origin of AIDS: "it was one guy screwing a monkey"

http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/01/26/stacey-campfield-on-the-origins-of-aids-it-was-one-guy-screwing-a-monkey

Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall. My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]. What's the average lifespan of a homosexual? it's very short. Google it yourself."

best use of "IIRC" ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ga%C3%ABtan_Dugas&oldid=420463332

man fuck that guy

no thanks!

guy monkey

It could have been a drug user who shared needles w/a monkey, no?

also let's be real here it was probably a chimp not a monkey

i heard u can get it from shaking hands w/a monkey

No no no it's from sharing a toilet seat with a monkey...

just to be clear here, the most likely culprit was bushmeat, not monkey-fucking.

whatever u want to call it man

hehe "bushmeat"

This reminds me of those SPIN reports from the early nineties purporting to tell The Real Story.

oh man, i remember those

iirc Spin said it was a government conspiracy? or that HIV doesn't cause AIDS?

I heard chimps would put tainted needles in pay phone change receptacles in order to infect the Monkees.

spin twitters those things these days iirc

xp Careless Tork costs lives.

or that HIV doesn't cause AIDS?

^^^it was this

alternate theory was to blame "environmental factors" (ie, promiscuous sex, drug use) that damaged the immune system so badly they developed the symptoms of AIDS

somehow George. H.W. Bush was responsible. Having sex with Barbara released HIV microbes into the atmosphere, later breathed in by gay men.

perhaps the most irritating thing is that this dude's nonsense isn't even internally consistent. he seems to be aware that penetrative sex rarely leads to transmission (hence the "My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]" bit), in which case if a monkey was going to have transmitted the virus to humans via sex, the monkey would most likely had to have fucked the gay man in order to transmit the virus, not the other way around.

I'm thinking about this too much.

the monkey would most likely had to have fucked the gay man in order to transmit the virus, not the other way around.

your point?

the Gridler

I'm thinking about this too much.

― Full Frontal Newtity (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, January 27, 2012 5:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mmmm

i think that point is self evident

there are some sicko monkeys out there

the Gridler

― buzza, Friday, January 27, 2012 5:22 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

your point?

well the real culprit isn't the gay man, it's the vicious, diseased rapist monkey!

well the real culprit isn't the gay man, it's the vicious, diseased rapist monkey!

― Full Frontal Newtity (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, January 27, 2012 4:24 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

worst sherlock holmes mystery ever

It's the gay guy's fault for dressing like a sexy monkey.

Oh so the guy was a furry as well?

he seems to be aware that penetrative sex rarely leads to transmission (hence the "My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]" bit)

i am clarifying for myself here not picking you up on anything but the use of the word 'aware' above is throwing me off - afaik "penetrative sex rarely leads to transmission" is not true. right; this isn't a part you're conceding to his admittedly otherwise warped logic. i just wanna clarify for myself bc it's weird to see it.

I haven't worked in the HIV/AIDS industry in 15+ years but my understanding is that the likelihood of the HIV virus being transmitted from the receptive to the penetrative partner via vaginal/hetero sex is, in fact, really low. maybe stats have changed in the intervening period, I haven't kept up.

which (I think) is the factoid the quoted dude is admittedly mangling

This was a pretty good take on the origins of AIDS:

http://www.radiolab.org/2011/nov/14/aids/

I haven't worked in the HIV/AIDS industry in 15+ years but my understanding is that the likelihood of the HIV virus being transmitted from the receptive to the penetrative partner via vaginal/hetero sex is, in fact, really low. maybe stats have changed in the intervening period, I haven't kept up.

ty for this, i appreciate it. i did some training in this a while ago & don't really remember an emphasis on 'really low', though i understand it might be less common - it was made easier to understand, to me, when it was broken down to a focus on mucous membranes, i think, the concentration of which in different areas correlated w/likelihood of transmission, & which was still an issue in the formula you mention. would welcome anyone else's expertise here fwiw.

I heart radiolab

Yup, was going to post the Radiolab link, too. Excellent piece (to this layman, at least).

I haven't worked in the HIV/AIDS industry in 15+ years but my understanding is that the likelihood of the HIV virus being transmitted from the receptive to the penetrative partner via vaginal/hetero sex is, in fact, really low. maybe stats have changed in the intervening period, I haven't kept up.

― Full Frontal Newtity (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 27 January 2012 22:53 (20 minutes ago) Permalink

yes, this is a fact which I think some people try to downplay because they're worried it would lead to hetero people being dismissive of STD risks.

WOULD U EVER GO TO A GAY BEACH DURING MOSQUITO SEASON?

look at every HIV outbreak in the porn industry: it's always one male and then a bunch of females he performed with. Hetero men lucked out w/r/t HIV.

xp

*throws condoms into the ocean*

nah bro you'll get warts or somethin'

plus what if you get super drunk and you want to take a walk on the wild side

troo

is the wild side gay sex

take a walk (sex) on the wild side (gay sex)

plus what if you get super drunk and want to take a sex on the gay sex

what if you get super drunk and want to gay sex a monkey

def. wrap it up for monkeysex

i thought wild side meant ass sex, which is how you get HIV

either way do not first throw your condoms in the ocean is my takeaway from this thread

OK I just got back here yesterday and I'm beginning to understand some perspectives about a dude on this board.

that's probably dangerous to the fish

OK I just got back here yesterday and I'm beginning to understand some perspectives about a dude on this board.

really? who? (send me a PM)

But was the monkey riding backwards on a pig????

always wink wink

I'ma just post my thoughts from my understanding and learning from being intensely interested in medical anthropology for many years... not trying to be all "As an expert in this field..."

