For those of you not in on the lingo, a bug chaser is an HIV negative dude trying to become HIV positive, because that’s hot. Note, they haven’t just eroticized bareback sex, they’ve eroticized sero-conversion. (That has to be up there with the people who eroticize their own castration.) Gift givers are the hiv positive dudes who help the bug chasers get what they want.
If the givers (and chasers for that matter) never gave hiv to anyone who wasn’t a bug chaser and if the rest of us weren’t paying, literally, to help cover their medical expenses (not to mention the wide variety of other stds that bug chasers incubate and spread around) I suppose it wouldn’t be an ethical problem, anymore than suicide or self-cutting is.
But the reality is, everyone else is paying for the bug-chasers. They are the new welfare queens, except these people really are actively seeking to be a burden society, even if they don’t think about it that way. Assuming they are lucky enough to be having all their medical needs seen to by private health insurance, everyone else with the same insurer is ponying up for their irresponsible behavior in premium and copay hikes. If not, they’re a drain on tax payer resources. AIDS meds aren’t cheap, and we have a system in place to pay for it.
“HIV isn’t really a problem, we have meds now. And if you can’t afford them, you’ll get help paying.” One, last I heard, HIV meds had some nasty side effects. Two, they’re hideously expensive. Three, fuck you and your reliance on the public dole. Most people sensibly want to avoid HIV, but you want to follow this fucked up little fantasy of yours to your own destruction and then ask someone else to bail your idiot ass out? I almost wish we could make an exception. Not to subsidizing your meds, but to letting you have them at all.
So, if you have any questions about it, yes, bug chasing is fucking immoral. And so is gift giving. Pull your selfish head out of your ass, and start using it to think. Maybe take a trip to Zimbabwe with the money you would have spent instead, where you can see what happens when the HIV+ population overwhelms the caregiving capacity of the society that holds them. Or just do everyone a favor and off yourself more quickly, and more definitely.
I blame the shits who can’t see past the end of their dick for the recent accidental seroconversions of a number people I care about. Happy about it, I am not.
I just had this asshat tonight proposition me for bareback sex, and when I declined telling him I onlt have safe sex he told me to “educate myself” and sent me a link to a youtube video from one of the “HIV does not cause AIDS” groups alleging HIV tests are not accurate, and we are being lied to, and so on.
I told him WTF? is HIV/AIDS the only thing I am trying to avoid by having safe sex? I suggested he educate himself a bit more before pushing his “science of bareback sex” on me.
wow.
wow, indeed
That is incredible! I knew about the bug chasing phenomenon, but I had no idea there was actually a “science” to justify it. Yowza….
How many of these bugchasers really exist? I figured it was mostly frothed up reportage fodder.
dude it is a huge sub-culture :-/
i know about it cuz this model i know here in LA is HIV+ and he has told me all about it from his own first-hand knowledge.
disturbing.
Can you help me understand how huge?
Compared to say: coke users in the gay community. S&M people. Meth users. Smokers?
If you can gimme a clue where it fits in it’ll help give me perspective here. Thanks!
I remember reading about the “bug chasing” phenomenon on the BBC. How fucking ridiculous. It’s things like this that make me wonder how the human race has made it this far with so many stupid people….Do we see people flying into the congo just to contract ebola??!?!
We’re doomed.
The indefensible
Wow, Stephen! Such venom from somebody who is HIV negative (“do everyone a favor and off yourself” is that just a funny sarcastic LJ line, or do you really want fellow gay brethren to commit suicide?) Not that you are uninformed, but you might not an educated a perspective on this as a postive person might.
I’m not a bug chaser and am negative also, but I’d like to defend the indefensible. Imagine that you’re a teenager. Just came out, and had a lot of trouble with the coming out process: rejected by friends, family, maybe homeless. All your new gay friends are positive, and are have all sorts of kinky bareback sex in groups.
Here’s the problem: you think that AIDS is inevitable. You will get eventually because you are gay. It’s a leap of logic, true, but it’s what society and the media teaches us. So, instead of waiting for your fate, you decide to infect yourself on *purpose*. It’s kindof sel-empowering in a weird way: you are taking control of your own health (in a negative way, true) you are deciding who you will sleep with and how and when.
I could see how someone could be a bug chaser. And I feel sorry for those people: I think they need therapy (and quick) to remove feelings of self-loathing and the inevitablity of death. But your LJ comments don’t help, and just spread venom to some troubled people.
Still indefensible
The people you write about, in these all-positive enclaves (really? *all* their friends would be kinky-bareback-HIV kids?) are one thing. But the HIV-doesn’t-cause-AIDS crowd is another. And the people that Stephen described are something else entirely. They don’t find HIV either irrelevant or inevitable or a romanti-tragic trophy of self-destruction. They find it “the most erotic thing” to be brought “into the brotherhood.” [quote source]
Like yourself, I’m neither positive nor a bug-chaser. Unlike you, I cannot see how someone could be a bug-chaser. The logic just doesn’t hold up: if they consider HIV a lethal inevitability, then they’re ignoring all the reports that medicines can treat it, as well as the countless homosexuals who never contract HIV. (It’s been at least a decade since every gay movie ended in everyone dying.) I’m more concerned that people don’t consider the disease lethal, but just a minor annoyance: “like living with diabetes. You take a few pills and get on with your life.” It’s irresponsible, hedonistic, and short-sighted. As Stephen said, they’re needlessly draining resources from an already-underfunded system and willfully ignoring the many other diseases they’re likely to spread thru their “conversion” experiences.
I agree, therapy is needed. But understanding is not. I believe a harsh rejection of this lethal ignorance is the only proper response.
Re: Still indefensible
Shoot, that was my best scenario to stir up some empathy for bug chasers!
However, I see a hole in your logic. 1) you admit some people think AIDS is a “minor annoyance” 2) they’re “ignoring the medicines that can treat it” 3) modern movies and TV shows no longer show people with HIV, must less ones dying, but 4) somehow you’re surprised that someone could be a bug chaser. Why are you surprised? It’s an innocous disease to those people.
How about another analogy: people that willingly take cystal meth. Why would they do that when there are reports that it’s insanely addictive, poisonous to make, and destroys lives?Ithink it’s a similar situation.
But you’re right, the collective moral indignation should come down strongly on both misapprehentions.
Disgust, not surprise
I must agree with the meth analogy; it’s apt. I almost made it myself, but didn’t want to take up too much space. Same problems: willfully ignorant, hedonistic, and short-sighted.
And I’m not sure I’d agree that’s a hole in my logic. I find diabetes a minor annoyance, but I (like other rational people) don’t fuck with my insulin levels. I guess I’m not particularly surprised that they’d be so selfish and reckless with the population’s health and money (and, eventually, lives). Selfishness and recklessness fit the young gay Americans sterotypes, sadly too well. (c.f. meth)
What infuriates me is the willful ignorance of these people to the costs that they’re generating to society at large: in medical expenses, STD infection increases, and the fact that they’re willing petri dishes for evolving more virulent HIV strains. Indulging in this selfish bloodsport just disgusts me.