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COMMENT: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS – THE NEW RELIGION
Comment, Gay Sex Health, London Gay News by HOMOVISION on October 27, 2009 at 7:22 amTweet
Part two of Gary Leigh’s three-part report on HIV prevention. Here he explains why he thinks political correctness is damaging gay men’s health…
Defending GMFA’s stance not to run harder-hitting HIV campaigns, Head of Programmes Matthew Hodson said in September: “The GMSS (Gay Men’s Sex Survey) shows that there is almost universal agreement amongst gay men, irrespective of their age, that HIV is a serious medical condition. Therefore, campaigns that only tell everyone how serious HIV is would only be delivering a message that gay men already know.”
Hodson was referring to a 2006 GMSS statistic purporting that virtually all gay men of all ages (97 percent) perceive HIV to be a “serious medical condition”; a finding that seriously conflicts with the 27 percent of Soho Survey respondents who regard HIV as a manageable condition, and the 26 percent who regard it to be no more serious than catching any other STI. Only 45 percent in our survey correctly perceive HIV as a “serious terminal condition”. Certainly, if as many as 97 percent of gay men in 2006 really did regard HIV as a “serious medical condition” – i.e. that they were aware of the life-eroding implications of contracting HIV – then most would surely have made a greater effort to protect themselves during sex, which isn’t borne out by today’s HIV rates.
Finally, survey participants were asked what single factor is most contributing to the rise of barebacking. By a clear margin in nearly all age groups 21 percent said bareback porn; a significant finding given the deafening silence and indifference of the HIV sector on the subject. “I don’t like the thought of censorship, particularly that which discriminates against gay men,” GMFA’s Matthew Hodson said of bareback porn last year, in marked contrast to IML (International Mr. Leather) President Chuck Renslow who told the US gay media in August that vendors at the annual Chicago convention – at which barebacking is the practised norm among many attendees – would no longer be permitted to sell or distribute barebacking materials. “Too many in our community believe HIV/Aids is curable or manageable,” he said. “We believe that it is our duty to inform and educate. We have an entire generation who may not fully appreciate or comprehend the severity of the situation. Greed and avarice must not supersede the health of our community.”
Chuck Renslow
“Lack of free condom distribution” and “Boredom of safe sex/condoms” were each cited by 18 percent of respondents, obliterating the fallacy that “condom fatigue” is the overriding factor influencing gay men of all age groups into having unsafe sex. “The increase in sex-on-site premises” came 4th (16 percent), while “ineffective safe sex education” was itself considered to be a main factor in the rise of barebacking (13 percent), more so than “disinhibiting recreational drugs” (12 percent).
No matter how its devastating findings are interpreted or its “ambiguous” questions discredited by those in HIV prevention, I feel the Soho Live survey raises doubts over the success of UK HIV prevention strategies. Most of all it emphasises that if gay men’s health – particularly the urban scene-goer’s – is to be safeguarded into the next decade and HIV prevented from entrapping a new generation of gay men, blind faith and trust must stop being placed in the HIV charity sector which continues, year after year, to cling to the same out-of-touch policies. The unpalatable truth is that the sector is no nearer to delivering the solutions that are blindingly obvious to gay men on the street than when it started out because it has become the central problem, subverting and co-opting HIV prevention to the point where some of its methods may enable the virus’s spread.
Political correctness entered the mainstream psyche with good intent; to stamp out hate and ensure fairness for all. Its relentless, unrestrained march, however, has overstepped all reasonable boundaries into many areas of public life, inflicting ridiculous levels of paranoia and bureaucracy upon – and immeasurably weakening, destabilising and paralysing the democratic power structures of – once great institutions, not least the HIV charity sector whose central failing is its pervasive PC doctrine that a hardline approach to HIV prevention would run counter to its spin that HIV is a manageable condition and those infected can enjoy healthy, normal lifespans. As long ago as 1990 medical journalist Oliver Gillie, writing in The Independent, warned that the UK’s largest HIV charity, THT, was “rent with political discord and pursuing political correctness at the expense of medical accuracy, and sometimes common sense.”