I don't know of anyone trying to have sex with a chimp, but it seems more likely that a Chimp would rip your peener off and then start chewing your face off. I don't really think humans should be interacting with other primates in "deep meaningful ways" like as pets or in constant close cohabitation with them for experiments cause they can without any warning flip out into a enraged wild animal with enormous strength and cunning.

Chimpanzees also regularly engage the genocide of rival tribes, and cannibalism and infanticide. (Not much different than humans in that regard I guess).

Yes, it was BUSHMEAT that led SIV to mutate zoonotically to Humans, turning into HIV. Likely from a chimp or bonobo, def. not from tree monkeys. I don't really know the whole how it got out of Africa story but it seems clear now that it hit the Caribbean before mainland US.

CLEARLY though, the first real and legit victims of HIV and AIDS are unknown indigenous Africans in the 60s... (possibly even the late 50s) Nobody talks about them tho.

Also it is true that M2M and M2F (primarily through anal sex) transmission is fairly easy but F2M transmission is much rarer, due primarily to the way sex works. Its clear anal sex is the most dangerous in terms of transmission bcz of "microtears"... ugh, this is getting a little TMI maybe. Obv. with needle drug use anybody can give it to anybody easily.

Anyway, lots of hope these days -- the cocktail keeps people alive and healthy for decades and decades and there have been (at least one) confirmed cures - IIRC.

So is this to be a catch-all thread for HIV/AIDS craziness or just this specific asshole on radio? Cause I don't think disinfo and misinfo w/r/t to AIDS is going to go away anytime soon, unfortunately.

I totally take this>>>i thought wild side meant ass sex, which is how you get HIV to be in the spirit of the joeks and ironic statements on this thread, and not at all anti-gay, but it came across as tone-deaf. From the little I've seen, if ham-fistedness has a platonic ideal, you're burning your corneas.

Also, reputation colors perception, which isn't fair, but there it is regardless. I get the impression you're having a rough time on this board, but that's probably not entirely due to others' misperceptions. It's like you still manage to walk into people's fists even when they're not swinging their arms and walking towards you.

The whole thing with the airline pilot (he was actually a steward) comes from And the Band Played On, which kind of became the most influential book about about AIDS, and which (I need to really read it to be sure but anyways) really plays up the whole "patient zero" thing in a really questionable narrative building way.

Also it is true that M2M and M2F (primarily through anal sex) transmission is fairly easy but F2M transmission is much rarer, due primarily to the way sex works. Its clear anal sex is the most dangerous in terms of transmission bcz of "microtears"... ugh, this is getting a little TMI maybe. Obv. with needle drug use anybody can give it to anybody easily.

True. The risk of F2M transmission does increase a lot with the presence of other STIs esp those that cause lesions the prevalence of which might account for higher rates of F2M transmissions in certain parts of the world.

xpost to myself: i.e. you can't, nor is there any merit in, trying to locate a specific originator. But it's nice to see people are still adopting homophobic AIDS myths (we all know it was a Soviet cold war plot anyways).

Lol I love ATBPO but that is prob p true.

really? who? (send me a PM)

― frogs you are the dumbest asshole (frogbs), Friday, January 27, 2012 3:38 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

okay, no fucking way. who's sock is this?

erm, whoos whose hoos

Ignore him. He obv gets off on all this.

Lol I love ATBPO

― ENBB, Friday, January 27, 2012 7:12 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just remember to always use a condom erica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3Om9WjgpQ

True. The risk of F2M transmission does increase a lot with the presence of other STIs esp those that cause lesions the prevalence of which might account for higher rates of F2M transmissions in certain parts of the world.

yeah.. blood. no good. We should just get rid of it!

i'd like to think armond white did the vo for the shakma trailer

oh that youtube reminds me to seem Margret at cinefam this wk

there are important conversations that people need to be having about HIV right now and this is not one of them.

ice cram - it took me a second but then I LOLd in the middle of Dunkin Donuts. Loudly.

btw does anyone who lives in la know why all the fucking aids billboards for the past year have been so horrible and embarrassing

ice cram - it took me a second but then I LOLd in the middle of Dunkin Donuts. Loudly.

― ENBB, Friday, January 27, 2012 7:31 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

B-)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X2_QFeXUHTY/TfHhPG6yooI/AAAAAAAAAEs/vbb8_WzmeC8/s1600/AIDS+Billboard.jpg

I can't find an img of the new billboard but it features a sleepy bulldog with the words FEELING STRESSED? over it's head

Well. That's pretty strange.

do it with mom more like right

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CHOhiKxdGWQ/S8Q1UaCt80I/AAAAAAAAAC0/tH3agwBDTQo/s320/DSCN0041.JPG

tbf that ones p funny

all the HIV billboards in my 'hood show empty vials of crystal meth and a cheery font asking, "Party too much last night? Get tested!"

you know why!

because youre a drunk slut!

i miss the blair underwood "man up" billboards

then there are all those billboards for the clap around hollywood

yeah blair was p alright

blair underwood everyones avatar of manhood

ok sorry this is the last one

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5-X2RrsSpZI/TZtad8s4ZPI/AAAAAAAAbFQ/fl1HOXmBSZA/s800/Mona%2BLisa%2BHIV%2Bbillboard.jpg

What do the clap ones say? You know for a very long time I thought the clap was Chlamydia. I remember learning it was Gonorrhea and just thinking but that doesn't make sense! Chlamydia = C Clap = C - much more logical!

alright that one is legit vv odd

yeah

lol what if da vinci had gone in that direction

down la brea?

that bitch aint clean bro

CLEARLY though, the first real and legit victims of HIV and AIDS are unknown indigenous Africans in the 60s... (possibly even the late 50s) Nobody talks about them tho.

its likely that HIV was first transmitted in the late 1920s

a v impressive dude started this thing: http://www.gvfi.org/

they do bloodwork on hunters that are exposed to bushmeat to check out what might be coming down the pike, virus-wise

btw peter duesberg is/was a v v bad man

dudes named stacey overcompensating

wish he'd said 'encarta it'

