I love when people pretend to have something new or powerful to say about HIV/AIDS. 99% of the time, they are more likely to recycle tropes that we've been telling ourselves for the past decade or two. The latest example of this is David Mixner's post at DCAgenda, "What happened to silence = death?", in which he makes the tragically pseudoradical claim that we just need to talk about HIV more to end the epidemic. You know, silence=death, y'all!
Now let's put aside the fact that he seems to misunderstand the silence=death mantra of ACT UP -- it wasn't really just about mentioning HIV or getting tested, but about coming out into the streets and demanding action from homophobic institutions that were helping to fuel the silence and the epidemic, like the Roman Catholic Church and the CDC. But this gross misunderstanding aside, I still have a few words to say in rebuttal:
David,
While I appreciate your commitment to HIV Prevention, your editorial doesn't shed any new light on the issue. You make no mention of the fact that Public Health's stigmatizing and demonizing efforts to smear gay men and their sexual practices may be part of the reason why gay men checked out of prevention and of thinking about HIV/AIDS more generally. You tell people they're a piece of shit for long enough, eventually they stop tuning in to hear more.
My problem with Public Health is that there is no accountability for the racist, sexist, rabidly sex-negative, and often antigay messages that are trumpeted from the mountaintop under the guise of HIV prevention. "Oh, that campaign was racist? Well at least it started dialogue." You hear it time and time again, from the local to state to national level. In their minds, reducing HIV infections is the only end worth measuring - and if it reinforces or reproduces racism or antigay sentiment along the way, so be it.
And don't make the mistake of thinking more funding = better prevention. Most of the CDC dollars allocated to prevention fund tired, useless, and ineffective interventions that have no relation to the complexities of gay men's lives. Just take a look at the available "DEBIs" that ASOs have to put up with. Many people on the ground tell me that they have to pretend to be engaged in these pathetic excuses for interventions while secretly radically changing the curriculum on the ground. The CDC's efforts force ASOs into positions of dishonesty and secrecy. Where's the critique of the CDC's infrastructure in your analysis? Of the damning and devastating impact of abstinence-only education? Of Congress' forcing states to pass HIV disclosure criminalization laws, even though they are harmful to Public Health, if they accept Ryan White dollars?
So forgive me if I'm not sympathetic to your critique. But I think you've missed the point. It's not gay men who need to shape up. It's the CDC, local, state, and federal governments, and the larger institution of Public Health that needs to get its priorities straight.
Trevor
Phew. And that's how Sue sees it.
If anyone ever starts to wonder why I love you so much, Trevor-----they need only read this post. Can't wait to see you again in a few weeks!
I don't know of any public school in America that is providing sexually explicit instructions on the use of condoms and lube during gay anal sex. Sexual prudes have prevented school administrators from providing anything more than a watered-down text pamphlet that obliquely refers to preventing sexually transmitted infections and pregnancies by using condoms. In fact, many schools are legally barred from promoting anything other than chastity "abstinence-only until marriage" educational programs directed only at heterosexuals because gay marriage is illegal in most states.
The problem with continued funding of HIV prevention efforts is that it is so deceptively simple looking. Telling boys how they can avoid being infected with HIV appears to be simple as telling a child not to touch a hot stove or they will get burned. In fact, doing this is difficult as telling girls how they can prevent unwanted pregnancies.
If we can't even teach the facts about gay sex in school, there is little hope we can implement the more sophisticated prevention programs needed to significantly reduce the rate of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV. I am unaware of any prevention program targeted only at adult gay men that can fully compensate for this inadequate sex education of adolescents.
Thanks for the kind words, Erik! Can't wait to see you in a few weeks.
Thomas, you're right on point. It's beyond me why comprehensive, gay-positive sex education has not been priority #1 for HIV Prevention folks. It's often simply ignored, I find.
Wow, I must say your "rebuttal" certainly is a little caustic. I don't really know David Mixner's work, nor do I know yours, but what you two are saying doesn't seem to be mutually exclusive nor even to contradict each other. The difference I see in your writing and Mixner's is that he seems to rely more upon invoking an urgent need for action ("fags are quiet, scared, demoralized, disillusioned, out of touch-- this must be changed"), while you seem to fall more in a language of reproach and reaction ("thanks for your thoughts Mixner, but whoaa there!"). I think you both have said interesting things here; Mixner could have mentioned systemic failures of the Public Health model in his article, but that doesn't seem to me to be his aim or point. Now, I don't know Mixner's politics, but perhaps he would even say such things or agree with you, but to me he seemed more geared up on addressing what he sees as a general apathy surrounding homo X's regard for HIV's historical precedent, which manifests, he sees, as silence. You're right, there are a lot of problems with the way ASOs (...NGOs PPOs NPOs HMOs BLTs) handle AIDS/HIV (whether by design or otherwise), and agencies like the CDC do fall back upon models that differentially manage Public Health; however that doesn't mean that Mixner isn't right that there is, in many parts of the country, a taboo amongst homos (well, nearly everybody, really) about speaking about HIV and/or AIDS. Nowhere in his blog did he even purport that all we need is to "talk about HIV more to end the epidemic". In a virtual vacuum of anything vaguely "pseudoradical" concerning HIV and AIDS, both his and your points would seem to work together quite nicely and be of great value to a lot of people who have no connection to a culture or history that feels empowering. I believe your post could have been made in a way that worked synergistically, that would have made both postings all the stronger, rather than taking Mixner apart on the basis of his blog failing to encompass something the author wouldn't necessarily disagree with.
You say it's "beyond you" why gay-positive sex ed. has not been priority #1? It might be said that just as Mixner defiantly overlooked the "-isms" ingrained in Public Health models, you have also overlooked the painfully similar parallels that "homophobia" (and racism and sexism and ageism and ableism and heterosexism and boo and baa) plays in public education. Now, perhaps "it's beyond me" was just a convenient linguistic crutch to save you from having to endlessly write overly worded, heavy analyses? But, if it wasn't, then perhaps you could cut the rest of us a break and try to work with us and realize that many of us homos living with HIV or AIDS or GRID or whatever you'd like to call it (personally, I like "GRID" or "gay plague") are human too; and while some of us are gross people or can only ultimately care for ourselves, a lot of us have things of value to say, just as you and Mixner do. If this were a posting talking about the systemic "-isms" and the other issues built into Public Health models, withholding the rather abrasive critique on what seems to be a wholly separate article which approaches a completely different aspect of the issue, I think I would have enjoyed reading it more. Of course, I like it when people and ideas that don't seem to be at odds, get along and work together.
Anyways, I look forward to reading more of your blog entries and finding out more about the way you think; thanks for putting your ideas into the world.
(Disclaimer: I don't know Mixner's work, he may be totally gross politically, but the posting I read relating to this blog seems only to appeal for the need to open the issue up so homos don't have to steep in apathy or fear, at least amongst each other; Conversely: I don't really know your work, other than this posting and the SF AIDS Meds posting, you could be gross politically, but you seem to generally have some interesting things to say; On the other hand: I know I'm the grossest of the gross.)
After re-reading Mixner's posting, I must say that his politics are a little dodgy, though I do agree that homos need to be able to move out of their apathy, I don't believe that being in the military is anything to be proud of, nor are State sanctioned unions. Some of the context he uses to frame the AIDS epidemic... as having "galvinized a generation of gay men" to "serve openly" and what not seems like a one-way ticket to Ciudad Problemática.
Okay, thanks, good-bye.