Serosorting: UB2

"27 yo, GWM, 5'9", 145 lb, bl/gr, smooth, vers, 6" cut, DDF, UB2"

UB2...You Be, Too. (For the cave dweller, DDF is Drug & Disease Free.)

Emphasis on Disease Free. UB2.

That has a name now. It's called Serosorting. Sounds kind of like office work: collating, xeroxing, filing, serosorting. It's not, though. It's an accident of segregation between HIV-negative and HIV-positive men that is thought to be a contributer to a slowing of HIV infection rates among the gay male population in at least one major city: San Francisco. I find myself on a shaky soap box with this one for a couple reasons.

First, I should disclose that I am a Serosorter. I dated a man a few years back who swore on a stack of Blueboys that he was "fine with it" when I told him the night we met that I was HIV+. He wasn't HIV+. He later patted my foot in the hospital and pronounced "I just don't do the 'sick thing'". And he left. So now I serosort. It won't prevent that same incident from happening. But the next time I cry on my pillow over the same situation and wish him dead in a weak moment, I won't have as long to wait to see if it happens.

I serosort because I question the knowledge and mental health of HIV-negative men who might want to date me. Stay with me here....this is not an indictment of anyone else's practice. We're talking about my choices. It takes a lot to convince me that a negative man really, really "gets it" when it comes to dating, let alone being, someone HIV+. Popular phrases I've heard include, "That's no big deal."

Note to Mr. Next: That is the wrong answer. After almost 10 years of puking, head sores, kidney stones, wasting, thrush, bone marrow extractions, spinal taps, diarrhea, staph infections, Stephens-Johnson Syndrome (look it up...I'm not your doctor, but be warned: My Therapist Says the description of that episode gave him nightmares),etc.....It is a Very Big Deal. The least someone could do is avoid minimizing it. And a negative man's willingness to knowingly expose himself to what I've been through makes me think there's something wrong in his head. "But I Luuuuuuuuv You," they say. Bullshit. They don't love themselves enough to stay out from in front of a moving train. I suspect they can't love me. But that's my choice and I leave it to anyone else to make the one that's right for them.

I have the privilege of being co-leader of an HIV Social Group that meets in Kansas City (www.yahoogroups.com/group/kchivsocialgroup). We had a message sent to the group yesterday that described Serosorting as "The Only Way To Stop The Spread of HIV". It's the first time I've ever hit the Delete Button instead of sending the message on to the membership. I exercised censorship. I was conflicted, but not a lot, about doing that. I am, after all, a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Censorship bothers me. So does telling other people to stay in their ghettos, which is how the Serosorting message struck me.

It's the new Anti-Miscegenation movement - only based on blood, not skin color. The thought goes that if all "you" people with HIV stay over there and date each other and all of "us" HIV-negative people stay over here, society will be the better. Here's where I fall off the bandwagon. What I decide for me....that's for me to decide. But it's not for me - or anyone else - to prescribe or proscribe someone else's choices. I've been in the teeth of The Plague just long enough to remember when some thought it would be a great idea to put us all in isolation camps to prevent the spread of the disease. A naive person would call that protecting the public health. A sane person would call it rounding up the diseased cattle for quarantine...or worse.

Let's be truthful for a moment and deconstruct the serosorting as Public Health Policy myth. First, it is NOT the only way, as some would hold forth, to prevent the spread of HIV. If we were 100% honest, we would say that killing off everyone with HIV is a much more sure way to halt the spread of the disease than simply making dating rules. But that's not our official policy.....yet. Serosorting also does nothing to stop mother-to-child transmission (Positive Woman + Positive Man may equal Positive Baby - with or without pre-natal prevention.) So serosorting is not "the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV" as our message stated yesterday. It is, however, a fear-based attempt by those without the disease to ghettoize those with the disease. It is also largely ignorant of the procreating heterosexuals capable of handing the virus down a generation. It's a load of horse shit as public policy, to be perfectly frank.

I know what we call "sero-variant" or "sero-discordant" couples: pairs with one HIV- and one HIV+ partner. In most cases, over long, long years, cross infection has not occurred because of dumb luck, the difficulty in actually transmitting the virus, or negotiated practices between them to reduce risk. I am happy for them. I wouldn't do it. But it's not for me to say that they shouldn't.

Haven't we learned enough from the Religious Right battles that one man's choices aren't another man's obligations? Come on guys.....screw who you will. But for Christ's sake...spare us the sweeping mandates on who should be doing whom. Some of us are grown enough to make those decisions for ourselves without imposing them on others.

UB2