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Comment by m0a0t0 | Hacker News Reader

>It was the same with the aids epidemic, the gay community ignored/denied/downplayed the demographic localization of HIV but the truth was that at it's height if you were not a gay male the epidemic was effectively irrelevant to your life.

There are a hell of a lot of people - and a hell of a lot of people who have sadly died - who would be very surprised to hear this. It's a pretty accepted view by those that study the AIDS epidemic that calling it a gay plague caused massive problems for people who weren't gay and contracted HIV.

Singling out gay men for what you have decided are immoral behaviours is exactly why there is a stigma around HIV and why people continue to fail to seek treatment.

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This is so true. What really terrifies me is if this new monkeypox became more easily transmissible and killed millions of people. Imagine the backlash against homosexuals?

...imagine the millions of dead people? What are you implying exactly, that if behavior from a protected class is the source of a major social issue/catastrophe, that we need to avoid making that link, and allow this class to continue engaging in antisocial practices, because we are worried about stigma?

That doesn't seem like a sane ordering of priorities.

I'd avoid making the link to "gay men", by highlighting the link to "promiscuity".

That's more strictly correct anyhow, and assigns causation to a behavior - where it belongs - instead of a vulnerable group.

This sort of wokeness is actually dangerous. 99% of the cases in the US have been linked to gay sex. In europe its been linked to a couple of raves involving the participants having gay sex. Its ok for health authorities and people to say "hey there does not seem to be a need to panic as we have identified the infection vector and its gay sex". It calms the general population and it arms the gay community with the knowledge that this disease is currently a risk for them. Why lie about the numbers in order to not hurt peoples feeling and expose people to real bodily harm? I am a relatively left leaning person but this constant insistence of altering the narrative to make people feel better is inane.

I’m more than mildly amused that you assigned the label “wokeness” to my position. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me :)

Would you mind specifying exactly what kind of “gay sex” might spread this - or any other disease - that does not equally apply to heterosexual anal or oral sex?

It's a numbers game. 83% of gay men report having more than 50 partners, majority of whom are strangers. 23% report more than 1000 partners. That last stat is hard to believe but this link [0] has many damning publications.

You cannot elevate protected groups above criticism. That's a dangerous privilege and as we see in this instance, condoning this sort of irresponsible behavior puts greater society at risk. Straight people on average are not having nearly as much anonymous sex with nearly as many partners and, ergo, not spreading nearly as much disease.

It's probably a manifestation of sexual dimorphism. The average woman is not as willing to sleep with a stranger. Not sure about how much lesbians get around though.

0. https://carm.org/homosexuality/statistics-on-sexual-promiscu...

The number of heterosexuals engaging in repeated random anal sex with strangers is significantly less than that of the male homosexual population. But you're smart, pretty sure you already know that.

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