Man, I was reading a few articles lately explaining that HIV was likely appearing a few times in North America in the 1950s/1960s, if not before. England, too.

ok gbx beat me to this by two posts

btw peter duesberg is/was a v v bad man

x1000 - I was going to bring that up when I saw people had been talking about denialism but then I got distracted.

really hope this stacey campfield person has something very horrible happen to him fwiw

basically think that AIDS denialism (and the gay panic around it) is roughly equivalent to holocaust denial, tbh.

many xposts but is the why on that 'u kno why!!' billboard is especially bolded? It just kinda looks that way.

maybe worse, if only because AIDS denialism shaped policies that could have otherwise prevented transmission of a disease that killed over two million people in 2010

It gets me really really angry. When Christine Maggiore's daughter died and she still denied that she had AIDS . . . ugh. I think she died too, actually. We had this whole thing at my last job where some company in South Africa that manufactured vitamins was misquoting research my boss had done in order to support some denialist theories and tout vitamins as a cure-all to HIV. It was a mess.

i hate it so much. and whenever i start thinking stuff like "well that catholic church does SOME good stuff with like orphanages and hospitals and what not" (mostly because my mom, the irish secular catholic, can't completely abandon all faith in the church) i have to remember that the church's ban on prophylaxis has lead directly, inexorably, to literally millions of unnecessary deaths. and then my head explodes.

we should all learn about these things from comedians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnGakbprjgE

"Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering deadly new viruses where they first emerge -- passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa -- before they claim millions of lives."
http://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_wolfe_hunts_for_the_next_aids.html

CLEARLY though, the first real and legit victims of HIV and AIDS are unknown indigenous Africans in the 60s... (possibly even the late 50s) Nobody talks about them tho.

jacques pepin's new book does talk about them, not so much as individuals but he does note some outbreaks of disease that in retrospect sound a lot like HIV.

also i think you can date the first human deaths from HIV back to the '30s/'40s. rapid population shifts (toward cities) and increased migrant labor, and very possibly immunization campaigns, accelerated the spread in '50s/'60s.

there are important conversations that people need to be having about HIV right now and this is not one of them.
― judith, Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:30 (53 minutes ago) Permalink

the intention of the thread was to mock a truly idiotic tennessee state senator.

actually IIRC the jump from lower primates to humans is probably dated 1900–30, based on current research. so the first human AIDS cases (unobserved obviously) could have been as early as the turn of the century.

GBX - Yeah, I know. :/

and amateurist drops some serious knowledge. thank you!

don't take my word for it

http://www.amazon.com/Origins-AIDS-Jacques-Pepin/dp/0521186374/

(although i find epidemiology totally fascinating. partly it's just the attempt to construct a narrative where this major "event" has so many complex causes that have to be clarified and untangled.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Farber

^^^she is a real piece o'work

and amateurist drops some serious knowledge. thank you!

man am I chopped bushmeat or what

ah, go fuck a money.

:)

"I have had it with these monkeyfucking snakes on this monkeyfucking plane!" etc.

In simian porn, is the end of the scene called the monkey shot?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-lEzYZMo1k

he makes some excellent points

very surprised that a throwaway yung joc single from 5 years ago showing up in so many places now

man i miss dave chappelle

lest we forget:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51e16rO4NtL._SS500_.jpg
(I love how big the actors names are for a novelization)

DUSTIN HOFFMAN
RENE RUSSO
and
MORGAN FREEMAN

(are all in a movie that formed the basis for a cash-in novelization of)

OUTBREAK

lol i always assumed outbreak was based on a creighton novel

'now a major motion picture' lol its always been a major motion picture stupid book

andromeda strain was the crichton one

Sorry, but I gotta say that I find this thread in general kind of O(ff)TM, insofar as its "theme" ("haha, look at this idiot and his ridiculous AIDS explanations") more or less belies a whole history of extremely powerful, yet extremely ridiculous, AIDS explanations that indelibly shaped AIDS discourse in its first decade, and evidently, remains today (which isn't so much funny for being an absurd anomaly so much as scary because of the resilience of early ultra-homophobic AIDS theories).

Yeah I know I made a joke about soviet conspiracies, but only because that too was a real theory about AIDS. Essentially I'm just reiterating the point made in this important essay by Paula Treichler on AIDS and Biomedical discourse, which is all about how "We cannot effectively analyze AIDS or develop intelligent social policy if we dismiss such conceptions as irrational myths and homophobic fantasies which deliberately ignore the 'real scientific facts'."

Why are there scare quotes around "real medical facts"? I don't think this thread is putting anything up as unimpeachable or any one person or viewpoint as authoritative. Just kind of seems like a cathartic diss session against sources we can all jointly agree are so very wrong.

"screw the monkey!"

http://animalvideo.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Peter-Gabriel-Shock-the-Monkey-HQ-music-video.jpg

xpost:

Those are Paula Treichler's words, not mine. And she's using scare quotes advisedly and legitimately, The article discusses in length how the idea of "real scientific" facts are indissociable from an AIDS discourse that includes ideas about guys screwing monkeys. The whole point (i.e. her point) is that as wrong as these guys are, you can't necessarily dismiss them, because the whole social phenomenon of AIDS is more or less founded on ideas that are so very wrong, and that even includes (this is undeniable in the 80s) scientific conceptions of it.

so, what are the proper semiotics of AIDS discourse? that article is tl;dr, sorry

I don't think it's a matter of semiotics or there being proper answers. The article is essentially just applying Foucauldian discourse analysis to the construction of AIDS. I'm not trying to be a party pooper, just saying that cathartic diss sessions have their undersides too.

ok, so the discourse is problematized. do you have an alternative?