What is so pernicious about political correctness “gone mad” is how it transforms into quasi-religious disciples those who kneel at its altar. For years gay men have been contending with the spread of not one but two viruses, HIV and PC. But as support for a return to hardline HIV prevention increases, a growing band of dissenting voices including TV doctors Chris Jessen and David Bull and author Paul Burston are finally being heard above the dismissive put-downs of some within the HIV sector.
In campaigning long and hard these past seven years for greater awareness around the unparalleled HIV-correlated health risks associated with crystal meth, and more recently in calling for harder-hitting HIV campaigns for no self-interest other than to protect the health and wellbeing of those I may never meet, I have rarely encountered anything so deeply disturbing as the ferocious amount of energy HIV sector personnel are willing to expend attacking, suppressing and dismissing all criticism of their approach, nor the manner by which they aggressively discredit all opposing viewpoints into submission.
The sector surpassed even itself in March 2008 – two days after Dr. Chris Jessen told The Metro “There hasn’t been a decent HIV campaign in years” – when Boyz journalist Paul Steinberg was invited to the annual CHAPS conference to deliver his well-researched case for harder-hitting HIV campaigns. In the event his speech was ambushed by a heckling, jeering mob of prominent HIV sector staffers, and when Steinberg dared to quote Dr. Jessen he was humiliatingly shouted down by one who screamed: “What does he know? He’s only a doctor!”
TOMORROW: Thoughts on the way forward if HIV prevention is to be revived…
Tags: AIDS, Area, charity, drugs, funding, gay, gays, health, HIV, london, People, politics, porn, religion, sex, soho
14 Comments
Thanks Homovision and to Gary Leigh for bringing this important public health issue into the spotlight. I await the conclusion tomorrow with baited breath, and equally await the HIV sector’s excuses, sorry, defecse, of their now conclusively proven failures as borne out by Soho Pride’s independent sex survey.
Very interesting
Hello Joseph, any chance of persuading your successor, Tris Reid-Smith, at GT into covering this story? Of all the gay media not to be laying into the HIV sector at all for their appallingly blatant failures, GT, Pink Paper and QX stand out for their deafening silence. And the longer they remain quiet about the issue of most importance to gay men today, the more the finger of suspicion is pointed at them for the fact that they are putting profit before their readers’ health and wellbeing. And in the case of GT, the fact that parent company Prowler are purveyors of the worst extremes of bareback porn sits uncomfortably with the Soho Live Survey finding that gay men in general regard bareback porn as the prevailing factor influencing them into indulging in unsafe sex.
PS: Would that you were still GT’s editor today – the magazine since you left has fast going down the same pan that the Pink Paper ended up in…
How do the HIV charities respond to these revelations that they have been pulling the wool over all our eyes? Now, a major article in the New Yorker Magazine called “Another AIDS Crisis” reveals that HIV-pos people in their 50s on AVRs have immune systems comparable to 88 year olds and are susceptible to brain damage and a plethora of cancers:, but the truth must be told as to what agendas were they following to ensure gay men were misled into catching a killer virus? Their current muted silence is telling, but I for one will not let this issue rest, and will be calling on all gay media to do their duty and keep the questions coming.
http://nymag.com/health/features/61740/
So much for the charities telling us we can catch HIV and live a normal and healthy life. Anyone with half a brain could have deduced that the very fact you are absorbing pharmaceutical poisons into your body on a daily basis is going to lead to severe consequences sooner or later. THT, GMFA, the whole damn lot of them have been exposed
Well done Homovision for setting the ball in motion.
While I think that Gary Leigh’s series of articles raise some very good points, and commend him for doing so, I think JJ that your suggestion that THT and GMFA have deliberately misled people into catching a killer virus is, well, a bit of a stretch.
Are some gay men that thick that they can’t make their own informed decisions, and use boyz and qx as their only source of sexual health information? We all have to some responsibility for the decisions we make and the lives we choose to lead.
