| a place at the table |
[Dec. 23rd, 2006|09:09 am] |
the aids committee of toronto have an informative series of lectures on hiv throughout the year and, apparently, around this time of year, have a special dinner along with it. i went and really enjoyed the food--unfortunately, the very knowledgeable doctor was not speaking to his audience (providing a barrage of graphs that he went through at breakneck speed; using technical terms for drugs while the power-point showed drugs with other names, so if one didn't know every possible name for every possible drug, it was incomprehensible; discussing comparisons of drug combos which were not very meaningful to people in the room since most were already committed to their drug regimen). there were a lot of unfamiliar people in the audience to me and, clearly, people came because of the reputation of the food. unfortunately, i also spotted someone who was neither hiv-positive or the partner of hiv-positive people, who had just come for a free meal. i mean, people with hiv have so much going for them that one shouldn't be resentful if someone tries to get a free meal at their expense. okay, at the drug companies' expense--but people with hiv may have missed the meal because the seats were occupied by others who came for free roast beef.
a week later, at the dinner and show for hiv-people sponsored by the people with aids foundation, and held at buddies in bad times, i, again spotted someone who had come for a free meal who was not hiv-positive or their partners, one i know is a highly-educated and high-salaried person who should know better. there were poz-people there who, clearly, had not had a good meal in a long time, and my heart broke when i saw people stuffing their pockets with whatever dry food was available for a future meal; so seeing someone who chose to spend his money on crystal meth and take advantage of the generosity of the pwa foundation made me furious. (and i know for a fact this person is not hiv positive) i suppose i should be more charitable during the holiday season but i would hope that charity is addressed to those who need it. perhaps act and pwa might want to have an rsvp list for next year that coincides with people on their list of clients (and their clients' partners).
the show put on by the pwa foundation was very enjoyable. i was tired that day from my radiation treatment, and depressed that the doctors wanted me to go for another week of it (and i have developed side-effects from it), but my partner encouraged me to go, and i'm glad he did. the queer community in toronto has an enormous population of talented people who were also generous in giving their time for pwas. elvira kirt is always funny, especially when she imitates her negative, cynical, depressive jewish-hungarian mother--who sounds exactly like mine (close our eyes and my partner and i are sure that my mother has walked on the stage). oddly--or sadly, now that my mother is in my head--at least 3 of the performers in the show were jewish yet the show was clearly geared as a christmas show, rather than a seasonal show. and while most of the humour was outrageous, and it was almost always directed to our own group (queers) or institutions (christmas/pagan myths and consumerism), the only comment that was directly against a non-queer group or an institution was an anti-semitic comment by one of the b girls (based on a stereotype of jews being cheap). what made it worse for me was that it got one of the biggest laughs that night.
the show ended with lots of door prizes and gift bags for every one attending and there was a real feeling of warmth and shared caring that extended beyond the poz community into the queer (and queer-friendly community). i have had friends mention how, as hiv-positive they felt shunned in the community, other than the lip-service, but that night at buddies i didn't feel that.
there was also a poz social at sailor's that was put on (i believe) by poz people for themselves, and also had a nice buffet and lots of door prizes. (and the non-poz guy was there, too.) being jewish, not doing anything special for christmas doesn't bother me (much, anymore), since i got to celebrate hanukah with my partner and friends, but i hope that there is a place for the poz christians to be for christmas, since i know not all of them have family (or have family that know--and try popping drugs at the dinner table without people noticing). when i was single, i used to go to bathhouses on christmas, to see who was there and to talk (among other things) with them to make them (and me) feel less alone (and, increasingly, found muslim gays who felt left out). for a multicultural country, christmas can really overwhelm, particularly those who are not christian or who are alone. officials discuss the higher suicide rate around christmas/new year's as a sign of anomie, but they never discuss how, for two months, a christian holiday takes over the country. (and people get upset when a toronto jewish judge asks for a christmas tree to be moved to a less prominent space in a public court house, stating that no one objects to the menorah at city hall, but i haven't seen any el fitr celebrations at city hall, or the eaton center decorating their space for holi, or the ttc having saturday service in front of synagogues or friday service on front of mosques the way they have sunday service in front of churches.)
finally, year end marketing news has a new tradition of announcing the amounts in christmas bonuses given to ceos and stock brokers. the highest amount this year goes to the outgoing ceo of pfizer, over two million dollars--yes, that's correct: $200,000,000.00. it's nice to know that people with hiv have to pay astronomical prices for hiv drugs (diflucan, eraxis, VFEND, zithrorax, and the new maraviroc)--if they can afford them at all--so that some guy can get more money for leaving work than he'll ever be able to spend. i wonder how much MORE he would have received if he didn't reduce pfizer profits by 40% in the past year. i wonder how many people could be treated for 2 hundred million dollars. i wonder about who really gets the spirit of the holiday season. |
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| world aids conference (last day) |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|05:57 pm] |
i didn't feel any urgency to discuss the last day, but i thought i should complete the review. the last day was really a media circus. nothing new was said, which may have been reflected in the numbers: there appeared to be more media there than the people who had attended during the rest of the week. stephen lewis talked forever about the steps that needed to be immediately taken. they were all good and important, but by the time he got to the sixth and kept going and going (i think he landed up having 14) it sounded like a running joke. while important, the steps started getting unrealistic, and he could have just been singing that coca cola song from the 60s ("i'd like to teach the world to sing...") since what he wanted went beyond solving short or medium term goals for hiv, and became his philosopher-king ideology of how to totally change the world. i'm sure a whole lot of pharmaceutical companies, capitalists, dictators--regardless of politics, plutocrats, religious leaders, and phallocentric societies would hear him and think, "oh, treat everyone equally, share the wealth, be nice: why didn't we think of that before? hey, let's do it!" and, of course, he was very critical of the U.S. and the U.N.--easy since he was finished his job at the U.N. so he could bite the hand that feeds. and it really sounded like he was giving an election speech; i was sure he was going to run in the liberal election that canada was gearing up for.
then there was the horrible film propaganda about the next convention in mexico, espousing the tolerance of mexican society (unless you are gay, poor, or are canadian vacationers from woodbridge, ontario). lots of people were talking from mexico, and people from the toronto conference were doing a lot of hand-shaking with people from the mexican conference, and it felt like the passing on of the miss america crown, minus the crying and the glamour. about 1 1/2 hours into this last day people were walking out in droves, longing for the fresh warm summer air. i stayed, because i always do, hoping that something great will happen at the last minute (you see, i am an optimist), but nothing happened.
