Dumb question but lately, with the rise in monkeypox cases, I've been seeing a lot of wild claims about gay men being thrown around, with some going as far as to say that the vast majority of them are sexually promiscuous.

Apparently it's more common for gay men to have had more sexual partners than heterosexuals and that they're also less likely to use condoms, leading to a rise in STDs.

I saw somewhere though that the most prevalent cause of higher STDs in gay men is due to disease transmission being much more of a risk with anal sex than it is with vaginal sex. Considering how dirty butts can be, no matter how much we clean ourselves, this does seem like a pretty reasonable explanation.

Yet all I see are negative comments directed at gay men, smearing them with the same brush, that they're whores, have no sense of hygiene, let their hormones get in the way of safety, etc. The monkeypox crisis seems to have brought back a lot of the hysteria from the beginning of the AIDS crisis.

I don't really know what I'm asking with this post but it kind of pissed me off reading a lot of these wild claims and was wondering if anyone had any insights or actual data as to why certain factors seem to be higher in gay men.