Stacey Campfield is my very own state senator.

sigh...

No. Nor do I think it is, or that I ever purported it to be, a matter of applying an alternative. Nor do I think that that is a nihilistic or reductive position, applied for the sake of "problematizing discourses." Finally, I don't see why you're badgering me about me about this, as if I was suggesting everyone is wrong and I hold the answer. Having spent a decent portion of last year reading about writing about stuff related to this, it irks me that people take a right-and-wrong stance about these things.

I know the scare quotes are hers, but that doesn't mean they're not over-applied in this context. The problem is that science isn't a once-and-done thing. Even if studies did exist, or the actual consensus was slightly off at the time, that does not mean that today's view isn't more nuanced or scientifically sound. Frankly, I would very much hope it would be. The disdain here isn't for "oh, these people are dumb" it's that although they may have had some valid points in the 80s/90s about the efficacy of treatments and the validity of the views and science of the time, it's that these people are unrepentant and actually still espouse these views.

We're not looking back and saying "oh they were wrong so they're responsible." We're saying that these people STILL BELIEVE crap like "HIV and AIDS have no causality link" or feel that such views are worth publicizing.

Can we at least agree that taking the stance that they're taking in 2012 is reprehensible and wrong?

Well, you really can't blame me for scare quotes in a copied and pasted quote. And isn't that the point? that these ridiculous claims are still being made by influential people. At the same time, I think it's too simple to say "oh that's how things were back in the 80s when people were just ignorant." With AIDS, knowledge about the illness was essentially disseminated by very particular channels that were influenced by these attitudes, and that was exacerbated by blind faith in scientific institutions. I'm not saying that we don't have a more nuanced understanding, but that AIDS has been vulnerable to its constructions all across the board.

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned in this thread (amazingly) is the fact that a state senator having absurd notions about AIDS has real ramifications for say, AIDS funding and support in Tennessee.

(This isn't about intellectual masturbation, but the fact that these statements, no matter how wrong they are, or how problematized a discourse is, have real power).

ok EDB, can you tell me what we should do with such 'conceptions' if not deny them as 'irrational myths and homophobic fantasies'

what is the first step towards denying a statement its power? xp

Realize that if a state senator utters them that that has the potential to affect real legislation, as opposed to laughing it off.

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned in this thread (amazingly) is the fact that a state senator having absurd notions about AIDS has real ramifications for say, AIDS funding and support in Tennessee.

Not if knowledgeable people jump on that senator immediately and with both feet for being reprehensible, wrong, laughable and downright stupid.

In other words, calling that senator out for idiocy is not the same as laughing it off.

But reading this thread sounds a hell of a lot more like laughing it off than calling anyone out.

Well, to be fair, the senator probably knows less about ILX than he does AIDS

I dunno, I think anything else I can say was summed up already:

there are important conversations that people need to be having about HIV right now and this is not one of them.
― judith, Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:30 (53 minutes ago) Permalink

what is the first step towards denying a statement its power? xp

ridicule.

hah, I mean, I don't think anybody has claimed that this was meant to be an 'important discussion' about HIV? what in the first 20 posts led you to believe that? is this the only thread on HIV/AIDS on ILX? xp

I'm shocked that a thread called 'origin of AIDS: "it was one guy screwing a monkey"' is lacking in serious discourse!

Just as I'm shocked that anyone would read that post in a strictly literal way.

I think this is one of those topics where anyone who lacks a distance from the topic -- anyone who knows anyone with HIV, anyone who works in HIV education, or sex ed, or similar -- is going to be turned off of the discourse, and with good reason. This isn't a topic that I'm particularly emotionally invested in, and I don't think this kind of mocking of the ignorant is going to hold anything for people who do have that investment.

Maybe it's more of a "humor not for EDB" kind of thing? To be fair, the more I type here the less humorous I find this guy's ignorance and the more depressing it becomes.

I heart radiolab

Esp the one which had Linda Thompson in it. Sad too. :-(

idk, engaging with this idiot's discourse on any level other than scorn seems to be giving it a legitimacy it doesn't deserve. maybe EDB or others can point to a more fruitful way of dealing with this person and his comments.

Educate those you can, politely inform those who can be informed, and recognize that all moments are not teachable ones. I kind of doubt sending this guy's office a strongly-worded letter setting the record straight is going to help anyone

I think the thing that's been missed is that dude is a STATE SENATOR. If it was an idiot then sure, but an idiot with power has a lot more legitimacy. That's ALL I'm saying.

I think mh more or less is OTM. Having spent almost all of last year writing about AIDS in the 80s/90s, my first reaction is not necessarily amusement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Farber

^^^she is a real piece o'work

I never read her non-music writing in Spin, and dug the two Who pieces she wrote (one in which Townshend comes out as a Marxist). But holy shit, I had no idea how supremely fucked she is.

No. Nor do I think it is, or that I ever purported it to be, a matter of applying an alternative. Nor do I think that that is a nihilistic or reductive position, applied for the sake of "problematizing discourses." Finally, I don't see why you're badgering me about me about this, as if I was suggesting everyone is wrong and I hold the answer. Having spent a decent portion of last year reading about writing about stuff related to this, it irks me that people take a right-and-wrong stance about these things.

