It was set to be a fantastic Thursday evening. “UrbanSteve 48″ had been messaging “MagicMike 18”. “Sooo your profile says you’ve got the clap… call me Gaga cause i live for the applause 😏”. 30 minutes later, they were upstairs by the gloryholes at Sauna X. Steve is that soft spoken florist-gay who realised his true self a little later, not a bear, not a twink, certified average and here for good honest fun. Mike was a little on the bearish side, but everything seemed routine. That all changed in the cubicles. Steve was only a dozen thrusts in when he felt the horrifying sensation. Suddenly, flashbacks to his failed marriage hit him like a freight train. BIOLOGICAL PUSSY. He had been tricked into heterosexual STI transmission. After he climaxed, the sense of violation was swift. This was meant to be a positive experience. It was now Steve’s worst nightmare.
Steve is one of my gay friends. He’s a bug-chaser. As a gender-critical straight woman, I’m a steady shoulder to lean upon for my gay male friends. They come to me for support, for advice, for tea and scones (yes, that kind of tea too, I know my gay slang). Recently, fissures have strained their community, as a minority of activists force their values on them. They feel afraid that if they express their distress, they will be shamed.
So I’ve decided to speak for them.
“Bug-chasing” is a fetish within the gay community and cruising that relates to the desire to contract and propagate STIs. Though born out of the nihilism of the AIDS crisis, it has since evolved into a healthy space, where gay men leverage their autonomy to reclaim the power STIs hold over NSA (No Strings Attached) sex. What previously made these men pariahs is now celebrated. But recently, attempts to push diversity and inclusivity have invited a different kind of virus into the community…
Gender madness has come to cruising, and vulnerable groups like bug-chasers are being hit the hardest. To an outsider, more vectors for infection sounds great, right? As usual, straight people project their ideas of sex onto the gay community and misunderstand it entirely. If you know gay men like I do, you understand how sacred giving and receiving STIs anonymously can be. When a bug-chaser receives a positive STI diagnosis, it connects them to their partner. What they now have inside them was inside another man, and they now share that journey; apart, but together. Bug-chasers no longer have that certainty.
This transgender-related panic that is overwhelming bug-chasers has desecrated the casual encounter. Innocent hookups now have the threat of transgenders tricking gay men into sex. “Slippery 47” intimated to me of an encounter with a “twink” at a gay sauna:
We were in a darkroom and I was, you know, inserting myself. At the first stroke they let out this incredibly feminine moan. I panicked, I was like “whoa, are you a woman? Are you a crossdresser?” I feel their chin for some beard or stubble then I realise, what if this is a transman?? They had a penis but it wasn’t erect so I started feeling around their balls for the pump, they have a pump there you know that’s how they… anyway they push me off and storm out, leaving me feeling unsafe, I don’t know who or what I’ve just penetrated! I pursued them, trying to get answers, and eventually staff removed me from the venue! Other men were clearly disturbed by this, but were too intimidated by the progress flags plastered everywhere to say anything. Some even told me to stop “harassing” this weirdo out of fear they might be cancelled by their peers!
This isolation is hurting gay men, much like it does for us in the female community. Uncertainty over woke thought-policing hangs over every conversation; you could cut through the tension like a surgeon with a knife. This transgender craze causes irreversible damage to these spaces. Indeed, some gay men are striking out, unable to compete with younger, nubile transexuals seducing potential mates. Bug-chasing has become a bisexual’s game. As my friend “SmallPackages 👀🍆💦 67” put it:
Things are getting worse. Our spaces are no longer sacred. If I’m at the gloryhole in the men’s room, I’ve got no trust in who is on the other side. I see the progress that women like yourself have made with transgender bathroom bans, and I think that’s a good thing. But I worry it’s going to give transvestites license to invade our spaces and push their inclusivity agenda on us. As a gay male, I don’t feel safe with these mentally unstable crossdressers.
As a biological woman, what SmallPackages says resonates deeply. We are turning back the tide of gender ideology for women, reclaiming our single sex spaces in the US and UK. But for us to be a truly liberationist feminist movement, our struggle has to be intersectional. The next step for radical feminism has to be the protection of our gay male siblings. There must be a concerted effort to ban trans people from shared male spaces. Any veteran bug-chaser on the scene can tell you, you don’t end a course of antibiotics early just because the symptoms pass, you keep going till that bug is gone for good.
*Grindr profile details used throughout this article including profile names, self-reported weight, height, age, and penis length/girth have been changed/redacted to preserve the anonymity of victim/survivors for fear of cancellation if they speak out.
