1. The Drake condom hot sauce rumor shocked me most bc I thoght…men still use condoms!?! It made me think of some medical anthropology history in the making.
In the 70s, the birth control pill largely freed straight women & men from condoms, which gay men had never used.
2. For a short period of time, straight men and women and gay men were having a lot of sex without condoms—the pill taking care of pregnancy worry for thr straighths, and cheap antibiotics taking care of STIs for the straights and the gays as needed
3. Then came AIDS. And gay men could no longer have sex and only worry about an easily treatable STI like syphilis or gonorrhea. There was nothing to treat HIV. So in one of the great peer-to-peer education campaigns, gays started using & teaching each other to use condoms.
4. Most gay men used condoms in the 80s and 90s and 2000s and first half of the 2010s. Many straights learned to start using condoms, too.
But largely, “the pill” made it so straights were having a lot of sex w/on condoms, but gays could not, bc the thing gays feared most
5. couldn’t be addressed by a pill.
Then came PrEP, a pill to end fear of HIV transmission. Suddenly the gays had access to a pill *they* could take that allowed them to have sex w anyone without condoms while allaying their biggest fear (HIV). Meanwhile…
6. Straight men depended on their sexual partners to take a pill to allay their biggest sexual fear (pregnancy), and could not have sex without a condom based on their own pharmaceutical practices.
7. Anyway, it’s fascinating how sexual practices are deeply affected by pharmaceuticals—but this technology affects different populations in different ways at different times. (This field is called STS—Science and Technology Studies, ie how science & sociology affect each other.)
8. Oh yeah. I am not denying this. I’m just noting some overall trends of how ppl actually have sex. It’s something like this…
9. —1970s - gay & straight men have sex w/o condoms
— 80s to present-straight men have sex w/o condoms more often than gay men bc the pill allays fears
—2015 to present - gay men have sex w/o condoms more often than straighths bc of PrEP
Not saying it’s right or wrong…
10. or absolute. Just noticing a trend. For instance, of the gay men I know on PrEP, none use condoms. They check for STIs w their med providers every 6 months or so or w symptoms, like pre-AIDS. But this was not the pre-PrEP. They all used to use condoms.
11. One interesting thing in HIV/AIDS literature is a belief in monogamy is a major HIV risk. Viruses don’t know what a marriage it. Ppl who are single use protection more than partnered ppl, who often don’t. Thus single ppl w multiple partners have less risk than partnered ppl.
12. Only 1 in 2500 straight white men are projected to become HIV positive in his lifetime, while 1 in 2 Black gay men are. So straight white guys generally don’t worry much abt HIV & it doesn’t affect their sexual practices a lot. (Again not right or wrong, just noticing.) Thus,
13. the birth control pill was very liberating for them, tho they depended on their partners taking them.
Meanwhile, cis gay men don’t worry about pregnancy while having sex w other cis men, only maybe when having sex w some trans men. So PrEP allayed their major sex fear.
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1. Obama was unusual in that he wasn't the handpicked candidate of the DNC or its owners. (Having billionaire Penny Pritzker run his fundraising sealed his Wall St bona fides.) Otherwise, Dems choose unelectable VPs (Biden, Kaine, Harris) they hope they can install later.
2. But it's weird they always tend to pick VPs who are just awful retail politicians with no support. Biden ran unsuccessfully for president for decades and called Obama "articulate" and "clean." Harris was polling 5th in her home state. TIM KAINE?!!!?! Who was he???
3. You can see the utter contempt on Harris's face. She didn't win primaries. She hates ppl. She seems put out by @cthagod or journalists. She is not comfortable working a room, unless it's of rich donors who tell her she's brilliant bc they know they'll dictate her policy, they
1. A report from the streets of Chicago, where CPS students are walking out, demanding better conditions to face Covid-19. Riding my bike up Statr St towards the Board of Ed, I already see hundreds of students on their way
2. Students crossings fittingly, at Ida B. Wells Drive
3. A really beautiful scene — several hundred students in front of the Board of Ed chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Lori Lightfoot has got to go”
It's fine to be angry w Democrats. You can't reason w Republicans. But a pro-Hillary friend once asked "Do you want to argue w neoliberals or w fascists?" The Dems have the WH & Congress, so I am arguing w & angry at them, bc they're letting ppl die & handing off to fascists.
For years, the Dems have been using the threat of Republicans like an abusive spouse with their fist raised uses the threat of violence ("Do what I want or I'll put you out on the street, then you won't have a home at all and you'll REALLY have something to cry about." )
But...the Dems aren't even providing any of the material comforts they are threatening might be taken away? More ppl have died of Covid under their year of governing than did under the (pre-vaccine) Republican governing year.
Well @RoniNYTimes, shall we dig up the arrest record of everyone's crimes from 35 years before deciding if they are deserving of a vaccine, dental care, an organ transplant—or should they get THE DEATH PENALTY nytimes.com/2022/01/13/hea…
Carceral thinking everywhere. The NYT wants you to go the doctor and have someone—the receptionist? A Twitter poll?—decide if you are good enough to receive care or bad enough to be denied care.