the best part of the day, and the most moving part of the whole week, was a brief talk by a first nations woman who spoke of aboriginals with hiv and the lack of recognition, discussion, and funding for them. ironically, she had to wait for the end of the conference to remind people of this, rather than this being at the beginning of the first day. beside her stood her young daughter, who stood there holding back tears, both proud of her mother and, probably, terrified of her future, given what her mother just said about natives and hiv. hopefully in mexico, where there is more recognition (or, at least, numbers) of aboriginals, natives and hiv will be more prominent element of the conference. at first, a lot of hiv talk was about gays and blacks in north america, then hiv in africa, and now in india and eastern europe. once again, natives of the americas get ignored. what small pox and residential schools haven't finished, it feels like hiv will as the new colonialism (at best) or new genocide (at worst). |
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| after a long hiatus |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|03:49 pm] |
i thought i was okay after the operation but i guess i wasn't, and i needed a break. three reasons i can easily think of are: lots of well-meaning people kept asking me how i was and what was happening, and having to recount the episodes was simply depressing. i will deal with what i need to, but when i don't really have to, i was quite happy forgetting my situation. reason two was my season affect disorder: not getting enough sun makes me depressed. reason three was that i had to keep going back to the hospital every week as they took their time taking the staples out of my head (all 126, plus 3 sets of stitches and various internal stitches that popped out of my head randomly; i got the last staple and internal stitches removed only yesterday). okay, reason four: weight lifting gives me endorphin rushes that i need to combat the depression, and a boost of testosterone that, well, i like. not being able to go to the gym for 6 weeks was chemically difficult. add to that the loss of muscle and the increase in fat, a head that still looks like it was opened by an epileptic with a rusty can-opener and, in my situation would YOU want to write daily about your life?
that's not all of it, once i'm purging. i go daily for radiation treatment because, after all the incisions in my head, the plastic surgeon was not sure he got all the cancer. even with the radiation, there is too large an area of my head that needs treatment that the radiation cannot cover it all. so the radiation is getting the center area and the doctors are hoping for the best (thanks). if the cancer returns to the peripheral areas they will have to remove parts of my skull since there is no more flesh to remove. oh for the simple life of just being hiv-positive!
for my radiation treatment i was told they would need to tattoo my head, which then was modified to tattooing my chest (to line up my body for the radiation). then they said they would need to shave off my beard, just before i was suppose to get my first treatment (ct scan), to which i refused--although the humiliating part of it is that, had they insisted, i would have complied (and hidden behind a hijab until it grew back). instead of all that, they made a mask much like the medieval iron maiden, a hard shell adhering to the contours of my head and smothering my face, eyes cut out (but then covered with rubber once i started the radiation so my eyes don't fry), and then clipped to the radiation table so that i am immobilized.
on the first day of treatment--the actual treatment only takes a minute, much like warming coffee in a microwave, except it is my brain--i was strapped into my iron maiden for 2 hours as they tried to get the machine (radiator?) to work properly. in between trying to breath, i kept thinking that if these kids (at 50, everyone that works there seems like a kid) made a mistake (as they kicked the machine around while listening to eric clapton) i would end the day with an ionized lobotomy. i kept asking, muffed by my mask, where they were trained--stupidly, a question i should have asked BEFORE i was pinned like a butterfly to the board. anyway, they seem good, but maybe my laissez-faire attitude towards them is a sign of a lobotomized brain. i have had very minor side-effects so far: a sensitivity to that side of my head (i suppose it helps that, last month, the surgeon removed most of the nerves in my head, so i can't really feel much there, even if they were sticked nails into my skull); and a little bit of the fatigue (but that could also be the seasonal affect disorder, the cold weather, the excess weight, and the chronic depression). despite all the whining, i'm okay (or maybe i'm okay because i can still whine; i am jewish).
other than medically, i applied to a job at the aids committee of toronto, which i didn't get (they wanted someone to do surveys and my only experience in it has been doing them for 15 years and teaching it at a university); and i wasn't invited to participate at a photo exhibition they had for world aids day (i guess they forgot i was positive or did photography); but at least they still ask me to do volunteer work like handing out condoms at bathhouses and stuffing condoms and lubes into little plastic punches (good work for us lobotomized people). resting at home has given me lots of time to work on my photography, largely playing in photoshop; and i am teaching myself to read hebrew (so far i can read it, but have no clue what i'm reading; unlike my french and hungarian which i can speak but no one has a clue what i'm saying). i am back at the gym and crawling back to the weights i used to lift before the operation but, alas, not reducing my waist. i am determined to lose 4 1/2 inches on my waist by new year's eve (so i can go to some hungarian dive and eat a fatanyeros for two all my myself). 24 days and 4 1/2 inches to go! |
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| back from hell (sorta) |
[Oct. 15th, 2006|12:39 pm] |
i usually feel guilty for everything, so doing this journal for ACT and not having updated it for a long time should make me feel guilty; however, i am not. between dreading a horrible procedure and having 3 procedures that were worse than imagined, somehow not maintaining my internet diary was far from my mind.
as i've mentioned or alluded to several times here, irony is not always predictable, nor is it always charming and funny. when i sero-converted and doctors told me i would probably die of something else, i was imagining something in the distant future. i may not be dieing now, but my mortality is certainly at the forefront of my thoughts and it has little to do with having hiv.
the scar that reappeared on my forehead following the 3rd cancer extraction done by my plastic surgeon required another biopsy which, to me, meant more needles, pain, and a week of not being able to eat, sleep, or move. ah, the good ol' days. when i went to the hospital on tuesday, the doc took the biopsy, stuck a bandage on my head, and told me to wait until the results came back from the lab. after 1 1/2 hours of bleeding my toxic blood all over everything in the waiting room, i demanded that the doctor be paged (i had overheard the nurses whispering about my results 1/2 hour earlier and, since it was noon, i suspected my doctor was busy in the cafeteria). maybe i shouldn't have been in such a hurry. it turned out i still had cancer, that it was larger than expected and, if it turned out to also be deeper, he would have to remove part of my skull. he said he would do another biopsy but that i would need to wait until an operating room was free. after another 5 hours of bleeding everywhere, i was given more needles, another biopsy, bandaged and told to go home and return for a larger operation on thursday.
with hiv, when doctors say they don't know much, but seem certain about what they do know, i can accept the level of knowledge and uncertainty. when a doctor says there is a 99.9% chance that the type of cancer i had could not return, then i want to believe that stat--even after 2 further operations on the same spot. is it really my bad luck that i am in the .1 percent who has recurring cancer, or do doctors sometimes use their bedside manner with more placating than truthful intents?
