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From Vox
Bad Bunny threw the party of the year for Puerto Ricans — and didn’t skip the politics -
Bad Bunny performing in San Juan, Puerto Rico. | Gladys Vega/Getty Images
The reggaetón singer’s homecoming took on gentrification, women’s rights, and the power that won’t stay on.
Between breaking Spotify records, starring in a new Brad Pitt movie, and getting cast as a Marvel superhero, Bad Bunny’s having a helluva year. No other Latin artist today has reached such global stardom — and, yet, the reggaetón rapper only has eyes for one place: Puerto Rico.
To kick off the tour for his latest album, Un Verano Sin Ti, Bad Bunny booked El Choli, San Juan’s largest indoor arena, for three nights straight. The $15-$150 tickets weren’t sold online, so folks camped outside for hours. That was by design; the tickets were intended to really only be available to those who live on the island. Naturally, a record celebrating the island’s beauty, girls, and resilience should be properly danced to by its people.
The booking was a sign to outsiders to stay out. Years after Hurricane María devastated the island, Puerto Rico now is facing an uptick in gentrification and development, especially from mainland Americans who are receiving a hefty tax break in return. But resources for islanders haven’t improved. Newcomers are claiming the beaches are private property, when legally all of them are public. Developers are polluting the water and endangering the wildlife. This tension comes on top of blackouts, caused by the recent privatization of electricity (rates have increased seven times in the last year alone). It’s a sentiment Bad Bunny touched on in his song “El Apagón” (literally: “The Blackout”).
So what do Puerto Ricans do? We party. As a response to rising developer tensions, party protests have cropped up from coast to coast as an act of reclamation and dissent. In the popular beach town of Rincón, protesters danced to plena while they tore down and cleaned up construction materials abandoned by developers last month. (The courts had declared the work illegal in February, after a year of protests.) These protests aren’t just dancing to good beats, though. They’re rooted in a long history of direct action and often come with brushes with police.
It’s significant that the first of these performances was broadcast on Telemundo PR — imagine if, say, ABC had Beyoncé perform on national television for four hours straight. While Bad Bunny isn’t a political organizer, he is an amplifier, given his huge platform. Through his music, his explicit longing for a better Puerto Rico is clear. His record-breaking performances last weekend exuded a cathartic, collective joy for attendees and streamers alike.
Considering Puerto Rico’s fraught relationship with the United States, Bad Bunny’s spotlight on the country holds a certain weight. For many islanders, Puerto Rico’s status as a US territory has created a sense of inferiority and internalized colonialism, said José A. Laguarta Ramírez, a research associate at Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies. “There’s often this idea that Puerto Rico’s too small to make it or for great things to come out of here,” he told me. “A side effect of that is every time a Puerto Rican does something that gets recognition internationally, it’s a source of national pride, a kind of cultural nationalism.” (I’ll admit: I’m guilty of this, too, as a Diasporican.)
Politically, Puerto Rico is very divided. There are groups that want independence from the US, those who want to stay as a territory, and those who want to become a state. But no matter where you fall, folks see celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Daddy Yankee as proof that, yes, Puerto Rico can be a place people can be proud of — despite the bullshit. Bad Bunny, who grew up in Vega Baja’s public housing, is just the latest to be added to the national canon.
As Bad Bunny’s celebrity exponentially grows, these shows were a refreshing reminder of what — and who — reggaetón is for. Bad Bunny didn’t leave Puerto Rico behind as he ascended the charts. He brought it with him.
Bad Bunny’s rise to fame can be partially attributed to his predilection for genre-bending. Sure, it’s reggaetón, but there are also touches of rock, R&B, salsa, dembow, and so much more. He’s daring and experimental, while simultaneously referring to the hallmarks of the genre. Un Verano Sin Ti is reflective of that inclusion. The features range from reggaetón heavyweights like Tony Dize and Chencho Corleone to up-and-coming Puerto Rican indie artists such as The Marías and Buscabulla. He could’ve featured American artists — he’s certainly big enough to do so. But in a May interview with the New York Times’s Isabelia Herrera, Bad Bunny said he’d rather put “the whole world onto underground from Puerto Rico, you know? That makes me feel proud of what I represent.”
Fans agree. As Carlos Nagovitch, a concert attendee, told me in Spanish, “He has never stopped making music from Puerto Rico.”
Certainly, reggaetón’s international popularity is skyrocketing, and not all of the hits are coming from Puerto Ricans (Rosalía’s “La Fama” or J Balvin’s “Mi Gente” come to mind). So to really home in on artists from the island or from the diaspora is an ultimate power play. The world may be able to consume and churn out reggaetón, but divorcing the music from its history and its context isn’t going to happen if Bad Bunny has anything to say about it. “Everyone wants to be Latino, but they lack rhythm, drums, and reggaetón,” he sings in “El Apagón.”
