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HIV Is Awful, Even With
The New Drugs Bay Area Reporter, August 25, 2003 Michelangelo Signorile is a former editor of The Advocate, a national gay magazine, and author of "Queer in America" and "Life Outside." |
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One ad is headlined “Crix Belly7” and features a man with a horribly distended stomach, a side effect of anti-HIV drugs such as Crixivan. Another, headlined “Facial Wasting,” depicts a man with a gaunt face proclaiming that he now looks “like a ghost.” There’s one called “Night Sweats” and another called “Diarrhea.” What all of these bus shelter ads have in common is that they drive the point home that HIV — as well as the side effects of the drugs that now combat it — is a living hell. You’d think ads like these would be running in national gay magazines and would be slapped up on bus shelters in gay ghettos across America. Yet, scandalously, here we are, almost 25 years into the epidemic, and the only place you’ll see anything like them right now is in San Francisco, where they were produced by the Stop AIDS Project, and only in the past year. The eerie absence of such reality advertising has taken a toll. According to the latest reports, many gay men, young and old, have given up on safer sex. It’s alarming, and enraging, to see entire generations of gay men forget about the past. But as new reports show a surge in HIV infection among gay and bisexual men — up 17 percent from 1999, according to a study released last month by the Centers for Disease Control — you can’t help but notice that AIDS has been whitewashed in the media and popular culture. Even AIDS groups themselves have made the disease seem so manageable that, to many young gay men, it doesn’t matter if they get infected; for some, HIV infection may even seem desirable. With drug-resistant strains of HIV spreading, the rise in unsafe sex — and the unwitting glamorization of AIDS — can very quickly turn back 20-some years of advancement on the AIDS front. And much of the blame, rather than falling on right-wing politicians ignoring the disease, will fall squarely on gay men themselves for what is grossly irresponsible behavior. For much of the epidemic, AIDS groups have had the dual role of trying to prevent the spread of HIV while also empowering those already infected and helping them to fight off stigma. That’s often meant depicting HIV-positive gay and bisexual men as healthy, attractive and successful. Drug companies, too, in their efforts to sell high-priced AIDS drugs, have hawked images of chiseled men climbing rocks or flexing as hot poster boys, ready to take on the world. But if AIDS has been glamorized in the world of advertising, it’s been forced into the closet in the gay community itself. AIDS and the pain and ugliness surrounding it — including death — are hidden from view today. Gone are the emaciated bodies walking the streets and the decrepit, lifeless souls carted out in wheelchairs at AIDS walks. Most HIV-positive men today have not only remarkably prolonged their lives thanks to the onset of the combination drug therapies of protease inhibitors, but many are on testosterone therapy as well. Many are now muscle-bound and studly, even if they’re taking powerful drugs with debilitating side effects — the night sweats and diarrhea, for instance — and an uncertain long-term effectiveness. Meanwhile, many HIV-negative guys look like average Joes and often find it hard to compete. There is something very twisted and wrong when some young, HIV-negative gay men profess a fear of not fitting in, to the point of perhaps unconsciously contracting HIV to attain a sense of community. Earlier this summer there was a barrage of media attention around a controversial documentary making the rounds of the film festivals called “The Gift,” about an alleged subculture of grotesquely reckless gay men who fetishize contracting and spreading HIV. Calling themselves “bug-chasers” and “gift-givers,” these men apparently talk of HIV as a special, wonderful club. Truly demented, yes — and highly sensationalized as well. But while this phenomenon probably accounts for only a minuscule group, a much larger swath of gay men seems to be engaging in unprotected sex not because they actually want HIV, but because they think it’s just no big deal to get it. They see a muscle stud on the street who, they’re told, is HIV positive, and they see a handsome man in an ad proclaiming how wonderful his life has been since he was diagnosed. Suddenly, forgoing condoms in the heat of the moment becomes a lot easier. That’s why a radical new vision like that of San Francisco's Stop AIDS Project is vital right now, in New York and across America. Of course, it shouldn’t be considered “radical” to depict a disease as a bad thing. But the highly-charged issues surrounding AIDS have never been that simple. --- |
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