― Frasier Ramon (EDB), Saturday, January 28, 2012 4:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

IMO you've failed to actually spell out the precise danger of this thread as you perceive it. is it that we won't take the very real problem of bigoted theories of AIDS seriously? what would taking them seriously entail and why does what we are saying here suggest that we don't? does poking fun at them on this thread mean that we can't attack them seriously elsewhere, in more sober contexts?

i mean, this guy's explanation is an appalling mass of misinformation (self-contradictory misinformation, at that) and he's being pilloried for it everywhere. perhaps this simply reinforces the sense that he and some of his followers may have that they are being persecuted for holding "unpopular" "opinions"--i have no doubt that many of his constituents are just as ignorant as he is, although perhaps they don't hold so closely to outdated, bigoted ideas. but i fail to see how we will reach those people via ILX.

so again, i fail to see the harm this thread is doing.

people in positions of power make hateful, ignorant statements all the time. sneering is an acceptable response. in fact, there's even a thread dedicated to doing just that: the Kommisariat's Kontinuing Kronicles: more right-wingery in the USA, 2k11

also EDB are you in grad school? or a jr professor or something? b/c i'm getting a paranoid liberal arts grad student vibe from you. (hey, i'm one too.)

eh the danger is the same as telling jokes in poor taste -- eventually you might start trivializing the subject

like prison rape? i guess i can see that, but i don't think the jokes are to blame -- the jokes are symptomatic of a broader culture that relishes punishment.

I always thought this was an interesting theory by the Strecker Group. Forget about watching it, the audio quality is good though. Long!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OumDcU_Ndo

It was discredited but there are some interesting correlations.

The mother of a guy I knew died from congestive heart failure that was caused by pneumonia that came on because she was HIV positive. She had received a blood transfusion in the 80s in Germany where they were stationed when his dad was in the military. No one knew she was HIV positive until 1999. Her husband had been tested and re-tested and never showed up HIV positive.

It was discredited but there are some interesting correlations.

see statements like this seem more problematic to me -- what do you mean by "interesting correlations"?

i mean is monkey-fucking like a common counter-hegemonic explanation for the origin of AIDS? it seems pretty out there. i don't suspect we'd be making the same jokes about, say, the idea that HIV doesn't lead to AIDS, since that seems to still have a great deal of currency (albeit waning, no?).

and another ILX thread goes awry....

threads r def better when they start out serious then go funny

Let me clarify: When I initially read the first post I basically shrugged, since I'd already read about a thousand other statements of the same, if not much worse, ilk. And while I don't think I ever implied that there's a danger in making fun of the dude, I just wanted to communicate that this is merely another instance in a long history of absurd AIDS theories that have historically shaped how AIDS has been thought, and that historically they have held serious weight, despite their absurdity.

also EDB are you in grad school?

I refuse to answer this question.

buuuuusted

I mean correlations that sound interesting to me, who is not a scientist, physician or even above average when it comes to scientifically minded.

correlations with what?

Let me clarify: When I initially read the first post I basically shrugged, since I'd already read about a thousand other statements of the same, if not much worse, ilk. And while I don't think I ever implied that there's a danger in making fun of the dude, I just wanted to communicate that this is merely another instance in a long history of absurd AIDS theories that have historically shaped how AIDS has been thought, and that historically they have held serious weight, despite their absurdity.

― Frasier Ramon (EDB), Saturday, January 28, 2012 6:11 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we all know this already.

EDB now: I just wanted to communicate that this is merely another instance in a long history of absurd AIDS theories

EDB a few hours earlier: Sorry, but I gotta say that I find this thread in general kind of O(ff)TM, insofar as its "theme" ("haha, look at this idiot and his ridiculous AIDS explanations") more or less belies a whole history of extremely powerful, yet extremely ridiculous, AIDS explanations that indelibly shaped AIDS discourse in its first decade, and evidently, remains today (which isn't so much funny for being an absurd anomaly so much as scary because of the resilience of early ultra-homophobic AIDS theories).

you are retreating from the second quote here, which accuses the thread as being "O(ff)TM" somehow works to deny a history of bigoted AIDS explanations (but you still haven't explain how that is the case!!!). now you're just saying that you wanted to "remind" us that these explanations exist (which we already know!!!).

so, again -- what's yr beef?

garbled that last message, let me try again...

EDB now:

I just wanted to communicate that this is merely another instance in a long history of absurd AIDS theories

EDB a few hours earlier:

Sorry, but I gotta say that I find this thread in general kind of O(ff)TM, insofar as its "theme" ("haha, look at this idiot and his ridiculous AIDS explanations") more or less belies a whole history of extremely powerful, yet extremely ridiculous, AIDS explanations that indelibly shaped AIDS discourse in its first decade, and evidently, remains today (which isn't so much funny for being an absurd anomaly so much as scary because of the resilience of early ultra-homophobic AIDS theories).

you are retreating from the second quote here, which accuses the thread of being "O(ff)TM" and somehow working to deny a history of bigoted AIDS explanations. but you still haven't explain how that is the case!!! the implication is that somehow our making fun of this guy and us combating (or something--what is it people in academia do, exactly?) these explanations are incompatible.

now you're saying that you simply wanted to "remind" us that these explanations exist. but we already know this!!!

so, again -- what's yr beef?

I wouldn't entirely agree with that assessment, but my beef is my perceived lack of awareness about how those explanations have functioned. Fine, I'm probably making this up or have it all wrong, but it seems like a days worth of posts about monkey sex implies (but doesn't necessarily means) an ignorance of the fact that absurd theories hold weight, and can't be dismissed so easily, because to do so would neglect a history of that happening. Anyways, I'm tired of defending myself here so feel free to take from this whatever you want since I'm going to sleep, and have better things to do than massively derail threads.

i have A COMPLAINT abt this thread too

there are places where these battles are to be fought and should be fought; noted pillar of conservatism ILX is not one of them, imo. anyway, good night!

Watch it....

also EDB are you in grad school?