But qué emoción to have an artist who cares more about being accessible to Puerto Ricans than American perception. If you weren’t at El Choli, you were watching the Telemundo PR broadcast or livestreaming at a party in the plazas nearby. There were more than 18,000 people at these shows every night, and that’s not including people who watched from home. The performances were an event for all Puerto Ricans, even those in the diaspora who watched from TikTok or Twitch.
There was a special, once-in-a-lifetime quality to these performances. “It was just us and him,” said concert attendee Alysa M. Alejandro Soto. “I feel like that’s something he wanted to achieve: a special, intimate moment with PR.” During all three shows, Bad Bunny spoke about the privatization of the electricity grid, the gender violence women experience, and the pollution of the beaches. Because Bad Bunny’s music already lends itself to issues on the island — “El Apagón,” “Andrea,” and “Yo Perreo Sola” are all great examples — it was expected he’d have something to say about the collective experiences Puerto Ricans face. “We have a government over us that messes up our lives day in and day out,” he said before telling the private electricity company and the governor to go “pal el carajo.”
He also spoke of a better PR.
“He asked the crowd how many of us wanted to achieve our dreams while living in Puerto Rico,” Alejandro Soto added. “It made me really emotional since I am currently living away from PR for academic reasons and I miss it every day. He’s using his platform very wisely to bring awareness to issues that affect Puerto Rico and to break many stereotypes.”
The energy at the shows, according to indie band Buscabulla’s Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle, was “absolutely massive” and like “a portal to another dimension.” The duo, who are featured on the song “Andrea,” performed alongside Bad Bunny at 2 am each night. For Berrios, it was the largest show she’s ever done, and probably one of the most emotional, too.
“The show was a special show made for Puerto Rico,” Berrios told me. “I just hope it inspires people. I hope that it gets more people to just be more involved with the issues of PR and maybe having bigger artists be more aware and do more for Puerto Rico.”
Buscabulla weren’t the only ones brought to the stage. Besides the artists featured on Un Verano Sin Ti and some fans with excellent dance moves, Bad Bunny also invited queer musicians like Young Miko and Villano Antillano, the first prominent trans Latin rap artist. Misogyny and transphobia is pervasive on the island, so to see these artists on stage, who are often marginalized within the genre, at the largest concert in Puerto Rico’s history on national television is mind-blowing.
“I’m a queer woman, and growing up we never really had songs about women liking women,” said Alejandro Soto. “We always had to make the urban music made by heterosexual men fit because it’s what we had. Young Miko, Villano, and other queer artists are doing something very important, and it makes me so proud that they are from PR.”
For Marisol LeBrón, an associate professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, she enjoyed how “tongue-in-cheek” the performances were.
“I was on Twitter and seeing stuff that was like, ‘I feel so bad for people who aren’t Puerto Rican,’” she said. “There is something that’s really powerful about that — to affirm this feeling of incredible pride every day. The fact that the shows gave an outlet for people to counter the overwhelming dominance of that [inferiority] narrative and the kind of things that govern people’s everyday lives is actually amazing.”
It’d be a misnomer to say that Bad Bunny is at the heart of change on the island, or that he’s the ultimate ally. But, damn, he can throw a party.
“It’s bigger than Bad Bunny,” LeBrón said. “It’s about this energy and it’s about this connection. It’s this feeling of being united.”
How to save democracy from the Supreme Court -
A security guard stands watch at the main door of the fenced-off Supreme Court building on July 28. | Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
A Harvard law professor on the evolution of the Court and what Congress can do to make it more democratic.
Has the Supreme Court lost the American people?
We’re more than a month removed from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, a massively consequential decision and arguably a watershed moment for the Court.
Whatever your politics, and whatever you think of abortion, this much is clear: The Court made a choice to unsettle established law and shake up the tectonic plates of American society.
So I invited Niko Bowie, a Harvard Law professor and a former clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to join me for an episode of Vox Conversations. He writes about the issues at the core of this conversation, and last year he testified before President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court to discuss potential ways to reform the highest court in the land.
We discuss the history and role of the Court, whether these conservative justices sacrificed the Court’s legitimacy for the sake of political power, and if he sees any path to reform that might save the Court from itself.
Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sean Illing
It’s been a few weeks since Roe was overturned. We all knew this was coming, but what was your reaction when it actually happened?
Niko Bowie
My immediate reaction was sadness, sadness that rights that millions of people had taken for granted for the past 50 years have suddenly been taken away. And that people’s lives are about to be upended and it’s only gonna get worse. So as far as just the practical effects of the opinion, it just felt really sad.
Legally speaking, it was expected. The conservative members of the Supreme Court have been saying for almost the past 50 years that this was their objective. It’s why they were selected to join the Court in the first place, and so when they got the opportunity, I think it would’ve been a surprise had they not taken it.
Sean Illing
I’d like to ask you to briefly steelman the conservative legal case. One of the things I have heard the most from defenders of this decision is that it simply returns power to the states and that’s it. What’s your response to that?
