LGB Alliance monkeypox tweets deleted

[pezdis]

The LGB Alliance tweets from yesterday about gay men and monkeypox have been deleted by twitter for either homophobia or misinformation.

If a disproportionate number of a certain group are getting this, it would be wrong not to say it. It’s not discrimination, it’s information.

Wow. What if they're right? And even if they're wrong, Twitter is not the correct entity to decide that. Absolutely crazy to shut down that conversation before it even starts.

The nhs are warning gay men in particular to be mindful of the symptoms

i would like the gay man i love and adore to have that information (not that i think its an issue as he is in a relationship)

Even the BBC is saying gay and bi penis people men constitute...

"A large proportion of monkeypox cases diagnosed in the UK are among gay and bisexual men...But with most confirmed cases among men who have sex with men, doctors are encouraging this group to be particularly alert to symptoms."

Although of course anyone can catch it.

I thought it interesting to note that the article uses the word "men" 10 times.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61609888

While the BBC is happy to name men as men, they refer here (about halfway down) to pregnant women as "pregnant people" 😡

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61640196

Im assuming you are just here to have a pop at LGB alliance and thats fair enough, your opinion and all that

but you need to sit down and have a good think about this bit…an organisation for gay people posts something in an attempt to protect gay men who seem disproportionately affected by this disease

and you think thats a bad idea

That seems very wrong of twitter. If a particular group is more vulnerable, they need to know, so they can make informed decisions about whether there is any need to temporarily modify behaviour. Not sharing such information because it affects gay men, bisexual men, and MSM seems homophobic of twitter.

That seems very wrong. I've heard loads of health professionals say the same all over MSM, including the BBC. Yes it's not sexually transmitted, but it's spread by close contact and the outbreak in the UK seems to have started in the gay community. It's useful information to let people know it's spread by close body contact gay or straight.

I think they are right to raise awareness and suggest steps be taken as a precaution.

Raising awareness is one thing but it seems a bit weird for the LGB Alliance to come to the topic to suggest places be closed down. It’s sounds horrible to get pox but it’s hardly COVID.

I am very alarmed that LGBA's thread was deleted.

Monkeypox is not an STI, it's not a 'gay disease' and it's not covid.

But LGBA's suggestion to close all commercial sex venues for one month was very sensible because that is where it is currently spreading.

It's incredibly important to not stigmatise any community but it's also incredibly important to tell people if an infection is spreading among their likely contacts and to give accurate information so people can protect themselves.

Monkeypox is more like smallpox than covid in the way it spreads. It can be contained with proper intensive contact tracing and targeted vaccination, as we have done for several smallpox outbreaks in the 20th C.

But that only works if people know who their contacts are.

And cases are growing every day, it won't be containable for much longer.

This is terrible timing, Pride month starts in just over one day.

The silence is deafening.

No. It's not covid- the fatality rate for monkeypox is currently higher than Covid, and at this point, surely everyone knows someone who died prematurely due to Covid?

I find the situation very disquieting. I don't want us to be here in two years' time, wishing venues had been closed.

Yes, they seem to think this is the less fatal form of monkeypox that "only" kills 1% of the infected. Better to control it.

They aren't wrong though, monkeypox is currently disproportionately impacting gay men.

The fact that twitter are silencing an LGB charity trying to raise awareness is very worrying. No doubt LGBA tweets were mass reported by people who want to shut the charity down.

I'd be pretty sure quite a few of the LGBA people will have lost too many friends and lovers to AIDS, and so are particularly likely to be vigilant and not laissez faire about this.

I think this may be what I think of as "toxic positivity". We have a load of people, who I suspect to be under 40, more concerned with signalling their trans inclusiveness by reporting LGB Alliance. They will say it's because LGB Alliance tweets were unpleasant in some way.

You know what is unpleasant? Burying a loved one who didn't have the chance to have a full life. This thing is actually more transmissible than HIV- it just needs close physical contact. Sex not required. So that will be hugs, standing next to someone in a packed crowd for ages and so on. All things that will happen at any festival! I'd really, really really like us to contain it now.

Otherwise it's going to be a reprise of 2020, with grieving families taking to the press to ask why events were allowed to go ahead.

