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Originally Posted by Taylor74  I'm not so sure if I agree with your reasoning. I can't see how putting something in one's mouth is less dangerous and/or risky than putting it in another orifice. The contact and exposure is there regardless. |
Fair enough. No one said you had to agree and I don't disagree with your right to go without. Nor did I call out anyone else's reasoning to use condoms or not use comdoms as a weak attempt or an illusion. I simply gave you one viewpoint why one may use condoms for intercourse but not necessarily for oral, and why I personally don't view that as "weak" or an "illusion". If I want to use CDC and other research stats as the basis of my decisions, so be it. It's not weak or an illusion to me. Clearly, your mileage varies.
I've been on the bareback train with one person. I really thought I knew the person and thought, based on conversations, etc. over the course of a year, that we had the same idea as to safer sex practices and I could trust this person to be honest about things if there were changes in risk. I always advised as to negative tests or the fact that I had never received a call from the Red Cross that I was positive for HIV or Hepatitis C for the 20+ apherisis donations I"d given over the previous few months. Turns out, he had gone bareback elsewhere. That in and of itself isn't a bad thing. However, I wasn't told that there was a change in risk for him so that I had information to make choices best for me and that was the problem for me.
That event was and remains a very big deal. The trust was gone, of course, but it was a big lesson to me that you really don't know anyone else. I don't know if I'll ever be able to put some trust or faith in the words coming out of someone else's mouth when it comes to safe sex and histories and exposures. It's just going to be easier to require condoms so that I don't have to rely on someone else being truthful as to any change in risk.
I've tried to tell myself the same thing that you are sying, Tyler - it's really no difference. But when it comes to HIV, the stats say otherwise and my head can't get past that difference in the stats between oral and intercourse. It does exist, and it was the basis of my choice and that doesn't mean weak or illusion.
So, to each their own. I have no issue with the concept of bareback. I certainly would have preferred to have continued to do so. I'm glad others don't seem to have the same amount of problems I do with stats, and trust, and acceptance of risk.