Monkeypox and the Virus of Virtue
It's almost exclusively effecting gay men, but saying so is seen as scandalous online. The reasons may tell us something about the warped nature of digital life.
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The discourse surrounding monkeypox should be a moment for us to reflect upon how, much like a virus, an idea can take hold and supplant itself in the collective body. Aided by the entrenched biases of platforms and the collectivized hive mind, ideas can be stubborn to treat.
As a writer chronicling online life, it can become hard for me to discern what is actual discourse shaping real human opinion and what is simply fodder for the too-online. Maybe much of it is the latter, but I have a strong sense that when it comes to matters of public health, information shared across social networks has much more validity amongst my peers than what is shared by those oh-so-credited institutions. And hey, it’s not great that many of us get our science via infographic, but mass-institutional failure will do that to ya. And in this context, bad ideas around monkeypox have been running rampant. Now, we are in a full on pandemic.
Let me take you to the hazard zone: Today, if you were to go on Twitter and see many popular accounts that are on the broad-left, a firm sentiment has become mainstream and assumed. The sentiment is that it is problematic and wrong to say that Monekypox, a virus which creates excruciating and scarring rashes and legions across the body, is an STI that largely effects gay men.
A quick look at just a few of those afflicted by the viral idea:
The argument made by these everyday folk and politician alike is manifold. It goes something like this: Monkeypox spreads from skin to skin contact, such as touching an infected person’s rashes for a prolonged period of time, so it is not only spread through sex. The risk in labeling it an STI (apart from being technically untrue) is that saying it is an STI gives people a false sense of risk and/or safety. The other concern is that connecting the virus to a sexuality is wrong because A. a virus knows not of your identity and thus cannot discriminate and B. highlighting gay men as high-risk will increase the stigma surrounding them and their sexual practices.
The thing is though, monkeypox is spreading almost exclusively among gay men and their sexual networks through sex. Studies have confirmed that 98% of those infected are gay and bisexual men and “sexual contact was identified as the likely transmission route in 95 percent of cases.”
As of July 25th, of the 18,095 cases that have been confirmed globally, only 100 have been women. The existence of these women prove, of course, that the virus is not some bioweapon of the Westboro Baptist Church to target gay men, but that micro-fractional reality should, I hope, make it clear that as of now, this is largely a virus circulating in gay men’s sexual networks. Thus it makes sense that vaccine distribution is putting gay men and their sexual network in front of the line.
As a gay man myself, I’m concerned about stigma, but I’m far more concerned about, you know, getting monkeypox. And the reality is that right now, this disease is simply ravaging us. So the focus and public health response should obviously be focused on the demographic most effected. Why then, with this overwhelmingly clear information, are so many in the chattering and activist class groaning blasphemy at mention of this clear and present truth?
As mentioned, the thrust of the argument relies on the notion that connecting the virus to gay men will encourage stigma. In some ways, it’s a perfectly reasonable assumption to make that the advent of a scary, painful disease circulating almost exclusively among gay men will encourage discrimination. The problem is though, that this stigma, which is in fact being displayed by right wing assholes, is responding to reality, not a false rumor. And those that are furthering stigmatic arguments are already deeply homophobic. Of course they will use this moment to be opportunistic. So we do ourselves absolutely no favors by contorting ourselves to avoid the ire of people who already hold it. We only hurt ourselves by muddying up what is a pretty straight forward public health message: sexually active gay men are much more likely to get this virus.
In this vein, there has been a strange trend of people citing the history of the AIDS epidemic and distilling the absolute opposite of that era’s lessons. For example:
This makes me feel insane. The stigma put upon gay men during the AIDS epidemic was not because there was some conservative conspiracy to falsely label all gay men as infected. The stigma derived from the actual real fact that AIDS was almost exclusively being spread among gay men and needle-using drug users. And people didn’t care. It was a problem of discourse reacting to reality, not one of discourse lying about it. That does not excuse it, but should rather clarify the barbarity of that moment: it was contempt, not ignorance that defined the crisis.