so thursday i go to the hospital feeling very much like a prisoner walking down death row, particularly after i'm put into a hospital gown (they originally said i wouldn't need to change, since they were only doing my head), connect me with an iv-drip (i was waiting for a lethal liquid to be added once they strapped me to the bed). i did not feel confident when it was discovered that, for the past year, my hospital card had me mistakenly identified as a female and no one had noticed until then--this was augmented by a mistake on the part of the surgeon's secretary, who had me written down for a forehead extraction and something on my right toe! maybe i am in that cursed .1% and was going to have recurring skin cancer, a sex change operation, and an amputated toe.
whatever the anesthetist used was good stuff, except his drug and the morphine i was given later led to massive headaches. i wasn't allowed any liquids or food from the midnight before the operation, and i woke up at 5:30 p.m. the following day. they were uninterested in my thirst, but i finally got 1/2 cup of crushed ice. they decided i needed to stay the night, so i got another 2 cups of water and a sleepless night, except when the morphine just knocked me out.
my biggest concern was my hiv-drugs. nurses like to confiscate all meds, so that they can hand them out when they want. nurses also work on shifts, and my partner and i had to explain to two different nurses why it was essential that i get my meds at exactly 10 p.m. (and with water). i honestly don't know if they knew about hiv-resistance (or cared) but the nurse on the 2nd shift let me keep the pills with me, and my partner was allowed to stay until i took the pills, to ensure that i wouldn't have any trouble. with everything else that was going on i suddenly had to panic about hiv-mutations and drug-resistance because i really didn't trust all the nurses doing night shift. thank god for my partner, who stayed with me (or as close as he could to the operating room) the whole time, even sat calmly doing office work while i lay in a drug-induced stupor. i know that if i was single, would not have survived the operation intact; and that if i didn't have such a great partner, i would not have survived the following days.
i was told that my surgeon, who had skipped the province following the surgery for a wedding, was going to call that morning, and then i could leave the hospital. he never called, and by 12:30 i was getting my partner to drag the nurse in to remove my iv-drip. despite looking like the elephant man's ugly brother, it was joyous to walk out of the hospital and return home.
so i am chewing a combination of percocet and demerol (like red or white wine, it depends on the situation and my mood), watching an endless supply of bad hollywood films, eating little but indulging in milkshakes, not sleeping much, and being pampered by the best man in the world. a nurse comes every day to change my head bandages, and my partner, thrice daily, records and empties the blood that collect in two "pomegranates"--plastic bulbs connecting to two tubes inserted into my head. today i felt good enough to try using the computer and lucid enough to connect my situation with two images i wanted to record. one is a "self-portrait with bandages," after van gogh's (but camera and photoshopped, since i'm not a talented painter--okay, i'm not a talented photographer or photoshopper either), although by the time i got in front of the camera i don't nearly look as monstrous as i did when i was in the hospital. the other photo was based on the two pomegranates hanging from my head and pinned to my undershirt (to stop them from pulling out of my head); i recalled a description from the bible which states that the gown the priests had to wear were bordered by fringes and pomegranates (red tufts of material, i assume); i thought about my "pomegranates" and how they were filled with my hiv-infected blood, how blood was so important in jewish classification and ritual purity, and how the pomegranate symbolizes righteousness in judaism. the juxtaposition of elements appealed to me as ironic. but maybe it is just demerolic.
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| world aids conference, day 4 |
[Sep. 26th, 2006|03:23 pm] |
when the conference started i wanted it to go longer, as i was having a hard time choosing which panels to attend since there were so many good ones. by the 4th day i was getting pretty exhausted--and it didn't help that the conference sessions were taking place in two areas so far apart (or it seems that way when you are dodging 29,000 people to get to the rooms). i still attended sessions, but i was not hearing much new information. i did attend an interesting one on drug resistance before haart treatment, which concerned me, as i knew that resistance would limit my choice and range of drug therapy. it was frightening to hear that untreated people could have drug resistance if they had contracted the virus from someone who had that drug resistance. it made me think from whom i may have contracted the virus, and how lucky i was that they had no drug resistance.
at another session on men who have sex with men in the middle east and north africa, the speaker detailed how men there have built up treatment programs and emerging same-sex organizations despite strong religious taboos, no legal rights or protection for msms, and lack of access to condoms and treatment. it was another reminder that same-sex sexually-identified people still have to fight for basic freedoms while we are in a privileged position here; of how closely sexual rights are connected with human rights; and of how communities can form and strengthen through resistance to oppression. as this speaker was at the last session of the conference i would attend, it was a good way to end. |
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| meds |
[Sep. 26th, 2006|02:54 pm] |
i held my medications in my hand last night thinking that my life would change once i swallowed them. oddly, i felt that it was the meds that were giving me the virus and not protecting me from it. i didn't think i would be put on medications so quickly, and now that i am on them, since i don't expect to go off them, my life truly has changed. i am dependent on yellow and blue pills. (and since they cost $1200.00 each month, i am also dependent on my partner's life insurance policy.) but life is about change, and the other option is worse.
because of my concern about side effects, i was frightened to go to sleep last night, and when i finally did, i was having a very strange experience, hallucinogenic--but i don't know if that was a side effect of the drugs or a combination of the drugs and trying to resist sleep. in any case, i didn't have nightmares, wet dreams (damn), or pee in bed, but i also didn't have much sleep. i'll see what happens tonight. after 15 hours of medication i don't detect any rash, body or bone wasting, or liver or kidney failure, so if all i get is this kind of acid trip then things aren't so bad. i only wish that there was a good soundtrack that accompanied these side-effects (hendrix, dead, airplane et al). |
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| world aids conference, day 3 (continued) |
[Sep. 25th, 2006|01:29 pm] |
a brief, but gratifying comment by an african health care worker made a good session immensely satisfying. the session was running late, and i was on my way out while some members of the audience continued to ask questions to the panelists. one woman got to the microphone and mentioned that she was a health care worker who was a christian and working from a christian agency. many of us stopped in our tracks, waiting to hear some diatribe about sin, abstinence, and such. she claimed that many of the health care workings in africa were from faith-based organizations and many of those faiths do not support some of the types of people who contract hiv, nor do they believe in some of the activities that transmit the virus--okay, we were waiting for it--but, she continued, it is not the job of these faith-based health care givers to impose their religious beliefs onto their clients. the room burst out in applause!
