Bill Weintraub

Re: standing up for what is right

6-11-2006

Hey David

Thank you for all your kind words.

But what I hope people will hear in this post is first of all, the understanding that we're not victimizing -- that's not what we mean by being a warrior:

That is totally opposite of the aggression that you speak of. What I see is encouragement of aggression in standing up for what is right, WITHOUT COMPROMISE...what it means to be a WARRIOR... protection of yourself and those that you love because that is what a MAN does when he operates with a foundation of love. I think that is a major part of our biological role as MEN. I fight with my pen, with my power of reason, without compromise.

David is correct. This is a major part of our biological role as MEN, and that's standing up for and defending what we know is right.

And the other thing I hope people will hear is that David was able to do a course in self-protection, and that he found it immensely empowering.

Guys, you don't have to be Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee to train.

Karate was originally developed by Okinawan peasants as a means of defending themselves against Japanese soldiers -- many of whom had been trained as warriors.

So karate is actually very democratic.

Sure, there are ranks and white belts and black belts and all that stuff, but the essential idea is that anyone can learn to defend himself -- and you don't need weapons.

Training is a transformative experience.

You ALL should do it.

In an email, David mentioned to me that he'd looked at an old message thread titled "you should be put in jail," which is still on this board but which has also been archived on its own page in Warriors Speak.

The thread is about some analist working at an AIDS Service Organization in Boston who emailed me in 2002 to say "You should be put in jail for saying Frot is safe."

And he went on to say that our site is homophobic.

Of course Frot is safe; there's never been a documented case of HIV transmission via Frot.

And of course my work and our sites are not homophobic.

To the contrary, we here celebrate true homosex -- phallus2phallus and Man2Man -- which we call, rightly, Heroic Homosex.

Anyways, David wrote me to say that rather than being put in jail, I should be put in the White House.

Which was very sweet of him.

But we need to be clear:

What actually bothers these guys isn't that we're saying Frot is safe.

It's that we're saying that anal is unsafe.

And degrading.

And emasculating.

That's what bothers them, and that's what they want stopped.

They want that message silenced.

Look at this guy Andriote.

He said to me, How dare you question my sex life?

But he has an STD -- which he wrote about at some length in the very public pages of the Washington Post.

To play the jargon game, this man has an STD which among MSM is most commonly contracted through URA.

Translation: J-M Andriote has a sexually transmitted disease which among men who have sex with men is most commonly contracted through unprotected receptive anal penetration.

He doesn't want to talk about that.

Instead he says, I thought the "low-risk sex" I practiced would protect me.

Problem: If it's anal, or oral to ejaculation, it's not low risk.

The other thing these guys do is that just as they've romanticized anal, they try to romanticize AIDS.

In his article, Andriote spoke of how he'd seen so much compassion and spirituality while reporting on AIDS.

Well, compassion is certainly a fine thing.

I was in the hospital in March and was surrounded by people who were being paid to be compassionate -- which they were.

But you're far better off in this life if you don't NEED the company of compassionate people.

Do you understand?

It's better not to be sick.

Similarly, my late lover was, it is true, very spiritual at the end of his life.

Problem was, the end of his life came at age 37, not at 95.

So the last thing we should be doing is romanticizing a fatal disease.

There's nothing romantic about being sick, nor about dying young.

Of course people do get sick, and when they do they need compassion and care.

But that doesn't mean we should encourage them to get sick.

Or suggest that it doesn't matter if they contract HIV.

Mr Andriote said in his article that his health insurance had a very small yearly prescription benefit, and his HIV drugs would cost $1700 a month.

But he said, he then found help in getting meds through some AIDS Service Organization.

That's all well and good.

But we need to recognize that there are many sick people in America and in the wider world who can't afford medication and NEVER get it.

The difference is that most of those people do not have an AVOIDABLE disease.

Again, Mr Andriote doesn't want to talk about that.

But there's something very troubling -- dare I say obscene -- about these guys contracting HIV, which is easily avoided, with the promise of free medication, antiretrovirals, for the rest of their lives.

And when we put foward a non-anal alternative which is far lower risk and far more pleasurable -- we're threatened with jail.

I encourage all of you to do what David is doing -- to think about what it means to be a Warrior.

And to get some training.

David, thank you again.

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Robert Loring

Re: standing up for what is right

6-11-2006

David I congratulate you on your success!

You wrote: "I want to be a MAN OF INTEGRITY...a WARRIOR who can and will take care of himself and what he believes in! "

You are well on your way my Brother Warrior. A major part of being a warrior is the mindset.