast enough.

 

I'm super terrified of any kind of STI or anything really. I don't even get my freak on and I still have a box of condoms I've aquired from the HIV Awarness drives I've been to and those rubber shields don't expire til 2020.

I had a friend who I always told about it sex, condoms and to be safe becsuse he was sexually active. I always told him about his raw habits and he needs to chill. He stayed doing hookups and messing with dudes (he only likes Hispanics & White guys), especially this white guy who I found out was just all over bottoming for any and everyone in the city. Anywho, my friend decided to come & tell me one day out of the blu that he's positive now...

He waited for my reaction and all I said was, "Okay."

Till this day I don't know why he ignored me and did what he did but he knew the risk. Just don't think he cared.

 

You can lead a horse to water but that's about it.