here was a person who understood that caring for the sick may be an ethical obligation which should not be confused with personal moral choices. i wish some people like Harper or Bush or the pope were there to hear that. it was also nice to witness that so many in the room had the same fears and response that i had, that my disappointment with some religious groups in their response to hiv/aids was less than "christian." and it was a good reminder for me that not everyone who profess a certain religious belief have the same political stance (and morality is political), that spirituality and ethics may diverge, wisely, from dogma. |
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| new year |
[Sep. 25th, 2006|12:48 pm] |
friday night was the beginning of the jewish new year. my partner and i celebrated it together with some traditional foods and a bottle of cremant de bourgoigne--then we both fell asleep by 9 (ahhh, married life). this past year hasn't been the best for me healthwise, with 3 operations for skin cancer (and another impending) and a plummeting of my t4-cells, so i hope this new year will be better. one significant change is that i start hiv meds tonight: sustiva and truvada. while this should improve my cell count, i am a bit worried about what side effects i will have. luckily my hiv is not resistant to any type of hiv medication, so i can avoid protease inhibitors right now, and my doctor and i chose meds that had the least (and least offensive) side-effects for me (and we all can tolerate different things). the doctor mentioned the small possibility of getting a rash. more likely, i may have dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, abnormal thinking, impaired concentration, agitation, hallucinations, nightmares, and vivid dreams--most of which describes my life anyway, so most don't bother me. the ones that do are the nightmares--the last time my partner tried to wake me from a nightmare i punched him in the nose, not intentionally. because there is a chance that the dreams are so vivid that i may not be able to distinguish what was a dream and what was reality i am concerned that i may lose a grip on reality; also, i am worried that i may pee in bed, because i may not know if i am waking up to pee or dreaming that i have gotten up to pee. either i get a plastic liner for the bed or i learn to enjoy watersports. i am not worried about having vivid sexual dreams, i just hope they aren't so much better than real life that i want to sleep all the time.
and somewhat related to wet dreams, i am a subject in a study on hiv in semen. once a month, for the next 6 months, i get to jerk off into a little cup of pink liquid and give it to a lab with a jar of my urine and several tubes of blood. there is nothing less sexual than ejaculating on command into a plastic cup of pink liquid. however, i'd rather cum in a cup than have biopsies or other extractions that are sometimes done for research, and i get $30 bucks a shot, literally. money i save up to buy presents for my husband, my own sperm bank.
(actually, since they only want my semen, i wonder what they do with the sperm? is the hiv washed off and then the jizz sent to sperm banks? will there be little mes running around the world? or is the sperm just flushed down the drain, where it gets emptied into lake ontario and, eventually, recycled into the water you drink. doesn't that make you feel closer to me?)
while the doc said truvada has virtually no side-effects other than a bit of gas, the pharmacutical company that makes it mentions in their ads that possible side effects also include a buildup of lactic acid in the blood, serious liver problems, kidney problems, thinning bone mass, and, my favorite, lipodystrophy. i realise that american litigation requires pharmaceutical advertisements to include all possible side effects, regardless of probability, so i am less worried about these effects. my doctor has already demonstrated his expertise on hiv medication that i trust if he did not mention these as side-effects, that the probability is very low.
so tonight will be my first pills. if i can remember to update the blog, rather than just dream that i have updated it, i'll write down how it went. |
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| aids conference, day 3 (continued) |
[Sep. 19th, 2006|03:11 pm] |
since i am so delayed in writing about the conference, i haven't really discussed anything in my life since--and 6 weeks have gone by. briefly, i have been working on renovating my place, which is going slower than expected (which is not unexpected), and working on my photography. i was fortunate in having some good friends agree to model for me, and i also contacted some men i saw on the net who had bodies that i felt appropriate for the images i wanted to capture. one of the men i saw on the net captured my attention because of his profile as well as his image. he had been an actor, but stopped when hiv started transforming his body. he decided to accept how he looks. let's face it: he looks better than most "healthy" people will ever look, no matter how hard they try. and if one didn't know how to read lipodystrophy, no one would know he is hiv-positive. but a large part of what makes him attractive is his outlook: he is happy "dans sa peau" (literally, in his skin), as the quebecois say. when you are happy with yourself, you always look attractive. he is intelligent, funny, charming, adventurous; this is so different to some people i know with hiv, who act miserable--and it is apparent in how they look.
i know hiv makes people sick, tired, irritable, and i know that some people are angry with how their lives have changed, but when i see people going through virtually the same things, but responding in opposite ways, when i see people appreciative of partners and friends who want to share in their lives, rather than bitter, envious, and ungrateful, i wonder what causes those differences?
at day 3 of the conference there was a discussion of internalized stigma, and how some people will punish themselves (and others, unfortunately) because they cannot accept their new lives (and it is a new life, not the end of life). if one is queer and has internalized homophobia along with hiv/aids, then the problem is not doubled but squared [sorry, i just saw a program of physics]. if one has aids-phobia and suspects s/he is sero-positive, then projecting that stigma onto others (perhaps correctly) may delay that person being tested until it is too late. then, when they are sick and have less options for treatment, their phobia is confirmed because it may be the end of their lives. they are bitter and they make sure everyone knows it.
one of the fears of hiv/aids is the side-effects, particularly the physical ones that can't be hidden, that let people know you have an "aids body." and in the gay community, where the perfect body is so critical (not just the muscle bunnies: i have experienced in the bear community stigma for people who are not hairy enough or fat enough) i think there is more internalized stigma for hiv queers whose body is no longer "perfect" (as if bodies ever are) then within the straight communities. i think this quest for the perfect body is, indeed, a form of internalized homophobia/aidsphobia/age discrimination; it is a need to never be satisfied with who we are or how others are. i could say we are brought up never to be satisfied: from the romantic tradition of unfulfilled love; from a christian tradition of bodies being evil; from a consumerist tradition of always needing something to improve ourselves and make ourselves more popular; from a homophobic and aidsphobic tradition of being sick and abnormal; and from the connections of beauty to youth and aging to death.
people who hate themselves don't go for help, and they don't get tested. they don't practice safe sex because who cares if they get sick and die? what we need to see are more pwas who are productive members of society and we need self-help groups and agencies that promote integration into the mainstream community. this will increase exposure of people to pwas and reduce the stigma that comes from ignorance, and it will stop pwas who are, otherwise, healthy from thinking of themselves as disabled, relying on other people and agencies to support them, and waiting to die. it will make pwas feel better about themselves, and it will make them more attractive, mentally, emotionally, and physically, to themselves and others. |
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| world aids conference, day 3 |
[Sep. 19th, 2006|02:12 pm] |
there is a paradox with hiv/aids: we are always being told that hiv can affect anyone and everyone, yet we are also reminded that there are risk groups. i am often hearing the same people repeat both messages without them clarifying how this paradox may not be a contradiction. if the people pronouncing on hiv/aids sound confused, is it any wonder that the average person is as well?