Niko Bowie
Well, abortion is one those issues like, “what should our democracy look like?” or “how are we gonna respond to climate change?” — a fundamental issue that all of us care about very deeply. And for these really fraught, fundamental issues that the entire country has an interest in, I think the basic question is: Which institutions or which forums will be responsible for resolving these questions?
In a democracy, you would expect that this would be resolved democratically. And there might be some reasons why the democracy would delegate certain questions to an un-democratic group. But in general, you would think that the most important questions facing the country would be resolved by the country in which every person is treated as a political equal.
So Congress has weighed in here. Congress drafted a 14th Amendment in which it guaranteed the equal protection of law and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of citizenship, and the due process rights of all people. The amendment the American people ratified in 1868 gave Congress power to enforce its terms. Congress passed a law, that’s currently known by 42 USC 1983, in which it tells federal courts to prohibit states from depriving these federally guaranteed rights.
And so to suggest that when a Court just returns an issue to the states as though state legislatures are the default forum for resolving these questions, I think begs the question: Why should state legislatures resolve this rather than Congress or the Courts?
Sean Illing
The conservative justices seem very eager to have people believe that the Court is actually maintaining a position of neutrality on the question of fundamental rights here. Again, they insist they’re just throwing it back to the states. Is neutrality actually possible in a case like this?
Niko Bowie
No. I mean, keep in mind what is being decided is whether some words that were drafted 150 years ago — that Congress 150 years ago told courts to interpret — protect abortion rights. And those words are like, equal protection of law and due process, or deprivation of liberty, or life without due process of law.
There’s no neutral answer to the question of whether the deprivation of liberty without due process of law, or denying or abridging the privileges and immunities of citizenship, or denying the equal protection of the law, requires or prohibits an abortion ban. The words just don’t say anything about it.
And so to suggest that neutrality would lead to an answer, I think, is misguided. I think any interpretation is going to be justified by certain normative principles. Like, do you believe in the dignity and equal citizenship of pregnant people? Do you think that fetuses are individuals who should have rights of citizenship? Do you think that what equal protection requires is whatever a state legislature thinks?
I mean, these are just the normative principles underlying any interpretation of this language. And so to suggest that one is more neutral than the others is just to put your thumb on the scale and say my normative principles are neutral to me, and yours are activism.
Sean Illing
Is it fair to say that the Court had a choice between exercising power and preserving its legitimacy and it chose to exercise power?
Niko Bowie
I would not adopt that framing because I think the term legitimacy needs to be defined.
So when the Supreme Court itself has discussed legitimacy, the case in which the Court gave its longest discussion of the term legitimacy before Dobbs was Planned Parenthood v. Casey — the opinion that had upheld the essential holding of Roe in the early 1990s.
And in that case, three Republican appointees, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Sandra Day O’Connor, authored this joint opinion in which they asked the question, why do people listen to the Supreme Court? Why don’t they just treat our opinions as no different from a press release by a conservative senator, or a liberal senator? Why do they take our opinions and do things with it?
And their answer to that question was legitimacy. They defined the term legitimacy as basically, the general understanding among the American public, that when the Court issues an opinion, what it is doing is engaging in this principled analysis, as opposed to just exercising the individual views of the justices.
I think what’s most significant about the Court’s definition of legitimacy is, it’s not based on the Court actually being neutral. It’s based on the public’s perception that the Court is neutral, or engaged in something different from politics.
So this Court’s self-definition of legitimacy is, what does the public think we’re doing?
From that perspective, yes, today’s Court had a choice of, do we want to cultivate this public perception that what we are doing is different from, say, what five Ted Cruzes would do if he were on the Court? Or, you know, you can get a Supreme Court of former clerks that are currently in Congress, like Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz, and then like Mitch McConnell, you take five of them, give them robes and a gavel — is what we’re doing different from what they would do?
And to the extent that the public believed there is this distinction between the two, then yes, I think that today’s Court basically does not care about that distinction. In the Dobbs opinion, Justice Alito explicitly said, it’s not our job to care about public opinion. We shouldn’t take that into consideration at all.
But I think what the Court is realizing, especially in the last few weeks, is, if you do not care about public opinion, and you do something that’s extremely controversial, you risk the public turning on you. And eventually at some point, if you anger enough people, the public will stop listening and start doing something to reform your power.
Sean Illing
There has been a lot of conversation in recent years, mostly on the political left, about potential reforms to the Court. People talk about everything from abolishing judicial review to court-packing to setting term limits for justices. Do any of these reforms make sense to you? And perhaps even more importantly, do you see a viable path to passing any of them?
Niko Bowie
Let me start by saying, yes, I do see a viable path to a good outcome. So, I don’t wanna hide the ball — I think we don’t have to live in this world.
