ares

Frot and health professionals

6-8-2006

I'm an educator teaching college students about diversity and teaching health care professionals about personal care issues, including cultural differences. The curriculum I've been teaching has recently been informed by the many articles, essays and personal stories you've been sharing with us. In recent classes I've talked about the following:

Men who have sex with men don't necessarily engage in penile-anal sex or other unsafe-sexual practices. I let students know that there were many, thousands, of men who rejected both promiscuity and analism; men who honor family, relationship, commitment and social responsibility while being "gay" or "bi" etc. This was also a good opportunity to educate about the fallacy of sexual-orientation labels (the meaninglessness of "gay" and "bi" etc). A man expressing his love for a man is not a prescription for disease. The contemporary image of the sexually liberated male is skewed by the both popular and conservative medias that portray gay/bi/curious males as promiscuous analists.

To my surprise the students received this message openly and with a sense of relief. I heard comments like, "Well, that makes more sense . . . . of course, why would anyone promote unsafe sex . . "

Students were surprised to learn that those who promote anal=gay were ignoring the most alarming rise in HIV infections: the straight population that continues to pretend that hetero-sex activities protect them from infection. Anal-positive sexualists not only promote disease and death to men who love men, but to those who solely engage in heterosexual activity when they 'nod & wink' that disease is a fag problem. The bottom line is that butt-fucking and promiscuity spread disease that causes discomfort, misery and death.

Men who love and appreciate male sexuality are not diseased antisocialists bent on promoting the corruption of society.

These healthcare pro's have been hearing for years that they needed to be tolerant, and to their credit, they've been able to do that for the most part. The message that a culture of positive masculine sexuality could bring an answer to the social ills of "gay society" seems to be a fresh and welcome concept. Make no mistake. The Frot message is male positive and life positive. Nurses were asking me if they could suggest to their patients that non-anal relationships might work better for them, "Won't they be offended?".

My sense is that health care professionals have seen enough of human nature not to be shocked by same sex love, but they have never been able to rectify the incongruency of sexual expression and willful pathogenism. Socially responsible sexual expression and activity has support from the health care professions. Health care professionals may be our greatest advocates.

Press on, dudes.

Ares