So,as I've mentioned, I'm here in Chicago for a few different reasons. One of them was to attend a forum organized by my friend Jim Pickett from the AIDS Foundation Chicago (and Lifelube blogger) called "'Good' Sex? 'Bad' Sex? Just What do Gay Men Want Anyways?" featuring my mentor / friend David Halperin. The panel was moderated by the hosts of the podcast "Feast of Fools," and also featured Michelle Morales (Northwestern University) and Gary Harper (DePaul University).
It's always good to get together to discuss frankly and openly gay men's sexualities, and to have difficult conversations on controversial topics like barebacking and crystal meth use / abuse. So this forum was invaluable to provide that kind of space. David's insights into public health culture, which has focused on gay men's "bad" behavior, is always needed and welcome.
Michelle Morales, who critically engages with the scientific literature that tends to view gay men as having poor measures of health behavior, was incredibly useful / important / refreshing. She is one of many scholars calling for research on gay men that resists the "gay men have higher rates of ____ (insert drug use / suicide / other bad behaviors here)." Thank God for people like her!
In general I thought the forum went well. I have a few hesitations to the dialogue, which I've posted in the comments over on the Lifelube blog. I suppose they might only make sense if you were there, so I won't regurgitate them here (I'm also a bit too tired / tipsy to make them understandable here at the moment).
But cheers to Jim and everyone who had a hand in organizing the event! Hurrah!
How do we find out about this stuff, darling??? I'm on the Gay Men's Health Summit listserv but that, like so many other things, produces nothing, so I'm very curious about panels like these. I would have loved loved to attend.
Well I knew about this event because I read Lifelube, a project of Jim Picket's (who organized the event), and I'm a student of David Halperin's (who spoke on the panel). I agree that these things are typically inconsistently publicized... Not sure that there's a centralized way to be "in the know."
This is fairly common across the country... I know it's one we fight with here... how to get th e word out. Once we figure that out, I think we'll be millionaires, darling. Let's do that.
Millionaire queers. How passe
We in fact posted this on the Gay Men's Health Listserv - though only once as it is a Chhicago event and many of the members of the list are from elsewhere. In Chicago, we had banner ads on a number of sites, listservs, advance media with the Feast of Fools podcast and the Windy City Times, plus listings in the gay press and TimeOut Chicago. We also posted to many Chicago lists and distributed several hundred flyers... And as Trevor said, we talked about the forum a lot on the LifeLube blog - so please check in regularly, or subscribe! We also promo things from all over the country, not just Chicago.
All the best,
Jim
How dare you prove to me that I am just really out of touch. LOL
So nice to hear from you, Jim, haven't heard from y'all since the Campaign to End AIDS.
LOL!!!
Come and visit www.LifeLube.org - early and often! And hope to see you at the Gay Men's Health Summit in Seattle this fall.