SEXY AND YOU KNOW IT? TAKE PrEP

Sexy people come in all shapes and sizes. As they say, everyone is someone’s some kind of wonderful. But there are some of us out there that have a universal sex appeal. I’m not talking about big muscles, a bubble butt and washboard abs, necessarily. Some guys are just incredibly sexy and large groups of people feel a visceral attraction to them. There is no formula for what makes a person sexy. Some people just have it, like the “X-factor”.
The challenge with being sexy is that a lot of people are going to want to have sex with you, which means you need to be as sussed on your sexual health as possible. With being really sexy comes great responsibility. Being sexy doesn’t mean you are going to be promiscuous, but it does mean that the temptation to have sex will be that much stronger with everyone constantly making passes at you.
If you are a sexy person and are also HIV-negative, you should go to the Ivan Toms Centre for Health in Greenpoint (close to the Waterfront) or the H4M clinic in Yeoville to find out about free PrEP and how using it can keep you HIV-negative.
If you are a sexy person and happen to be HIV-positive, you should also pop into the Ivan Toms Centre for Health to learn all about U=U. It means Undetectable equals Untransmittable. In plain English, it just means that if you take your ARVs like you should until the virus is undetectable in your blood, then you can’t pass it on to a sexual partner. It also makes you healthier and stronger to have a much weaker virus in your system.
So, ask yourself: Am I sexy? I’m willing to bet that the answer is yes. Get that cute ass to Ivan Toms Centre for Health and make sure you keep your sexy self, strong and healthy. You can even score some free condoms and lube while you’re there!

Exit World AIDS Day Message - 1 December 2018

By Edwin Cameron, Constitutional Court of South Africa

This World AIDS Day, 2018, we mark the death, twenty years ago, on 1 December 1998, of gay icon and struggle activist Simon Tseko Nkoli. He died of AIDS.

Remembering Simon’s life and struggle, and how he died, offer us powerful pointers to our own lives and struggles today.

For in the dire days before antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) became available, when AIDS inevitably meant death, activists in the United States fighting against hatred, stigma and government hostility came up with a slogan. It was brilliant, beautiful, and also terrible.

The slogan was SILENCE = DEATH.

The slogan was devised for Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan was a narrow homophobe who for years refused even to utter the word “AIDS” as tens of thousands of gay men died across the US.

In the US, as in Europe and also in Asia and Australasia, the AIDS epidemic overwhelmingly afflicted men who have sex with men (MSMs) and those who identified as gay or bisexual.

In this hate-filled atmosphere, to be silent about being gay, to be silent about the suffering of AIDS, to be silent about the pernicious behaviour of the big pharmaceutical companies, to be silent about official hostility to LGBTIs was to embrace death.

The activists refused embrace death. They refused to be silent. They fought for increased funding, for speedy release of new medications, and for dignity and justice for everyone with HIV and AIDS. Their unapologetic campaign revolutionised the way AIDS was treated.

Why is this important here, for us, in Africa, in 2018?

H.I.Who?

By Craig Stadler

It occurred to me the other day, just how lucky we are in 2018, not just as a gay community, but as a global society at large. In South Africa specifically, we enjoy an open constitution granting a vast spectrum of rights to all walks of life. Even gays can get married and hold hands in public without too much kerfuffle unless you find yourself in Orania. There are gay clubs where you can shake your ass in a safe environment, newspapers such as Exit, targeted specifically at the LGBTQ community, indeed, there is even a gay village in Cape Town, whether formally designated that way or only in the hearts of the community.

Furthermore, we are allowed to get married and actually call it marriage. We can adopt children if we feel the need to change shitty nappies, we can get life insurance, funeral cover, dread disease cover, hell you can even get medical aid for your Siamese cat. Not the least of these things that we enjoy is the advent of Treatments that have turned HIV/AIDS into a life sentence as opposed to a death sentence. We can also not forget the miracle range of drugs known as PREP or Pre-exposure Prophylactics. Which means that if you meet someone on Grindr who is on the same drug, you can fling your legs apart and get banged like a Salvation Army drum without fear of ever getting sick or diseased with HIV or AIDS. Amazing, right?

Wrong.

We have so much to celebrate and so many wonderful things that we enjoy that perhaps people have become relaxed. Too relaxed. We believe that we are suddenly immune to a disease that killed people at Holocaust levels and was meaner and less caring than Pol Pot, Ghenkis Khan and Adolf Hitler put together. Allegedly. I’m sure they were lovely people. So is Trump. Cough.

We play Russian Roulette with our lives because we believe that we have found a way to avoid that sickness people once spoke about but that is no longer around. Right?