But before getting there I guess I would just sort of start with first principles. Which is, if we live in a democratic society, we have these fundamental disagreements about questions like, how many guns should be available, and who should be able to obtain abortions in what context, and what should we do about this impending climate catastrophe?
Which institutions should be responsible for resolving these fundamental disagreements? And it’s no answer to say, well, whatever the Constitution says. In part, because the Constitution just does not provide clear answers about it. And in part, because I think even that has to be justified. Like, why should we in 2022, responding to 2022 crises, turn to a document written by people who really did not have any way of anticipating what we are currently undergoing?
So for me, looking around, what do other countries do? In most other democratic societies, national legislatures are responsible for making these determinations, particularly democratically responsive national legislatures. From the United Kingdom to France and Germany and New Zealand — in general, these sorts of questions are decided by national legislation. And national legislation enacted through far more democratic legislatures than the United States Congress.
So I would love to see a more democratic Congress. I would love to see reforms to Congress to make it more democratic.
But even the Congress we have now, I think, is a better answer to the question of who should resolve these questions than another institution like state legislatures, or local governments, or neighborhood associations, or federal or state courts.
That’s the real question: Which of these institutions should be responsible for resolving these fundamental questions in a democracy? I think a national legislature is what I would turn to, particularly one that is the beneficiary of democratic reforms enacted by that national legislature, like a Voting Rights Act.
From that first principle, I think the best methods of advancing Court reform are federal laws enacted by the national legislature that both make it more democratic, as well as reduce the power of other institutions that are not as democratically representative, that do not treat all members as political equals, and prevent them from interfering with the national legislature’s output.
The history of the Supreme Court’s evaluation of federal legislation is just … it’s a terrible track record. And so in practice, I don’t think there is a reason why we should necessarily give a federal court the power to invalidate national legislation.
From a theoretical perspective, I don’t think there’s any democratic reason why you would want unelected officials making determinations that, you know, I’m sorry, but a Voting Rights Act is not, quote-unquote, appropriate. There’s just nothing about being a judge or going to Harvard Law School that gives you any expertise as to whether a Voting Rights Act is appropriate or not. It’s just fundamentally a question that in a democracy should be resolved by a community of political equals.
So getting there is just gonna require Congress over time to enact legislation that protects fundamental rights that makes itself and the rest of the country more democratic.
And that also keeps other institutions, whether state legislatures or federal courts, from advancing their own more parochial or anti-democratic views and trying to enforce those over the will of the American people.
I think what that sort of legislation will likely look like is, when Congress enacts laws like a new Voting Rights Act, or like the Women’s Health Protection Act or like a new Clean Air Act, that it just prohibits Courts from undermining that legislation. So the Constitution that we currently have gives Congress the power to regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts; gives Congress the power to regulate what a federal court can do when it sees a law that the individual judge doesn’t like.
In the 1930s, when federal judges were going around enjoining labor unions, Congress thought this should not be what federal judges do. So they just took away the power of judges to enjoin labor unions, absent certain conditions. Congress could do the same thing when judges review federal laws, or when it tries to interpret laws like the Clean Air Act.
So I think there’s a lot that Congress could do to limit the power of courts to interfere with the will of a democratic nation — just like almost every other peer democracy does. This is not a radical position anywhere else in the world, except for in the United States of America.
The US monkeypox response is failing queer men -
People call for more government action to combat the spread of monkeypox on July 21 in New York City. | Jeenah Moon/Getty Images
An expert explains how the community has learned to take care of itself when governments won’t.
A full month before the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, my gay friends in my group texts had already figured out how to get vaccine appointments, what to do if we were exposed, and where to find the best research on risk and vaccine efficacy. These were the same group chats that once contained gossip, lunch orders, and gentle ribbing between friends, but now, we’d also often devote minutes and blocks of text to a virus that we were struggling to find any information about.
It was June, and at the time, monkeypox had been spreading in Europe and was primarily affecting men who have sex with men. New York City Pride — and the numerous parties and celebrations that come with it — was about to start, but according to New York City health officials, the number of cases in New York was very low. The caveat: Those were the same city health officials who underestimated Covid-19.
Without advance notice, the city’s health department had made 1,000 doses of Jynneos, the monkeypox vaccine, available the Thursday of Pride. The surprise release — like a sneaker drop — didn’t feel like a reassurance. It felt more like a late attempt to get out in front of a major problem.
A friend sent me a link to an appointment-making website operated by MedRite, and I booked an appointment for 1 pm the next day. I also sent the link to several more friends.
According to health officials, the CDC, and others, monkeypox is a “mild” disease, usually not fatal, that largely consists of sores that can spread all over the body. That it starts as a fever, that the sores will creep all over your body and make it hard to sleep, that it feels like someone exploded a lightbulb in your bottom, that the pain is scorching and unbearable, and that TPOXX, a drug that can help battle the virus, is frustratingly impossible to procure — this knowledge comes from accounts from queer men who have or had the disease. Some of those men have posted their experiences on social media because of the lack of information about the severity of the disease.
