What’s worse than a gamergater? A gamergater giving medical advice.
Mike Cernovich is spreading misinformation now, in a post about avoiding STDs. He first tells us that American women, especially those feminists, are diseased and proud of it (he gives a few quotes that show that people at Jezebel are conscious of the prevalence of STDs, but not that they take pride in it). Then he shows an incomplete chart of the frequency of HIV infections, and announces If you’re a straight man, you will not get HIV.
His entire article is built around misinterpreting this one chart, and one citation…of a 2004 article in Details magazine, the “Modern Man’s Guide to Culture and Style”.
Let’s keep this simple: he’s wrong.
The Center for AIDS Prevention studies answers the question, Are heterosexual men at risk?
Yes. In the US, new AIDS cases are increasing among people who were infected through injecting drug use (IDU) and heterosexual sexual contact. The rise in IDU infections in heterosexual men has led to the rise in HIV infections in women, as more women become infected from men who are IDUs. For this reason, sexual behavior change among heterosexual men will be key to controlling the HIV epidemic for heterosexual men, women and children.
Women’s Health addresses the myth that Women can’t give men HIV.
It’s much harder for men to get HIV from women, but it does happen. HIV does not live long outside the body. A man’s penis is only exposed to HIV for the time that it is in a vagina or rectum. Men also may have fewer areas on the penis where the virus can enter the body. HIV can enter at the opening of the tip and through cuts or sores on the shaft. But if a partner has an untreated sexually transmitted infection (STI) like syphilis, gonorrhea, or chlamydia, the risk is higher. These infections can bring more CD4 cells to the area of infection, or cause breaks in the skin, both increasing the risk of passing HIV. Meanwhile, women have a higher risk of getting HIV from men. Because HIV is in the man’s semen, which can stay in the woman’s vagina for days, her exposure time is longer after sex. Also, the vagina provides a much larger area than the penis does through which HIV can enter the woman’s body.
AIDS.gov has advice for men having vaginal sex.
Insertive vaginal sex (penis in the vagina) without a condom is considered a high-risk behavior for HIV transmission, but it is less risky for the male partner than the female partner.
In men, HIV can enter the body through the urethra (the opening at the tip of the penis) or through small cuts or open sores on the penis. Men who are not circumcised are at greater risk of HIV infection through vaginal sex than are circumcised men.
Your risk of HIV infection increases if you or your partner also has an STD.
Use a new condom with a water-based lubricant every time you have insertive vaginal sex to prevent STDs, including HIV.
These are all more reliable sources than Mike Cernovich or Details magazine. Cernovich is a dangerous moron.
I’m not even going to touch his obsession with black women and their sex with down low brothas
. Ick.
The best advice? Don’t have sex with Mike Cernovich. He’s filthy and has bizarre ideas about sexual hygiene.
Aha! Of course a real gamer would never do drugs, so it clearly is the women’s fault if they have such low standards that they sleep with drug-addicts instead of well-mannered better-looking healthy nerds.
*Looks at a picture of “JuiceBro”*
Steroids don’t count as drugs, right?
Mike Cernovich then is one of the right-wing assholes who insists that AIDS is a disease almost exclusively afflicting gay men. Fuck. Him.
Fucking Christ. And with his standard feminist bashing, that’s a bigotry trifecta.
barbaz @1,
According to their PR strategy gamergaters never get to have sex with anyone, at all, ever.
So we need not worry.
Evidently, according to that post at “archive.today”, straight men do not even get HIV from sharing drug syringes — unless they’re black, that is.
You could have safe sex with Cernovich, but first, you’d have to boil him for 30 minutes at 212F (at sea level), dry him off, pour rubbing alcohol (min. 70% isopropyl alcohol) over him, and encase him completely in non-allergenic plastic. Why, exactly, you’d want to have sex with a racist/sexist bigot is another matter entirely.
I’m constantly surprised that Americans in particular seem, in my limited experience, to believe this myth more than others. Don’t you guys have a Famous Sports Guy called Magic Johnson who announced that he had HIV while being straight years ago?
Yeah, but according to Cernovich, Johnson was still susceptible to HIV because he’s black.
“If you’re a straight man, you will not get HIV.
Funny how he doesn’t even assert that straight WOMEN are safe from HIV.
There are of course, millions of straight, male, HIV victims in Africa; but of course they’re black too.
Worldwide, HIV is overwhelmingly a disease among heterosexuals. Unfortunately, that fact is too complex for a lot of people to understand.
Holms:
Two reasons for this:
1. HIV/AIDS in the United States really did initially become a big thing in gay communities first. But more importantly
2. We have a lot of right-wing homophobic bigots who will ignore ANYTHING in order to seize on small factoids, distort it to suit their agenda, and will shriek the half of a half of a half truth from the rooftops in order to ensure that there is no one free of misinformation and bigotry.
HIV/AIDS is really the right-wing bigots dream disease. It started in Africa, came from a strain that initially affected monkeys, and disproportionately affects African-Americans and gay people. It lets them easily come up with homophobic and racist bullshit myths, which is their bread and butter.
Wow Mike, you’re setting yourself up for a hilariously ironic death.
Crikey, PZ – here I was thinking Mike C jumped on the GomerGate flat-bed because he was honestly and truly concerned about ethics in game journalism (which literally wasn’t even a problem until the year 2013, apparently), but now you’re telling me he’s a not-even-bothered-to-try-and-conceal-it racist and opportunistic, pants-wetting rageboy who thinks women are literally filthy sluts and who will cherry-pick decade-old “data” to back himself up? ?