The article is essentially just applying Foucauldian discourse analysis to the construction of AIDS.

i think it's entirely reasonable for someone who has spent a year writing about AIDS and "AIDS" as a discursive construct to get a little tetchy about, you know, how AIDS is discussed by politicians and message board wags alike.

otoh, given the actual content of the posts itt, and the fact that virtually no one on ilx is a denialist (and that many ilxors have very personal experiences with the disease), getting het up about ppl laughing at a stupid idiot saying wrong (and dangerous!) things comes off as a little concern troll-y and more than a little self-righteous. you're not the only one who realizes that how we talk about something has substantive, real-deal effects on policy and culture and w/e; you're just the only person who's taken the time to point it out. in many contexts, that would be a very necessary and laudable thing to do. in a thread full of ppl that are familiar not only with HIV/AIDS (intimately, even) but the discourse around it ~as well as~ the critical tools used to investigate that discourse, it comes off as a little condescending, is all.

keep fighting the good fight. also fwiw i'd be interested to know exactly how the various misconceptions of AIDS/HIV transmission have affected policy and w/e. i know a fair bit about HIV as a disease (it's my job) but not nearly as much about its political and cultural history. by the time i was old enough to even get the concept of HIV, the info available to me was largely accurate, and i tend to forget how differently it was understood back in the day. save for the odd reminder provided, unfortunately, by my own mom: she's as left as they come, and made a point of teaching my sister and i that homosexuality was just another way people loved each other, but she's still a little clueless about how it's transmitted and who has it, and so on

x-post - LOL

GBX otm x1000. I missed all this tonight but couldn't have said it any better than Evan has here:

"otoh, given the actual content of the posts itt, and the fact that virtually no one on ilx is a denialist (and that many ilxors have very personal experiences with the disease), getting het up about ppl laughing at a stupid idiot saying wrong (and dangerous!) things comes off as a little concern troll-y and more than a little self-righteous . . . in many contexts, that would be a very necessary and laudable thing to do. in a thread full of ppl that are familiar not only with HIV/AIDS (intimately, even) but the discourse around it ~as well as~ the critical tools used to investigate that discourse, it comes off as a little condescending, is all."

btw I fuck monkeys all the time and haven't gotten HIV yet so the risk is way overblown

truth bomb

tbh before this thread I didn't know what the origins of AIDS were? I knew it wasn't some dude fucking a monkey, because I'm not stupid, but... I guess I assumed the origins were basically unknown and it didn't matter when you could be thinking about awareness/prevention/living with the disease? so this thread has been useful to me, and now if the topic comes up and someone thinks it's 'edgy' to make monkey-fucking jokes I'll be on more secure ground to shut them the fuck up.

eh the danger is the same as telling jokes in poor taste -- eventually you might start trivializing the subject

― mh, Saturday, 28 January 2012 23:43 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like prison rape? i guess i can see that, but i don't think the jokes are to blame -- the jokes are symptomatic of a broader culture that relishes punishment.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, 28 January 2012 23:50 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is all frogbs had to say but noooooo

edb otm

gbx/amateurist/ENBB/dayo etc otm

guys, turns out the origin of aids was actually a guy screwing a monkey

can someone please change this thread title to "origin of AIDS (SPOILERS)"? thanks.

lol

hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

was he otm when he acknowledged that he was close to the subject or when he dodged the grad student question

again folks, i can't recommend that pepin book (linked above) enough. it's not just one guy advancing his pet theory but a careful survey of the available research and various hypotheses. in part it attempts to synthesize a variety of hypotheses to suggest the multiple, intertwining causes of the disease's spread.

eh the danger is the same as telling jokes in poor taste -- eventually you might start trivializing the subject

― mh, Saturday, 28 January 2012 23:43 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like prison rape? i guess i can see that, but i don't think the jokes are to blame -- the jokes are symptomatic of a broader culture that relishes punishment.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, 28 January 2012 23:50 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is all frogbs had to say but noooooo

― teaky frigger (darraghmac), Sunday, January 29, 2012 6:20 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i can't parse this response; what or who is frogbs and how does it relate to the posts you're responding to?

what or who is frogbs

oh man, you are the luckiest man on ILX

explain that post to me though, is somebody calling me out or is it just something i can't expect to understand as a non-regular?

frogbs makes jokes about prison rape and it caused a cluster once. I'd just let this one go

for clarity, frogbs is a who, not a what, at last sighting

frogbs makes jokes about prison rape and it caused a cluster once. I'd just let this one go

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Sunday, January 29, 2012 3:01 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

will do.

oh, it was not an unflattering comparison, rest assured

I feel like I have contributed to driving EDB and plax away from this thread and I regret it. :-/

don't think yr post upthread is anything but a fair response tbh

Evan I don't think you did at all. What you said was totally appropriate esp considering who was posting itt. I was really pretty offended but EDB's condescending BS when I first read it and very glad to read your completely valid and otm response. Also for Plax (who I <3) to just come on here and basically say nothing about what you object to is sort of lame. I honestly don't see anything wrong with this thread and have worked in HIV and sexual health policy development.

what you object - should have read "what he objects so"

TO not so, dammit

yes, co-sign: whoever emphasised upthread that there are obvious reasons that would make this thread difficult to engage with was correct, but in this thread there shouldn't be a regulation on the style of the discourse, just because it's a serious subject. it is really positive for a "look at what this asshole said about AIDS" thread to turn into a discussion about AIDS, from all the different angles that it is thought about - socially, scientifically, empirically, historically, in the media &c&c&c. it's involving and educational. people should be able to think out loud, and people are more likely to stay engaged if there isn't a huge priority on setting aside initial or difficult thoughts for fear of falling foul of the appropriate register.