On Thursday, the US declared the monkeypox outbreak — now nationwide — a federal public health emergency, a move which should help unlock access to emergency funding and other resources to stem the epidemic. But vaccine availability remains a problem everywhere.
The federal government has been criticized because it didn’t act with urgency against monkeypox after a July New York Times report surfaced that, despite a vaccine supply and information coming in from Europe in June, the US took a wait-and-see approach. Protests have erupted. New York City, California, Illinois, and other cities and states have declared states of emergency to receive and deploy resources to battle the epidemic. Appointments are few and far between, many without any second doses planned, though Jynneos is a two-dose vaccine, and overall, the handful of cases in May and June have, as of August 4, increased to 6,617 reported cases in the US, and 1,666 in the state of New York.
Without my gay phone tree, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get a dose of Jynneos. On the one hand, having this network is great and informative in the midst of an outbreak.
At the same time, that I’m largely depending on my network of friends to let me know the latest about an epidemic has shown the gaps in the American health care system and how thin public health resources are spread.
“What I see is a community of people who have been left without access to the care that they need, advocating for themselves and for others and going to extraordinary lengths to try to minimize viral risks,” says Joseph Osmundson, a queer health advocate and clinical assistant professor of biology at New York University. “All the while, their suffering is not being taken seriously.”
Marlena Sloss/Washington Post via Getty Images
California state Sen. Scott Wiener speaks during a rally to demand that the federal government respond quickly to the recent San Francisco monkeypox outbreak, in San Francisco on July 18.
Osmundson, who I chatted with last year about Covid and harm reduction, has been helping friends get tested and treated for monkeypox. I spoke with Osmundson again recently about the outbreak, the seemingly lackluster federal response, the stigma of labeling monkeypox a gay disease, and the parallels to the fumbled response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We talked about the troublesome situation we’re in, but as Osmundson also points out, because of queer men’s experience and relationship to HIV/AIDS and health care in general, they’ve learned to take care of themselves when the people in charge don’t.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Joe! I cannot believe I’m having my second interview with you about another virus.
Another one! Another! And this one is coming after gay sluts — it’s almost personal to me. I had so many plans for a slutty summer. And that’s not happening.
Honestly, fuck monkeypox!
There are so many things about this disease and our current situation that are infuriating, but I think the most awful thing is that we’re left in the dark. There are no best practices. There’s no clear guidance other than “If you have sex, you’re at risk,” and every behavior that isn’t “sex” feels a little nebulous when it comes to said risk.
To me, the most annoying part is this entire thing was preventable. The gaps in knowledge that we have are gaps that have been made by choice. And it involves ongoing colonial and neo-colonial violence.
This is a virus that has been spreading human-to-human in Lagos, Nigeria, since 2017. Why do we not have clinical trial data on how effective Jynneos is as a monkeypox vaccine? We have no human data — zero. We have no human randomized clinical trial data on how effective TPOXX is as an antiviral — no human data.
We have no human data because we ignore the suffering of people in Central and West Africa. This current outbreak cannot be taken out of the context of global racism, which leads to a virus being understudied. If we had been vaccinating at scale in Nigeria, it’s almost certain the virus would not be spreading around the world.
A bioethicist I spoke to about Covid last year said something similar: Vaccination doesn’t work when you aren’t vaccinating everyone. It was in regard to wealthy countries stockpiling Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and how the virus would mutate if those vaccines weren’t shared with countries in need.
Increasingly, infectious diseases are, by definition, global problems. Nationalist solutions to global problems are destined to fail. The US has a stockpile of the Jynneos vaccine to “protect” Americans. Okay, well, using that fucking Jynneos vaccine in Lagos, Nigeria, would have fucking protected Americans because it would have stopped the spread of this virus in its endemic region. And it would therefore be much, much less likely that it would ever get to the level of global spread that we’ve seen over the last few months.
I think what you’re pointing out is that the struggle we’re facing with monkeypox and other infectious diseases is a mentality of “us” versus “them.” Now, with the monkeypox outbreak, which primarily has affected “men who have sex with men,” according to various health authorities, it seems like a scenario in which stigma and prejudice have once again become factors when it comes to getting care.
I’ve been working on an op-ed about how we’re trying to replace the language of “men who have sex with men” with either “men and their sexual networks” or “queer people and their sexual networks.”
“Men who have sex with men” has a really long history of being a term that people in public health understand, but it also completely erases trans and nonbinary people who are part of our social networks.
And terms like “men who have sex with men” directly led to New York City not allowing trans women to get vaccinated in the first swath of vaccinations.
So people and communities who are vulnerable not receiving care — that stresses the importance of language, right?
Right. The language we use to describe who is at risk directly impacts who can get interventions, and there are people who have been thinking about this language and being precise with it, and what terms are best to use, and what communities like to call themselves for many, many years.