Wrong.

HIV/AIDS is still a very real possibility in major society. And perhaps we have become Flazéda about it because we have forgotten the nightmare that was the 80’s. When people you knew suddenly got a nasty flu that wouldn’t ever clear up. You watched them lose weight and become pasty and suddenly dark lesions would show up on their skin. They stopped coming to parties and you would start hearing rumours that they were in hospital. So, you decided to visit them. Except you couldn’t because they were kept in isolation so that they could not pass on this illness they had. This illness that people called The Gay Flu, or GRID – Gay Related Immune Disease.

Dis _ Moffie_Ja?

By Bruce J. Little

I look in the mirror and there’s a knot in my stomach because of the bit of padding that I see on my stomach. I am nowhere near obese and actually weigh less than the average person my height, but I feel shame, disappointment and regret looking at my shirtless reflection. It’s a bit embarrassing to share this with you but I suspect that it may be important that I do.

If you’re already feeling that this article is too much of an overshare, I suggest you move on, because I am about to get even more TMI up in here.

Body dysmorphia is a condition in which someone falsely believes that there is something seriously wrong with their appearance. This is a pathology that I have self-diagnosed. I have managed to convince myself that I am fat, and not only that I am fat, but that I am fat in a way that would make me unacceptable to a suitable partner. I have an irrational belief that the fat I harbour on my stomach and hips is what is keeping me from finding success and love, and yet (seemingly) I haven’t done enough to get rid of it. It’s common for the average person’s weight to fluctuate within 5 kilograms every year but mine regularly varies within 10 kilos in a 6-month period. My gut goes from concave to convex and back again twice a year almost every year.

There will be longish periods of extreme self-discipline where no carbs will pass my lips and I squat and lunge myself into a coma and will melt away a chunk of my body mass, and then I will self-sabotage binge on bread, chocolate, potatoes and sweets until I start to resemble a stretched out caramello bear. Why don’t I just stop? Why isn’t it as easy as that? Is this my subconscious self-loathing/ internalised homophobia/ insecurity / fear of greatness manifesting in this bizarre cyclical behaviour? Maybe it’s just a result of the ebb and flow of the mood disorder I live with. One thing I have noticed is that it’s quite prevalent in my friendship circles and we can’t all have bipolar (can we?)

My regular gym attendance is well documented on social media, so why am I not built like an Adonis?

My increasing pocrescophobia (fear of gaining weight) and dysmorphia about my body’s current fat percentage is self-centred in the sense that I don’t hold anyone else to these unrealistic standards. I often joke about the fact that I am attracted to big beefy rugby types and can swear under oath that one of the sexiest and most fulfilling couplings I ever experienced was with a guy that was a lot chunkier than I have ever been. Let’s say he put the ‘love’ back into love handles (I told you I was going to get TMI!) I find all sorts of body types attractive except when it comes to the one that looks back at me in the mirror.

Pocrescophobia, also known as Obesophobia is a pathology that often leads to or exacerbates other conditions like depression, anxiety and eating disorders and many men suffer in silence with these conditions because of stigma and societies propagation of toxic masculine ideologies. The long-term effects of these conditions can have dire consequences if they are not addressed. Men have body issues “qha!”

Initially, I planned to write this piece from the perspective that this form of dysmorphia is practically a national sport in the gay male community, but then I realized I was guilty of projection. There’s a few of us with this issue, sure, but I know plenty of gay boys of all shapes and sizes that are happy in their skins, they slay in the fuller-figure ‘sexay’ department. Our burgeoning and beautiful bear community lays further testament to this -not to say that members of the bear community do not suffer from body dysmorphia.

Farewell Yellow Brick Road

After more than half a century on the road and an unparalleled career that has redefined the cultural landscape and seen him claim his place as a true global icon, Elton John has announced via an exclusive VR180 Live Stream on YouTube, details of his final tour called 'Farewell Yellow Brick Road'.
The news was announced to the world in the very manner that has defined Elton and his creative output over a dazzling career - innovative, daring and constantly taking bold strides into the future.
Centered around a marquee event at Gotham Hall in New York City – and simultaneously transmitted to venues in Los Angeles and London – the immersive experience used latest in live-broadcast technology from YouTube and cutting-edge motion capture, to revisit some of the defining moments that set Elton on his unstoppable path to global superstardom. Transformation, after all, is part of Elton’s DNA, and he adeptly used the latest technology to help him defy space and time, connecting his past and future.
“After the tour finishes, I’m very much looking forward to closing off that chapter of my life by saying farewell to life on the road. I need to dedicate more time to raising my children,” he said.