aids has been used as an ideological weapon
i mean, this is what this guy is doing, right?
he couldn't do this with cancer, though people have lost friends just the same with aids, saw them fading in front of them. watching somebody die is terrible.
i realise that we live in a different world now. that aids is treatable. we live in a world of retrovirals where aids treatment becomes about access, about the intersection and segmentation of groups, of visibility and of who is deemed worth saving. for whatever reason.
this guy isn't a joke.
i mean,
he's a terrible person. but what he says is only ridiculous inasmuch as you think of his words as existing in some vacuum of pure objectivity, whatever that is. as if this rhetoric doesnt echo to here from some time and place where words uttered by people in power, like him, don't influence public policy on who is and isn't deemed worth saving, and whatever reason that might be for. and as if that time was not also now, because time is always overlapping.
(i realise there were congolese people dying, just the same, sixty or more years ago, but this mans words are not whether or not those people are worth saving)
to just, like, ridicule this mans words is kindof to ridicule what the AIDS crisis is, the event and its representation collapsing into each other. A war about who is and who isn't worth saving, waged as a war of representations. but one with real material effects: cuts to aids research, needle exchange programs, lgbt youth homelessness support services. cuts cuts cuts.
and celibacy as sex education. and rising infection rates as younger generations, not schooled to be afraid, become sexually active, at risk.
this seems obvious, you can't just shrug these things off. being above them. they have to be understood for what they are and tackled for what they are. you can't like laugh this shit off and point to science because its pretty obvious that this isn't really about facts.

EDB was like "man I really want to pull rank and show off my expertise" but no one was saying anything incorrect so he tried a hail mary.

he couldn't do this with cancer, though people have lost friends just the same with aids, saw them fading in front of them. watching somebody die is terrible.

he certainly ~could~ do this with cancer (and mental health, and addiction, and any other malady you care to name...foucault has been paged, and is the attending).

like if you want to make a thread that was ostensibly started to be a moment of catharsis into Part of The Problem, go right ahead, fine

he couldn't do it now at this moment with his constituencies. otherwise totally. and i did actually mention drug addicts who are part of the undesirables that this particular rhetoric is sequestering (along with sexually active teenage girls &c&c&c) that the pathologisation of the body has not and will not be the site of many interventions, of power flowing through and across these spaces. this i wouldn't contest. but if you bring up anything that might not happen in another context, given any other set of variables. we could be here forever.

or you could just all hang out in here being right.

I agree with a good part of that plax, but if you don't respond to this type of invective with science*, then what do you respond to it with?

*acknowledging that 'science' was probably fully responsible for lots of harm during the 80s, as has been suggested itt

you're making it sound like having a laugh at the expense of a terrible person in nashville is tantamount to rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, or fiddling while rome burns. but, you know, it isn't. levity in the face of severity isn't impious, it's human. i'd expect you to understand that, but w/e

xps

I mean, if this is in fact a war of ideology, instead of science vs. crazy shit deniers say, then that becomes scary, because in ideological battles no one side can ever claim to be on the absolute and objective correct side of the line as one could more easily assume with science as a foundation.

judith et al, i agree with your political analysis but i dunno about the idea that mockery and humor is not an appropriate response to something like this. again it seems like grad-school policing of the discourse b.s.

again, it depends on the venue. if i was writing an op-ed for the NYT, would i want my critique to be chiefly couched in terms of mockery? no, probably not. on ILX, in a community of like-minded and generally informed folks, i don't see the problem.

xxxpost

Amateurist and dayo and gbx otm. I don't get the objections itt at all.

fwiw this thread has now concerned itself with the Discourse, and not base lolz, so mission accomplished, chapeau.

goodbye lolz, it was good to know you.

goodbye lolz, it was good to know you.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Sunday, January 29, 2012 8:14 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kind of the grad-school credo when you think about it.

One thing bugged me about that Radiolab piece - it gets the story of the origin of the term "Patient Zero" wrong. They said that in the early 80s, AIDS patients' sexual history was charted and each patient was given a number, and Gaieten Dugas' number just happened to be 0.

This inaccuracy caused me to question the accuracy of other info in the the rest of the story. WTF, that's pretty basic stuff unless I've been totally misinformed??

I thought the laughter was p innocuous but I gotta admit plax is completely on point

(sorry Je55e)

dudes fucking monkeys will never not be funny, no one can ever take that away from us

Co-sign with everything judith said, which is all totally right. This thread is reaffirming a whole way of thinking that has been having negative effects for decades. If you find my "condescending BS" or pulling hail marys offensive, then that's your own problem. History doesn't go away so that we can have lolz.

This thread is reaffirming a whole way of thinking

WHAT way of thinking?

actually, add to that question another one: and how do jokes on this thread reaffirm that way of thinking? please be as clear and straightforward as possible in your answer. so far i can't grasp exactly what you arguing.

to just, like, ridicule this mans words is kindof to ridicule what the AIDS crisis is, the event and its representation collapsing into each other.

this is completely insane. just fyi.

Can a mod just ban me from this thread so that I don't continue to just waste everyone's time.

that's sort of defeatist. i'm not irritated by your posts or anything, i just don't really understand where you're coming from.

FWIW I agree with most (if not all) of what EDB and Plax have said throughout and think that making those points would be a necessary thing to do in some contexts. I do not, however, think that it was necessarily called for on this particular thread. Sometimes people need to be able to get angry and say - "Hey, get a load of this jerkface" and in this instance I don't think that's a dangerous thing.
As someone who has both studied and worked in sexual health, these are issues that are of both interest and importance to me and I am acutely aware of the value in recognizing the history and origins of the myths surrounding HIV when it comes to policy and programming decision making. TBH, it was the tone of EDB's original protestation that bothered me the most esp considering that there were some interesting discussions starting to happen within the thread that he seemed to ignore entirely. It just came off as really unnecessary and self-righteous to me within the context of this thread.

that's sort of defeatist.

Well duh...

Where I'm coming from is that, at least in the 80s, AIDS policy was largely shaped not just at some grand top-down level, but at the level of the public. It seems like the whole lol-monkeysex thing is an echo of lol-gayplague or whatever dismissmals that ignored the extent to which those attitudes created the realities of the cultural existence of the epidemic. This is what I meant by "way of thinking."