anyone can contract the virus but certain populations, because of their social situation, are more likely to contract it. the average person may think they are immune because they confuse probabilities with possibilities. consequently, there are more white heterosexual teenagers coming down with the virus because they were not considered a "risk" population.
at the same time, as panelists at the conference point out, political and social leaders are, often, frightened to name the "risk" groups because those groups--queers, sex trade workers, iv drug users (and, to a lesser extent, black people)--are not particularly deemed desirable members of the population: not a change from the days of GRID (gay-related immune deficiency, the early name for aids) when people weren't too unhappy to hear that fags were dying. and then there are some countries, like russia and china (until recently) that refused to acknowledge people had hiv because that meant the country had queers, and sex trade workers, and iv drug users and that can't happen in utopias. until social leaders can honestly discuss that they have risk groups that are citizens, and that as citizens they require attention, it is difficult for members of those risk groups to get their needs met.
it isn't just russia and china (and i won't bother talking about the u.s.). in canada, we know that chretien never mentioned the word "gay," even when he was obliged (because he was, nominally, a liberal) to support same-sex marriage; harper not only wants to revoke same-sex marriage but, as the world knows, he preferred to look at arctic fauna than visit the aids conference, that protecting the canadian north from potential interlopers was more important than protecting people with actual illnesses. we also hear our politicians, when they talk about hiv/aids, talk about helping people in the developing world--a worthy pursuit, but it is also a way to push aids onto another continent; it is still a way of pretending that hiv isn't on the rise here in canada. (and while i was pleased that the focus of the conference was on the developing world, it was also unbalanced, in that there was not much about people in the developed world that still have problems; maybe we have access to drugs, but not necessarily the money to pay for them; maybe we have grocery stores that are open 24/7, but not necessarily the money to buy nutritious food--or to even know what is nutritious; maybe we have access to help in large cities like toronto and montreal, but not all people with hiv live there--or can afford to live there. does addressing one part of the world mean ignoring another?)
when social leaders are too frightened to discuss hiv/aids [within their own spheres] this adds to the stigma around the virus. when they criminalize hiv transmission, they add to the stigma and to the decrease in population that will get tested. confidentiality is an important component in getting tested (along with informed consent, which is not always given, not even in canada, where hiv tests are done on pregnant women and others, i believe), and if someone knows that their results will be given to others, that the pwa may not have the option of telling people when they are ready, and to those they feel safe telling, then we cannot be surprised that some people will not get tested. when i tested positive, i hardly had time to adjust to the news when i got a call from a provincial (?) health officer who asked me if i would be informing people who i had previously sex with--the implication being that if i didn't the government would. there's another paradox: some governments won't acknowledge that members of the population have a virus in order to help those people, but they are prepared to tell others about someones virus in order to criminalize them or increase their stigma. |
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| world aids conference, day two: clinton |
[Sep. 14th, 2006|08:17 am] |
i have mixed feelings about clinton's appearance. true, he is everything Harper and Bush are not: intelligent, sensitive, humanistic, charismatic, and with a breadth of vision, and what appears as humble--although i have trouble with his naming a charity after himself. in judaism, real charity means that no one knows who is providing the charity and no one knows that the charity is given to someone so that no one feels embarrassed or obligated.
he said a lot of the right things, and most were nothing other plenary speakers had not already said. he was even cute about the circumcision strategy, which made it clear that monica sucked uncut dick (and she's jewish! treyf)--something stephen lewis felt the need to also provide too much information about on the last day. there were only two points that i felt were important that others did not say. one was that developed countries often rely on health care workers from developing countries without considering the effect that has on health care in those developing countries--and that they often need those health care workers more than we do. for us, it is often just cheap labor, revealing the colonialism that still pervades world politics and the economics of hiv/aids. but people leave developing countries to work here because they need the pay, which is better than what they get at home--and in many developing countries families rely on stipends from abroad to survive--so clinton reminded delegates that more money needs to get into those developing countries to pay health care workers so that they can stay at home.
the other important point clinton made was that there is no point searching for vaccines and developing prevention strategies if we can't get people to get tested. an effective prevention strategy is getting people to want to be tested, and a lot of that has to do with changing the stigma and discrimination towards hiv/aids, but i take his point. if people don't know they're positive, they will transmit the virus to others, and they might not seek treatment until their immune system is too compromised for the medications to work. regan and bush, among others, proposed abstinence, which is ludicrous; and safer sex campaigns have had limited effect if people think they are in a non-risk demographic or, as teens tend to believe, they are immune/invincible, so getting people to want to be tested, so that they then, at least, know to have safer sex and to seek ongoing medical supervision may be the most important prevention strategy. furthermore, whenever doctors/scientists talk about the percentage of people who do not know they are infected, since they cannot prove this, the numbers are hypothetical and easily dismissed by governments; if politicians see that the numbers are higher than the actual cases now reported, and they can calculate the cost in productivity loss and health care costs that these higher numbers present, more funding would go into aids research and prevention, particularly in places like canada, where the government pays the hospital bills.
but back to getting people to want to be tested: at one of the first day's sessions, a speaker discussing disclosure in southern africa (and testing and disclosure go hand in hand) spoke of an area where the teenagers wanted to get tested because no one would go out with them unless their status was known. knowing ones hiv status increased people's social status. now that's a queer take on hiv status (not developed by queers) that just might work! |
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| world aids conference, day two: the quilt project |
[Sep. 10th, 2006|10:55 am] |
across from the conference center where the conference is being held is the cbc building. in their atrium they had sections of the sids memorial quilt. i don't hear about anyone doing them anymore, so i don't know if it is now a historic relic from the height of the crises. it is still as powerful now as it was when i first saw it in montreal in the 80s. the olympic stadium had just a small portion of it on display, yet it took up the entire floor of the stadium. i'm not sure how, but i was a volunteer working on putting it together, and my photo got on the front page of the montreal paper standing behind a portion of the quilt. it was very moving spending the day there, reading all the quilts and trying to figure out about the people's personalities based on the iconography of each panel. every time i saw a name i knew, or saw the photo of a person i knew (but had never known their name) it hit me that so much of my generation of gay men were gone. of course there were others who died of aids, and their deaths were equally tragic, but the bulk of the panels were for gay men and, because of the lack of treatment and the attitudes towards pwas then, the quilt felt like a chronicle of a genocide.
all that came back to me at the cbc atrium, so i was already emotionally scarred when i came upon a panel i had made for my friend, so long ago that i had forgotten about it (but not him). he lived in new york and seemed to be one of the first people to have contracted the virus. no one knew what to do with him and we all watched the ks cover his beautiful body in total helplessness. his father, who was not only homophobic but a monster, waited until his son was so weak that he was confined to a hospital room, and then performed his final indignity: he refused to let any of his son's friends visit, so that the final weeks of his son's life was to be alone.
