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COMMENT: FIGHTING HIV – THE WAY FORWARD
Comment, Gay Sex Health by HOMOVISION on October 28, 2009 at 8:02 amTweet
The final part of Gary Leigh’s three-part report on HIV prevention. Here he reveals what he believes is the only logical solution to successfully start reducing HIV infections among gay men…
The Soho Live survey exposes catastrophic failures and appalling degrees of negligence within HIV prevention. Indeed, the problems are so ingrained and endemic that if the suicidal shift the sector has implemented this past decade in softening up and normalising attitudes to HIV is to be reversed and the virus’s unrelenting march stemmed by a ‘tough love’ approach that zooms in on the harsh realities of living with the virus – as favoured by most of the 500 gay men who participated in September’s Soho Live Sex Survey – then HIV prevention must be taken off life-support forthwith and placed in the care and trust of those motivated more by a sense of service to others than a calculated career move; who don’t eye gay men as potential pill dispensers, future support service users or components of a strategic business plan; who don’t speak in the cold, bureaucratic language of “measured outcomes” and “qualitative assessments” but from a place of compassion, feeling and an innate grasp of the enormity of the task they are confronted with; who aren’t immune to criticism and wallow in obfuscation but are fully transparent and accountable; and who have the courage and conviction to say out loud that “a life without HIV is a life best lived”. It isn’t rocket science, just plain common sense.
Tags: advertising, AIDS, Area, business, charity, deaths, drugs, europe, funding, gay, gays, health, HIV, love, Rights, sex, soho, Stonewall, times, volunteers, work
215 Comments
I will look forward to seeing the boyz world aids day magazine next week. thank you david for keeping on with the message.
As a newcomer to the page, the thing that strikes me about your point on “the right to fuck” for positive men…isn’t that because the hiv sector is made of predominantly positive men, who, in the past, took jobs at tht and gmfa becuase they couldnt face or get them anywehre else? those organisations actively sought out people with hiv to come and work with them. it is therefore a problem that the people who have been infected are the same people coming up with the message about how to stay negative.just a thought.
For the record, it was Karl Riley’s coverage of HIV and the bareback porn industry in Boyz which led to me programming the Bareback Mountain event at the Southbank.
Karl’s incisive reporting on these issues has been second-to-none, which is why I also quoted him in the feature I wrote for Attitude.
This coming week’s Time Out will also be of interest to those following this debate.
William, it’s sad that you’ve drifted from beginning to make a reasoned and constructive contribution to this debate back to playground insults.
But I’m going to save you the bother of having to keep saying that your gang is bigger than my gang, and so on, because I’m reassurred and thankful that two of the most important players in moving this debate forward, Paul and David, are neither hysterical nor paranoid, and are capable of critical reasoning.
I’ll leave them and, for what it’s worth, the Gary Leigh Fan Club with a thought from Mr Leigh himself that I could not agree with more, and which has motivated my efforts to challenge the dogmatic quality of most of their contributions to this thread.
“HIV prevention must be placed in the care and trust of those who aren’t immune to criticism.”
Good luck with that.
Lots of love,
Mark x
“As I’ve said probably too many times on this forum, I have very deep concerns that the “right to fuck for positive men” has been placed above and before the “right to be protected for negative men” by the HIV sector. Again referencing the latest THT Assumptions campaign as clear evidence of this (”No point in using condoms. All the lads here are positive”).”
That one sentence encapsulates exactly what is going on David, and as an HIV+ individual I applaud your braveness in being able to say something that would be considered politically incorrect by many other poz men. When a good number of influential people in the HIV organisations are themselves regular fixtures in environments where indiscriminate barebacking is rampant you begin to see how self-interest and conflicts of interest have been alllowed to pervert the safe sex message. These individuals who will remain nameless (for now) have bred a fertile climate for such “underground” venues with campaigns that have become ever sleazier; endorsed and legitimised such establishments with a code of good conduct emblem often positioned in plain sight of guys gang banging one another with or without condoms; and have even launched a web site providing a step-by-step guide to the hard sex scene all the while sticking two fingers up at the still negative majority. But negative men won’t be the majority for too much longer if the deranged minds sanctioning these dangerously disproportionate projects are allowed to continue the sleazification of our culture. I have even been told by insiders that a running joke in one main HIV charity is that some of today’s HIV campaigns are intentionally designed to recruit “fresh young meat” rather than keep them negative.
David, I also applaud your brave decision to reveal yourself as Boyz’ publisher. I have been bowled away by your incredibly astute and wise observations, often pulling this thread back on track when it threatened to run away with itself and descend into endless mud slinging. But I would be very interested to know if your insights came recently or whether you always held them? If the latter, then why did you so willingly provide such an easy platform for the HIV sector’s HIV enabling campaigns and printed many of its sometimes crackpot press releases? Afterall, Boyz began in 1993, pre-meds and long before the HIV messages softened in their impact, so you must have been aware of what was happening and perhaps could have spoken out sooner and questioned their content? As a large circulation scene magazine read by many at-risk men the sector has a moral duty to use your platform and they could have been held to task if they threatened to withdraw their advertising for no good reason. Are you speaking out now as a form of redemption? I would really be curious to know. I suspect that this may have been also largely due to Hudson’s influence, because like Joseph Galliano he either can’t or point blank refuses to see the harm the charities are causing.
