Virtual Prevention: Fighting HIV Online
Read this interesting piece from POZ on the challenges, and the progress, around engaging gay men online.
Do we blame the internet? Can the internet give us syphilis or HIV?
How do we make virtual HIV prevention activities fun and sexy?
[Key word, sexy.]
For too long we have made HIV prevention clinical and dull in the real world - and absent of sex. What can be done differently online? How can health messages be integrated in enjoyable and creative ways into the online world in which gay men navigate? Can we shop, look at i-candy, read gossip and hook up - with HIV prevention thrown into the mix?
The article doesn't necessarily have all the answers, but offers some important insights and starts to chart a course forward.
LifeLube would love to hear your thoughts...
The biological imperative is too powerful a force for these efforts to work. What will work is people dying. When you see people dying from something then other people start paying attention. As the number of people dying increases then more people pay attention. For example, cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Automobile accidents weed out young males in the population. Populations are culled. Darwinian selection is going on as the population grows. Young males are being selected out before reproducing by their exuberance or whatever else, their stupidity, their desire to impress females with their driving skills, wanting to show off, testosterone. The population grows but the number of automobile deaths per year stays about the same.
ReplyDeleteSo, the only way to engage gay men around healthy sexuality is to show people dying?
ReplyDeleteReally?
I beg to differ.
Dying has been the thing that has changed behavior more than anything else. There can be different opinions, but how do you prove one?... whether it's people dying or sex education programs that don't even seem to work on sex educators.
ReplyDeletei think there are several ads targetting gay men with regards to HIV prevention that show sexuality and condoms, i just think they aren't too effective because people think it can't happen to them
ReplyDeletehttp://www.queersunited.blogspot.com
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete> i think there are several ads
ReplyDelete> targetting gay men with regards to
> HIV prevention that show sexuality
> and condoms, i just think they
> aren't too effective because people
> think it can't happen to them
What would prevention advocacy be like if we actually take into account that we are programmed by nature for what to do when sexual opportunities arise? Our species would not continue existing and evolving without the powerful force of this program from nature. For most people going against nature is not likely. On the other hand there are people with genetic combinations that give them maybe a greater fear of dying, maybe some kinds of paranoia, maybe some kinds of obsessive compulsivity that can interrupt the powerful force of the program that nature gives us and those people might manage some strategy, some preventative step before going on ahead with sexual opportunities.
The 3 SEX RULES
SEX RULE number 1. Sex is more important than dying.
SEX RULE number 2. Sex is more important than killing somebody.
SEX RULE number 3. If people could change their sexual behavior we wouldn't be here.