CHECK Ost #1

COMMUNITY
ENGLISH
ONLY WITHOUT
PLEASE
No fats, no Asians, no faggots. Intra-community
discrimination is a well known thing. But do we have to
marginalize condoms now too? Condom-Shaming appears
to be all the rage. And some argue that it is symptomatic of a
war that has been dividing the gay hookup culture for years.
Those who take PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis)
no longer have to worry much about
HIV. Yet, this sadly is not the case with other
STIs (sexually transmitted diseases). Experts
report that STIs are spreading more and more:
super-gonorrhea cases have been popping up
all over Europe and Asia, which is particularly
worrying as the strain has mutated so often
that it has become resistant to most medications.
A patient in Berlin was diagnosed with
third-stage syphilis, which is really difficult
to treat. On the one hand, more STIs are diagnosed
because more people are being tested.
This is particularly the case as PrEP cannot be
obtained without a previous HIV test, where
the doctor often screens for other infections.
So you simply have more results. On the other
hand, taking PrEP often coincides with less
stringent condom use, even though it does
not protect against gonorrhea and the like. So
while you don’t get HIV on PrEP, you can still
catch everything else.
BAREBACK SEX IS A MATTER OF
NEGOTIATION
Hand on your heart, who has experienced this:
in the heat of the moment and after maybe
one beer too many, you quickly undress and
are ready for anything. You just want to be
close and intimate in all its purity. And when
there is no condom at hand, that’s when the
negotiations usually start: I’m healthy, I take
PrEP, I’m undetectable, and so on. Then sometimes
the mood changes from heated up to
slightly threatening. And while saying something
along the lines of “Come on, it’s safe”
is not yet a coercion or emotional blackmail,
doesn’t this normalize the non-acceptance of
boundaries? If I think it’s ok to have sex without
a condom, then the other person must also
see it that way too if we don’t use protection.
A Canadian blogger puts it this way, “We are
in a cultural war that is largely fueled by
PrEP. Bareback sex changes from a product
of negotiation to an expectation and demand.
The practices that move the social context of
bareback sex toward expectation or demand
directly instill a culture of rape. Because they
detract from the acceptability of a person
setting their own conditions of consent, in this
case condom use.”
CONDOM-SHAMING AS A SYMPTOM
OF A RAPE CULTURE
You have to know that in the context of this
statement the young man claims to have been
gray-raped. Before the act, the use of a condom
was agreed. Yet the sexual partner did not abide
by the agreement, which the young man only
noticed a little later. Such trickery is also called
“stealthing” and is classified in many countries
as a sexual offense and serious bodily harm.
It can now be argued that the risk of unsafe
sex when taking PrEP is mainly a bacterial
problem. But it’s certainly not right to call
10 CHECK OST #1