Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Pretty far from it, I might agree with the descriptions of certain facts, but I'm a billion lightyears away on the implications of said facts or my reaction to them. I mostly follow him because he writes interesting fiction and political commentary, which is fun to read if nothing else, even if it can be bitingly insightful.
While I might agree with things like HBD, I'm still a classical liberal with libertarian sympathies, not a reactionary, even if returning politics to what I consider ideal would be a "reaction" in some aspects.
While in our modern cultural milieu, all of the above are almost universally interlinked, my bugbear with any of them is that they're taken too far, rather than me denying women equal rights or considering alternate sexualities sinful. I'm certainly not colorblind anymore.
As for whether gay men having piss orgies or fucking till their assholes big enough to drive through, why should I give a fuck? If they're not raping me, I have no reason to care.
I respect the right of anyone to self-infect with anything, as long as it's not contagious by normal means, and in the case of HIV, as long as they disclose to potential partners or refrain from donating blood and the like. Is it deeply stupid? Of course. I don't think that's grounds for it to be illegal by itself, until it infringes on my safety or freedom. Since the piss orgy relates to the nothing-burger of monkeypox, which didn't spread significantly outside the gay community, it doesn't reach that level of concern.
I am strongly sceptical of this claim, and even before I read it, I ran into a research paper on Twitter that claims otherwise.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213415003828
People with the behavior that you describe strike me as some kind of experiment in the development of new infectious agents. In other words biolabs, or biological warfare laboratories. They should be banned according to the Biological Weapons Convention.
I understand that you could have a professional bias toward keeping as many customers coming back again and again, but for us regular folks, these behaviors pose a significant threat.
I find this argument poor in everything except rhetoric.
Plenty of human behaviors, such as urbanization, farming livestock or just plain old existing, even just using antibiotics to treat illness, all serve as incubators for disease and potential for future pandemics.
I reserve that argument for actual bioweapon labs, or "legitimate" labs that engage in gain-of-function research.
Besides, I'm aiming to be a shrink, and while I can't deny I'll get customers because of people grappling with non-standard sexualities, I'd likely get more of them if it was cracked down upon and their desires repressed.
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80's medicine wasn't so cautious about people blood as they do now, and HIV infections to medicine interventions were common enough.
I'm well aware of that (it would exceptionally awkward professionally if I wasn't).
The reason we are so cautious these days is because of the epidemic of bloodborne disease that lax monitoring of donations or other sources of contamination engendered.
I suspect that blood contamination was the most likely way for a non-gay person to get AIDS at the time, but I haven't looked at the actual data, it's more of a historical curiosity now.
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If a society that sees sex as something more than just pure hedonism is not something you value, I don't think I can convince you otherwise, but I think it's important to point out you not caring in not a valid argument for others to not care.
The other issue is that I don't know how sustainable "live and let live" even is. No one talks about the AIDS epidemic as "haha, who cares, they've made their choices!" the very people that demand I live and let live because it doesn't affect me personally, also demand that I see AIDS response as a giant moral failing of society.
My argument is that when people do things you consider viscerally disgusting yet do little to no tangible harm to you, you shouldn't complain, or feel free to complain, but don't legislate against it.
Now, there are plenty of arguments about the secondary effects from the disintegration of the social fabric, changes in the dating scene and politics and so on, but once again, that's not something suitable for legislative solutions.
I prefer people who vehemently disagree with me yet agree to live and let die, versus those who concur with me so far yet are utterly inflexible in that regard, if they're not a literal mental clone of me, we're going to part ways sooner or later, and possible even if that's the case.
In turn, you or anyone else finding sodomy offputting isn't a particularly valid argument for me caring (to the extent that any argument can be called valid)
I wasn't around at the height of the AIDS epidemic, or at least I was only a toddler. So I can only speak for myself. As far as I'm aware the (potentially justified) stigma against AIDS caused a lot of unnecessary human suffering and even death, especially since it made people unwilling to get checked.
These days, HIV infections are manageable, more of a nuisance rather than the life sentence they once were, and on medication you can live an entirely normal life. We're likely on track for a complete cure soon enough, and there have been sporadic success stories.
I'm not against measures like barring MSMs from blood donation and the like if they're at an excessive risk of spreading the disease, but that falls under an imminent threat to public health, not a minor inconvenience. As for anyone who catches it these days by fucking without a condom, my sympathy, while not non-existent, is slim nonetheless.
And if it's not suitable for legislative solutions, that's all the more reason to push back against the idea that I shouldn't care about things that affect me directly and personally, wouldn't you say?
I don't want anyone to be my mental clone, but there are certain things I value, and I prefer to be around people who aren't going to spit on, and walk all over them.
What do you mean by "sodomy"? Homosexual sex? I don't find that offputting, and I find it quite telling that any criticism of gay culture is routinely conflated with criticism of homosexuality.
I never used that argument on you, you're the one that used the "it doesn't affect you, why do you care" argument.
We used to have a guy here that used to point out how untested straight men are about as likely to have HIV as gay men that tested negative (hey look - his blog is still up). I find it extremely hard to believe you can get these sort of numbers only through stigma, and unwillingness to get checked. I'm happy to provide compassion for people who got infected or died, but if you're asking me for compassion, you have no right to throw the "why should I give a fuck" argument at me.
I'm happy AIDS is not much of an issue nowadays, and even happier that we're close to having a cure, but the fact that I'm being told the response to that epidemic was some sort of moral societal failure shows that "live and let live" is a lie.
Sure, I retract the insinuation that your opposition to homosexuality was based off a disgust response to their sexual activities, even if that's common enough in practise.
I make no such claim, after all I pointed out that disbarring gay men from blood donation might be a sensible decision, at least after a proper cost benefit analysis.
I'm not asking for compassion, merely tolerance or live and let live. While compassion can be helpful for that purpose, it's not strictly necessary.
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