In the most recent effort to enlighten us breeders about how dangerous we are to gays, a duo from Alberta, Canada have journeyed to New York to perform Bash'd, a "hip-hop musical about gay marriage and gay bashing." While I cannot see and review it personally, this bit from the NYT sums it up rather nicely:
With exceedingly bawdy lyrics, two rapping angels, T-Bag (Mr. Craddock) and Feminem (Mr. Cuckow), recount the tragedy of a Canadian couple, Jack and Dillon, who meet in an Edmonton club, fall in love and wed. But when Jack becomes the victim of violence, their idyll collapses.
Angels, couple, falling in love, wedding, idyll, and tragedy caused by straights -- gosh, only a bigoted Fascist would choose other words to describe an always-shifting web of butt buddies and epidemic diseases. Back on planet Earth, we discover an only slightly different account. *
And why rap, of all genres?"It was a way to turn hip-hop on its head," Mr. Craddock said, "because of the ultramasculinity of it, but also to take it back to its roots, to back when hip-hop was a tool of social justice, speaking out against poverty and oppression."
Something that never dawns on naive White activists is that there is no such thing as "identifying with someone else's oppression," as identity politics is nothing more than whining and clamoring for an unfair slice of the pie -- and louder and more insistent queers only divert more of our limited public and private resources away from race racketeers.
By the way, the use of art as "a tool of social justice" has a shorter name: propaganda. But surely perverting art is OK as long as the ills it alleviates are pandemic, right?
Carl D. White, one of the show's producers, called "Bash'd" an answer to current social ills. The gay world, he says, "is still marginalized, attacked, hated, pushed down, violated, ignored, beaten, sometimes killed and often shunned -- even in New York City."
Well, I'll grant you "pushed down" and "violated," but I hardly see what straight people have to do with that. As in all other cases of the personal being political, you are your own worst enemies.
* Choice quotes from the linked post:
I estimate I've had approximately 3,000 men up my butt ... I estimate that I went to the baths at least once a week, sometimes twice, and that each time I went I had a minimum of four patners ... I also racked up about three men a week for five years at the Christopher Steet bookstore ...Then of course there was the MineShaft; the orgies; the 55th Street Playhouse; the International Stud backroom ...
Let me present my own history of STDs. From 1973, when I came out, to 1975, I only got mononucloeosis and non-specific urethritis, or NSU. In 1975, I got my first case of gonorrhea. Not bad, I thought. I'd had maybe 200 different partners, and I'd only gotten the clap twice. But then, moving from Boston to New York City, it all began to snowball.
First came hepatitis A in '76 and more gonorrhea and NSU. In 1977, I was diagnosed with amebiasis, an intestinal parasite, hepatitis B, more gonorrhea, and NSU. In 1978, more amebiasis and my first case of shigella, and of course, more gonorrhea. Then in 1979, hepatitis yet a third time, this time non-A, non-B, more intestinal parasites, adding giardia this time, and an anal fissure as well as my first case of syphilis ... By 1981, I got some combination of STDs each and every time I had sex ...
At age twenty-seven I've had: gonorrhea, syphillis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis non-A, non-B; intestinal parasites including amebiasis, e. historicia, shigella, giardia; herpes simplex types one and two; venereal warts, mononucleosis, cytomegalovirus, and now cryptosporodiosis, for which there is no known cure.
Gay promiscuity these days isn't quite as bad as it is sometimes made out to be, though there are certainly pockets of craziness still out there.
ReplyDeleteEugene Volokh has analysis and data here, here, here, and here.
Of course, these are the post-AIDS numbers. Its quite possible that most gay men in the 70s were as rabidly promiscuous as they were thought to be. People do tend to respond at least somewhat to the incentive of not dying. There was also probably a selection effect among openly gay men in the 70s, with only the most unashamedly sexual men coming out. More conservative types probably only started coming out much later.
I would be remiss though if I didn't bring up Half Sigma's classic post here.
ReplyDeleteIn the late 80's, I knew a gay guy who came of age in the 70's. He said that the gay scene, pre-AIDS, was every bit as wild as depicted in books like "As the Band Played On" and the like. He said that much of the promiscuity shut down in the 80's exclusively because of AIDS (because it was fun and it would not have shut down for any other reason).
ReplyDeleteThis guy happened to work in the medical field and was well aware of the STD infection rates in the gay community at the time. He also read the first papers that came out in the late 70's when SIV was discovered (the primate version of HIV).
He predicted that a human version of this disease would emerge and that it would largely wipe-out the gay community. He then became largely celibate in '79 and urged all of his "friends" to do the same. As you can guess, this went over like a lead balloon, and he was largely ostracized by the gay community.
Almost all of the people he knew from that time had died of AIDS by 1985 with him being the only survivor.
There is no question that the rampant promiscuity of the gay community in and of itself makes being gay a medical risk factor for STDs in general.
RE: Volokh. Yep, I recently discovered the same thing. But I don't know how he is getting those numbers from the General Social Survey.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked into the same data set just a few weeks ago, I found that gay men and straight men had nearly identical partner numbers (identical median: 4, and identical mode: 1).
In contrast race differences were large.
Straight White males // Straight black males // Gay males:
Mean 35 // 61 // 42
Median 4 // 9 // 4
Mode 1 // 10 // 1
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2008/05/gay-marriage-and-infidelity-people.html
I choose my images very carefully, and "web" is there for a reason: even if a straight guy has had 5 partners, none of these could have slept with each other, whereas the 5 partners of a gay guy could very well have.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, if a straight guy has had 20 partners, he's probably unusual, and the girls are thinking, "Well, I normally wouldn't give it up so easily, but he's just so _____." Therefore, these females are unlikely to have really slept around.
In contrast, the 20 partners of a gay guy aren't necessarily thinking, "Gee, I normally wouldn't give it up so quickly, but...." They've probably had 20 partners themselves.
Health organizations have recently conceded that AIDS was never going to make inroads in the straight population, unless they were needle-users. But why hasn't it even made inroads in the highly promiscuous straight male population? Again, that's where the web comes in.
You can think of it like a neural model, where your level of AIDS-like activity is the sum of the activities of all partner-nodes that are connected to you. For a promiscuous straight guy, the picture looks like a radiating star, and each node leading to him has very low activity.
For the gay guy, it looks like all possible connections are realized, kind of like epilepsy.
Yes, the high rate of STDs among gay males is the result of A) sexual networks and B) anal sex being inherently more conducive to transmission.
ReplyDeletePromiscuity, per se, is unlikely a major source of STDs in black populations as well. More likely genetic vulnerabilities play a huge role. (with networks playing a large role too, at least in Africa)
You say:
ReplyDelete, "is still marginalized, attacked, hated, pushed down, violated, ignored, beaten, sometimes killed and often shunned -- even in New York City."
Well, I'll grant you "pushed down" and "violated," but I hardly see what straight people have to do with that.
So you deny that gay males have a greater risk of bias violence than straight white males? You honestly claim that homosexuals aren't discriminated against in housing, employment, and medical care? Are you joking here or do you really believe this rhetoric?
as identity politics is nothing more than whining and clamoring for an unfair slice of the pie
So fair employment is an unfair slice of the pie? Fair access to housing is an unfair slice? Civil Unions are unfair? Gay marriage? Hospital visitation rights, medical access, and freedom from fear are unfair slices of the pie?
I take it you are opposed to homosexual equality?