if that panel was a blow to me, it was augmented by turning the corner and seeing another panel i had done, this one for my partner. however, this panel was bittersweet. while it commented on loss, it also felt like a celebration of his life. he had asked me to make a panel for him, and i had told him what i thought might be nice (to which he agreed). jerry had worked for a while on the queen charlotte islands, and collected west coast aboriginal art, to which i happily joined in; so it made sense to do a haida style panel. i decided on a button blanket style of a salmon (he wanted his ashes spread at a salmon stream in b.c.): red felt on black felt with the borders ornamented with white buttons. i didn't start it until he died, but finished it quickly, and was pleased with how it turned out. but once i sent it to the aids memorial quilt organization, i never saw it again. but i'm glad other people get to see it and get to reflect on who jerry was by seeing a haida salmon button blanket. |
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| world aids conference, day two |
[Sep. 8th, 2006|10:42 am] |
when i initially considered going to the conference i expected it to be scientific or medical in nature. by today's plenary, it became clear that the conference was sociological in focus. gender, sex, race, religion, and sexuality and their effect on hiv/aids were the focus of discussions yesterday, today started with the opening speaker stating that discussing hiv in terms of individual responsibility was unrealistic, as that hides the structural problems that allow some groups to contract the virus more than others, that structural inequality and exclusion condition the possibilities of risk and risk reduction.
structural dynamics are things conservative governments do not want to deal with; it is easier to blame the victim (and not surprisingly, violence against women, which has long been a "she was asking for it" issue, is strongly tied to hiv transmission), and the moral discourse of the conservatives mask the structural inequalities that they support (demarcating "morality" discourses and ethical behavior as antipodal) and that support them.
the french minister of health, who was there (unlike the canadian minister), provided an example of how structural inequality could be addressed without a socialist revolution. france has created a tax on plane travel, with the money from that tax going for hiv/aids. here's a painless way to make the rich (who can afford to travel) contribute some money for aids research, money that they wouldn't notice missing (unlike if they were just asked to donate money, i assume); yet the minister calculated that several millions of dollars would be derived from that tax yearly. that would be so easy to implement in canada and in other industrialized countries, but will we ever hear of france's tax copied? don't hold your breath.
france is also encouraging pharma not to patent hiv medications and make their price so hugh, so that they may be more accessible. pharma must make enough money on aspirin and the like that, by law, they should not be permitted to extort money for life saving drugs. isn't profiteering one of the earliest moral crimes during wars? this is a war. |
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| world aids conference, day one (last session) |
[Sep. 7th, 2006|08:43 am] |
hiv and nutrition was a topic in which i was particularly interested. i am always obsessed about my weight and food consumption, and the knowledge that hiv depletes certain vitamins, proteins, and minerals from the body, and that PIs can redistribute body fat adds to my obsession. unfortunately, there are no places in toronto where pwas can get help from nutritionists free (st. mikes had it for their patients and stopped; one nutritionist does it free but only for people who will follow a regime sponsored by a pharmaceutical company--more guinea piggery). so i was hoping for some good information from the sessions on nutrition at the conference. so much for hoping.
one doctor in particular gave the most concrete data, specifying which nutrients were depleted, which improved t4 cell counts for people on HAART, and the role of selenium in decreasing mortality rates. i was excited and busy scribbling notes (still got em). then, during question period following the presentations (the others were general and obvious: people in countries with little food die faster from aids--doh) scientist after doctor after scientist tore apart this speaker's study. it appeared that the data was skewed, that results were exaggerated, the study was unreliable, and because it was funded by a pharmaceutical company, the data, not surprisingly, supported what they do/sell. i've taught research methods, and i know how easy it is to misinterpret and distort data, and i expect that from some mediocre researchers, but i was truly shocked that such a prominent researcher would stoop to something like this, and have the chutzpah to present it at a major conference in front of his peers. it was a good reminder that all research results need to be looked at, not only by its study methods, but by who funds the studies. |
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| world aids conference, day one (still) |
[Sep. 7th, 2006|08:12 am] |
the oral abstracts on disclosure found some obvious findings, such as social support leads to successful coping abilities, and that reducing stigma improves prevention. there were elements of disclosure that i had not connected to social factors, although in retrospect they seem obvious. for instance, social support leads to better adherence to drugs. i've already thought about visiting my family or they visiting me, and how i would have to hide taking my medication, or pretend they are other meds (my family knows i am on anti-depressants). it would be hard to explain my my eating habits change, if some of the meds need to be with or without a full stomach--and all my family events take place around the dinner table (did i mention i'm jewish?). if they all knew i took meds, then i could just take them. more likely, they and my other friends would always be reminding me to take them. while that could be annoying, in the long run that would be helpful.
the other element of disclosure that i hadn't connected was the change in laws about disclosure, that there is more criminalization of not disclosing. an acquaintance of mine was arrested and put under house arrest here in toronto--also outing him to his conservative religious family in the process--because he was sexually accosted, but then the assailant told the police that the person he, in fact, raped, beat up, and stole from hadn't told him he was hiv-positive (i take it the man found out subsequently). telling people one is positive before sex may be a courtesy, and an encouragement to have safer sex, but being arrested for not telling: how does that reduce stigma for people with hiv? in effect, it may stop some people from having sex if they live in areas where people have poor understanding of hiv transmission, a cruel and unusual punishment. considering the lack of arrests for men who rape women, how is the criminalization of disclosure just another form of aidsphobia? i did some volunteer work at a homeless shelter, where i later found out they had an outbreak of a tuberculosis that was immune to treatment; why weren't the people who ran this shelter--or the homeless--criminalized for lack of disclosure? v.d. that goes untreated can also cause death; will the police start arresting people with cankars on their dicks? what about those people who inadvertently spread sars in the city a few years back; will they be arrested? it is horrible to cause someone to get sick, particularly something to which there is no cure, but the emphasis on criminalizing hiv transmission, i suspect, has more to do with a conservative moralizing about sex than about illness. criminalization may make more people not disclose and take their chances (if the person they have sex with has multiple partners, it is harder to prove who had the smoking gun, so to speak). reducing stigma, with the increase in hiv prevention strategies, is more likely to make safer sex a viable option than is criminalization. it is also more likely to make disclosure possible.