Yes meds are not perfect, and have their own associated risks, but do we really want to go back to a world without them? And some people, a minority, use misuse PEP, but does that mean we withdraw the option, and condemn someone who makes a mistake to a death sentence?
I have no connection to any of the Aids charities, but from what I know about the charity sector in general, recognise that it’s not a perfect world, but don’t entertain the idea of a malevolent plot. Human failings yes, ineptitidude maybe, but consipiracies, I don’t think so – as attractive as that idea might be to some, who may, for their own reasons, want to feel that they have in some way been a victim of a concerted plot rather than their own mistakes (I’m making that point in a general rather than a personal sense and no offense of inference is intended).
What we need, in my opinion, is to have reasoned, mature debate about this subject, and the best way to go forward, without getting hysterical about it.
@Aido
I couldn’t agree with you more. The shortcomings in HIV prevention etc, are not some malevolent conspiracy, but merely good intentions not managing to get everything right. Certainly THT and GMFA, for all their failings, do brilliant work.
My question is that although figures have been rising – how much WORSE might they be without THT.etc?
We do not live in a black and white world, there are no easy answers.
Hi Aido, I have to say I am a little dumbfounded by your assertion about the ability of gay men to make informed choices. The whole point of this series of essays, surely, has been to highlight how they haven’t been given the proper information from which to base those choices in, and have at worse been lied to and deceived about the seriousness of HIV and the effectiveness of the medications? How can someone possibly take responsibility for his behaviour if the information he has been programmed with about HIV and safe/unsafe sex has been, at best, softened, and at worse fabricated? We are not born into this world with such knowledge already ingrained into us. It is learned, and we fund and entrust HIV charities to dispense it truthfully and effectively. And they have failed us on both counts. However, I do agree with you that a reasoned, mature debate is needed, though I disagree vehemently in your labelling of those who think some agenda is at play here as “hysterical” – the age old trick employed by cowards wanting to win an argument at all costs, simply dub your opposition hysterical. Sorry to disappoint….
Oh, and Joseph, “merely good intentions not managing to get everything right”? Really? 27 years later and the THT is still not getting it right? If their intentions really were good and sound, wouldn’t they have realized by now that their approach has consistently been destroying the health and well-being of gay men and conceded defeat years ago and handed the baton over to someone else? Their only good intentions are to themselves, and the monopolization of the sexual health industry by whatever means. Maybe you should declare your interest here as you yourself were once a major cog in the “gay mafia” machinery. You moved on from GT a while back but clearly still feel the instinct to close ranks. And don’t even get me started on GT parent company Prowler’s track record where bareback porn is concerned. How transparent can you be?
Marcus, I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t been living in some parallel universe, or maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention, but I don’t recall THT or GMFA downplaying the seriousness of HIV – although I could be wrong there, I haven’t read everything they have ever produced.
I’d dispute though that in this day and age, with so much information at our fingertips, that anyone has an excuse for remaining uninformed about HIV, though there are plenty of people out there who regard anything around HIV as boring, along with politics, gay history etc — and are happy to swallow the myths rather than seek out the truth (one of the prevailing ones of these I’ve come across being that someone on meds with an undetectable viral load can’t transmit HIV). Perhaps, the HIV charities need to address these directly.
I think any failure on the part of the HIV charities reflects a failing of the wider community, where some complacency may have crept in. I don’t think its so much THT and GMFA telling us that people can lead “normal” lives on meds, whatever “normal” means, when these people are all around us, our friends, and sometimes lovers. And the rise in bareback porn is also not something that has been foisted on us, but rather reflects demand in the marketplace. And, when it comes to barebacking, in some cases I’ve known of, its been a case of too much information encouraging risky behaviour, with the old safe sex always message, being perhaps compromised by assessments of % risks of infection. I don’t think the charities are so much the cause of the problem, although they might be part of it, but only one part of it.
