WHO: cut hets, not gays

A long proposed policy of recommending circumcision among men in sub-Saharan Africa to "lower the rates of HIV infection risk" is now on the cards of being formally recommended policy because

"Three African trials have shown that circumcision halved the rate of HIV infection in heterosexual men."

Only halve? So it's still a huge leap of faith to base public health policy on a set of guidelines, starting with the deliberate mutilation of males, followed by all the necessary standard practices of safer sex (condom use, delayed sexual activity and partner number reduction) that the cut male has to apply too. Never mind that all those precautions are sufficient for the intact male to use to prevent getting infected.
So I don't really see any need for circumcision, a medical intervention usually not practiced in the best hygienic circumstances in a tropical African village. I don't think we need to add to the African infant mortality rate, do we?
How it would protect women is a big question too. Will they feel safer when approached by a cut male? You have to be pretty stupid to think you're not at risk when you can't see a foreskin.
And how many condom packs would a circumcision operation buy?

I've blogged about this before, and I haven't changed my mind one bit.

The first cut is the cruellest

I heard this the other morning on the radio and I thought, what's wrong with this picture?:

Circumcision may offer Africa AIDS hope
Procedure linked to much lower rate of new HIV infections
French and South African AIDS researchers have called an early halt to a study of adult male circumcision to reduce HIV infection after initial results reportedly showed that men who had the procedure dramatically lowered their risk of contracting the virus. [...]
The hope is that, lacking a vaccine, the nearly 5 million new HIV infections occurring each year could be slowed by circumcision, the surgical removal of the foreskin -- a simple, low-cost and permanent medical intervention that is a common but controversial cultural practice in much of the world. [...]
Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells, which are favored targets of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. So the theory is that men who are uncircumcised are much more likely to contract the virus during sex with an infected woman, and that the epidemic spreads when these newly infected men have sex with other women within their network of sexual partners.

From: SFGate.com

Male circumcision, just like its female counterpart, is child abuse and should only be carried out if there is risk of infection and a threat to the boys' health. In all other circumstances it should be a consensual decision by an adult man - and his alone. If you agree with all this, it must disturb you too that the medical fraternity is backing the cutters again (in earlier, unenlightened times, circumcision has always been linked to dodgy claims by medicalists and religionists, be it to identify your religion or to prevent masturbation, so no change there).
I have little quibble with the science involved, such as the susceptibility of the foreskin to HIV infection. But I think the policy responses they want to derive from it miss the point if this vulnerability is used to justify circumcision: it may give cut guys a false sense of protection against HIV knowing their knobs are less suspectible to HIV than uncut ones, and lead to less condom use which puts them and their partners at greater risk.
My point is that it really doesn't matter whether you are intact or cut if you want to avoid catching HIV. You just have to always practice safe sex.
Promoting the mutilation of males may thus even lead to the opposite of what you want to achieve in HIV prevention. And this would be criminally negligent.
I have never met an uncut guy who didn't like his foreskin, and have never met a cut guy who doesn't have some subconscious sense of loss.
The clue is that circumcision is always promoted by circumcised guys. Envy is a strong emotion.

The anti-circumcision campaign is here.

Out Takes poster causes drooling

The annual Reel Queer Film Festival is taking place at the moment and they have been promoting it extensively with posters on bus shelters around town. It may not be very visible here on-line, but the gist is: boy on left holds ice cream and boyfriend on right has white drool dripping from his chin. All very double/triple/rainbow entendre in the contemporary queer way: you could interpret the image according to your favourite perversion. How inclusive is that! And on bus shelters! Around town!
But not so according to queer trend critic Philip Patston (who is a stand-up comedian in his spare time, even while sitting in his wheelchair) in a guest column on gaynz.com:

The boy's "cummy" chin is just tacky and juvenile, not to mention sexist - I can't see any muff fluff on the girls' chins. But worse, the image could be construed as sexual harassment. Anyone confronted by that image in a public place could legitimately complain that they are being harassed.

All very precious and prissy, if you ask me.
An ice cream is sometimes just that, an ice cream. (Thank you, Prof. Freud)

In a vaguely related issue, the Reel Queer organisers scored a spectacular own goal. They offered an incentive prize of a mini-holiday in Fiji for festival attendees. Since gay nookie is a no-no in Fiji (men have been arrested and jailed for gay sex there while on holiday), just as it is in most Pacific islands, except New Zealand, and people with HIV are very unwelcome there (Bruce Kilmister of the HIV support group Body Positive was well pissed off), one has to wonder why this kind of prize is being offered to its main target audience. Perhaps they wanted to attract a few straight couples to their film offerings with the prize?
Then, not to be outdone by Reel Queer, another sponsor of the film festival, the NZ Aids Foundation found itself in hot water too over a prize it offered viewers of a trip to Hawaii despite the USA having a restrictive access policy for HIV+ people. What a mess! And they wonder why people are ignoring their messages.

Love life, stop Aids

The Swiss anti-Aids organisation released a rather delicious new media campaign. More details here.
I love my sports played in the ancient Greek way. Imagine what ratings they would get these days!

Link via OhLaLa Paris

Politically correct party animals on redneck cocaine

I'm a firm believer in looking after your own health, prevention being better than a cure and all that jazz, but now I'm a bit taken aback that this attitude is regarded as somehow disrespectful of people with HIV.
In a nutshell the question is: can I be as celebratory proud of being HIV negative as we have been celebrating and supporting HIV positive people?
A very thoughtful and quite scary article by Michael Specter on AIDS, speed and gay men cruising online covers a lot of ground, from age issues, loneliness of older unattached gay males, drug use, AIDS fatigue, the medicalisation of US society to all night sex marathons and a lot more.
Highly recommended reading, and I'm unsure whether to feel pity for all those partying souls, or angry at the denial and self-denial going on or sad about prevention messages for HIV negative men being labelled as un-PC.
Here's a short extract:

"[Bay Area psychologist named Walt] Odets said the gay community split in 1985, the moment a reliable H.I.V. test was available. “Before that day, everyone was in it together,” he said. “Nobody knew who had it and everyone acknowledged that it was a horror. And then, in April of 1985, we started protecting people who had H.I.V. And we did that by normalizing infection - and we have done that all along. It has completely compromised prevention work, to the extent that when the aids Health Project, in San Francisco, put up a banner outside its facility that said ‘Stay Healthy Stay Negative’ the gay public was incensed. Men wrote in and said, ‘I have H.I.V. and I am perfectly healthy. How dare you imply that I am not?’
While it has always been important to protect and support H.I.V.-infected men in the gay community, Odets argues that it has become difficult to teach men who test negative how essential it is for them to remain uninfected. “This is not about making positive men feel good about themselves,” Odets said. “It’s about protecting H.I.V.-negative men.” He told me that he had even conducted workshops where it was nearly impossible to shift the primary prevention message from supporting positive men to remaining uninfected. “There is just way too much guilt. Too much discomfort because what you are saying to a positive man is ‘I don’t want to be like you.’ ”
Daniel Carlson agrees. “There is some level of guilt about not living with the disease,” he said. “About staying negative. People will say, ‘Oh, look at you going around and glorifying your negative status.’ I don’t go around and say, ‘Hey, I tested negative today, joy to the world.’ And, believe me, when people test positive they do talk about it and they get support. People like me - we keep our mouths shut.”