one final note from that session which echoes the racial divide in hiv was the study that showed that white gay males were more likely to disclose than black gay males, and both white and black gay males were more likely to disclose than heterosexual black people (and heterosexual black males less likely to disclose than heterosexual black males--i didn't see any data on heterosexual white people; latinos and other racial divisions were in between whites and blacks, but that data seemed unrefined). this macho connection to homophobia and aidsphobia is killing people, and makes it evident that disclosure won't happen until gender issues are resolved (and its connection to racism). |
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| world aids conference, day 1 (still) |
[Aug. 27th, 2006|10:25 am] |
an enjoyable, but bittersweet, presentation was on women and girls with hiv/aids. enjoyable because the focus was not on females as "victims," but on cases where women have taken control and improved their lives and the lives of other women. and these were not examples of white american women going to patronize african women, but women from the developing world helping themselves, even when they had lack of money, education, or resources. these examples resonated with a comment made at the (one) seminar on gay men with hiv/aids: that over time, we have waited until we got funding before implementing action: reactive, rather than proactive engagements. these women were proactive, and made a vital difference.
these women also followed a "feminist" concept of using lived experience to ground work and from which to assess the efficacy of their actions. several times throughout the conference their were muted comments about how these aids conferences seemed to ignore the lived experiences of pwas, particularly when scientists and doctors were talking about drugs in a detached objective manner (it would be interesting to do a study of differences in the approach to hiv prevention and treatment between doctors who are hiv-positive and those who are not: lived experience again).
bittersweet in that the examples of these females were exceptions to the norm. that a person finds 5 case studies in all of the developing world after 25 years is not much and makes me question whether or not examples such as these 5 groups of women are being told to women in developing countries, and used by health care workers as examples that they will implement, or was it just a nice presentation to share with a lot of middle-class (and mostly white north american) people in a conference center in toronto? these women are a start, and an inspiration, but their story (and feminists speak of the "counter-story" as a means of inciting further action) needs to get out, particularly in places where conferences aren't held and blogs aren't read. |
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| world aids conference day 1 (continued) |
[Aug. 24th, 2006|06:29 pm] |
two issues about hiv/aids that i had been considering for over a decade were confirmed--about time.
the first was that some people appear to be immune to hiv. i had thought that about myself since the 1980s, since i had so many partners who got and died of aids, yet i always tested negative. but i'm positive, you say, so i was wrong to think i am immune. when i sero-converted, it was years after i had only safe sex, and i contend that it was because i was at a particularly stressful time in my life that i tested positive. perhaps i always had the virus in me, but my immune system was strong enough to fight it and to make it undetectable. it will be interesting to see if these people who are testing negative to the virus maintain their immunity or if they sero-convert if their immune system falters for other reasons. perhaps, as there are so many strains of the virus, i had a weaker one. it would be nice to think that my immune system, since i have so little stress in my life (now that i can finally complete my renovations, after 3 years), that my immune system will bounce back and fight off the virus again but that won't happen. i received my blood work today from my doctor, and my t4 cell count is at a level where i will have to start taking medications. i don't mind taking the meds--i've been in practice for the past 3 years by taking vitamins twice daily, to see if i can remember a regimen--but the side effects worry me. however, i have a month until my doctor and i decide which pills i should take, so i have time to do a cost-benefit analysis of side-effects.
but back to the conference: the other issue was that reinfection (or "super-infection") is possible, since there are so many subtypes of the virus. i remember pwas talking about this about a decade ago, then it seemed to have been disproved, and a lot of pwas i know started having unsafe sex with other poz people. i never did, as reinfection seemed logical. but now i'll feel more confident in telling pwas that want to have unsafe sex with me that it just won't happen.
a concept introduced today, which annoyed me in that i hadn't thought of it before, was that "health" (as understood in the West) follows a Cartesian binary that doesn't reflect the reality of pwas. we are not unhealthy, in that most of us can work and do everything that "healthy" people can do, but that we are not entirely healthy either, in that our bodies are under attack. this also applies to some people with cancer and other "illnesses." it puts us in a situation where insurance companies may question coverage (and long-term disability). it even puts into question some of our status and benefits: do people with cancer have their own centers where they get free theater tickets, lawyers, massages? true, there are more medications for cancer and the possibility of remission and eradication, and people are not criminalized for spreading cancer (probably because one can't--unless you're a cigarette company), and people with cancer (pwc?) are not stigmatized by society, but being un/healthy makes me question how much i may be expecting special status that other people with long-term disabilities do not get or expect. places like act and the people with aids foundation have been set up my pwas (and their friends) for themselves, and we have had to fight for what we received, but i wonder if some of us--well, me--may not be playing both sides of the fence, as it benefits us. i prefer volunteering at act than receiving things from them (although i do love the massages at pwa foundation), but i wonder, as i near finishing my degree, whether i plan on being a person LIVING with hiv and search for a job (age notwithstanding) or i become a person living with HIV and remain doing volunteer work and excusing myself from doing things i dislike because i am "unhealthy"? maybe the side effects will determine the answer. going on meds, i am, more than ever, balancing on the line between sick and healthy. |
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| aids conference, first plenary. part two |
[Aug. 24th, 2006|12:18 pm] |
it's been almost a week since i put in my last entry. i didn't expect to have been so exhausted after the conference, and this fatigue was augmented by nightly photo shoots during the conference, 2 1/2 days of photo shoots after the conference ended, and showing my scientist-photographer friend (who also attended the conference) and his partner around town this past week. i needed the photo shoots as a contrast to the conference. the conference may have been exciting, but it certainly wasn't upbeat. no new drugs in the near future, no new approaches to treatment or prevention, and an endless mantra of how the virus keeps spreading, how there won't be enough money to provide health care, how vaccines won't happen in my lifetime. so having 6 naked men in front of my camera was a means to celebrate life. that the hunkiest body was also that of a pwa with lipodystrophy signified that hiv was not the death of beauty.