It’s frustrating and fascinating to me that on the one hand you could argue that language in medicine is capable of — at the same time — stigmatizing queer men but also can exclude people who need care.
A lot of trans and nonbinary people were not able to get tested and we have anecdotal stories of cis women not being able to get tested. So, you know, measurement is not divorced from the identity markers.
As of four days ago, the CDC language on their website around vaccination has changed to be “people who have had multiple sex partners in the last 14 days” — people with no identity marker whatsoever and focusing on the behavior. That’s the absolute right thing to do. Because, for example, cis women who are sex workers may be at very high risk and need access to vaccines.
How do you address that this epidemic is primarily affecting queer men without creating animosity toward us?
We have to be honest about the fact that, right now, queer men and our sexual networks are the majority of cases. Saunas and group sex are pretty freaking risky right now. We are being honest with people in our community about that, and it’s out of love for those types of spaces and the members of our community who go there. It’s coming from a place of community protection, preservation, and mutual care — not from a place of shame or stigma.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
A sign directs people toward a pop-up monkeypox vaccination clinic in West Hollywood, California, on August 3.
So how do we talk about gay sex and this outbreak right now? What is an example of doing it wrong? What makes you so angry about the idea that gay sex is “driving” the monkeypox epidemic?
Gay sex is a fact of life. Gay sex exists on planet Earth, you will never change that, whether you want to or not. Gay sex will always exist, gay sex doesn’t drive anything. It’s like the sun in the sky or the tide going in and out.
So when epidemics spread through gay sexual networks, we want to be very precise about that language. And also to be clear that sex is a normal and healthy behavior. And our goal in biomedicine should be giving people all the tools that they need to make the best decisions and, in this case, have sex with the lowest risk possible.
In this case, the drivers of the epidemic are the structures globally that have led to vaccines, tests, and treatment all existing for a virus and yet being almost entirely inaccessible.
We cannot change the fact that gay sex exists, but we can change the fact that the Jynneos vaccine is not globally available. We can change the fact that TPOXX is largely inaccessible.
You were cited in the New Yorker in a story about how hard it was to convince authorities to broaden testing. You’ve had friends with monkeypox, and getting them tested and treated was like running into a brick wall. Health officials were not helpful. Has anything changed since then? Has testing gotten better? What has gotten better?
Unfortunately, I have many, many cases of people in my social network needing help. I have a bunch of friends who are sick, and it’s really been very emotionally exhausting. Testing has gotten much better. Testing turnaround is now a couple of days, and clinicians can order tests without having to go to the Department of Health. But testing is the only thing that’s changed appreciably.
Vaccine access and treatment access have not changed appreciably.
An example: My friend was swabbed on a Tuesday, his test came back positive on a Friday. New York City presumed him positive on Tuesday, based on what his lesions looked like. In New York City, they will process TPOXX for you on a presumed positive case without waiting for tests to come back just in case, because of testing lag time. So while he was indicated for TPOXX on Tuesday or Wednesday and alerted his medical provider, he did not get the medication until the following Friday. So we’re talking 10 days after the paperwork was submitted, possibly due to the scarcity of the drug and an ill-equipped system.
That’s 10 days of terrible quality of life and, from what I gather, a lot of pain.
Correct.
Having covered a pandemic more than I’d ever like to, one thing that kept coming up was that New York City probably had or has one of the better public health systems in the country.
Best in the nation, and probably one of the best in the world.
Given what we’ve seen over the last couple years, that’s not necessarily confidence-building — add to that cuts and resignationswithin the Department of Health.
Public health barely gets along without an emergency. Health clinics — they’re doing okay, barely. If you throw an emergency into the mix, no matter what the nature of that emergency is, we’re in deep shit.
So I think we’ve established that there have been several organizations and systems that have dropped the ball. But on the other side of that, I think I’ve found in a lot of my networks, that gay men — as a community — will take care of each other. It’s how I found out vaccines were being given out, what the disease was like, and our best guesses of how to stay safe.
Do you think that’s ingrained into gay male culture, based on our experience with HIV/AIDS, where it’s this mentality that if the government can’t take care of us, we have to take care of ourselves?
I really do believe that there’s been a revolution over the last 10 years in regard to HIV treatment and prevention. I think it’s the relationship between PrEP and HIV treatment and our interactions with health care. Theoretically, if you’re on PrEP or if you’re on HIV treatment, you’re getting STI-tested every three months. That means queer men have interaction with biomedical infrastructure that is far above and beyond the usual amount that people outside our community do.
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Protesters in New York City on July 21 call for more government action on the monkeypox outbreak in the US.
It’s not always easy. We can have homophobic doctors who stand in the way of our ability to get PrEP, for example. And there are still people within our community who are drastically underserved and people who have a different relationship with health care, by nature of not having high-quality access.
And with that, there’s often a community urgency or a community sense of need, of like, “Hey, I need to find a gay doctor that takes my insurance,” or, “Hey, I need to find a gay doctor that takes Medicaid,” and as a community, we’re always talking to each other about access to high-quality care.
