eoe-0705-024 c2ea: response to aatom et al. on aatombomb: cluck cluck

(LOS ANGELES, POSTED JULY 9, 2005)

response to aatom et al on aatombomb "cluck cluck"

dear aatom,

i remember reading the andrew sullivan piece, “still here, so sorry,” when it first came out in the advocate june 21. at the time, it impressed me as a cause for sadness, not for aggressive riposte. but then, that’s me.

i came to this discussion with an attitude, drawn from my own life experiences with and meditations about aids. in the beginning of “the war that can’t be won,” my first posting for on the engines of enlightenment: journal of an aids shaman (6/1), i wrote:

aids—hiv disease—is not a blessing, contrary to the sentimental testimonials of many of my brothers and sisters in infection. i cringe every time i hear another hiver say, “hiv is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

what horseshit.

call it aids.

look it in the face.

i have aids.

aids is an inescapable, ruthless, relentless, brutal, merciless, untiring, unyielding, sly, eager, steely-eyed and always-hungry assassin. no holds barred. no quarter. no breaks.

aids is my mortality and it is yours, whether you are infected or not.

i do not confuse my disease with my ability to triumph. neither should you.

back to the advocate article and michaelangelo signorile’s response: i think sullivan isn’t the only writer on steroids. but then i’ve been on anabolic steroids for the last fifteen years too. i recognize the rhythm of it. both of them with dramatic metaphors out of control. un-understatements. what do you think you might say twenty or thirty years from now? looking forward to smooth sailing?

ad hominem is how you characterized signorile’s response.

ad hominem—finding fault with the person rather than addressing the issue. sometimes i think this isn’t an exchange of ideas but an interactive vilification exchange network through which the issues drift occassionally. i’m pretty sure i’m wrong about that, though.

i can’t help it. the tone of sullivan’s and signorile’s dialog sounds to me like nattering between barney fife and gomer pyle. figure out for yourself who’s who. just call me aunt bee. “now, boys.”

there. i did it too.

i don’t know why we had to jump so quickly at signorile’s bait—or he at sullivan’s. but look at wayne besen’s more level-headed taking to task of sullivan (which includes reference to signorelle’s article):

besen called sullivan’s article “breathtakingly reckless” because he “glamorized hiv and made it seem about as burdensome as a hangover.” besen says sullivan “mocked hiv prevention efforts for using fear.”

besen concedes “sullivan's main points: 1) it is no longer as scary to catch hiv today, as it was in the early 1990's. 2) catching hiv is not necessarily a death sentence for many well-off gay men.”

he neglected to bring up points three and four and five—the disease has not changed. nor have attitudes at home and out in the world become less hostile or more informed. and all those other dreary not-so-slowly dying gay-and-non hivers in the world are relevant and important, even though they’re not on the circuit.

enter sheriff andy, aka editor chris crain at the washington blade. he cuts to the chase: “people act more responsibly when they’re told the truth.” amen to that, though sometimes they take a while. it is the dynamic principle empowering gandhi’s notion of satyagraha—the power of inspired, non-violent, personal political activism.

everybody agrees. crain (and sullivan) say, “’hiv is fast becoming another diabetes,’ and it’s about time that prevention strategies adapt to that not-so-new reality.”

i am apparently in a position to make a unique contribution to this discussion. i have both aids and diabetes (which was triggered in me by protease inhibitors). let me give you a one-long-paragraph shot at what substance there might be to the analogy.

diabetes is a little more complicated than hangover maintenance. diabetes is a secretive disease, even though it’s not shameful. to me, it’s needles & food & exercise & fatigue & questionable eyesight & qi. i give myself subcutaneous insulin shots four times a day, rain or shine. i take blood sugar readings at least four times a day—four fresh opportunities a day to fail. all this in alien bathrooms if i’m not at home. in the crowded back corner of the tented beingALIVE booth gay pride weekend. i give myself insulin shots in my thighs—the skin around my gut is too thin. carrying needles is icky, particularly on a date. i have a type of peripheral neuropathy in my feet from aids/arvs that is similar to the neuropathies diabetics can develop. if i don’t manage my blood sugar, i can get all sorts of skin infections that are hugely uncomfortable in the summer—not unlike the hiv-generated skin rashes i get anyway. and oral thrush. i’ll tell you about diabetes and weight gain some other time. i never thought about whether anyone would hesitate to date a diabetic. overall, aids overshadows diabetes, even though both involve issues of mortality and quality of life and personal activism. diabetes does not require a degree in rocket science to figure out what’s going on. nor as many consulting rocket scientists.