Colour me surprised (if “surprised” turns out to a shade of brown, best keep me away from Cernovich so he doesn’t think I’m trying to cuckold him).
—
Sigh.
Not that anyone’s keeping score, but let’s go ahead and add “Citing misinterpreted/flawed/cherry-picked data to support ones chosen mythology” to the “Ways MRAs/Gaters Resemble Creationists” list.
Well, you sure want to be Mike Cernovich’s bitch if you leave your link in his backdoor.
So I came here for a rebuttal and what do I get? A guy who’s parroting some convenient sources and doesn’t even care to present and interpret his own data. Where’s your part of the thinking?
But that’s okay. We all want visitors. Being a bit raunchy along the way will only make you the more controversial. Way to go.
I know a straight guy with HIV. He didn’t think he could catch it through heterosexual sex either.
I really, really wish Cernovich would just dry up and blow away.
Mike Cernovich has lots of company when it comes to being ignorant about HIV. Take, for example, faux historian David Barton:
Link
As Tauriq Moosa pointed out on Twitter, Mike ‘juicebro’ Cernovich has stealthily amended his post… somewhat. It’s homeopathically truthier! (i.e. by about 0.01% closer to the truth, way over on the opposite side where there are facts)
Before:
After:
Contacting and contracting are two different things, but this is not much of an improvement.
Before:
After:
Again, it’s not a huge improvement on Juicebro’s ignorantly and dangerously unsafe advice.
Leave it to David Barton to find new and imaginative ways to be tragically wrong… If/when they do find a way to create a vaccine for HIV, he’ll just seamlessly change his tune to how the vaccine is anti-Christian because it’s interfering with God’s work.
As for Mike, I can’t shake the feeling that a lot of his HIV ramblings might be motivated reasoning. Anyone who has had the misfortune of sleeping with him might want to get tested…
I realize you hate Cernovich, but I would’ve thought a blog devoted to “free thought” would care more about getting the science right than scoring points against someone. Transmission of HIV from a non-IV drug using heterosexual woman to a non-IV drug using heterosexual male in the US is extremely rare: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21062593. You have a higher risk of drowning in the bathtub or getting breast cancer (yes, about ~3K men a year in the US get breast cancer). The point isn’t that there’s no risk. There’s a risk that if you get up to get a glass of water you’ll slip and break your neck. There’s a risk that if you pick your nose you might get a deadly untreatable infection. Etc., etc. The point is that the risk is so small that it’s probably not worth worrying about.
Your evidence?
Yep, it will never happen to you. Just ask anybody taking AIDS drugs. It wasn’t supposed to happen to them. You presented opinion, not science. Science says it happens, and if you screw around, you increase your odds. So, why are you defending slyme?
Satoshi, #19
But the scientific consensus IS that having unprotected intercourse with an HIV positive woman poses some risk to the man. Having sex with her increases a non-IV drug using man’s risk from zero. Scientific medicine does not say that a man should go ahead and have unprotected intercourse with an HIV-positive woman because “it’s probably not worth worrying about”.
Your breast cancer point doesn’t work because unprotected sex is a certain way of increasing one’s risk. There isn’t a defined clear cut activity that a man can avoid in order to completely eliminate getting breast cancer.
In short, you’re the one getting the science wrong.
Satoshi Kamastura wrote:
I don’t have access to the full article, but the abstract of that document doesn’t claim what you say it claims. First, it’s from Melbourne, which is Australia, not the U.S. Second, it’s just reporting that the chance for a positive test done on “low-risk” (no intravenous drug use or overseas sexual contact) men is extremely low, and doesn’t mention sex with HIV positive women except when talking about the high-risk group.
Fuck off with your disingenuous bullshit, Satoshi.
Satoshi Kamastura:
What does “worry about” mean in this context? There’s no sense in getting worried to the point where the fear consumes your life. But it’s probably a good idea to worry just enough to ensure that you remember to use condoms when it’s appropriate.
If you read the Cernovich article, he’s not worried enough to use condoms. He’s been relying on coconut oil and some kind of magic soap to protect himself from STDs. (And from unwanted pregnancies, I guess; he doesn’t mention them.) He helpfully provides his Amazon affiliate link if you’d like to buy some, but it just seems too risky to me.
Using Satoshi and Cernovich logic: There were 13,834 deaths from AIDS in 2011. This is 1/3rd of the number of deaths caused by:
Falling
Motor accidents
Accidental poisoning
Therefore we should not be afraid of AIDS at all, it is practically no threat.
(Please ignore that the number in deaths is in the ball park of the number deaths caused in homicides)
This happened.
Yes, Satoshi. My heterosexual friend with HIV would agree with you.
You’re the worst kind of person.
*facepalm*
Satoshi Kamastura @ 20
…you realise that’s an aggregate statistic, right? It’s like me saying, “Well, there’s only 0.86 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in my country each year, so the odds of me actually getting shot are only 0.00086%! That’s so small as to be negligible! Therefore it is perfectly safe for me to sleep with a loaded handgun with the safety off under my pillow.”
Huh… yep, probably not befriending that guy any time soon. I mean, I dunno, maybe all he needs is a sitcom style adventure where he meets some impossibly patient and gentle soul from “the other side” who shows him the error of his ways, and by the end he says “I think we’re going to be good friends, and I’ve changed!” and then that guy never shows up again? Hey it worked for Homer Simpson!