The Ghost of Paley
Posts: 1703
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Faid:
It's nice to see you back! And you took time to look at my sources. That's a good thing, because I often wonder if anyone actually pays attention to the evidence during debates. Anyhoo:
| Quote | Hmm. You know, I think I can use yours, actually.
In the survey you posted, the larger percentage of homosexuals had 2 to 4 partners in one year. Since the other results seem evened out, more or less (those who had none, or one partner, were about as many as those who had more than a dozen) I can assume this is pretty close to the mean number of partners (at least I don't think it would be more than five or six, but someone more qualified can do the math)
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The math wouldn't mean much since we don't have access to the original data. But we can still spot some interesting trends:
| Quote | 2.7 VOLUME OF MALE SEXUAL PARTNERS IN THE LAST YEAR
Men were asked In the last 12 months how many MEN have you had sex with in total? and allowed to indicate one of five responses (0.9% did not answer this question). The number of male partners men had in the last year differed slightly by recruitment method. Compared to the men recruited on the internet, the booklet-recruited sample were less likely to have had no male sexual partners and were more likely to have had very high numbers of male partners. This is contrary to the popular impression that men recruited on the internet are, as a group, exceptionally sexually active.
Number of male sexual partners in the last year
(n=15852, missing 150) % Web responses
(n=11820) % Booklet responses
(n=4032) % ALL responses
(n=15852)
Number of male sexual partners in the last year
(n=15852, missing 150) % Web responses
(n=11820) % Booklet responses
(n=4032) % ALL responses
(n=15852)
(None) 6.1 4.7 5.8
(one) 16.6 19.8 17.4
(2, 3 ,4) 29.2 27.3 28.7
(5 to 12) 25.1 21.9 24.3
(13 to 29) 12.4 12.5 12.4
(30+ ) 10.5 13.8 11.4
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Now, it's true that close to half lead relatively restrained lifestyles, while another quarter are roughly normal. It's the other 22 - 26 % that concern me. Keep in mind that the "13" and "30" are lower bounds; for the former we can use a median figure of 21, which is quite a large haul by non-rockstar standards. Worse yet, 10 - 13% claim AT LEAST 30 partners a year. What are the upper bounds? 50? 75? 100? Suddenly it looks a little more like Vegas.
If there were no consequences to this promiscuity, we could just pass it off to "boys being boys". But what about the upper tail? Certainly some of these men are HIV+, and each partner that these men infect has a potential to spread the disease to many more men. In an insular community like the gay community, this quickly leads to saturation. And since the gay community will remain insulated given their relatively small numbers, relaxing societal taboos will simply expose free-thinking straight men (as well as their wives, girlfriends, and club tramps) to the virus. Look at the African-American community for a real-life example, and keep in mind that their culture is very homophobic. Their higher exposure to prison rape accounts for some of the spread....but a lot is from the down low.
| Quote | Do you think it's due to the "subjective interpretation of data" we discussed earlier, or is somebody deliberately twisting the data to make it show what they want? And who may that be?
Here's a hint.
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Thanks for the link. Like its real-life counterparts, diseased information has a way of saturating insular communities - in this case the fundamentalist counterculture. I'll try to avoid Cameron's surveys like the.....well, let's just say I'll keep my eyes open. Having said that, what does one bad researcher have to do with the authors of the New England Journal of Medicine and CDC studies? I realise that they might be hard to find, but according to rumors, there's a whole world beyond the internet.
| Quote | Now for the main issues:
Well, if you say that by "common sense" you were refering only to the promisquity of homosexuals, then I stand corrected (although that's more of a "common conception" than anything else).
However, you did claim, when defining the homosexual lifestyle to me, that this promisquity in homosexuals leads to disregard of safety, and finally sociopathic behaviour- you directly connected that with homosexuality. Do you retract that?
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Why would I do a thing like that? You asked me to outline an opinion, and I proceeded to do so. Now you're holding my cooperation against me.
| Quote | Well, besides the fact that saying "homosexuals are more active in pursuing sexual relationships because they feel safer" is a long way from calling them sociopaths, what of it? How does that differentiate a homosexual from, say, a heterosexual man with a vasectomy- or a woman with a permanent form of contraception, like tubal ligation, or even IUDs and vaginal rings, for that matter?
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What? Have you even read the whole thread? Here's the relevant excepts again:
| Quote | Gómez found that based on reports of the previous year, most sex behavior that might spread HIV did not differ significantly between African-Americans, whites and Latinos. But whites, for example, most often identified themselves as gay and reported a larger number of male sex partners than did Latinos and African Americans. Whites also were more likely to have oral insertive sex with men who were HIV negative or whose HIV status was unknown.
African-American men were more likely than either whites or Latinos to also report sex with women, to identify themselves as bisexual, and to be uncomfortable with their same-sex behavior. When recalling encounters within the past three months, African Americans and Latinos reported higher rates of unprotected anal intercourse with a partner whose HIV status was negative or unknown. Interviews suggested that both groups are less likely to consider oral sex as a substitute for penetrative sex.
The survey showed that 47 HIV positive men across all ethnic groups reported unprotected anal insertive sex with a partner though they knew his HIV status was negative.
In one-on-one interviews with each man, surveyors pulled out the context: "These encounters usually were rare, and there were very few men who did not consider it an issue to have sex with a man whom they might infect," Gómez said.
Often an HIV negative partner was willing, or even demanded to take the risk, she said. Even more often, drugs, alcohol or other factors limited the men's perceived sense of control over their behavior.
Gómez said a more worrisome statistic was that more than half the HIV positive men (132) had sex with partners whose HIV status was unknown.
[once again, my emphasis]
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Flint:
| Quote | I pointed out a few posts back that heterosexuals under the same conditions act exactly the same. Apparently finding members of the same sex arousing changes nothing else I'm aware of - young people still like lots of sex with lots of partners, are pretty irresponsible and spontaneous about it, and immerse themselves in promiscuous sexual activity whenever circumstances permit.
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The key phrase being,"under the same conditions". The conditions are not the same, especially in a moral society. Hetero men have a natural brake on their worst impulses: women*. Which is a huge reason why hetero relationships are healthier, IMHO.
*Don't be too smug, ladies: men help keep women civilised and focused as well
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Dey can't 'andle my riddim.
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