Ms. Warren,

Thank you for providing this wonderful analogy. It should be required reading in every school in America. The message I get is that in lieu of an updated and comprehensive health-test ID, abstinence and monogamy are the only meaningful methods of actual safe sex. Anonymous sex is akin to Russian roulette. Your essay should serve as a reminder to all of those within our community how many have lost at that game. An HIV quilt today would probably blanket the State of Texas.

I don't know if comparing other human beings to consumables is the answer - I mean, it's a relationship model common in the het world (that women are objects, like food, to be consumed, food advertising that compares animal body parts to women, etc.) and it doesn't seem to be doing any good there where it occurs.

It's an utterly dehumanizing, to me, way of looking at sex to just see the pleasure that another person can give as a product being sold. I know, I'm sure there are some people out there who love being compared to a hamburger, but I don't think that they're the majority of people.

If more of us -- especially young people -- had the courage to stand our ground on asking questions first and wanting to see tests, it would have a positive effect on community health. Unromantic? Sure. Life-saving? Definitely. Maybe this is a point that has been missing from all those “safer sex” PR campaigns that are said to be not working.

The phrase “I am what I eat” can be rewritten as “I am what I fuck.” But both contain that all-important word “I.”

I don't see how it's missing - they're always talking about individual responsibility.

I'm not going to pretend to have all the solutions (I think comprehensive sex ed is a good start, though), but a model that says that a person living with an STD is "a human hamburger loaded with food poisoning," that sex is a consumable just as food is, use it and throw away the rest, and that short-circuits people's ability to care about risk for others isn't a model that I find attractive and doesn't feel like the solution to me. But, then again, I'm not the only person out there.

(And when did people start demanding that food be perfectly safe? Food kills a lot more people in the US each year, through obesity and related diseases, than sex does. Maybe people should start modeling their relationship with food on their relationship with sex?)

Alex;
I think that Patricia did a good job setting up a comparasion for safety, not emotional investment.

If we are careful about our food or have expectations of that safety, then why do we not have the same expectations or take the same precautions about something as emotionally important as sex?

In answer to your question, by the way, Amreicans began demanding that food be safe in the early 20th century during the administration of President William McKinley and particualrly effectively during that of Theodore Roosevelt.

Most women who develop cervical cancer have HPV. Most women with HPV are completely unaware that they would test positive for it.

Having a chronic STD does not preclude sex, but morally it does demand precautions.

And it is hard to argue with the hamburger model when we discuss sex parties and bathhouses, or worse, are expected to defend them.

Comparing sex partners to food-meat may seem dehumanizing ... but it is also, in large measure, good science. I think Patricia's message is a hard one that will cause many to flinch. That does not mean that the message is invalid.

As a young boy growing up on a dairy farm in southern Indiana, I rarely drank pasteurized milk at home until the dairy herd was sold, about the time I entered high school. Luckily, my parents had their herd tested constantly.

There is, however, one major difference between food safety and sex safety: The "consumable" food product is indeed an "object": we kill the animal in order to use it as food. The sex partner, in contrast, whether free of or laden with disease, is a human being just as I am. Alex's comment speaks to this important distinction, and Patricia warns against the totalitarianism that ignoring this point will invite.

What is missing in this discussion is this: When I eat a hamburger, I'm not worried about the fate of the hamburger, that has already been determined. When I have sex, however, I am responsible for the safety of two people, not only my own. Without the general acceptance of this assertion, there is no possible answer that can maintain both safety and freedom. It is admirable to take one's own health seriously; but even more admirable to regard the other person's health seriously also, even if that person is a "stranger" or a fellow trader in a sexual marketplace.

Unless one is celibate, the sexual marketplace cannot be avoided. Being responsible as possible for both parties has to be the universal M.O. Even the most conservative abstinence and marriage-monogamy only changes the rules of the marketplace: it does not remove the marketplace itself.

I find it amusing sometimes that Alex and I are the "leaders" of the blog, and yet see things so differently sometimes... I thought this was one of the best posts this week - hands down. In fact, I sent it out to several other folks...

I think Patricia made some strong points in her commentary. Some of us seem to be more careful with the food we eat than with our sexual behavior.

I am in a committed monogamous relationship with my husband so we no longer practice safer sex. However, when I was single and engaging in sex with multiple partners I always assumed that my partner was HIV+ and behaved accordingly.

As with everything else in life, every sexual activity has a calculated risk associated with it. Each of us must take responsibility for our actions and the consequences that follow. Unfortunately it is far too easy to become sexually aroused and allow oneself to think with their wrong head!

Bil~

And I think that tension makes this place awesome.

Allen said:

What is missing in this discussion is this: When I eat a hamburger, I'm not worried about the fate of the hamburger, that has already been determined. When I have sex, however, I am responsible for the safety of two people, not only my own. Without the general acceptance of this assertion, there is no possible answer that can maintain both safety and freedom. It is admirable to take one's own health seriously; but even more admirable to regard the other person's health seriously also, even if that person is a "stranger" or a fellow trader in a sexual marketplace.

This is part of what I'm getting at. A hamburger, if it tastes bad, is something I throw away after I have one bite (actually I'm veggie, so we can make it a Boca burger, but the point is the same) If it has a disease and I get sick from it, the blame is on the people who produced the burger, oversaw the factory, etc. Like Patricia's neighbor, they take the person who's (ir)responsible off to prison.

