…

That’s part of the attraction, though, isn’t it? You don’t have to suffer through the process of sorting out those that don’t share the same interests or demographic. I’ve just recently completed a couple of reviews for our new STD dating section. After reading the stats on some of the diseases, such as up to 2/3rds of the public have Chlamydia but may not know it, I’m surprised we’re not all on STD sites! The best one I’ve seen so far is http://www.posi...ngles.com/i/520. What surprised me most was the number of members with profile photos. Obviously you need to post a photo for this whole “online dating thing” to work as it should. And although STD’s are a reality these days for a large percentage of the public, I was still amazed that this site actually had that many members who a) appeared real and b) were open about their STDs. Anyway, whatever your affliction happens to be, if you’re looking for love with some strings attached, this may be a great place to start!

I run a few forums and have developed a few sites myself. The major one being Living Sphere – an info and support site for people living with the herpes virus. A dating service was not in the original plan, but it became obvious that it was a service that people wanted, so we ended up including it, however, it is definitely not the main focus of the site.

During the early trial phase we asked members if they thought we should expand the site or the service to include other STIs, and the members were unanimous – keep it limited to herpes. They suggested if we wanted to cover HPV, that should be a separate site and service; ditto with any other STI.

It has worked well for us, and to be honest, I am happy to specialise in herpes – it’s the STI I know best because I have it myself. I’m well aware of all the issues and implications of having this particular incurable virus; I am motivated to help others with herpes; and I am passionate about promoting herpes awareness.

I believe that a site created by people with ‘X’ for people with ‘X’ will always work the best. But that is just MHO.

As Patsy suggested – if it helps one person (well a ‘couple’ of people get together) it has succeeded.

So good luck to you Ricky!

Jeannie

Check out this google video on Herpes.

http://video.go...erpes&hl=en

Cool

Glad to see some interest in my website.
Below is my press release.
Followed by a letter explaining why this website was developed.

Prescription4Love.Com is an online dating service specializing in special health conditions, Cancer, Diabetes, IBS, Obesity, Deafness, Allergies, Hepatitis, Infertility/Impotence, etc., including STD conditions. These days, many people are seeking others online and consequently, specialized alternative dating services have emerged. Dating with an STD can be awkward, especially when it comes time to divulge your situation, so an online service such as Prescription4Love.com is there to help. According to Ricky Durham the President of Prescription4Love.com, “Finding others with similar circumstances is a natural desire for everyone. Honesty is important, but finding an opportunity to mention such subjects can be difficult. By using Prescription4Love.com, you can be honest in advance and progress to the next stages of friendships and relationships.” Prescription4Love.com plans to be a free service for a limited time to build its customer base. At that time, new users will be offered a low monthly fee, a portion of which will be given to a charity for each condition.

###

This website was thought up several years ago because my brother had Crohns Disease (under IBS). At times he could weigh between 75 lb. to 125 lb. He also had a Colostomy Bag. It was hard for him to disclose his disease to anyone. But it was really hard for him to tell someone he had a colostomy bag, when do you tell someone that you want to date that you have a colostomy bag….. the first time you meet, the first date, the second? So I thought if he met someone at a website where everyone had the same condition there would be nothing to disclose.

He passed away July 15, 2004,(http://www.mem.com/display/biography.asp?ID=517377) back then the website was in the developmental stage but he liked the idea.

As we were developing the website it came to my attention the different people around me who had different conditions that might want to use my website for friendship or love. We put in 11 conditions to start, thinking we could add more later. Some of the conditions were added just because I knew someone who had that condition, and maybe their diet led me to add them. Another friend was deaf and suggested that also should be added to the website.

Its just an idea thought up for people who had certain conditions to better their lives through friendship or love.

Ricky Durham

I remember going to a chat room once where people just went to vent. There was yelling and screaming and I thought eeeeek. But you know what I had a choice, complain and stay or just get out and find something more to my liking. So for most of you who have posted, you all have an opinion but I am sure that you do not suffer from a handicap or mental condition or have had to use the run of the mill dating sites where most people are looking for someone perfect.

My two cents worth

When I refered to Deaf people, I am talking about ALL Deaf people considering themselves to be of a cultural and linguistic group, rather than a disabled one. This is due to the fact that using a capital D actually denotes those deaf people who are sign language users, quite often born deaf and into deaf families, or have associated with the Deaf community during life.

deaf with a small d usually refers to the larger group of deaf/hearing impaired/hard of hearing people out there. Many of this larger group might consider themselves disabled, particularly those with acquired hearing loss. I hope that clarifies my ‘generalisation’ in my last post.

From reading your post, I can see that you are willing to come to grips with the issues that Alison raised, so I think there is little point with us arguing for the sake of it. The problem here, and the reason the response was so intense is that this is a debate which has been raging for years in the Deaf world, and our Deaf community has fought long and hard to be recognised as a cultural and linguistic group.

