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Comment by nomagicbullet | Hacker News Reader

> or if you're homosexual?

HIV transmission is related to sexual activity not sexual orientation. Being in an open relationship, cheating on your partner, performing unprotected sex, are all examples of behaviors that put people at "higher risk". Being attracted to your own gender does not.

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HIV transmission is 18 times more likely with receptive anal sex than with receptive vaginal sex and 69% of the HIV positive people in the USA are active gay men.

So yes, being a homosexual man is a huge risk factor and probably more significant than being in an open relationship, cheating on your partner or performing unprotected sex unless you live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The risk factor in the US is "man who has sex with men", not "gay man". Factors can combine: e.g. "gay virgin" is a lower risk factor than "straight + multiple partners".

HIV transmission is partially related to attributes that are correlated with sexual orientation, the most prominent of which is the fact that the chance of transmission is much higher for anal sex than it is for vaginal sex.

From personal experience, anal sex is definitely not limited to sex between men. I'm going to guess that there are entire websites dedicated to that, and there are definitely sections of porn websites dedicated to it. Additionally, sex between men encompasses much more than anal sex.

Which all goes back to teh point: HIV transmission isn't related to sexual orientation, even if some sex acts are traditionally attributed to one specific sort of orientation.

I feel like you aren’t queer because this isn’t what we think about it.

I’m bi, and hiv is a big deal in the gay community. I know people who have it, we have clinics around dedicated to treating people with it. Straight people can do anal, straight people can get it otherwise, but this is hitting gay/bi men way harder. It’s okay to acknowledge that

The argument you are addressing is a strawman. Nobody claimed that anal sex is limited only to sex between men. Anal sex is, however, far more common in frequency among homosexual men than between heterosexual couples, and significantly increases the risk of HIV transmission compared to vaginal sex, therefore it is a risk factor that is strongly correlated with sexual orientation.

That's a bit misleading. Attraction doesn't change the risk but certain types of activities (anal sex) are significantly more prone to bleeding which drastically increases spread rate.

There is a correlation between unprotected anal intercourse and HIV, which is why male homosexuals are especially at danger.

As a male who is bisexual, this isn’t true. Transmitting hiv via unprotected vaginal sex is actually pretty rare, something like 1/1000 or under. And gay/bi men also tend to be more promiscuous. But of course a straight male and woman could do anal sex and that would be the same risk rate that gay men have, which is higher.

Im pretty sure that HIV is much more prevalent in homosexual communities [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html

It doesn't change the fact that homosexuals have much much higher incidents of HIV/AIDs.

They knew that.

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