Yeah, I have those conversations — about doctors we recommend, about new advancements when it comes to HIV prevention, or even about the difference between Descovy and Truvada — with my friends a lot.
I also do think there’s something inherent in our thinking about risk and pleasure that may not be common to people outside of our community. I think it’s a real badge of honor, that our community takes our collective health so seriously and that we won’t continue to allow people inside or outside of our community to suffer in what is an oppressive American health care system.
Okay, so on that. The way I found out how to get a vaccine was through a friend who texted me, and I sent that text to all the people I know.
Right, or like, “Here’s the phone number to call.” Or, I remember asking people if they can get to Westchester, because Westchester was not advertising their appointments. And if you could take the LIRR from Harlem to Westchester, you could walk five minutes and get a vaccine — same thing on Long Island.
We are giving each other the information that we need, given the abysmal federal response, in large part, to try to do the best to keep one another safe.
We’re trying our best, given the cards we’ve been dealt.
A close friend of mine, who had that case of monkeypox that was detailed in the New Yorker, had proctitis [the virus had affected his rectum].
I was on calls with high-level federal officials, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, and they were telling us, monkeypox is mild, no one’s being hospitalized, and we got this under control.
Meanwhile, my friend feels like he’s shitting out broken glass. This was in early-mid June; we had to yell at them to say, the experience of patients on the ground is not that this is a “mild” infection. They are suffering, and they need access to tools, and you are not giving them access to tools. You’re telling us to our faces that this is a mild infection, and we have the community experience to know that it isn’t.
I know you’ve cobbled together some rough guidelines regarding sex and monkeypox transmission. The CDC and various health departments are starting to release and update ideas of harm reduction strategies too. I know you’re not a medical doctor, but what do you think we can do to keep safe?
I’m gonna do a Rumsfeld here: There are knowns and there are known unknowns.
It is known that a lot of monkeypox transmission has come from saunas, bathhouses, and group sex. The epidemiology is clear on that. That is known in this epidemic at this time. A lot of people who have gotten monkeypox have recorded attending a sauna or bathhouse or group sex event within the incubation period.
Given that there’s a lack of vaccine accessibility, and given that there’s a lot of community spread of the virus, we say for now that’s a very high-risk activity and we recommend against it. It’s not for forever; it’s until we have better access to vaccines and potentially a little bit better understanding of how well that vaccine protects against the highest risk types of skin-to-skin contact.
Condom protectiveness is a known unknown. We know that condoms are not going to be fully protective, for sure not. Because this is a skin-to-skin contact, like a herpes virus. You know, if you ask a public health professional, do condoms always prevent herpes? The answer is no. But they may provide some level of protection for monkeypox depending on where the lesions are.
That, of course, is not based on any data — because we don’t have the data yet. What it is is a potential harm reduction possibility that may help, and what we think may help particularly with the very painful penile lesions that can get infected and with the proctitis and internal rectal lesions that are being reported.
It’s not a perfect correlation. This is based in science but it is not yet super well-supported by clear data. But wearing condoms during sex is not going to hurt, and it may help.
Update, August 4, 7 pm: New information on a federal emergency declaration and updated CDC reported cases of monkeypox has been added.
From The Hindu: Sports
Intense Belief and Flaming Fire show out -
A Star Is Born, who is in fine nick, should win the Zavaray S. Poonawalla Eve Champion Trophy -
Chelsea sign Cucurella on six-year deal from Brighton - 24-year-old should now be available for Chelsea’s Premier League opener away to Everton on Saturday.
Commonwealth Games 2022 | Para athlete Bhavina Patel storms into table tennis final, assured of a medal - The 35-year-old Gujarat paddler will take on Nigeria's Christiana Ikpeoyi in the final on Saturday.
Commonwealth Games 2022 | Bajrang moves to quarterfinals with dominating ‘by fall’ win over Bingham - Bajrang measured his rival for about a minute and then put him on the mat from a lock position to finish the bout in a jiffy.
From The Hindu: National News
Protest march against harassment of youths by Forest dept. - It is being taken out Biligaru to Kanur in Sagar taluk
Karnataka HC comes to the rescue of electricity accident victims, awards total compensation of ₹1.28 crore - Victims in two of the cases were minors who were paid only a nominal amount of ₹2.5 lakh and ₹5 lakh in 2020 after the intervention of the state child rights commission
Suspected monkeypox case in Kochi - 29-year-old native of Uttar Pradesh arrived from Jeddah
Andhra Pradesh: SCoR zone with Vizag as HQ will be operationalised soon, says GVL - Quoting Railway Minister, he says land and funds for construction of the office complex are available
IIT-Madras, National Institute of Siddha to collaborate on research, training - Aim of the collaboration is to develop new teaching programmes and research in molecular biology, in-vitro cell line studies and health system research There will be exchange of faculty and students as well
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine war: ‘Russia using nuclear plant as cover to shell us’ - Russia is firing on civilians from the area around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the BBC is told.
