LOJ and monkeypox. Knows what a man is

[123Callie]

So LOJ has finally decided that men who have sex with men ARE more at risk of contracting monkeypox after all. And he wants them to know this so that they can all go and get vaccinated. Strangely, he is not using inclusive language at all. He only mentions men. There are transwomen at risk in exactly the same way but no mention of the women who sleep with men who sleep with men. Now that men are affected he is well aware that clear language is necessary for health campaigns.

Also, on another note, he doesn’t want men to stop having sex with multiple strangers. That’s fine despite the known risks. Can’t expect a man to take responsibility for his own health over servicing his raging libido.

Youve misunderstood

pearl is giving up (as is her prerogative) on trying to tell you that some people are actually worried about the gay men in their lives…and probably the ones that aren’t in their lives as well

its all very well saying that the thread has been set up to have a pop at OJ but plenty of people who read the threads and contribute have no interest in OJ but are worried about the situation

@TeaKlaxon Are you going to come back and defend the harm that LOJ caused by monstering LGBA tweet?

LOJ is directly responsible for the speed of the spread of monkey pox in gay men, causing physical harm to his own community, because his ideology would not let him support correct health messaging by LGBA.

His community must disown him for spreading lies at the time of global health emergency, if they are not hypocrites.

Anyone disagrees?

In the case of suicide having a penis I suppose is a risk factor because you can use “having a penis” as a direct proxy for “being a man”. Saying having a penis means you are a higher risk of “successfully” killing yourself is correct.

In the case of higher risk for monkey pox it doesn’t work because “having a penis” isn’t a proxy at all for “being a gay man”. It’s a condition for being a gay man but it’s not a sufficiency. Most people who have a penis are not gay men so putting out a health message that having a penis means you are at higher risk of contracting monkey pox isn’t very useful. It wouldn’t drive the behaviour change/ increased vigilance in specific groups that it’s meant to.

Does that make sense now?

@Pruella Nobody would have to talk about the bloody penises if people stopped denying that being born with said appendage makes you a man. That is all being a man is, being born with male physiology, but the word has been mangled to include women, losing clarity.

It's really useful to have clear terms that group people by the physiology, as it also provides some really useful indicators of their behavior, as in this case.

I agree with that certainly.

thanks for your posts o here @TeaKlaxon , they've really helped me to understand the situation

there does seem to be a reluctance to be up front about the fact that for a proportion of gay men extreme promiscuity and risky behaviour is an important part of their lifestyle.

I expect I'm about to be called a homophobe for stating this fact, but nevertheless, it is a fact.

possibly LGBA's initial call to close commercial sex venues was unrealistic in the light of your comment that it would simply drive the risky behaviour to other venues. I wonder if that stems from the relatively high proportion of lesbians in LGBA? If promiscuity has suddenly become extremely dangerous, stopping doing it does seem like a sensible solution to me. To men who value that behaviour? not so much.

however, I didn't really see that kind of engagement with LGBA at the time. what I saw was a gleeful use of a stick to beat them with and an excuse to shut them up.

I think LGBA have acted in good faith throughout, although possibly also naively. I think Owen Jones has not acted in good faith at all.

However I am pleased that he is now using his platform to broadcast an important public health message, albeit in a very confused way due to the current post modernist mangling of language.

It would be a strange day when LOJ acted in good faith.

In a stopped clock being right every 12 hours style I actually agree with his article on this. I think there is some quite dangerous refusal by young people especially that gay men (as a class obviously, not all gay men) have particular patterns of behaviour and that this can mean particular health risks.

Yep, Rufus, exactly - I find OJ tiresome and unhelpful, but the bigger issue here is that we need to understand the risks and possible solutions/ameliorations. It helps nobody at all when politics and ideology muddy the waters.

What Owen's article illustrates is the absolute importance of clarity when talking about public health. Imagine trying to rewrite his piece so that it was inclusive of trans women. Instead of talking about "men who have sex with men" he'd need to write "people assigned male at birth who have sex with other people assigned male at birth". He'd have to lose the word "gay" because "gay", according to Stonewall, includes biological males having sex with trans men (biological women). The phrase "gay men" would be a particular no-no.

I'm surprised at Owen's use of "queer men", as we know that "queer" no longer means "homosexual". To quote Stonewall's definition: "Queer is a term used by those wanting to reject specific labels of romantic orientation, sexual orientation and/or gender identity. It can also be a way of rejecting the perceived norms of the LGBT community (racism, sizeism, ableism etc)."

If you try rewriting it to be trans-inclusive, you find that the piece very quickly descends into an unintelligible mess.

I am sorry but why does everyone keep focussing on gay multi-partner sex as high risk behaviour and dismissing the very real and substantial involvement of trans women in the male sex trade? Globally, in South america, Africa and Asia, transwomen have multiple male sex partners? International health agencies use the MSM term to include transwomen. In this particular instance, OJ was wrong to ignore transwomen. Unless your argument is that he was being provincial in his appeal when the disease is a global one.

