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Only partially related, but I'm still so mad at the covid collective insanity that took place. Can you believe there was a time when the Canadian CDC actually recommended that people use gloryholes to avoid spreading covid? And I've actually argued with pro-lockdown people who defend that recommendation as legit instead of denouncing it as insanity and bandwagon jumping. Multiple people I've argued with have said something like "well, just because you're sucking dick through a hole doesn't mean it's unsafe sex with anonymous partners". And this flabbergasts me.
In what world would people use a gloryholes that's safe and not anonymous? Gloryholes exist in adult bookstores. Did any people go modifying their houses, drilling holes into their walls saying "gee, I sure would like to have sex with girls I'm seeing, but I don't want to violate lockdown and be in the same room as them"? Did any guy tell the new girl he's dating (the one that he is not yet seeing steadily enough such that he would just include her in his covid bubble) that he wants to meet her at the adult bookstore so she could suck his dick through the filthy hole there without him looking at her face-to-face, so they don't share the same airspace? Women love being asked for non face-to-face sexual favors, while being in a separate room, being done through disgusting holes where random guys stick their dicks regularly, that never get cleaned, right?
To me this is up there with "racism is a bigger public threat than the pandemic" and promoting mask wearing when getting up from your restaurant table to go to the bathroom as terrible apologism to justify their own side's horrible behavior.
I share your frustration, anger, outrage that the craziness of those 2+ years were just allowed to pass and be forgotten. In Ireland (where I am) stories were legion of different rules for those in charge than the rest of the people. Old people were allowed to suffer, die and be buried alone, with no family contact, because of isolation regulations. People who refused to take a vaccine that was (let’s face it) experimental having been rushed through foreshortened clinical trials, were outcasts, prevented from entering any space where the vaccinated were. Apps and QR codes to separate the noble majority from the degenerate minority. It’s an enduring disgrace and it nauseates me that we’ve become too fatigued by it and too sedated 360-degree 24-hour screens to remember what went on. Therefore we’re destined to repeat it, and worse, at some indeterminate point in the future. It makes me sick.
[Edit: There’s so much crap about DEI but so much of what went on was its opposite. It was the preferential treatment of the old and the wealthy at the expense of the young and the healthy. That split has continued with further wealth transfers taking place since then via pensions and taxation. Spoke to a guy recently who, at 65, got his free medical care and discounted entry to the swimming pool and sauna while the hardworking and broke generation can’t afford either.]
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To be fair, there actually are some gay guys who kink on gloryholes-qua-non, where it's about the informality and casual nature rather than either the anonymity or grossness/degradation. (Though the resulting kink is still very casual-sex-with-longer-term-acquaintances). Braeburned's probably one of the better-known artists in the furry fandom really focusing on it, but there's a decent amount both inside and outside of the fandom.
But it still wouldn't be especially effective at reducing COVID transmission even in that 'ideal' case, for pretty obvious reasons, and it still has other issues re: both COVID and STD transmission.
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