my medic alert bracelet says aids & diabetes. we must find cures for both.

here is the problematic underlying assumption with all this discussion: everyone i hear talking seems to believe that the first, most significant and most profound social and personal effect of aids has to do with the pursuit of lubricated friction.

when the men i loved died from aids—the most recent in march—my first thought was not, “oh, shit. i’m scared now so i’m going to have to practice safe sex.” or my second. or my third. it was quite a ways down the list. not in the top ten. (i loved men who died from diabetes too, but not many.)

what other responses might there be?

i met a twenty-something hiv-negative gay man—mike—at a recent workshop aimed at generating a prevention campaign that didn’t rely on soft porn. he said he first heard about aids in the second grade. then, the only thing he knew about gay men was that they died. it terrified him, but he arose to become a gay man in spite of it. he was wrestling with a defining issue, even though he was uninfected: aids. he seemed to be doing just fine.

i marched in the christopher street west parade with aids.org this year. the volunteer driver of the car, jerry, the amazing tattoo man, was hiv-negative. i was surprised. “how did you end up with aids.org at the parade?” i asked. “i’m not used to seeing someone uninfected hanging out with an aids service organization.”

“well,” he said, “partly it’s from my ex-boyfriend, who’s positive. but before him, i watched a lover of five years die from a damp mold infection. damp mold—rot in the walls. he finally had a heart attack. it doesn’t have to be aids. it pisses me off when people think because he was a dead gay man, it was aids.”

my astonishment kept me quiet.

“people saw me in the parade,” said jerry. “I spotted one guy i liked in a bar after the parade, and he came up to me and said, ‘sorry—i’m not positive.’ and turned on his heel and left before i could think of anything to say.”

me too.

this week i heard news of a serio-different gay couple (sero-diverse!?!)—two men, friends of friends—who welcomed their newborn adopted daughter home for the first time. married or not.

"the voice of positive people needs strengthening and it needs to ring out loud and clear at every level and within every government department and in every country," said maura elaripe mea during the closing ceremony of the seventh international congress on aids in asia and the pacific in kobe, japan, according to a july 5 ap report.

as an hiv-positive woman from the impoverished pacific nation of papua new guinea, ap medical writer margie mason noted, [maura elaripe mea] represents the growing face of the disease in the region where about 40 percent of the 8.2 million people infected are female.

mason continued: mea called on everyone to battle extreme stigma and discrimination that people living with the virus face daily, so that more positive people from a number of countries can speak up and reach out for help.

"we cannot just sit back and let the issue of ... scaling up access to treatment slip through our hands while our brothers and sisters continue to die and infections continue to rise," she said, according to the ap report.

we are the “everyone” mea is calling on. she is speaking to us. we need reminding.

here is my aids-cum-diabetes-inspired prevention strategy: our arms are stronger when we all pull together.

let me offer “everyone” a response option that will bring us together instead of leaving us (albeit with artistry) fencing.

i will be joining the car caravan from los angeles to washington dc this october to march with the campaign to end aids (c2ea).

meet me there. let me meet you there.

march with me.

let’s march together.

let’s write about it. let's find others who will march too.

here are c2ea’s four demands:

• fully fund high-quality treatment and support services for all people living with hiv everywhere in the world.
• ramp up hiv prevention at home and abroad, guided by science rather than ideology.
• increase research to find a cure, more effective treatments and better prevention tools.
• fight aids stigma and protect the civil rights of all people with hiv and aids everywhere.

here are c2ea’s four legislative objectives:

• reauthorize and fully fund the ryan white care act.
• keep medicaid strong for people with hiv/aids and all other beneficiaries.
• strengthen the global fight against aids by fully funding the global fund and backing 100% debt cancellation.
• restore and revive effective hiv prevention worldwide based on the best science.

c2ea will be in washington october 8-12.

if you can’t make it, sponsor someone. sponsor me. talk to me.

life is an adventure.

i look forward to hearing from you.

namasté

aids.org

beingALIVE la

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text of eoe5-027 c2ea: response to aatom et al. on aatombomb: cluck cluck © 2005 by richard kearns. writers and speakers quoted own their own words.

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