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[–][deleted] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Public health as a discipline has been struggling with this for ages. Identities and behavior just not matching.

"I only spend maybe one, two hours tops out of my week pursuing sex with men. The rest of the week, I have a wife, kids, a white picket fence, I'm a respectable member of my church. I have a dog and a good job. I'm not a homosexual." (This paraphrased anecdote collected prior to bisexuality as a salient identity.)

For public health, identity, desire, sociopolitics be damned, it's about the sort of sex you have with the different sexes. MSM: Men who have sex with men is a term they've been using for ages. It's gotten a bit long, recently I read a paper where the cohort was BMSMW. I.e. behaviorally bisexual black men. They manage to have lots of same-sex sex but maintain a heterosexual identity. It's pretty fascinating.

Of course, trans came along and upended the entire table. TWAW and all that. It might be "heterosexual sex" to some GAMP muppet, but as far as STI's are concerned? Very gay.

[–]millicentfawcett 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I either watched or read something a while back that featured a women who I think was a founding member of the GLF or Stonewall (maybe both?). She's not very high profile compared to the founding men but she is currently a TRA. She was talking about HIV and the lack of acknowledgement that lesbians in the community were at risk because some of them slept with gay men. It was a very old interview so she meant lesbians in the true sense and she was referencing the height of the AIDs crisis. It's the only time I've heard someone bring that up and I don't know how true it is, she inferred that it was taboo but more common place that people realised.

I wonder if that is the sort of thinking behind the statement or at least part of it? I can't remember where it was to link to but it stuck in my mind because the idea of gay men and lesbian women having sex with each other out of comfort or convenience hadn't ever occurred to me. I wasn't an adult in the 80s/90s and I don't move in those circles so I still don't know what to make of it.

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There have always been lavender marriages and bearding relationships. Not sure how common they were by the 80s. My thought would be that they mostly happened in subcultures: Mormons, Evangelicals, ethnic communities, Muslims, etc.

If you add up a couple of marriages and fake relationships from each conservative subculture in a large city you can start to reach dozens and dozens of couples. If there are fifty lesbians in NYC in the 90s sleeping with gay men- there's your transmission risk.

I honestly don't believe that, though. I wasn't alive then so who knows.

[–]millicentfawcett 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm familiar with lavender marriages and bearding but I got the impression she was talking more about a 'friends with benefits' type situation. As you say though, who knows? I have no way of verifying what's true or isn't.