What is interesting is “hey, knock it off” campaigns work very well in fact but there was no stomach for trying them when men’s sexual demands are involved. Smoking, drunk driving, not wearing a seatbelt: “hey, knock it off” messaging has worked wonders.
exploiting vulnerable people to get your rocks off: oh heaven forfend we mention to men they could stop doing this ever
What confounds me is that most trans women still are locked into sex work globally...so we end AIDS by expanding a class of uniquely vulnerable people via informed consent at every HIV clinic...
Very good piece, lots of interesting bibliography, thank you.
"The term “bisexual” has been used to talk about GAMPs, but the scientific literature prefers “men who have sex with men” because it describes the act and not any culture-specific identity"
As a small clarification, is not just because of that, but also because given systemic stigma towards Gay and Bisexual people, there are pleeenty of men worldwide who refuse to identify as such (instead identifying as straight or unlabelled or questioning or bicurious) despite knowing they have some same-sex desire or arousal and studies of the infection would miss them because even if they are at the same risk as any other male having sex with males they would self exclude or avoid participating due to not wanting to label themselves gay or bi if the research uses that criteria.
The men who like feminized males love to claim straightness to save face and keep the privileges of a normal image esp if they're married, its also why many act overly defensive when women don't buy the trans mantra and "misgender" the shemales, it bruises their ego and jeopardizes the facade. But The transwomen/male transsexuals and 3rd genders also have an investment into those men identifying as straight because its like a validation trophy. if one calls the spade a spade and they're not really straight then obviously the "transwomen are women" mantra falls apart because if they were truly straight males they wouldnt be getting boners for them (other males).
Unfortunately, for the young people caught in the gender mania, this came at a time when the idea of collecting money for gay causes underwent a rapid collapse. If you were an organization that wanted to ask for serious cash (the rapid adoption of gay marriage laws and acceptance of gays, in general, threatened to turn off the spigots), you needed to do something concrete - you needed to show that you were doing something about it. In other words, you needed to show that the medical interventions among the transgender population were "normal."
But what if you wanted to do something more? After all, caring for 0.008% of the population (see, for example, some historical estimates from Scotland https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10824346/, Belgium https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2006.10.002, or Netherlands https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1993.tb03364.x) in some of the seamier neighborhoods can only mean so much donor money. What ideas could be even more destigmatizing (and, in a happy coincidence, bring in so much more dough)? Why, make such interventions available to anyone, of course! (And, as a corollary, insist that they are safe and that the "science is settled").
And who would you expect to follow something glamorous with easy availability? Young people, of course. Which is where we are today.
What is interesting is “hey, knock it off” campaigns work very well in fact but there was no stomach for trying them when men’s sexual demands are involved. Smoking, drunk driving, not wearing a seatbelt: “hey, knock it off” messaging has worked wonders.
exploiting vulnerable people to get your rocks off: oh heaven forfend we mention to men they could stop doing this ever
Absolute brilliant piece. Thank you so much.
What confounds me is that most trans women still are locked into sex work globally...so we end AIDS by expanding a class of uniquely vulnerable people via informed consent at every HIV clinic...
Very good piece, lots of interesting bibliography, thank you.
"The term “bisexual” has been used to talk about GAMPs, but the scientific literature prefers “men who have sex with men” because it describes the act and not any culture-specific identity"
As a small clarification, is not just because of that, but also because given systemic stigma towards Gay and Bisexual people, there are pleeenty of men worldwide who refuse to identify as such (instead identifying as straight or unlabelled or questioning or bicurious) despite knowing they have some same-sex desire or arousal and studies of the infection would miss them because even if they are at the same risk as any other male having sex with males they would self exclude or avoid participating due to not wanting to label themselves gay or bi if the research uses that criteria.
The men who like feminized males love to claim straightness to save face and keep the privileges of a normal image esp if they're married, its also why many act overly defensive when women don't buy the trans mantra and "misgender" the shemales, it bruises their ego and jeopardizes the facade. But The transwomen/male transsexuals and 3rd genders also have an investment into those men identifying as straight because its like a validation trophy. if one calls the spade a spade and they're not really straight then obviously the "transwomen are women" mantra falls apart because if they were truly straight males they wouldnt be getting boners for them (other males).
Unfortunately, for the young people caught in the gender mania, this came at a time when the idea of collecting money for gay causes underwent a rapid collapse. If you were an organization that wanted to ask for serious cash (the rapid adoption of gay marriage laws and acceptance of gays, in general, threatened to turn off the spigots), you needed to do something concrete - you needed to show that you were doing something about it. In other words, you needed to show that the medical interventions among the transgender population were "normal."
But what if you wanted to do something more? After all, caring for 0.008% of the population (see, for example, some historical estimates from Scotland https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10824346/, Belgium https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2006.10.002, or Netherlands https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1993.tb03364.x) in some of the seamier neighborhoods can only mean so much donor money. What ideas could be even more destigmatizing (and, in a happy coincidence, bring in so much more dough)? Why, make such interventions available to anyone, of course! (And, as a corollary, insist that they are safe and that the "science is settled").
And who would you expect to follow something glamorous with easy availability? Young people, of course. Which is where we are today.
Fascinating. I wasn't aware of any of this. Thank you.