Within the wider disability area we moved away from a medical model decades ago! We now use a social model, which concentrates on barriers in the environment for individuals, rather than on particular disabilities/conditions.

I think this is the reason for the fervour of replies – these are battles we thought were won a long time ago, but sadly they have only been won on paper, and general awareness is such that it can be depressing to bump against.

Btw, many thanks for correcting my English

Kirsteen

Randomly selected tech news……

@K

I totally agree with Alison and while not seeking to offend, can’t quite believe the ignorance that is being spouted by Ja.

I’m not offended, I just hate the feeling of knowing someone out there thinks of me as ignorant. It’s a hang up of mine since my intellect and knowledge are the only things I have left to cling to and even those are crumbling since my memory is shot (and I’m only 28).

I think you’re misinterpreting my stance as a realist as ignorance. I tend to be a realist rather than idealist with most issues. Sometimes I’m just a cynic. None of this means that I’m narrowminded. Perpetual idealists can be extremely narrowminded so the terms really have little to do with each other.

Ignorance can’t be spouted. Maybe it can be espoused but I’m not sure how much of a stretch that is. Sorry, it’s like when I see a lot spelled “alot” and it drives me nuts.

The first thing I thought when I read this was “What a bizarre and offensive combination of ‘conditions’”.

Yes, this was also my first though. See my first post where I say what my main issue is about the specific and arbitrary selection.

Is deafness considered to somehow be contagious? Something which needs to be ‘announced’ to potential partners so that they can appropriately safeguard themselves?

No, but it’s likely to come up sooner or later, don’t you think? Most of the issues on there are not contagious. If it’s just an attribute than how is it any different than “announcing” ethnicity on a dating site. People do have preferences. Lots of people are only attracted to certain ethnicities for example.

A deaf site run by deaf people is one thing, this is clearly another. A profound lack of understanding of the social model of disability, deaf culture and empathy is clearly being displayed here.

As Alison has tried to point out, Deaf people consider themselves as a cultural group, rather than a ‘medical one’, and therefore being listed along with ’sensitive’ medical conditions is actually quite insulting. Her points about ethnic groups being treated the same way seem to have gone way over some peoples heads.

Not everyone is an expert on such subcultures and it was poorly explained by Alison. Without context, the comparison to black people seemed rooted in exagerration lacking much logic. Cultural group… medical group… how about we just say biological group and call it a day? It’s rather blanket statement to say deaf people and ethnic groups consider themselves cultural groups. I’ll let you slide on that one without resorting to accusations of ignorance since I assume you mean “most” or “a large population of.” In any case, thank you for the clarification on what she was referring to

I am not deaf myself and find this whole idea incredibly offensive, I particularly find the remarks about ‘normal’ people being able to frequent the site if they find themselves ‘capable of handling the circumstances’ ignorant and irritating. Fine if you are talking about people who should be aware of the health risks to themselves if getting invovled with someone living with HIV or Aids, but thinking this kind of attitude is appropriate for deaf people is true ignorance.

“Normal” was in quotes for a reason and the whole idea of that statement will take a bit of explaining but I’ll give you an example:

I got involved with a girl named Mary. I was very straightforward about my issues but she was less forthcoming about the fact that her low bloodpressure often caused her to pass out pretty much anywhere. I found out quickly but she downplayed it as something that wasn’t a real issue. Unfortunately it was and it quickly became my role to take care of her, spend hours every day doing the trips back and forth to school since her condition made it impossible to drive, and remain vigilant at all times so I could catch when she did start to pass out so that she didn’t crack her head on anything. I didn’t mind doing any of that. The issues arose when I started having another bout of sickness (which could last quite a while and effectively knock me out of life for a year or so completely each time). I couldn’t do all the things I had been doing for her, the relationship became very strained, and at that point I really could have used someone to take care of me instead of vice versa. Things didn’t last much longer.

Other relationships ended due to the fact that my gf couldn’t handle how I got when I was sick. I know what I’m capable of handling and not handling in relationships as well as other aspects of life. Sometimes just putting ill people together is a bad idea. I am by nature a terribly hopeless romantic but even I have to hold back at times because of the incredible impracticality of some situations. The person that understands me the best in the world also has virtually identical symptoms and though we’ve always had this thing how would it have ever worked out when neither of us have the energy levels to do much of anything regularly and aren’t capable of of having the day to day functionality to hold down regular jobs so can’t earn enough to pay our medical bills let alone other costs of living?

Some people don’t want to deal with any complications period, while others may be more capable of handling and even subconciously attracted to people with issues that strongly affect their daily lives. I don’t see any reason to exclude these people from the community, especially if they have intimate knowledge/experience with certain issues. Does that explain it better or is it still insulting and ignorant?

