King's recommendations to women are in line with the sense of omnipresent threat and moral panic that he projects. Not an insignificant number, but scarcely a omnipresent threat to women. So a very generous estimate of the incidence of guys on the DL is 5%. Surely MSMs are no more than half of this population, probably a good deal less. Let's opt instead for the larger figure of 10% that is often bandied about. Estimates are hard to come by, but many studies put the percentage of men who are gay in a broad sense (including bisexuals and, despite their self-identifications, MSMs) at around 5%. King might well believe, given his life history, that a large percentage of black men are on the DL, but this claim is almost surely false. But all these assertions that not all Xs are Y implicate that a large percentage of Xs are Y. I also want to make sure that I am clear when I say not all black men are living a double life, a double lie. Not every black man in your life is on the DL. The first thing I want to say to women who are seeking DL signs or behavior traits is that not every black man is on the DL. This view of the world finds expression in the way he frames his warnings to black women (the bold-facing is mine): Now, King lived on the DL himself for years, and he's writing about what he knows, which includes a very large number of men on the DL, so in his world the Down Low is all over the place. My dismay, on the other hand, is over King's fomenting a moral panic - in this book, in television interviews, and in public appearances - about the prevalence of DL life. So Boykin sees King as engaged in a campaign of blaming the gays. 31-3 (Boykin, an openly gay and politically very active black man, has a book Beyond the Down Low soon to be published.) Boykin is particularly outraged at King's claim that men on the DL are the vector for the spread of HIV/AIDS among black women he notes that the phenomenon of "straight" men having sex with men is as widespread among whites as blacks, yet HIV/AIDS is much more prevalent among black women than among white women. Since then I've read King's book, with some dismay, though possibly not as much as Keith Boykin, as expressed in his article "Not just a black thing" in The Advocate of 1/18/05, pp. Life on the DL was last discussed here back in July. Implicature is working in the service of a moral panic over DL men. However, one of King's aims in the book, to sound the alarm about "straight" black men who have sex with men and the danger they present to black women, is furthered by the way he phrases his warnings. King's recent book, On the Down Low (Broadway Books, 2004), but most of it doesn't have to do with linguistic issues. Implicature in the service of a moral panic