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Celebratory rally takes place at New York’s historic Stonewall Inn. See story here: http://bit.ly/11RbaWz

Dick Keiser Jr., Ph.D.

It was the 1960s. Both straight and gay people embraced the sexual revolution. The result? An explosion of STDs, and then, 30 years after it began, over 500,000 were dead. The HIV virus had appeared on the scene. In this era of confusion and horror, gay men embraced whatever solutions were available, including experimental drugs to stop the deaths from AIDS, and for the first time, condom use became a part of gay life. Today, the AIDS epidemic is over in the US. It has morphed into the HIV epidemic, with a steady 50,000 new infections a year. Individuals are still dying, but in the bigger picture, this is a largely silent epidemic.

Individuals who survived the AIDS epidemic, having lost partners, brothers, sisters and even parents, are still shell-shocked by the carnage it wreaked on their lives. The younger generation, and those older individuals who came out late, like me, were insulated from the plague. Individuals who could be mentoring us are either dead or in relationships away from the scene. What is left is a gay health infrastructure set up to fight one epidemic that has failed to transition to a new reality. This is largely due to grant requirements dictated by the federal government.

In the midst of this situation comes a blog post by Mark S. King. Mr. King is a former director of the AIDS alliance in Atlanta and also a contributing columnist for TheBody.com, which provides valuable information about gay health issues to the community.

The blog post’s title: “Your Mother Liked It Bareback.”

Some of the post is factual: One has a low risk of dying from HIV. Still, there are 18,000 deaths a year. Cigarettes do kill more people than unprotected sex does. HIV-positive men who are medication-compliant and have bareback sex only with those of a similar HIV status are at low risk; there is increasing evidence that men who are HIV-medication-compliant (a pathetic 28 percent in the U.S.) and have an undetectable viral load are basically unable to transmit the virus. And even if HIV-negative men have unprotected sex with HIV-positive men who are medication-compliant, they are likely to remain HIV-negative.

PReP has recently come onto the scene as another option. But is it feasible? Let’s look at PReP. For one, the actual effectiveness of PReP is unknown; all the literature says, “Use with a condom.” With barely 28-percent medication adherence among HIV-positive individuals, what is the assurance that anyone on PReP will be totally adherent? For HIV-positive guys to be drug-compliant requires 90-percent adherence, whereas PReP requires 100-percent adherence. And for anyone who thinks PReP is a panacea for dispensing with condoms, think about at least a few weeks of your body adapting to some really strong meds. Sure, some guys have no side effects. Others do! Mark mentioned that “some” insurance companies are paying PReP’s cost (presently $14,000 a year). What value do you put on your money and your health?

Mark quotes a “survey done on Grindr” that found that the majority of men on that site bareback. This is not the only site where this is occurring. In fact, one prominent site is 100-percent bareback and hosts bareback parties in 19 cities in the U.S.

READ THE REST HERE @ THE HUFFPOST!

Where The Bears Are – Season 2: Episode 6 GO GO BEAR from Where the Bears Are on Vimeo.

After interviewing the DJ at the Faultline leather bar, Reggie learns Elliot’s campaign manager was having secret meetings with a hot personal trainer (Shannon Ward), which could be a lead in the Elliot Butler murder investigation. Meanwhile, Nelson (Ben Zook) drinks too much after hearing Todd’s confession about his past and winds up on a pole wearing nothing but a jock strap in an embarrassing attempt to upstage Todd’s ex-boyfriend Ivan (Howard Skora). Todd: Ian Parks. Reggie: Rick Copp. Wood: Joe Dietl. Detective Winters: Chad Sanders. Detective Martinez: George Unda. DJ: Decoding Jesus. Cyril: Scott Beauchemin. Bartender: Brad Kalvo. Go Go Bear #1: Dan Lovell. Go Go Bear #2: Dirk Willis. Patron: Ricky Mungia.

Follow us at facebook.com/WhereTheBearsAre and twitter.com/WhereTheBearsR

Fraser’s Edge / Are gays more obsessed with beauty?
Brad Fraser

In the early 1990s I had an agent in LA whose name, when mentioned, always elicited the same reaction: every person who knew him would say, “Isn’t he handsome?” Despite the fact he was also a smart, cultured man and a very ambitious agent, people commented on his perfect all-American face and hair — as well as his Olympian proportions.

