“This website is not to provide a forum for gloating or antagonism…”

Here is a terrible new website designed specifically for people who are HIV-negative.

BeingHIVNegative is an aggregator of articles about how to avoid HIV, which on the surface is fine. Who wouldn’t want to avoid HIV? But after scrolling down the homepage and reading headlines like “How I Didn’t Get AIDS,” “Undetectable Viral Load: As Safe As It Sounds?” “I’m HIV Negative,” “Saving Safe Sex,” how is this a website just about keeping negative people negative and not also a website about making positive people feel horrible?

How, after reading the “About” section for HuffPoHIVNegative BeingHIVNegative, is this not the most pointless bullshit you’ve ever read?

The overwhelming majority of gay men — across all age groups and all over the world — are HIV-negative, despite all the sex that we’ve all had with each other in the decades since HIV began entering the sexual networks that we all share in the 1970s, at the latest.

This means that most gay men are engaged with the idea of staying HIV-negative, understand how to give themselves the best chance of achieving that, and will continue to do so.

This website is not to provide a forum for gloating or antagonism, but rather give voice to the bulk of us who are being increasingly left out of a conversation dominated by a vocal minority of HIV-positive men, who have their own contexts, concerns and agendas, and who deserve as much respect as we do.

Finally, a safe space for people to commiserate over being…healthy?

When I asked publisher Mark Adnum what the point of his website was, he replied, “To balance the dialogue which is saturated by HIV-positive barebacking enthusiasts saying that staying Negative is worthless.”

Aside from bareback gay porn studio press releases or some idiot on a message board bragging (if not lying) about taking 50 loads in one night, I’m not sure where these “dialogues” are taking place in real life. And if they are occurring, who’s stupid enough to be swayed by them?

The overwhelming majority of positive men I know would prefer to be negative, and they encourage those who are to stay that way, so trying to segregate healthy HIV-negative people into separate forums to express their “concerns” is an embarrassing and pathetic waste of time. What’s next, an online support group for white people afraid of being shot by George Zimmerman?

There’s enough shame that unfortunately comes with being HIV-positive in the first place, but stigmatizing an entire community by manufacturing a need for “balanced dialogue” due to the reckless behavior of a few is what’s really shameful.

 

26 thoughts on ““This website is not to provide a forum for gloating or antagonism…””

      1. It’s not crazy thinking. It’s offering the other side. The HIV prevention narrative has been dominated by the poz and people with a conflict of interest by being on the boards of major pharmaceuticals or having stock in them. Why are they the only ones who get to weigh in? Why should we take advice from people who weren’t able to remain neg? Often the advice is to do exactly what got them infected in the first place. Now THAT’S crazy thinking! As far as people with ties to the big pharmas that are the main advertisers in gay media, of course we need a voice to balance that. They have a vested interest to get us all on their drugs when a simple barrier to stop body fluids (condoms) is cheaper and more effective.

          1. no lolz, now they’re trying to get you on their drugs, that you have to take daily and consistently for them to work and carry a $1,000 a month price tag, when you are healthy. It’s the same drugs used as treatment marketed as prevention. No need to get HIV! You do need smear condoms in order for it to work though.

    1. I can see why the pro-bareback crowd, many of whom are already poz, wouldn’t give a shit. But I don’t see anything “desperate” about negative men encouraging one another to do what it takes to remain negative. To the contrary, this is an affirmative step in the right direction.

    2. As desperate as the bb crowd trying to persuade people it is acceptable to fuck them without condoms!

      An argument like that cuts both-ways. So, I wouldn’t discuss it at all.

  1. Anything that tells people it’s good to stay HIV negative is okay with me. It’s something that doesn’t get said often enough, especially in the porn industry.

      1. There’s a huge divide between HIV education and flaming embers of segregation into flames. This community has come too far for this to potentially become another virus of destruction.

        1. I think being an informed adult, meaning talking about your sexual hangups–hiv status…etc, and then using appropriate protection is good enough. You can asses the risks from being better informed about it. NOT relegating haves and have-nots to the groups of those with the virus.

          Safe sex is key. Even if you don’t think the person has a virus. It is good practice. Not to dump people because they have one. That is inappropriate. Just gives more reason for people to lie about their status.

          And we know closeted behaviors is unhealthy.

          1. “Safe sex is the key.”

            If only more people agreed with that and behaved accordingly, perhaps this new site wouldn’t be necessary. Indeed, its clear underlying objective is to encourage the practice of safe sex.

          2. Perceptively, it suggests that people who have HIV don’t disclose to their partners. However, if you ask those with the disease they would tell you to practice safe sex and avoid it.

