I was shocked last weekend in Chicago at the LGBTI Health Summit when I began to cry in the middle of a workshop. It was my fourth session of the summit, and I was feeling a bit worn thin from the weekend's intensity. Nevertheless, I did not anticipate the power of the emotions I felt as I described my anger and intensity over Public Health's treatment of gay men's sexualities.
The workshop was titled, "Destroying Public Health: for the Good of LGBT Health: Critique. Alternatives. Discussion," and was a collaboration between myself and Bill Jesdale. He was going to do a piece on risk, and I was going to do an analytic-polemic piece on the need to destroy Public Health. I had given a similar presentation before at an academic conference (audio; slides), then-titled "Resisting Public Health." But I felt the need to rev things up a bit, so I opted for a more loaded verb.
No more than an hour before the workshop was to begin, I was fiddling with my Powerpoint slides. There was something missing. I had the analysis down, but there wasn't the personal-emotional component that I knew was key to the argument I was making here. I wanted to make first a structural critique about the field of Public Health's epistemological reliance on Psychology and Epidemiology -- and the kind of knowledge that these fields were most apt to produce -- and I also wanted to make a structural critique about the field's normative grounding assumptions about sex, desire, and risk. But what was missing was the personal piece about how these structures made me feel as a gay man. What was the impact on my life?
So I typed away, working up a slide that I knew was polemical, but that was coming from a real place of hurt and anger. I wanted to own that anger, to share it publicly in a way that I had not done before. I didn't realize then how painful and upsetting it would be to actual talk about these feelings. Here's the slide in question (click to embiggen):
You can see what I mean by polemical. In any case, no sooner than I started describing the ways in which Public Health scholarship on crystal-meth addicted, HIV-infecting, depression-ridden gay men made me feel, tears started running down my face. I could barely go on speaking. I had never cried like this in public before -- the only time I had come close was when I delivered a memorial speech for Eric Rofes some years ago. But this was even more intense.
I expected to feel anger, but I was struck by how overwhelmed I was by my sadness. Sadness over knowing that it was gay male scholars much of the time who were producing the research and interventions that made me feel so dirty and shameful. Sadness that my gay brothers -- my friends, lovers, and fuck buddies -- were being painted as uncaring and untrustworthy monsters. Sadness over how much damage Public Health had done to gay men's sexual cultures in the name of promoting health. Sadness over not being able to ask Eric what to do or what he meant when he said that Public Health was a "colonizing" force in gay men's lives.
I still cannot get over the intensity of the emotions I felt in that moment. I took me at least 45 minutes to stop crying. I did not know the level of hurt that was living within me, slowly building over the years, waiting for a moment like this to reveal itself.
If anything, my painful experience of presenting this material reminds me just how much I need to continue aiming my critique at Public Health. I want to take the lens away from Gay Men, and point it back in the face of Public Health. To reveal the ways it is structured around homophobic, heternormative, and anti-sex assumptions about what is "good" and what is "bad."
My life is now, more than ever, committed to destroying Public Health.
one day i could not deal with the new stop-aids campain in switzerland...wich produce such hurt inside with this message. I had to answer...
thanks for your html-help!
Trevor -
Are you aware of the conference on Anti-Heterosexism sponsored by Soleforce - November 20-22. Here's the link:
http://www.soulforce.org/anti-heterosexism-conference
I suggest you offer to be a presenter at this conference - and to encourage the conference organizers to reach out to public health leaders.
Love and blessings,
Sunfire
As someone who works in public health, I can't tell you how much this attitude from academicy types hurts me. I have worked and provided services to my local GLBT community--being a bi man myself I consider myself as part of this community--for many years. Many people, like me, work long hours for little or no pay and that's only if there is a source of funding for our work. Many others, particularly in areas outside of major urban enclaves, do mostly volunteer-based work.
Quite frankly, if it wasn't for public health I would be dead. Why? Because the concept of gay-straight alliances were invented, championed and promoted out of the recognition that gay youth were killing themselves at unacceptably high rates due to isolation and stigma. As someone who came of age near a city in the 1990s, I benefitted from the development of glbt youth programming. I believe I would have died without it.
In states like Massachusetts, where I currently live, this was a wonderful development where community members, social service 'grunts' like myself, and policy people came together to demand and secure services for our youth. There are now GSAs in schools and community drop-in programs throughout the state, providing lifelines to youth.
Absolutely we should critically examine medical fields including that of public health. But please, please stop holding up this ridiculous monolith of evil experts trying to stop you from enjoying a good fuck. Many of us are your friends and allies who are working our butts off and are sick of the scorn!
jtguy: I certainly hear what you're saying. And I don't deny that people in PH do good things. In fact, I was much better able in my presentation to contextualize the critique I was making -- which is aimed at the dominant logics that operate with in the field that serve to pathologize and demonize many gay men. I don't think that this is disputable. The evidence is everywhere you look with in the field. But I want to really urge you to recognize that it is possible to critique a field without necessarily damning its practitioners. This is not the same thing, and I'm very clearly trying to make a case for the former -- not the latter.
I also really resent the statement you have here of reducing my argument to presenting a "ridiculous monolith of evil experts trying to stop you from enjoying a good fuck." That's unfair, at best. I'm sorry if for some reason you read me as saying just that, but I think there's much more here to chew on -- and I hope you can find a way to see that without feeling personally attacked. I'm not mounting a personal attack. You may be "sick of the scorn," but to somehow say that the scorn is totally without merit is -- I think -- an utter failure.
I don't think my statement was unfair. Your main image is a slide entitled 'destroy public health'. As a public health worker I did take that as threatening. You are obviously aware that words have power and you should make an effort to contextualize what you meant by 'public health'.
I am also not debating the damage that can be done in the name of public health. I am not saying the field shouldn't be criticized. But I am pointing out that you should be more careful in your word choices and presentation. Whether intended or not, I don't like being lumped in as an enemy to gbt men's health.
Well again -- as I said very clearly in the presentation referenced here that you were not at -- my desire to destroy comes out of place of hurt and sense of violence that Public Health has invested much energy into trying to destroy me, my sexual culture, and my people in the name of health promotion. I was trying to own the anger I felt -- which is why I organized the workshop. It's not about logical / rational thought. It's about my fucked up desire for revenge. I needed to have that moment, to process those emotions, to deal with them. I'm sorry if you don't understand them. I don't really care if you don't, to be honest -- because they are mine and I own that. But I suspect I'm not the only gay man who feels attacked by Public Health. We need spaces to vent, to process, to deal with these emotions. That's what I wanted to do. And as I said here, I was overwhelmed by SADNESS in this workshop -- hence the title. I was so consumed by an emotional response that I did not know how to handle -- that I did not expect. I can't tell you how surprising that was for me. I had expected fury and rage and fire and brimstone, but what I got in the end was a consuming sense of loss, sadness, and despair. I could barely go on speaking. I have never cried that hard in my life.
Well, I'm glad you were able to express your feelings regarding that. I'm sorry if you don't care if I understand your feelings even though you have posted this on a self-described "gay men's health"-related website for all to see and not in a private journal.
However, I wish more individuals such as yourself in academia would think about, care, and try and understand how your dialogue and language can alienate and hurt others. Similar to your feelings about the system of public health.