An actress friend who performed in one of my plays in England is one of the most stunning beings I’ve ever set eyes on; she has honey-blonde hair, slightly vulpine features, a sparkling smile, dark-green eyes and a killer body. Over drinks one night I asked her about the best and worst things about being so beautiful. She said, “Everyone wants to fuck you,” making it clear that her statement covered both questions.

I have another friend who is a particularly cantankerous type when dealing with inept sales and service staff. During a particularly drawn-out saga concerning the construction of a custom cabinet for his home — the kind of experience that is filled with mistakes, misunderstandings and endless waiting periods — I overheard one of his phone calls with the cabinetmaker. When he ended the call I expressed my shock at his uncharacteristically reasonable tone. He looked slightly abashed and said, “You wouldn’t believe how fucking hot this guy is.”

Some suggest gay society is more obsessed with physical beauty than straight society, but I suspect, proportionately, it’s not much different. True beauty — the kind that blinds people to your other attributes, the kind that makes anyone you meet want to partake of sexual congress, the kind that cuts you a lot of slack and even compels people to give you things — is widely varied in appearance and relatively rare. Of course, there are highly attractive people made so as much by their personality and spirit as what they look like, but I’m talking about pure physical beauty here. The kind that creates movie stars and fashion models, the physical form that demands nothing more of itself than itself in order to be adored.

Not all people of great beauty become famous, because we each know a few of them carrying on with their everyday lives. But we also know, because we see evidence of it at every turn, that their beauty gives them an automatic advantage in most situations. Almost everyone, in some way or another, demurs to greater beauty even as we sometimes resent it.

Read the rest after the jump…

BODY IMAGE / Andrew Huber studied 144 gay men across Canada
Niko Bell / Vancouver / Wednesday, June 26, 2013

New research on gay men and body image suggests that gay men may be less self-conscious than they once were.

Vancouver clinical counsellor Andrew Huber studied 144 gay men across Canada and found that immersion in gay culture had no measurable effect on the men’s preoccupation with their own appearance, how they felt about their looks, or how they rated parts of their bodies. The only significant result, in fact, was a slight link between gay culture and self-consciousness about weight. That stands at odds with decade-old research suggesting gay men are much more self-conscious and appearance-focused than their straight counterparts.

“What surprised me is how little the immersion in gay culture correlated to any of the scales,” says Huber, who conducted the study as his master’s thesis at the Adler School of Professional Psychology. “The more immersed you would be, I thought, the more time you would spend on your appearance, wanting to fit in.”

Huber asked his subjects to fill out an online questionnaire about their immersion in gay culture and feelings about their own bodies. Huber expected to find a strong correlation between socializing with other gay men and body anxiety. Research told him that gay men — like most people — engage in “upward social comparison,” weighing themselves against the most attractive members of society. Among gay men, where lean, muscular bodies are celebrated, Huber expected to find more pressure to be attractive, more anxiety about looks, and more focus on physical appearance.

He thinks the unexpected results may suggest a shift in gay culture and a community that is more supportive about body image.

“Given my findings, people may not be getting their sense of self-worth from the gay community,” he says. “I think that now, in 2013, there can be very different standards of attractiveness. Look at the bear community, where someone might look very different from someone who’s part of the twink community, or the jock style.”

Huber’s study also looked at the way self-esteem interacts with body image among gay men. Not surprisingly, good body image was linked to high self-esteem, and body anxiety to low self-esteem. Contrary to Huber’s predictions, however, self-esteem did nothing to change the slight relationship between involvement in the gay community and concern about body weight. In other words, gay men feel slightly more self-conscious about their weight the more they are surrounded by gay men — whether they have low self-esteem or not.

“That was a surprise as well,” Huber says. “To me that shows the complexity of [the gay community].”

He thinks self-esteem and body image do not interact because gay men are becoming more supportive of each other.

He also credits the shift in mainstream culture over the last decade, in which gay men appear more in media and are accepted more by mainstream culture. As a result, they worry less about appearances, he suggests.

“We’re starting to see that being gay is more than just being a hairdresser or going to the gym all the time,” Huber says. “It’s branching out to being a normal person.”

While Huber is confident in the accuracy of his research, he says it is only a small part of the puzzle. His study did not ask participants about their actual weight, nor about muscularity, a body concern for many gay men. He says there is a lot more work to be done.

“The main conclusion of my study is that the gay community is complex,” he says. “More complex than we may have originally thought, especially with the shifting times. The cultural standard of attractiveness within the gay community may not be what it once was.”