Nevertheless it is great to see how Boyz is now blazing a trail for other responsible print publishers to follow, with Attitude, Pink News, homovision.tv etc also now leading the way on this issue. It is strange to pick up QX these days and see how far it is falling behind in this cultural shift, and how it is still beholdened to the HIV sector above the health and well-being of its readers. Sex club specials and escort erections are still order of the day at that outfit; I just hope they wake up soon and realise how complicit they are in watering the fertile HIV breeding ground their HIV sector chums have created…
Am I the only person on here to notice, for all it’s worth, that Marks’ posts have mysteriously gained 10 or so extra thumbs-up signs overnight as if from thin air? For someone who said this system is irrelevant and open to abuse I think he has revealed his true character by indulging in such childish displays at one upmanship. Or is it Mark’s “fan club” working overtime? If you don’t have the ability to win the argument on even ground then resorting to yet more tricks and tomfoolery only destroys your stand entirely Mark.
I don’t need to be in anyone’s fan club thanks all the same Mark. I am more hhan capable ofweighing up the available evidence and drawing my own conclusions. Let me see. HIV rates in gay men have doubled in 10 years (tick). The HIV sector had been working to government dictates since 2001 (tick). HIV campaigns of the last few years have abandoned safe sex messages on favour of risk minimization (tick). In 2006 PEP was approved by the Chief Medical Officer for wide use and touted as a morning after pill for unsafe sex in ad campaigns by both THT and GMFA. This new approach enablef the normalization of HIV and the rise of barebacking; a period during which thousands of gay men are known to have become infected (tick). In 2009 the HIV sector is instructed to ramp up campaigns imploring all gay men to be tested (tick). Last week our buffoon of a Prime Minister announces he is committed to gay men being tested but no mention of a return to effective HIV campaigns. Fait accompli. But why would our government be so callous, uncaring and profligate with our money, you cry, enriching it’s pharmaceutical industry donors in the process? For the same reason that for the last ten years New Labour has demonstrated that it is corrupt to the core and that is the only way it knows how to be. Having connected the dots I rest my case. The only conspiracy doing the rounds right now is the one that seeks to convince us that we have not been betrayed.
In answer to William’s question, I must give complete credit and enormous thanks to the previously mentioned Paul Steinberg who with great skill and enormous courage communicated many of my (and his) concerns about recent HIV prevention campaigns within the pages of Boyz in 2007 and famously at that CHAPS conference where he was treated with outright antagonism, despite being invited by CHAPS. The lion’s den or what…..?
Prior to Paul, it’s true to say that I hadn’t found a journalist interested enough, passionate enough or ballsy enough to say what I thought needed saying – or who even believed what I kinda believed.
And yes, of course, I was worried that if I went public with my views the HIV organisations would pull their advertising from our magazine – much of which helps to pay for Boyz to be there for our readers every week.
But personally, it’s true, I had been worried for five or six years prior to 2007 of a major movement away from clear, “hard-hitting” condom campaigns by the HIV organisations. I believe this is not conspiracy though – I think it was a genuine attempt by those organisations not to “demonise” HIV positive people and I think in many ways, they were simply following the pattern of America, Australia etc. But it’s all got very twisted.
I would like to see the UK now, be the first gay community in the world to go the other way – back to really trying to prevent infections (and we can argue till the cows come home the best way) but broadly, as my colleague Karl Riley says so eloquently, “gay men need to know ‘why’ they should avoid HIV”. That ain’t clear and hasn’t been for years!
I had a meeting at the Boyz office with GMFA and the publishers of QX about four years ago, 2005 I think, to discuss my personal concerns about bareback porn – especially UK productions. I believe Millivres and Clone Zone were also communicated with about the issue at the time. Sadly, none of the people involved in those discussions were to support my view or were to take any action. We don’t advertise bareback porn and most of the houses that produce it wouldn’t go in Boyz anyway.
But none of the HIV charities have really said a thing substantial about the dangers of bareback porn even after our own Boyz news reporter Karl Riley and BBC2 Newsnight’s reports on the infections of teenage young gay guys in British bareback porn shoots. One of the lads involved, now in his twenties, is now on combo drug therapy.
The silence that followed those high profile stories about bareback porn convinced me that the HIV sector was dangerously committed to “the right to fuck for positive guys” above and before “the right to be protected from HIV for negative guys”.
The rest, as they say, is history, and has been covered in this thread one way or another. I do believe there are people in the HIV sector who do not share this “right to fuck” approach and I urge them to act and speak out within their organisations.
I am also keen to see HIV prevention campaigns becoming a political issue at the next election and would like to see all the political parties state their position on the issues very clearly. I am hoping our news page in Boyz between now and next May – and the likely election – will be a forum for the political parties to say what they really think about how HIV prevention campaigns should be conducted in future.