As for the HIV/AIDS risk and disclaimer thing I don’t see how that should be singled out. Any type of issue that severely affects day to day life I think people should be very straightforward about from the outset. Again, to go back to the Lyme… women with Chronic Lyme will, in giving birth, pass it on to their children. However, even most women with Lyme don’t know this. It’s important to take many factors into account.

This is why I believe having a larger group for people that consider their problems to be chronic and serious enough to affect a relationship or even the chance of meeting someone would be effective instead of singling out an arbitrary bunch of groups.

It wouldn’t be just lopping people together into one category either. Deaf people for deaf people makes sense, whereas a group of Lymies for Lymies would be disasterous. See what I’m saying?

I apologize for the huge post and spamming the board with this little discussion but I had no way of responding to Kirsteen otherwise.

My suggestion is that if we’d like to continue this discussion, we take it to a different venue. I can be contacted via the contact me form in the about section of my blog (click on my name). Then we can discuss via email or in a more appropriate forum.

Again, apologies Marshall. Keep up the thought provoking articles though!

Ignorance would be bliss,

Jā

I applaude your effort to try to bring something different and of value to those outside the “web 2.0″ community as well as some of those within I’m sure. It was nice to see here, truly. No harm, no foul… your intentions were good and perhaps with proper feedback this service could turn around a lot of the way it’s constructed and presented. Plus, I believe the next step in creating useful services are making them useful *niche* services so I don’t mind seeing more coverage of those and less of the “novelty” services that abound today.

As far as disabilities and chronic conditions, they’re an overlapping issue. I’ve had Chronic Lyme diease for the better portion of my life (plus I’ve always had massive anxiety disoders amongst other things thanks to my family history) and it has turned into more and more of a disability over the years with each relapse further degrading my day to day functionality.

What’s most frustrating about it is that it’s very expensive to treat properly after a certain time period and doctors are leaned on quite a bit by insurance companies that pretty much pretend it doesn’t exist so they don’t have to pay for proper treatment. By the time we get to a certain age, we’ve become extremely expensive creatures to take care of at which point we’re dumped on the government to waste taxpayer dollars just because insurance companies are too greedy to pay for a one time *proper* treatment in the first place. Instead they spend their money on hiring doctors to take the stance that it doesn’t really exist or go by decades old references, while all modern medical research (along with common sense) shows it to be a very real very serious problem.

Why would anyone here care about any of this? Not really sure, but I’m just using it to put things in perspective. I have a lot bigger fish to fry than what a website may or may not be unintetionally be implying about one certain disability or another by clumping them together. We all have our issues (or non-issues). So I have a disability that significantly reduces my chances of getting a decent job, having a proper social life, getting by on my own, etc. Others with the same disease don’t have the same degree of problems. It’s something that must be dealt with on an individual basis.

That finally brings me back to my original point in my first post, that the disabiliteis and chronic conditions (chronic only means that it generally doesn’t go away and you’re stuck with it) are so incredibly arbitrary that it’s ridiculous. I mean, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Diabetes, Cancer, STDs, Obesity, Recovering Alchoholic, Deafness (which I didn’t notice at first)… there’s no rhyme or reason to why these are singled. It can’t be taken seriously and thus I don’t believe it to be a threat or setback to any rights movement.

@Marshall, perhaps you could get in touch with the Mr. Durham and make sure he’s read this thread. Sometimes owners lack perspective without feedback.

@Alison, you may want to leave them direct feedback and I may do the same.

My main concern is the design seems to be targetting a handful of arbitrary conditions. If they were simply to be removed from the listings that are plastered all over the site and just leave it open as a place for anyone with chronic conditions (or who feel they have chronic conditions that affect their social life) then it wouldn’t offend people and would likely have more of a draw instead of appearing to exclude others.

Thanks for the interesting discussion…

Jā

ps. someone tell them to get a refund from ImageServe, oi.

The first thing I thought when I read this was “What a bizarre and offensive combination of ‘conditions’”. Is deafness considered to somehow be contagious? Something which needs to be ‘announced’ to potential partners so that they can appropriately safeguard themselves?

A deaf site run by deaf people is one thing, this is clearly another. A profound lack of understanding of the social model of disability, deaf culture and empathy is clearly being displayed here.

As Alison has tried to point out, Deaf people consider themselves as a cultural group, rather than a ‘medical one’, and therefore being listed along with ’sensitive’ medical conditions is actually quite insulting. Her points about ethnic groups being treated the same way seem to have gone way over some peoples heads.

I am not deaf myself and find this whole idea incredibly offensive, I particularly find the remarks about ‘normal’ people being able to frequent the site if they find themselves ‘capable of handling the circumstances’ ignorant and irritating. Fine if you are talking about people who should be aware of the health risks to themselves if getting invovled with someone living with HIV or Aids, but thinking this kind of attitude is appropriate for deaf people is true ignorance.

Kirsteen