Get Educated!

In the last week, I have found myself appalled several times at the lack of education among the younger generation (God, at 29 am I old enough to say that now?) when it comes to HIV.

To me, the word "irresponsible" derives from NOT taking responsibility.

Because it is a personal choice and because the only truly safe sex is no sex at all, there are varying degrees of safety. A condom prevents a lot of things, but not all things. Testing is good to go too but there's always a window of days inbetween. Even testing and condoms together will not prevent all STD's. So what this comes down to is personal choice and an individual must decide for themselves what they are most comfortable with, where they draw their line of safety, and then take responsibility for that decision and accept whatever consequences befall them.

But people don't seem to be educated on the subject, so how can they possibly make that personal decision?

- One gay porn performer this week told me he assumed everyone working in gay porn was HIV- and that if anyone was HIV+ they would no longer be allowed to work in gay porn. This is someone who has worked on sets before and just didn't notice he was never asked to be tested? Did he think porn stars were just going to volunteer the information then? I mean, are you kidding me? Gay porn studios do NOT usually test their models. If they did, we would lose AT LEAST half of the industry and that is a sad but very true fact. That's part of the reason why they choose using condoms over testing. On top of which, condoms are incredibly effective in preventing the spread of HIV -- something else the performer actually did not know if you can believe it.

- Another performer told me he thought he contracted HIV from being on a porn shoot where condoms were used. ...Okay, do you have any idea how incredibly unlikely THAT is?

- Still another performer asked me if you could catch HIV from eating ass. ...Sure, if his butt and your mouth are bleeding and one of you is HIV+.

- Finally, one told me he had always thought HIV was a death sentence. Hmm. Could you die from it? Well, technically no. You would die from AIDS which some people with HIV progress to though many do not. HIV and AIDS are NOT the same thing. If it is 2009 and you don't know that yet, you should seriously take a sex education course, especially if you are working in the sex industry! And regardless of that, we're all either living or dying depending on how you look at it, so it's much more thoughtful to refer to someone as "living with HIV" as opposed to "dying with it." This should be common sense and ettiquete.

- One of these same people also told me they would never kiss someone with HIV. Like once you get the disease, you should cease all forms of affection?

I am thankfully (and God, so luckily!) not HIV+ but these days I worry more about how I would be treated if I had the disease than the actual having of the disease itself. I am concerned how this generation that follows mine will treat people afflicted with HIV if they do not INSIST on taking the time to educate themselves.

Responsibility goes so much further than putting on a condom or knowing your status, guys. Protect yourselves as you see fit (it IS a personal choice, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, I happen to like living in a free country) after taking the time to find out what exactly it is you're trying to prevent and why so you know enough about it that you do not treat an entire group of the gay populous like they are lepers that should be relegated to some island. I will not stand for it!

In an age where you don't even have to subscribe to a health magazine or make a trek to your local library but instead have Google at your finger tips and an archived encyclopedia like none other called the world wide web, this lack of education about how you can and can not get HIV, what HIV actually is and what someone can do if they contract it, is as reprehensibly irresponsible in my view as not using protection!

We have chosen to use fear over knowledge when it comes to sex education. Tell someone they might die if they don't do something and it gets the point across real fast. Where else have we seen this tactic used? The holy rollers use it to get you to name Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior to avoid damnation. George Bush used it after 9/11 to get us to support an unlawful attack on another country that did not attack us. Wake up. Fear over knowledge breeds hatred. Don't just put a condom on because you're scared. Get educated!