Come on now

this is a genuine public health issue in the UK. People here have sons, brothers and friends who will be at risk

I know very well the temptation to have a pop at master hypocrite Owen Jones, but let’s not pretend we really want him to muddy the waters by focusing on prosituted South American trans women in his article. Two wrongs don’t make a right

He also specifically includes transwomen who have sex with men as he clarified in a reply.
He is sending the right message and asking for clear health messaging, finally.

Although I'm fairly convinced he still doesn't understand why women bang on about clear health messaging...

This is just incorrect. I know trans men who are gay. Like my other gay friends, their behaviour varies. Some of them absolutely do go to gay sex venues, hook up via apps etc.

I get that that’s inconvenient for you but it is the truth.

I know trans men who are gay. Like my other gay friends, their behaviour varies. Some of them absolutely do go to gay sex venues, hook up via apps etc.

it’s off topic for this thread @TeaKlaxon (great name btw), but I’d be quite interested in how that goes for them

the gay men I have known in my life have been very clear about the fact that they are sexually attracted to male bodies. I would guess because in many cases that realisation was the result of some soul searching.

if they organised a hook up and a person you would refer to as a trans man and I would refer to as a woman turned up, they would be horrified. They certainly wouldn’t have sex with that person and would regard any pressure to do so as conversion.

I worry frankly about young women (who you would call trans men) putting themselves in this position. They will experience a lot of rejection, and men aren’t always kind

We see monkeypox patients where I work and so far they have all been gay men (who identify as men) who have engaged in ‘high-risk’ sexual activities. About 80% of them have been to the same resort in Gran Canaria and the remainder have been UK sexual contacts of the men who have been abroad. We are prioritising the higher risk men at the moment because we don’t have nearly enough vaccines to offer it routinely and by prioritising the higher risk men, we will hopefully be in a position to control the onward spread.

So far we are defining ‘high risk’ as men who are planning to visit that resort, men who regularly engage in high-risk activities such as saunas and parties, amongst other criteria.

However, we may have a slightly more informed understanding of who is high-risk as we already have them ‘on the books’ so to speak, as they are frequent attenders to the clinic and are on various recall lists/attend clinic for PrEP medication. We have a few transwomen who attend our clinic but (at least in our experience) the overwhelmingly majority of them don’t mix in the same social/sexual circles as the high-risk men we have identified.

The general population isn’t really at high risk, and OJ is correct in his statement.

I love the informative posters who pop up on MN, really helpful post @WhackingPhoenix

Am quite enjoying watching Owen Jones being on the receiving end of the truth deniers and being accused of being a homophobe.

As an aside, given that there is a very unpleasant contagious disease doing the rounds among their community, is it too much to ask that fully grown gay men lay off from having 'multiple and anonymous sexual partners' and take just a little bit of actual responsibility for their health, just for a little while, while the monkeypox thing plays out? Or is male libido sacrosanct and never to be curtailed in any way? Are men literally just unable to refrain from having sex?

TeaKlaxon gets ever more impressive, now she can tell everyones sexuality from afar!

Amazing.

BTW, monkeypox is not affecting mainly gay people, you mean gay men. Thanks for offending all the gay women, bigot.

My pleasure 🙂

I love your username!

But we are not talking about uneducated randy teenagers, or sex workers who have little choice but to continue. We are, largely, talking about consenting fully grown men, who have have jobs and normal lives who happen to 'enjoy having sex with multiple partners'.

It feels like infantalising gay men, like they are just kids who can't possibly be expected to take responsibility for their health, or are not mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions or something?

I don't know, I think about all the ways that women are policed when it comes to our bodies and health, what we are told to do and not to do etc. What we are allowed and not allowed to do, and all the ways we can 'take responsibility for our bodies'.

Why is it different for men? Why is it so unthinkable that they might change their behaviours, just temporarily?

This is about identifying exactly why the current use of language is so problematic - and there are going to be people out there who get very sick because they don't understand that the term "gay man" applies to them.

Or indeed "men who have sex with men" which is intended to be as clear as possible about who is at risk. But still no good when the words to describe such people are no longer meaningful.

What's notable about LOJ is that he has always denied this problem but is now running into it himself.

They think it's a homophobic fact. They way they have been taught means they can't deal with that kind of idea. At best they end up like Tea here and imagine that being promiscuous is somehow uncontrollable and innate to being a gay man, so to advise not engaging in dangerous activities is akin to denying them the right to be gay.

Thanks to all this confusing and unclear language I’m still not very clear how monkey pox is spread. Is anyone who engages in unsafe sex at risk? Is it spread in bodily fluids ? Does the sex of your sexual partners make a difference? If there was a group of women (not trans women) who met up regularly to have anonymous sauna sex would they be just as liable to catch it as a group of men? I also agree that male sexuality is weirdly being treated as above reproach. I imagine there is a tendency for criticism of gay sex to veer into homophobia, but here no one is being critical of gay sex just the sheer lack of safety in going about it.

@WeeBisom me neither. HIV for example is transmitted at different rates for vaginal sex (and differently men to women and women to men) and gay male sex, and again differently depending on whether the man is 'receptive' or 'insertive'. I have no idea here whether the increased risk for gay men risk is because of the specific act (or acts) or whether it is merely because the community it is prevalent in is relatively 'closed' so to speak, but that any close contact with an infected person is the same risk.