But maybe, in our dissociative age, stigma is all we can worry about. When we live in the digital, discursive world as much as we do in the world of flesh and blood, stigma (i.e. discourse) strikes many as more dangerous than diseases of the body. What will others think? How will hearts and minds shift? And how will that trickle down into the real world? This appears to be many’s chief concern. And that makes sense for many folks; when monkeypox is simply some new variable in the discourse-spectacle, how it reverberates across networks makes sense as being the most relevant factor.
The thing is though, stigma is not new. Monkeypox is. And I want protection from that first and then we can adress the ambient discourse that shapes our world. The people online who are doing everything to de-clarify the fact that it is those like me who are most likely to be infected are hurting, not helping, us. And I wonder if some of these people were in our position — one where the prospect of infection is not just possible, but in certain cities and circles, probable — would they be so quick to center stigma over the real biology of the virus?
All of this, honestly, seems like a convoluted way to de-center and de-prioritize the health of gay men. Though so much of this discourse is rooted in a spirit of protecting us, I can’t help but notice the actual lack of concern for our physical health. To be blunt, it seems that gay men who have many sexual partners are not the most sympathetic group to many, including those that identify as on the left. As writer Jason Okundaye said on Twitter, “People’s lack of care or solidarity for gay men is screaming right now. I understand everyone’s concerned about monkeypox but it’s clear the demographic it’s almost exclusively ravaging right now and rather than expressions of care/empathy it’s ‘but what about MY vaccine’”
The reason for this is mutlifacted. One, is that gay men are men of course and thus have more privilege than many members of the LGBTQ+ community. In a time when intersectional analysis is the norm, highlighting this relatively privileged part of the community seems counter-intuitive.
Another factor is the ambient strain of Gen Z neo-puritanism that has cast promiscuity as vaguely problematic and unwanted. Gen Z is having the least amount of sex of any generation at its age and thus I don’t believe there is a shared understanding and acceptance of safe, promiscuous sex. When sex and hookups are seen as indicative of a general malevolence, as it so often is described as by sex-critical members of Gen Z, there is an inherent lack of solidarity for those that seek bodily pleasure without reserve.
And finally, gay men are a sliver of the LGBTQ+ population and maybe, there are simply not enough of us when considering the scope of the world to make gay-men-oriented arguments take off. Which is unfortunate, but I guess, numbers are numbers.
This confluence between an overemphasis on discourse and widely held biases have come together to make an inherently odd argument, the defacto one of so many. And there’s a network effect. People see what’s performing well on platforms and mimic it. When ideas are so often performing well, more are encouraged to espouse them and suddenly it seems that everyone is parroting each other and any conflicting idea is looney-tunes. Virtue becomes narrowly defined within peer groups and ideological tents, and straying from that becomes increasingly scandalous. Especially on platforms where you are performing for and viewing your peers, nuance and heterodoxy (though sometimes lucrative for the attention seeking) carries with it a real risk. And for whatever reason, the virtuous opinion on online networks, at least among the broad left, has been this ill-informed and strange critique.
So now gay men and our sexual network are in need. We have a specific bio-political problem and everyone wants to talk about everything other than the fact that it’s us getting sick. I don’t care if noting this fact is stigmatizing. Assholes like Matt Walsh will always stigmatize and hate us. I care that those we’re supposed to be in community with and those that purport to be our allies are doing everything but show care or concern for those that so clearly need it.
I don’t see a cure to this discursive affliction other than diagnosing it and addressing it head-on. Like with so much, the first step is admitting you have a problem, and there’s a problem. The creeping crawl of digital life, the economics of digital virtue and the silent bias of the online masses have warped it so concern for those actually effected has become some niche perspective. My prescription? Let’s look at the world as it is in reality, and show some care for gay men, because the thousands with blistering sores certainly need it.