If I sounded condescending then I sincerely apologize. That wasn't my intention. As I said at the beginning "I'm not trying to be a party pooper, just saying that cathartic diss sessions have their undersides too."

Hopefully that's all I'll ever say here, except that, for fucks sake, I didn't "dodge" the grad school question, that was a joke.

Now I believe I have a thread banning coming to me, I have all sorts of stuff I need to get done today.

i think there is criticism of "lol-monkeysex" as if it's only way in which ilx responded to hearing the guy's remarks, when that isn't true; there has been "lol monkeysex, how absurd/retrograde" & then personal, conversational, corrective clarification of what the deal is. it's isolating a single part of the response and saying that our whole discourse is wrong. lol is a reaction to how much of a douche the guy is; discussion about the origins of AIDS a reaction to what he's actually proposing; they're pretty easily split, allowing a cathartic lol instead of an all-encompassing sombre & depressing dismissal. i agree with a lot of Judith's post above too, & think that the general tone & amount of leeway afforded to denialists &c is going to inform policy & attitudes, but i don't think that this thread has been particularly reductive or taken the guy at his terms. i think criticisms of the humour involved are expecting too tidy a response to too large and multifaceted a thing.

also otm:

I mean, if this is in fact a war of ideology, instead of science vs. crazy shit deniers say, then that becomes scary, because in ideological battles no one side can ever claim to be on the absolute and objective correct side of the line as one could more easily assume with science as a foundation.

― dayo, Monday, 30 January 2012 02:02 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but wait now im confused is monkey sex the only way to contract aids or can you also get it from shaking hands

if you share a toilet seat with a monkey, I think it counts

aids has been used as an ideological weapon
i mean, this is what this guy is doing, right?

well, yes, that is what he's doing in the public sphere. in the ilx sphere, it just looks like he's a total dipshit. think of this less as "getting our discourse in line to confront non-ilxors" and more as "people who have had some stake in the AIDS crisis sounding off around the water cooler". not everyone can really participate in sounding off because it rubs people in the wrong way, but what seems like too much levity is sometimes catharsis, and we all get over shit in our own ways.

I don't put this on the same level of a joke with racial overtones or speaking in less-than-serious tones about rape or other violence. Mocking an ideological dinosaur doesn't help when dinosaurs walk amongst us, but I think in the time we're trying to figure out how to hunt these fuckers down or wait for their extinction we have some free time to mock their t rex-like stubby short arms and walnut brains

wait, did i make a prison rape joke

not everything is about you, frog (not frog)

i hope not! just was trying to see why such a thread exploded

its ok to laugh at cluelessness and monkey sex w/o first referring back to yr experts guide to internet commentating, srsly its ok, give it a shot

As a slightly interested outsider, I came into this thread over the weekend and read it because of the "lol small-minded nutter" opening, but actually found myself being educated from several sides about the medical and cultural history of AIDS and HIV. I can see EDB's point and understand their upset and frustration, but sans the diss I'd not have learnt anythign at all, and I suspect that this conversation has done more to get people to consider the issue's scope than it has to reinforce the initial douchebag's worldview.

fwiw this thread has now concerned itself with the Discourse, and not base lolz, so mission accomplished, chapeau.

this was a little jerky and dismissive, but tbh I actually think the "derail" has been beneficial!

heheh

http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/01/30/stacey-campfield-denied-service-at-knoxville-restaurant#readerComments

oops
http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/01/30/stacey-campfield-denied-service-at-knoxville-restaurant

"I'm busy making soup. I've got to run," Boggs said.

haha awesome

a+

omg i just heard about this

grimly fiendish, where/who are you?

apparently the bistro at the bijou has been jammed to capacity since this went down yesterday

chalkboard at the front says "today's specials: a, b, c, etc - and no stacey campfield"

something similar happened w/ a state senator in madison IIRC

come for the food, stay for the right-wing politician getting tossed on his ass

;_;

http://lastcar.blogspot.com/

Unfortunately some people do not let facts get in the way of their prejudice.

kind of lol, but mostly sad...

i mean ffs he didn't even get the profession of Patient Zero right! (and that was the smallest of the details he got wrong!)

I commented, but guarantee he doesn't post it.

kills me that if you take him at his word and google "lifespan homosexual", you get one flawed bullshit report and the only people that host it are sites like Catholictoday and reformed homosexual/anti-homosexual websites. yet half the people that read this asshole's shit won't even bother cuz they'll assume he did his due diligence.

that is awful. what is Catholictoday? is it a mainstream Catholic magazine?

from what i saw just some BS religious website or some shit.

yeah, he didn't post any of my comments. cuz he's a chicken shit. I hope he dies horribly.

(sorry, sense of humor is impaired atm)

lol he posted mine:

see, it would have been different if she had kicked you out for being red-haired or having a girl's name

this guy is on some next-level real-life troll ish

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kitchen/bjcuis/gr-1-close.jpg

ha

Stace is going to be Newt's campaign co-chair in TN!

http://www.memphisflyer.com/MemphisGaydar/archives/2012/01/31/stacey-campfield-chosen-as-newts-tn-campaign-co-chair

omg

well, Newt did tell a gay man that his recommendation was to vote for Obama if you're gay

ok this guy is a menace:

http://www.metroweekly.com/news/last_word/2012/02/sen-stacey-campfield-insurance-companies-charge-ho.html

God, if AIDS is what happens when we screw monkeys - ostensibly a pretty close relative I mean how different are they from us really - I shudder to think of what will come from this new dolphin trend.

have you heard about armadillos carrying leprosy?

I heard they try to, but they never manage to carry it all the way across the road.

lol

I don't ever wish for people to die, but I wouldn't cry much if Stacey was squashed in multiple pieces on I-95