the opening plenary provided a leitmotiv for the whole conference: this was about women. not just women with hiv/aids, but women as a major component in a holistic understanding of global issues. it was clear throughout the conference that issues around hiv/aids can not be resolved unless women have more equality, that what structurally promulgates the spread of the virus are the same elements that maintain inequality. this may be why politicians choose to discuss "risk" groups, as if certain people are anomalies outside social organization. that way, society doesn't need to change, only the behavior of those in the risk groups. but it is society that needs to change. and for women to gain equality means changing employment, education, governmentality, religious dogma, family, gender, and sexuality. in deed, hiv/aids may be the catalyst for a social revolution. females are more likely to contract hiv if they are married, according to one of the plenary speakers. men on the down low are known to be a problem for black men in north america spreading the virus to their wives and female partners (and black msms in the states have an extraordinarily higher percentage of hiv than white, hispanic, or asian msms), but in places like india and africa, it is straight men having sex with female prostitutes that spread the disease to their partners and children (and the early age of intercourse by females in some countries blurs the lines between children and women). if women weren't in societies where being subservient to their husbands was acceptable, if women had legal defense from abuse, if families allowed for more sexual freedom--and more fluidity in types of families, if religions didn't support female inequality as divine decree, if women had the economic ability to leave marriages or choose not to marry, would females be more likely to contract the virus? i think not. are governments and societies committed to curing hiv that they will change long established traditions and structures? all governments, even the most radical, are inherently conservative, as they seek inertia once they are in power. even if that inertia can lead to aids depopulating their country. the leader of south africa encourages his citizens to drink lemon juice and oil (in effect, salad dressing) rather than to use condoms: this isn't stupidity, it's genocide. |
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| aids conference: first plenary, part 1 |
[Aug. 16th, 2006|06:39 am] |
one country seems to be consistently attacked for limited thinking and poor policies: the united states. the "abc" prevention policy is roundly proved not to work and to endanger the lives of millions, yet the most powerful (only in their minds, as power comes from thought, not bombs and money)country in the world is powerless to control the spread of hiv/aids when it lets religious dogma replace scientific facts; the biggest democracy in the world (only in their minds, as democracy means equality for all and that everyone has the right to vote, including the poor, the black, and the elderly)prefers to support american colonialism and plutocracy rather than remove drug patents internationally so that everyone, not only rich and industrialized countries, has access to drugs; the richest country in the world (as long as they don't pay their deficit and monetary obligations to world organizations and promised moneys to other countries)can't decrease the spread of hiv in their own country while some of the most impoverished countries in the world can; the country that considers itself the leader of the world is far behind most other countries in hiv prevention strategies. maybe "abc" should stand for "everything but coherent," and that could describe Bush as well as his aids policies. besides the "abc" policy for prevention, the states bans federal funding for drug prevention in the u.s. and globally; big surprise that hiv among iv-drug users is one of the largest growing target populations, and that studies have shown that the "war against drugs" hasn't stopped drug use but has increased the spread of hiv. as several discussants throughout the conference have mentioned, access to aids prevention is a human right. denying human rights is something that disqualifies the united states from being anything but the biggest sham.
as a gay man in toronto, where condoms are free in all the bathhouses, bars, hiv/aids resource and health centers, and many gay organizations, i am shocked to hear that only 10% of the world has access to condoms. american policies must be a large aspect of this (if countries want american funding, probably they are not allowed to encourage condom use), and the rise of catholicism in the developing world does not help matters, so it isn't only the protestant fundamentalism of american policy that is to blame. christianity, particularly catholicism, started and has remained a death cult, but there is a difference between relishing the death of a savior and assorted martyrs (and worshiping a torture instrument, and looking forward to the end of the world), and forcing other people to suffer and die. one thing that i don't see in this conference program, and is only alluded to by a few discussants in the vaguest terms, is the role of religion in hiv/aids. it is lovely to celebrate the religious such as desmond tutu and others who understand that stopping the spread of hiv is more important than dogma about birth control (and a dead christian is not a good christian, only a wasted potential), but these figures are de facto exceptions. why is there no talk about how some religious groups and policies encourage the spread of hiv, and their lack of ethics and moral responsibility?
this connection with religion will also come up (pardon the pun) in the issues around hiv and male circumcision. studies, according to many researchers, seem to show a correlation between reduced hiv spread and uncut cocks. this is fine for muslim and jewish countries, but what about the other countries? not that there are any religion edicts (as far as i have found) against circumcision in hinduism, buddhism, christianity et al, but cultural tradition has a strong hold on people, and religious tradition is often connected to cultural tradition. will skinning the snake become a policy, and will it be enforced? furthermore, while some researchers have mentioned that people in sub-saharan africa may need to get cut, will they be putting their money where their mouth is (or my mouth, for that matter)? at a time when many men in north america are discussing reconstructive surgery of foreskins, and there is a decrease in male circumcision among the general population, are adult men in north america going to go to a moyle? (the snip is quick and painless, but try not getting an erection for 5 days.) how about all those eastern orthodox in russia and the ukraine, and the hindus in india, countries where hiv is spreading faster than anywhere on earth? when i lived in hungary, and my dick made me obviously jewish every time i went to a bathhouse (baths in houses where still uncommon, so it wasn't a sex thang) or showered at the school, friends made it clear that an uncut dick was a sign of virility (hence, jewish men weren't really men); what happens to men when something as close to their hearts, such as their image of male dominance, is so close to someones knife? as it is, many heterosexual men think that birth control is the females problem, and wearing safes reduce their pleasure, so can we expect them to willingly cut their dicks to reduce hiv? before that will happen, a lot of work will need to be done to make straight men rethink gender--which is not a bad thing. maybe male circumcision will work first-hand (sorry for the pun) to separate gender from sex and sexual inequality at the same time as it reduces the transmission of hiv. and maybe it will also help people separate religious dogma and tradition from the highest religious moral: caring for the ill and saving lives (note to Bush: not the lives of potential cells, but living, thinking, sentient beings who pay taxes). |
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| aids conference: registration |
[Aug. 15th, 2006|09:38 pm] |
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going to register reminded me of expo 67 when i was a kid. even living in toronto, one of the world's most multicultural cities, i have not been so constantly aware of different cultures and peoples as i was lining up to register. but it wasn't just a panoply of cultures that made this registration so exciting. it was the fact that so many people from so many countries were all here because of their interest in one issue, that despite whatever we didn't share, we were all affected by hiv/aids. the variety of people also reminded me in an important way that hiv/aids is not a gay disease. yes, i know it hasn't been one for decades, but in north america, the media often presents it in the context of gay men, aids organizations have been organized and run, mostly, by gay men, and in toronto, where women pwas, black pwas, hemophiliac pwas, and so on, all tend to be in their separate corners with little interaction, i tend to see few pwas that are not gay. so it is important to be at a conference where i see transgendered pwas and aboriginal pwas, former prison inmates and iv drug users with hiv/aids, to be at a conference where the focus is on developing countries and women with hiv/aids. it pleases me to see health care workers from countries that don't get in the media for aids (except in reports on the "devastation" of their countries) prepared to discuss their successes in research and prevention, to know that pwas such as myself may benefit from work being done in rwanda and india as well as from the CDC and the pasteur institute. standing in line (which may explain why i have seen so few people in wheelchairs or with canes at this conference: the distances between rooms are enormous, and elevators are small and few) i kept thinking that the person standing next to me, dressed differently, speaking a language i can't identify, may be the person who will change my life. |
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