Suppose I sleep with someone with a disease and I get sick - do we blame the hamburger itself, the someone with the disease? Do we drag him off to prison like Patricia's neighbor?

Allen gets to the problems of this model when discussing the marketplace in his comment - the marketplace is a cold place, every person for him or herself, no morality, no rules except greed. By comparing having sex to a "sexual marketplace", it's imposing the same anti-communitarian mindset on the whole process, IMHO, it's all about I, I, I and me, me, me.

Which has been the main take-home message of the HIV prevention I've encountered in the US (maybe my experiences aren't representative). And yet STD's are on the rise.

But if food consumption is a good model for other sorts of safety, then why are so many people killing themselves with food? Why are heart disease and cancer, both of which are exacerbated by poor diet, the top two killers of Americans under 85?

I think it's because the consumption/marketplace mentality posits immediate individual gratification as the highest good and the only things that can shock a market into changing are those things that are, well, truly shocking. While the news media go crazy with the latest E. coli infection found in lettuce from California, even though it ends up killing one or two people, no one really gets excited about heart disease, which kills more people than any lettuce scare has. The last thing most Americans think about in the marketplace is long-term well-being.

In a marketplace, the only responsibility that a vendor has is to make the biggest profit, not protect the safety of the customers. If the fines and risk of getting caught doing wrong hurt the bottom line, then their activity changes. But they really have no reason to care about others, so the sell to the buyers' immediate gratification as much as they can, push the limits of safety, and scheme not to get caught.

Is that a system we want to model for sex?

Yes, people should be asking questions and having discussions about safe sex, etc. But will making them think that they're in the market for food convince them to? I doubt it, and people being as irresponsible with sex as they are with food is a pretty scary thought.

Is that a system we want to model for sex?

I think we already do. In the sexual marketplace, we don't insist that the responsibility is for both people - instead we protect our own safety (if we do that!). When we meet someone for casual sex - whether after a few drinks, in a bath, online or whatever - we are completely seeking immediate gratification.

I think that's what I'm seeing differently here than you, Alex. I don't think this is about modeling a sexual system based on our food safety standards. Instead, I saw it more as a wake-up call that our food safety standards are rather low to start with and they're infinitely more prudent than the standards we hold our own sexual health to.

I don't think this is about modeling a sexual system based on our food safety standards. Instead, I saw it more as a wake-up call that our food safety standards are rather low to start with and they're infinitely more prudent than the standards we hold our own sexual health to.
>>>>>>>>

Bil got it 100 percent right about my intentions with this commentary. I'm not proposing a new model. I'm merely offering a the idea of a yardstick used in another arena of health, to show that we might measure more carefully in the sex arena.

Allen gets to the problems of this model when discussing the marketplace in his comment - the marketplace is a cold place, every person for him or herself, no morality, no rules except greed. By comparing having sex to a "sexual marketplace", it's imposing the same anti-communitarian mindset on the whole process, IMHO, it's all about I, I, I and me, me, me.

Well, yes and no.

An open marketplace usually attracts many different types of traders. Some will take a "dog eat dog" attitude ... leading to the sage saying, "Caveat emptor!" ... Let the buyer beware! But there will be others in the marketplace that strive to do business in honorable ways; these are the folks that realize that healthy and happy customers are the best way to do business long-term. Also in the marketplace are businesspeople that are so incompetent, in every sense of the term, that they will go out of business in short order. And a few are so cut-throat that they are indeed thrown into prison or essentially run out of town.

Previously, I asserted that the standard should be that I accept responsibility for both myself and my partner. That is the ideal standard --- but the marketplace being what it is, one would be naive to assume that most, or even many, vendors live up to that standard. Thus, it is prudent to do whatever is necessary to protect oneself. Still, I can set that ideal standard for myself, and I can encourage others to set that ideal standard for themselves. The ideal standard will never be adopted by 100% of the market, but it might be adopted by a large enough segment that the nature of the marketplace itself is significantly influenced for the better.

Similarly, the Better Business Bureau does not eliminate scams in the business marketplace --- but it does influence the marketplace enough that it is worth operating a BBB in each major economic zone. The BBB does its job via general business education, referrals, and dispensing advice on how to protect oneself from unscrupulous businesspeople.

As the primary promoter of sexual safety and health, the AIDS service organizations and related sex education programs, both governmental and private, and within both the GLBT and straight communities, serve the same function as the BBB does to monetary transactions. They, too, must encourage people to strive for an ideal, while at the same time being realistic and telling people how to protect themselves as a minimum. In this sense, it is necessary for them to operate on two planes simultaneously.

Thank you, Patricia, for yet another thought-provoking post. Americans are inconsistent to the point of schizophrenia in their attitudes toward risk --- requiring total safety in some areas (such as highway safety and child vaccinations), while at the same time insisting on "not being protected from myself" in others (such as smoking, sex, gambling, helmetless motorcycle riding, and certain aspects of stock market trading). The alarming discrepancy we hold between food safety and sexual safety is hardly the only such example --- and yet, taking a look at this facet of the picture is very enlightening.