(no subject)

[inahandbasket]

bug chasers

i... but...
feh...
</words>


Suicide is one thing, but this?
Just plain fucked up.
It takes a lot for me to say that about a subculture.

Comments

[krues8dr.livejournal.com]

despair. that's about all I can say.

It's some trick of social darwinism, that everything that is taboo can be fetishized.

[inahandbasket]

I guess...
it's just so freakin fucked up. The people don't even sound suicidal, it's like...:
"That'll kill ya!"
"Yeah yeah, someday." *waves hand dismissively*

I can't decide if it's just stupidity, or fundamentalist hedonism.

[corvus.livejournal.com]

Dan Savage on the matter!

[inahandbasket]

hmm...
Mr. Savage ends the article by saying that giving someone HIV if they want it is immoral. That's a little narrow-minded if you ask me.

feh.
I've always been awful vague on this 'morality' thing anyway. Personally I see nothing wrong with giving people what they want, morally at least. If you're ok with it, and they want it, knock yourselves out. I see nothing immoral there. Non-consent is where immorality arises IMHO.

[krues8dr.livejournal.com]

Morality is all about consequences - about preventing people from suffering from unwanted ones, particularly. The issue here is that the people who are actively seeking out this virus are incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions. The person who is infected already should have a much clearer view of the situation, and therefore has a moral duty to protect those who don't. In the same way that it is immoral (and illegal!) to intentionally infect someone with a disease without their knowledge, so should it be considered immortal to infect someone who cannot comprehend the gravity of the situation. Such as a child. Or someone who's hopelessly disturbed enough to be attracted to the idea.

[inahandbasket]

Do you really think these people don't understand the consequences of their actions? let me quote you from the article...

Stepping out of the cab into the rain, I ask what he will do if he finds out one day that he has succeeded in being infected -- ending the fun of being a bug chaser. He stops, then says he might move on to being a gift giver: "If I know that he's negative and I'm fucking him, it sort of gets me off. I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me."

He knows very well that it's suicide, He says as much. He has no problem with that. Yes, he's attracted to the idea, does that make him disturbed?

Consider sexual fetishes, the average mainstream person things that even those with mundane fetishes (face it, most people don't know about the really interesting ones) are "hopelessly disturbed." Heck, one of my female coworkers the other day was ranting to me about how disgusting lesbianism is, and how "people like that" squick her mightily.


Morality is all relative, and frankly I don't see this as a moral issue. I see it as an issue of a bunch of really fucked-up (from my perspective) sexual thrill-seekers.

[krues8dr.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that they don't have a fucking clue as to the consequences. Lots of people have a desire, a fetish for something until they actually experience it. And you can't really understand something until you've lived through it. From the article:

Now Hitzel understands all too clearly what bug chasing can do to a young man's life, but it's too late for him. After six months of bug chasing, Hitzel succeeded in getting the virus... Once he got home, he did the test and found out he was positive. He now wakes up each day with a terrible frustration that's just below the surface of his once sunny demeanor. He hates the medication he has to take every day, and he realizes that HIV affects nearly every part of his life. While he was bug chasing, Hitzel couldn't imagine ever wanting to be in a relationship again. But now that he's getting his life back in order, he realizes that being HIV-positive can be a roadblock to new relationships.

...the thing I can best relate this to is the stories of professional dommes who have clients who are turned on by the scat scene. Most ask to try it once and realise that they don't actually like it, there's a reason that most of the world is disgusted by it, and never try it again. In this case, you can't just try it once and never do it again, you're fucked for life. So yes, I think these people need to be protected from themselves, the same way anorexics and bulemics do... starting chatrooms on the internet and talking about these things may make them feel that it's more valid, but it becomes an echo chamber. Rather than helping themselves get over the mental illness, they're only feeding into each other's desire and false sense of reality.


There are two types of forbidden things in the world. (And this is a lot more deep than mores and folkways, here...) There are the ones that society forbids because it's, let's say, out-of-vogue - these are the rules that's it's ok to break. Then there are the ones that are forbidden becuase they're harmful to yourself or others. In the latter case, morality is an issue.

[inahandbasket]

*sigh*
and that's where I get hung up.

See, the only thing I can do when considering these situations is to put myself in their shoes.
If I were a bug-chaser, it would be with full awareness of what I was doing, and understanding of the consequences, and I'd get royally pissed at anyone who told me it was morally wrong.

But I'm not, because I don't and will never fit into a mindset that would do something like that.

