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Comment by aerostable_slug | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how most everyone is dancing around the primary mode of monkeypox transmission to date: sexual contact between men who have sex with men.

I understand the effort to be sure the public doesn't label monkeypox a "gay disease" or increase the stigma of being gay, but OTOH this article makes it almost seem like they might be biologically related phenomena (e.g. somehow syphilis contributes to monkeypox or vice versa) vs. behaviorally related phenomena (e.g. unsafe sex spreads multiple pathogens).

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>I understand the effort to be sure the public doesn't label monkeypox a "gay disease"

It's this 100%. It's just political correctness.

What's funny to me about things like this is that the gay community is well aware of the risks involved with their lifestyles. There is a reason grindr (the gay tinder) is the only dating app I've ever seen that has "HIV Status" and "Last Test Date" as attributes of a profile, and that "poz" is a tag you can add, which essentially means "I have HIV and am proud of it."

The fact is that the gay community engages in a lot of very risky sexual behavior, but that's politically incorrect to say. And as a disclaimer, I am not suggesting that any of this is deserved, or whatever X-phobia I'm sure I'll be accused of for pointing this out.

Is very risky sexual behaviour a good or bad thing? I'm just seeking to further understand this point.

Any gay saunas in London has lots of big anonymous group sex, if this the idea that risky sex is bad then these types of places would be shut, however they are still open for business.

At the level of a person? It's an individual decision. This is why I think the actual facts of monkeypox transmission should be openly discussed. If someone is in a monogamous relationship with another then unsafe sexual practices are limited in terms of risk. Other situations may be different. People need real data to make their own risk calculation.

At a societal level? History says yes.

EDIT: I would note that during the peak of the AIDS epidemic government did close bathhouses.

These places are destinations for sexual tourism and an extremely easy vector to spread a new STD worldwide especially in cities like London, however the government has deemed them to be safe. I'd think their reasoning to keep 'high risk' areas open would be very rational.

They made a risk/benefit decision, that seems clear enough. I'm not arguing the sauna in Madrid needs to be closed. I'm arguing that a random person heading to Berlin, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, etc. for Pride should know how monkeypox is currently making its way around the world.

After that, it's their call — just like people do knowing that syphilis, HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and other diseases are disproportionately represented in MSM. I'm not telling anyone what to do, just advocating that everyone get unfiltered information.

>however the government has deemed them to be safe

I'd argue that political correctness has played a role in this too. As we have seen over the past two years, the government isn't as science-oriented as it leads us to believe. This is anecdotal, but I have gay friends who despise the bathhouse in our (US) city because of how dirty it is, and yet it's been open this whole time.

Neither syphilis nor unsafe sex nor HIV are unique to gay men, nor is monkeypox. I think that is enough to genuinely disqualify it as a ‘gay disease’.

And your response is a disingenuous one, because I never said that. What I am saying is that gay men are at a much, much, much higher risk of getting/spreading it due to their lifestyle choices, and it seems stupid to always have to avoid saying that because of political correctness.

I was responding to your suggestion that avoiding calling monkeypox a ‘gay disease’ was “just political correctness” by suggesting that some meaningful percentage may instead be “actual correctness.”

Grindr is far from the only gay-centric dating app that allows you to list your HIV status. Almost all the major apps allow this nowadays. Scruff, Growlr, Jackd, and even the site Sniffies allow this.

As an LGBT+ identifying man, i don't think it's politically incorrect to highlight that gay men tend to engage in risky sexual behavior. It's not a new phenomenon either, just one that's been made more public by the rise of apps and hookup sites with the rise of the internet.

> Grindr is far from the only gay-centric dating app that allows you to list your HIV status.

Sorry, I should have clarified: grindr is the only gay-centric dating app I've used. Tinder, bumble, and hinge (which I consider the "big 3" of dating apps) all do not have these attributes. Which I think just strengthens my point, with which you agree.

Sincerely, thanks for the perspective, and for not calling me a bigot.

"big 3" for cishet people, sure.

> somehow syphilis contributes to monkeypox or vice versa

Speculating here, but hard to believe it wouldn't. Syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia infection, by themselves, are a well-known factor for enabling HIV infection, for example. Sores make for easier transmission. And diseases that can pass by skin contact usually pass even more easily through mucous membranes or sores. And just very generally, people fighting off infections are more susceptible to other infections.

That's possibly true, but look at the known superspreader events: Pride event in the Canary Islands, a bathhouse in Madrid, etc. These outbreaks are not associated with heterosexuals with STDs.

In the scientific community the fact that M2M are the dominant spreaders is not disputed. It's only in public discourse that fact is suppressed.

This isn't meant to cast blame, but OTOH if we keep dancing around the facts June might not be just Pride month, but outbreak month. People should be fully informed so they can make their own risk calculation.

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