            This allusion to a deceptive practice on part of the person with the infection is wrong. Simply wrong. And this kind of thinking leads to prejudice and hate. We cannot expect our heterosexual peers to respect the gay community when we are not doing it ourselves!!! I think a lesson in tolerance and acceptance has to be given and not expected. Otherwise, asking for it is impossible. You build a house on a shaky foundation and it will fall. The foundation starts within your self.

            Be the change you want to see in the world.

            Stop casting your fears and anxieties on other people. HIV is not over, but it is manageable if you know how to protect yourself. IF you use condoms you shouldn’t even have to ask the question of status.

  2. Hmm. Doesn’t your article condemning it, actually end up promoting it? You should know by now, from working in porn, that scandal/outrage is good press as it gets people interested in it.

    I clicked on it to check it out. Therefore, you defeat everything you stand for when you promote the site.

    Just sayin’.

    I think your mentality is correct, just your execution is wrong…boy, there is a lot of that going on with porn performers!!! Talk big, but act small.

    Yes, we shouldn’t put people in ghettos: black, white, gay, straight, negative, positive…and so on. Which we do automatically. We tend too, as human beings, think in binaries of good and bad–breaking this patter is very difficult, since our brains are wired that way. But we can certainly try.

  3. “the reckless behavior of a few” is a very loud and over-represented “few”. Look at any gay publication and you’ll be bombarded by articles and imagery the suggest and flat out say “Having HIV made my life *BETTER*” What you take as a given, that most people would rather be negative, is losing ground.It’s no thanks the concerted effort of the AIDS mafia to get everyone to abandon condoms and take drugs. Drugs made by companies they’re on the boards of or that they have stock in. The other reckless few are the former golden boys who have a narcissistic need to be just a sexy as they were before they were infected and are controlling the narrative, bullying and browbeating anyone who dares suggest it’s better to be negative or that having a disease that you need drugs for the rest of your life for or you’ll die, isn’t such a great thing.

  4. “However, the conversation in the blogosphere is steadily being colonised by a vocal minority of HIV-positive men (whose points of view certainly do not represent those of the majority of HIV-positive men). So, I established this website to build a library of resources that more accurately reflect the outlooks of most gay men of either status.”

    1- How does Mark Adnum know what the majority of HIV+ mens point of view are on anything? Let alone HIV.

    2- Why is Mark Adnum afraid or fearful of what he calls a minority group from speaking out and being heard?

    3- Isn’t it a bit pompous to create a website and claim that it represents the majority of gay men who are HIV+ and that their point of view trumps other HIV+ mens point of view?

    4- Is Mark Adnum HIV+? Shouldn’t he at least tell us that so we can determine if his website is trying to capitalize and cash in on HIV+ people and to then colonize the blogosphere with his own minority viewpoint of other gay mens viewpoints?

    5- Since when has any gay man, with or without HIV, been left out of any conversation he wanted to participate in because of his status or personal viewpoints?

    6- Should there be separate bathrooms in public places of accommodation for HIV+ gay men who have one viewpoint of HIV over another? Should there be separate entrances to these public places for them too?

    7- I think Mark Adnum is trying to fear monger our community into believing that we are under some kind of horrible viral attack from within.

    Perhaps we are. It’s name is Mark Adnum.

    6-

  5. Freddie, the commenter

    Gays are only 6% or 10% of the mankind. We will be judge by the others for what they see: Selfish and childish behavior, relatioships that included poliamori, fuckbudies, sugar daddies and no commitment, defense of nudism in public places, glamurization of porn and prostitution as something to be emuled and so on – A life lived without boundaries in absolutly disdain to the norms. What straights see isn’t what they want for them and those who put themselves apart accept to live in the edge of the society. And at last the most important thing straights associated with gay men: We are the ones who bring AIDS to the world. In the western world LGBT people have their civil rights recognized more as a straights’ donation ( a gift ) than because ” Stonewall “, ” Mr Milk ” etc. Think in gay civil rights in the muslin world, in Russia, in África…
    A community that in a very near past was seen as a bunch of mental disturbed people* and now in many places are seen as 2º class citzens needs places where the ones that think being sane is good must be welcomed.
    (*) Science seems to change its opinion every day. Who can affirm we will always be seen as ” mentally sane people “? Who can assure no doctor with his future genetic knoledgement won’t try to cure us all?…Anyway: Nice week for you all! (LOL).

    1. 6-10%? Did u get that figure from a Westboro Baptist? Try more like 30% if u included all the bi- and try-sexual population, if not higher. The lower numbers are equivalent to propaganda coming from people who would like nothing better than everyone with even the slightest gay desire go back into the closet and die of some nasty illness borne of tons of emotional repression. We are everywhere, are not going anywhere and theres no need to “cure” anyone (…except people who cant accept that we are moving into acceptance).

        1. They r only talking about people who are “out” or willing to discuss their attractions candidly and for survey purposes. That figure is nowhere near the actual truth.

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