Apparently LGB Alliance have now been suspended from Twitter. Good thread by Malcolm Clark:

twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1531405941886820352

I suspect it is not just the fact that they are highlighting the prevalence in the gay community - remember sex work is good, sex positivity is good, sexual fetish is good. This suggests there may be something negative about sex.

This is ridiculous, of course LGBA advise that the people they represent and care for minimise exposure.

Reading those screenshots that Malcolm has collected, I am yet again re-convinced that the self-appointed voices of the gay community, like the men at P. News, are the worst advocates anyone could ever have!

They seem to only think in the moment, and to have never ever interacted with anyone outside their own echo-chamber. They're worrying about LGB Alliance drumming up homophobia?

Gentlemen, let me tell you about the real threat.

You're quite right, monkeypox is not a 'gay disease'. It is a virus spread by close physical contact, regardless of sexuality. If you're having sex, you're in close physical contact, so naturally sex spreads it. It affects children worse than adults, and children are more likely to die.

Monkeypox is not currently widespread. In Covid-affected Europe, there is much less close physical contact going on than there used to be, so it hasn't managed to spread as fast as it would have done other years. It has a foothold in a few social networks, which happen to be gay and bisexual men.

As mentioned, it is not a "gay disease" and it doesn't care about sexuality. That means it can spread outwards from the networks of adults it's currently affecting. Now, gentlemen, consider for a moment the anti-Chinese hate that surged as a result of Covid. It wasn't pleasant and it's still ongoing.

At this moment in time, the general public is the most educated they have ever been about virus transmission, how to isolate to control viral spread and how to conduct oneself when there is a possibility you may have been exposed to a serious virus. People have been put through the wringer in the countrywide attempts to maintain social isolation for the public good. Children have sacrificed school. People died alone in hospital. With that in mind, consider the ramifications for the gay community if this virus spreads, and kills children, after some complete prats with public platforms have been mouthing off about it being unreasonable to close "commercial sex venues" for a month.

If this virus spreads, do you want the general public to develop the impression that the gay community blocked the containment? Do you want ordinary gay men to come in for the abuse Chinese people have been getting?

You don't represent the ordinary gay bloke in the street, but the general public don't know that. When you make prats of yourselves on this kind of scale, it also reflects on ordinary, responsible adults, who happen to be gay.

this is quite disturbing. There does seem to be a concentration at the moment in certain populations which is entirely coincidental, but that doesn’t mean that it is irrelevant. There is also information that particular patterns of interaction help spread the disease, patterns that are more common in some populations, not just homosexual sub-groups, but ignoring reality doesn’t protect anyone.

We have become so worried about stigmatizing people that instead of delivering effective public health messages, everything must be coded and diluted so as not to offend, alienate, or risk being used as ammunition by those who would discriminate. The problem is that if the disease does truly take hold within a sub-group, those are real people who will suffer. A clear public health message could have helped them. It also will provide actual ammunition to those who want to spread hatred because then they will have disease numbers to point to.

Yes, and I think what is really going on is that it is not totally aocoincidence that it is spreading in that population, it reflects a difference, at the statistical level, in gay male sexual behaviour. WHich is that gay men as a group have quite a lot more partners than straight men or straight or any group of women other than sex workers. This is very well documented and not controversial statistically, but it's one of the things you aren't allowed to say. We are not allowed to admit sex can be risky and some people might have more risky sex than others.

It's a method of thought control, really.

As for the idea that gay men are likely to be extra careful because of AIDS, that really doesn't apply to young men on the club scene these days in the way it used to.

I tried to find them on Twitter, but they seem to have been erased.

I spoke too soon, it's just hidden so that it doesn't come up in the search, but the account itself is still there.

How is that search-erasure achieved and by whom?

It wasn’t a great idea to release that by the LGBA. Why didn’t they encourage testing at venues instead of saying they need to be shut down? Also, monkey pox doesn’t spread like Covid does. You won’t get it from the supermarket and these venues are the focal point of many gay men’s social lives. To just say shut it down seems really insensitive. It also doesn’t help that quite a few LGBA members are straight.