It's a fundamental limitation in the way that I think about these things. At the risk of sounding really immodest, I'm just too levelheaded to comprehend that way of thinking.


so let me adjust the way I'm thinking about it.
Giving HIV to a bug-chaser would be stealing lots of money for your favorite charity with full knowledge that the cops would smack-down the charity. Intentions may be noble and the recipient is happy at first, but it sure ain't right.



But at the same time, there are bug-chasers who are fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Take a bug-catcher like Carlos (quoted above) who obviously understands the implications and repercussions of what he's doing, the slow descent getting worse every day until death. He knows what he's getting into and is ok with that, chosing to live a shorter and hedonistic life. Do you consider it morally wrong in this circumstance?

[krues8dr.livejournal.com]

See, it's exactly because Carlos is so clueless that I think it's morally wrong. He shrugs it off as just another thing, another high to reach, part of a hedonistic lifestyle. That's all just bullshit.

Yes, I know how that sounds - closed-minded, unaccepting. Fine. There is no possible way that a bug-chaser can know what it's like. And I'd assume that the large majority of the ones who get their wish regret it. Anyone who'd actually want to die is mentally disturbed. Period. It's fundamentally opposed to the most primal nature of life, therefore it is truly aberrant.

I can be accepting of most deviation, but this is far more than straying from the course. And it's not just suicide, either - once infected, the person has the ability to infect others. They become *more* than a danger to just themself - they're a danger to everyone around them. If it's not a big deal to them, or even desirable? The worst cases become sociopaths, the best might realise the gravity of their situation and repent - but it's too late.

A no-win situation. The value of one's life is not up to that individual to determine. There are greater societal values that are in play.

[inahandbasket]

"The value of one's life is not up to that individual to determine."

ah HAH!
Finally something I can sink my teeth into as a fundamental disagreement. ^_^
I 100% disagree with you on this, and any further argument will be just us banging skulls pointlessly.

thanks for waking my brain up today though. ;o)

[inahandbasket]

oops, fux0red the blockquotes, but you can figure it out.
stupid slashes...

man

[bobservations.livejournal.com]

it's so fvcked up
I'm almost hesitant to say i think it's made up.

Re: man

[inahandbasket]

there's been a lot of talk about it lately apparently. Quotes from the health official in San Fran are confirmed, except for the %25 of all new cases quote. lots of back and forth about that one. No one's disputing the rest though.
freaky deaky.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

that's one of those things that i really wish was an urban myth. >.< man.

[inahandbasket]

seriously

[djluminal.livejournal.com]

Consider sexual fetishes, the average mainstream person things that even those with mundane fetishes (face it, most people don't know about the really interesting ones) are "hopelessly disturbed." Heck, one of my female coworkers the other day was ranting to me about how disgusting lesbianism is, and how "people like that" squick her mightily.

Sexual fetishes, even extreme ones, do not involve murder. Intentionally infecting someone with a terminal immune-deficiency for which there is no known cure? Sounds like murder. Even the guy who answered the ad from a man in Germany asking to be killed and eaten was prosecuted after killing and eating said human, so the argument about "well these people *want* to be infected, so you can't prosecute their infectors" doesn't work. even if it ends up being classified as manslaughter and not murder in the first, it's still killing. "Carlos" even admits it...

"I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me"

The fetish/BDSM scene (or at least its core constituency - not the "tourists" experimenting without a clue of the scene's code of behavior) subscribes to "Safe, Sane, and Consensual" as a mantra for any activities involving rough play. The only tenet applicable in the case of these "bug chasers" is "Consensual" and even that is stretching it a bit. This is neither safe nor sane.

A person participating in rough play can call a safeword if they feel they are in a situation which compromises their safety. You can't call out "kiwi bird" and make AIDS go away the way you can, say, cause someone to stop flogging you, piercing you, cutting you, or even (since you brought up scat) unleashing large piles of dung onto you.

To address the dialogue between you and Bill: Yes, the value of one's own life is essentially up to that person to determine, but if you feel that life is worthless, then commit suicide by yourself. Don't hand someone a gun and ask them to shoot you, even if they *want* to shoot you -- because then that is no longer suicide, it is murder.

And I realize that statement brings up the argument of "well, then what about disconnecting life-support machines? is that murder too?", and to that I'd reply that in those cases, the person being disconnected has made their wishes clear in a legally binding document, and fully informed consent has been provided to disconnect *IF* it becomes apparent that the patient's contnued life is contingent upon connection to such machines and chances for recovery are nonexistent or slim. the people being deliberately infected with HIV are in no such dire condition, and are thoroughly capable of ending their own lives, unlike a patient in a persistive vegetative state.