At no time in history have so many gay and bi men been having so much risky and extreme sex. We think it could well bring another health crisis to our community. Could that be as disasterous as HIV/AIDS? We have to wait and see.
Already we’re seeing cases of men who have been infected with HIV despite being on PrEP. Usually by a strain which is resistant to the drugs in PrEP but most recently a mysterious case of a very promiscuous man who became positive, but not due to a resistant strain, and despite apparently having taken PrEP as directed.
If a resistant strain of HIV or this mysterious failure problem (whatever it’s caused by) suddenly surged through the gay community, how many men might become infected with HIV before word got around and before they woke up to the problem?
Having encouraged them not to use condoms, how long would it take to persuade them to do so again?
Looking back to the 1980s. Some of us knew about HIV (or GRID as it was known at first) as early as 1982. Yet we saw others in denial, saying it didn’t exist, as late as mid-1985. By then it was too late for some of those men. They died.
Imagine being on PrEP and then finding out you have been infected with a hard-to-treat strain of HIV.
We are at the stage where variations of some other sexually-transmitted diseases are almost untreatable, too.
Think about popping along to the clinic with gonhorrea because foolishly you haven’t been using condoms, relying instead on PrEP, and you’ve been hooking up within the cesspool that is the “bareback community.”
“It’s just a matter of a few antibiotics,” you think. But then the doctor breaks the news that actually no antibiotics are effective with the resistant gonhorrea you have contracted. Instead of two weeks off sex and pill popping, you face months of visits to the hospital, amid ill health, no sex for months and at huge cost to the NHS by the way…
And how long would it be before these resistant sexually transmitted diseases were so widespread that a condom was wise even for a blow job?
This is the world the barebackers and Prepsters are bringing.
It’s sometimes suggested that PrEP somehow means a return to the “good old days” of the late 1970s. The truth is that 40 years ago in Britain gay sex was nothing like as extreme, abusive and fetishised as it is now.
Nor was there the alcohol and (increasingly terrifying) drug culture that we see today. The selfish individualism is much more extreme. Partly due to changes in society but also encouraged by the lifestyle-focused gay media, funding-driven corporate charities and self-appointed “community spokesmen” who like to pander and foster a sense of entitlement.
AIDS took off in New York and San Francisco because 35-40 years ago those places did have a more extreme sexual culture than we did. Although it was controversial at the time, in retrospect, closing down the bath houses was probably a sensible move.
Today gay men are told that it is their right to be a selfish “slut” and that they must not be “shamed” or restricted. Things that really shouldn’t be, are built up into pseudo “communities” and unsuitable role models are given a platform from which to persuade others to join them.
If you think wearing a condom for anal sex is hardship, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.” We could be heading back to the days of mutual masturbation only because oral and anal are considered too risky even with a condom, due to highly resistant sexually transmitted diseases.
Every time a gay man has bareback sex or encourages others to do so, he potentially brings that day a little nearer.
All because some silly, juvenile gay men, who seem unable to enjoy a broad range of sexual activities, are anal sex focused and refuse to use a condom for it.
We are in completely unknown waters with this for the reasons we have given. And we think the NHS is aware of where things could be heading, hence the (very wise) delays and resistance in rolling out PrEP.