As for my using the term hysterical, I wasn’t seeking to win an argument “at any cost” but simply saying what I thought about JJ’s assertion that HIV charities deliberately misled people into catching a killer virus (a statement that seems to have been removed from that post).
It’s great to see this debate going on here.
What??!!!!!!! You can live a normal healthy lifespan according to these orgs. How much more can they downplay the threat?? It is THEY who are perpetuating this and other myths, and as they have total control over the HIV prevention budget they are the only ones dispensing HIV information on a regular basis to gay men, via THT’s booklets and adverts and GMFA magazine aimed at gay youngsters (Fusion I think it’s called?). How on earth can these youngsters be asked to seek out the truth, as you say, when they look to these official organizations to provide it????? Yes, indeed, what planet are you living on Aido?? jj’s post seems pretty straight forward and clear cut to me. Clearly gay men HAVE been misled by the hype that HIV is no big deal, that is irrefutable….
I’m a little disturbed that the full length of my response seems to have been truncated here – so I don’t know how these posts are being edited. I DID declare my hand re: GT.
As regards to your saying: “Maybe you should declare your interest here as you yourself were once a major cog in the “gay mafia” machinery.” Well, this is laughably paranoid. I DID say who I was and what my past interests were. You DO NOT KNOW the kinds of arguments I had in-house about BB porn and having seen the ‘top’ end of gay business, if you think these people are capable of organising themselves in any interesting way, then you are sorely wasting your time!
As for: “27 years later and the THT is still not getting it right? If their intentions really were good and sound, wouldn’t they have realized by now that their approach has consistently been destroying the health and well-being of gay men and conceded defeat years ago and handed the baton over to someone else? ”
Are you absolutely barking? Tell me who could have done a better job than the THT, and how and why, and I and thousands of other people would be fascinated to hear. If you really think this is some sort of one-size-fits-all arrangement, that would be fantastic and solve so many problems/. Unfortunately the issues here are multi faceted, complicated and fraught with complex potential outcomes. If you think you can solve them in one go, I’d like to see you try – really!
Joesph – your comments re: GT were on a different thread.
“Are you absolutely barking? Tell me who could have done a better job than the THT, and how and why, and I and thousands of other people would be fascinated to hear.”
– Joseph Galliano, one time editor of GT and now full-time comedian.
That’s a brilliant dissection of the argument, you must be thoroughly proud of yourself. An insult rather than response. I hardly think it’s worth having a discussion with you to be honest.
And yes, thanks I just realised that that was on another thread. Cheers.
I’d also like it to be noted that I am the ONLY person on these threads who seems to have made a full and frank disclosure of who he is. Which makes it easier for you to simply insult people who are entering into ‘debate’ with you. (I say debate – but I am not convinced you actually want to discuss the issues, it seems like you just want wind yourself into a foaming self righteous mis-guided frenzy.
unsubscribe.
@Joseph – “Are you absolutely barking? Tell me who could have done a better job than the THT, and how and why, and I and thousands of other people would be fascinated to hear.”
@Part three – “Last year THT won the lucrative three-year Pan-London HIV Prevention Programme contract, boosting its annual income to almost £16 million. “It’s in everyone’s interest, not just the gay community, to see the number of HIV infections reduced,” Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust Chief Executive Diana Middleditch said on awarding the contract. So why, with two years still to go, has this funding so far been spent on yet more campaigns pushing PEP for premeditated unsafe sex instead of accidental exposure, and which our survey shows is persuading a significant proportion of gay men to dispense with precautions; the ‘Drugfucked’ web site, which has provoked accusations of trivialising, glamorising and incentivising drug use; campaigns urging HIV-testing above prevention and which appear to utilise NLP techniques to reinforce the inevitability of contracting HIV; and advertisements for THT’s own HIV support services in Positive Nation magazine aimed at HIV-positive individuals? Surely not even the most efficiently media-trained person within the HIV sector can claim this to be an effective, well-coordinated strategy for HIV prevention?”
‘Nuff said.