Brittney Griner: US urges Russia to accept deal to free jailed basketball star - The US says it has a “serious proposal” for Moscow that would secure the release of the basketball star.
French mayor demands €15,000 fee to climb Mont Blanc - Climbers should pay a huge deposit for rescue and funeral costs to attempt Mont Blanc, a mayor says.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban fires up Texas conservatives - The right-wing leader says in a speech to Republicans that the West is locked in “a clash of civilisations”.
Grunewald: Blast at bomb storage site sparks Berlin wildfire - Firefighters could not get near the blaze due to sporadic explosions at the munitions facility.
From Ars Technica
Rocket Report: SpaceX launches Korea to the Moon, Georgia’s litigious spaceport - “Union Carbide most certainly has a contract with Camden.” - link
Indie devs outraged by unlicensed game sales on GameStop’s NFT market - It may be impossible to remove the games from the IPFS blockchain. - link
“Huge flaw” threatens US emergency alert system, DHS researcher warns - Hackers can disrupt legit warnings or issue fake ones of their own. - link
Evo weekend is here: How to watch the fighting game event of the year - The world’s largest fighting game tournament is live all weekend long. - link
Twitter subpoenas emails, texts from Tesla bigwigs and Musk’s BFFs - Because Musk purchased Twitter as an individual, his friends are “fair game.” - link
From Jokes Subreddit
So, these two engineers are trying to determine the height of a flagpole… -
…A blonde woman wearing a tool belt and hardhat comes walking by, notices the engineers with their problem and goes over to help. She loosens the bolts at the base of the pole, lays it down on its side, then takes her tape measure and runs it down the side of the pole.
“26 feet 6 inches” She says to the two perplexed engineers, and then walks off. One engineer looks at the other and says, “Typical blonde. We want the height and she gives us the length!”
A rich man dies and his three sons inherit his estate -
One’s a doctor, one’s a lawyer, and one’s a priest. His dying request to the three of them is that, to show their gratitude for all the money he’s leaving them, he wants each to take out $10,000 and put it in his coffin. The day of the funeral comes, and each of the sons dutifully puts a paper bag in the old man’s casket.
They meet up for a drink later. The priest shamefacedly confesses: “I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking of all the good our church could do with $10,000. Finally I decided to just put some wadded-up newspaper in there. Surely dad would understand!”
The doctor sighs in relief. “I’m so glad you said that! I couldn’t stop thinking about the life-saving equipment our hospital could buy for $10,000, so I also just put some newspaper in the bag. He’ll never know the difference.”
The lawyer wipes his mouth and frowns. “I’m ashamed of you both. Really, I can’t believe you guys! It was dad’s last request!”
“So, you actually put the money in?”
“Of course! My bag contained my personal check for $10,000!”
A city guy decides to pursue his dream to be a lumberjack -
So he moves to a remote logging town in the northern woods. It’s just 40 men in this little community, hundreds of miles from the nearest town of any size, and he wonders how they manage their “loneliness,” if you know what I mean.
One evening in the spring, after the day’s work has ended, a large pack of female elk wander into the village. One of the lumberjacks sees them and yells, “Gentlemen! They have arrived!” He runs to the center of town rings a large bell. “Shagging Time!” he yells.
The city guy sees all the men run out of their cabins, whooping and hollering. Then each get behind an elk of their choosing, drop their pants, and start going to town on their hoofed partners.
Our guy is disgusted by this. He’s never seen anything like this, and he’s horrified that living out in the woods has reduced his fellow lumberjacks to this kind of bestiality. He runs back into his cabin.
That night in the dining lodge, everyone is in a festive mood, drinking and singing. The city guy pokes his neighbor and says, “How could you do that? That was horrible.” The man replies, “You’ve been out here, what? A few weeks? I’ve been out here cutting trees for 10 years, buddy. The Shagging is always the highlight of the season. You’ll come around.”
A year passes. City guy has grown a huge beard and adapted fully to the lumberjack life. And he’s gotten ravenously horny, so he finds himself looking forward to the Shagging. Every day that goes by, he gets himself more ready to take the plunge when the moment arrives.
One sunny spring evening, a new pack of elk arrives. The bell rings, the men all come running.
Our guy is prepared for his moment. He’s been thinking about this for months, and he’s already rock hard. He gets behind the nearest elk, drops his trousers, and starts reaming her. Sex with an elk is not as bad as he thought. In fact, he finds himself enjoying himself quite a bit.
But soon he looks up, and he sees all the other lumberjacks staring at him. A few are pointing, whispering to each other, laughing.
The guy looks up. “WHAT?!? Why are you staring at me?”
“That elk,” one of them replies through his laughing fit, “is fuckin’ ugly.”
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