Who are we targetting and who do we want to get the message? Personally, I believe every single new infection is worth trying to stop. The average person with HIV – like myself – will currently cost the UK tax payer £320,000 in his lifetime. I have cost the taxpayer much more because I was hospitalised back in 1996 with PCP pneumonia and have visited my clinic on many occasions deeply sick with lung infections as a result of that initial illness.
Yes, I take my combo drugs and I am generally OK and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. But, for Christ’s sake, who wants to take drugs every day, have clinic appointments every two months and God knows how many ailments treated with antibiotics etc directly cos my immune system will never be as good as someone without HIV.
My message to every Boyz reader – and everyone else reading this excellent thread on Homovision – is stay negative at all costs. And I won’t stop saying that just because I’m HIV positive myself.
I was invited to write an article for the gay rags in Australia on this topic:
http://qlp.e-p.net.au/feature/the-truth-about-hiv-2911.html
which I understand this site will also be publishing shortly. For the piece, I received the usual flak and abuse, and an invitation from the CEO of my local AIDS Council that I might like to pop in for a chat. I graciously accepted his invite, but said that first, I would require his response to the Soho Live survey and to the issues raised in the article, IN WRITING.
I’ve had no further response.
I spent today with two very good friends, both of whom are positive. One used to work in the HIV sector. They asked about me about this debate (they’d heard about it, but weren’t following it online). We got talking about the wider issues, the main one being (at least to my mind) the resistance to harder-hitting safer sex messages, on the basis that they ‘demonize’ people with HIV.
‘How wrong!’ said my friend. ‘And how patronizing!’
I’m sure he’s not the only one. Perhaps we need to see some evidence to back up this assertion? It’s not what I’m hearing from the people I know.
It appears we should at least credit Mark/aidos/Andre for demonstrating how easily the new thumbs rating is open to abuse, and perhaps homo.tv would consider abandoning it from this thread to avoid manipulation of consensus? I am sure the Swarmite is devastated to find that overnight he has gone from being one of the most agreed with postees to one of the most unpopular. I wonder what other desperate tricks Mark and his scheming HIV sector kin have up their sleeves to try and stifle debate and save what face they can? With Attitude now joining the collective voice of reason, seems like they are running out if places to hide!
Paul Burston says: “Perhaps we need to see some evidence to back up this assertion? ”
You’ll have read the Soho Live survey. When asked whether AIDS campaigns which normalise HIV’s image had influenced them to be complacent about safe sex, 6% of respondents said they now engage in unsafe sex “every time” and 22% said, “sometimes”. (Among under-25s, 11% said “every time” and 35% “sometimes.”) Asked if HIV campaigns depicting the reality of living with HIV would be more effective in persuading them to engage in safe sex, only 4% said “no” while 36% said “yes.” Only 4% agreed that harder-hitting ads stigmatise HIV-positive people while two-thirds disagreed with the HIV sector’s rhetoric.
And in January 2008, 82% of the UK Pink Paper’s readers voted in an online survey for harder-hitting HIV campaigns.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/11/02…hiv-prevention
What evidence would you like to see?
@ Mike N. Yes I noticed this too over the past 12 hours, the march of the dastardly Red thumbs – but far from devastated I am amused that my words have hit home and continued to be backed up by others on this thread more academic than I.
I repeat again – the time has come for THT & GMFA to say sorry, we got it wrong.
Shayne, you misread what I wrote, or I didn’t make myself very clear. I was asking for evidence that harder hitting campaigns DON’T work, and that they stigmatize people with HIV.
This isn’t the sense I’m getting from the people I’ve talked to, so I wondered if the HIV charities had evidence to back this up.
OK, Paul, sorry I misunderstood your question. I’ve done a quick google search and can’t seem to find any evidence that harder hitting campaigns DON’T work. And I certainly can’t think of any reasonable argument against them, although I suppose the industry might argue hard-hitting campaigns fail to engage those men who are the target of HIV prevention activity, that confronted by campaigns that bluntly label certain sexual behaviours as wrong or irresponsible, gay men are likely to turn off. I can’t agree though, living with HIV can be an absolute horror, publicising some of the detail of that would certainly give gay men a reason to put a condom on or, as we often forget…just do something OTHER than anal.
I suppose the inverse question answers yours. Are the soft sell campaigns making any difference to HIV seroconversion rates? The answer is a very provable ‘no.’
In Sydney, our AIDS Orgs. latest campaign has dolly boiz handing out bananas.
http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2009/09/29/acon-goes-bananas-for-safe-sex/16698
Gawd knows what it cost, or what it’s supposed to say, but I can’t think of anything more useless or ridiculous. As one commentator said, “Gay wallpaper ads trivialising hiv infection and Aids.” Someone else makes a good point: “People travelling to a place with an earthquake or tsunami forecast want and deserve to be made aware of what risks their journey presents. Media coverage of these events and forecasts is not accused by the tourism industry of being ‘alarmist’ – it is serving its proper purpose.”
I’m with Swarmite Parker on this one, “I repeat again – the time has come for [our HIV/AIDS orgs] to say sorry, we got it wrong. “
HEY GUYS
Thanks for all your comments on this article.
The discussion now continues over in the MyHOMOVISION forum:
http://myhomovision.ning.com
Thanks!