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This post was published on 24/09/10 in Men, women and others.

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  1. Comment by Miriam in Vancouver, 24/09/10, 11:48:

    Thanks for this great post. Disturbing stats, but I think you’re right about the mixed-messaging.

  2. Comment by Brian, 25/09/10, 02:59:

    I don’t know; a lot of people, including MSM, are devastated by the diagnosis.

    But the number of new diagnoses stays constant and rises in young MSM, and particularly young black MSM.

    Is it possible that is because the denominator is also rising? Even if the number of ‘gay’ young men is constant, it seems much easier for young men to have sex with men than it was when the number of new diagnoses in that subpopulation was smaller.

    The other issue with the young is that they are having sex with others who are young, who by virtue of being young and relatively sexually inexperienced, of all infected men are the most likely to be newly infected, and concomitantly most dangerous.

  3. Comment by Tucker, 25/09/10, 07:05:

    I agree that any attempt to “normalize” HIV is problematic (perhaps more so from a preventionist perspective), but I’m not convinced that many mixed-messages actually exist at the institutional level. Sex-ed and HIV prevention curricula don’t make a habit of normalizing HIV (they are much more likely to use subtle or not so subtle scare tactics). The so-called mixed-messages, in my opinion, emerge only when we examine all the many different messages about HIV from the many different media and institutions (ASOs, NGOs, CDC/health officials, schools, popular media ect…); but if we examine any topic as such we are going to find “mixed-messages.” And we are NEVER going to achieve a single, coordinated and agreed-upon messaging strategy for HIV/AIDS–in part because no such propaganda machine (or consensus) exists and in part because different people need different messages.

    Targeting HIV negative gay men for prevention campaigns is important, but at the end of the day we all know that it is impossible to reach all MSM for such campaigns and unfortunately, despite now more than two decades of work and millions of dollars, we have not seen epidemiological success. It’s my impression that prevention specialists often completely ignore the role that HIV positive men can and do play in prevention. Prevention workers assume that pos men are adequately counseled by medical professionals and case workers once they test positive and are enveloped into the health care system, but that isn’t the case.

    The fact that 14% of men who tested negative in the past year tested pos with the CDC is more reason to normalize regular, guilt-free, no-cost testing and to start using nucleic acid tests instead of anti-body tests, especially in high-risk groups.

  4. Comment by Daniel Reeders, 27/09/10, 01:58:

    Great post! But can you please post an example of one of these campaigns that says “HIV is just another virus: Don’t get it”?

  5. Comment by Breno B., 27/09/10, 11:29:

    Elizabeth,

    Do you think that universal state-sponsored treatment, like in Brazil, encourage people to take risky behaviour?

  6. Comment by Songbird, 28/09/10, 12:31:

    I dunno. This is one of those articles that uses all the bad shift and rhetoric of the articles it is against to create… the same message.

    Did Larry Kramer write this?

    There are some things that never change in this kind of message — which includes the kinda “subtle” don’t fuck B/black men cant.

    People have been saying the messages that kept most of us negative aren’t working for the young guys because they don’t know how horrible HIV is!!! Well, shouldn’t young guys who are HIV + be encouraged to lead that kind of charge?

    No, because they are usually finding some kinda stable relationship with someone else who is Poz, thus not commenting on the rather salacious title. The virus has changed just as the treatment has changed. I am not saying that I think there is no big deal in seroconverting, I am in my 30’s, of course I feel it is a big deal. But when my young friend in his early 20’s seroconverted, he told me what my older friend in his 40’s told me the future of the virus would be when I was 20! — he told me, with a shrug, “It’s no big deal.”

    It made me want to cry.

    But that is where he is and how he sees it.

    He doesn’t even know how he got it… and he uses condoms, thinks it might have been oral, but no one ever thinks of creating dental health over as a safer sex issue. My point: HIV has changed because of the efforts of, well, all of us, in profound ways. I would rather we deal with reality first… people don’t die of HIV like they did of AIDS, sure HIV complications still occur, especially within communities of color (which becomes a healthcare issue, I believe)… what we need are voices. The young, gay and Poz are out there.

    Are they edgy, mundane? What do they think? People who are HIV negative (which admittedly includes myself) have no real right to this kind of thinking. We don’t know what it is like to be HIV +. We only know our fears and sometimes, what we see in our close friendships, but in the gay community, there is a very unspoken line placed between those that are positive and those negative.

    It is not a bad thing to not want to denigrate part of our own community for contracting a disease that ANY of us could get because I refuse to believe that ALL of us who are “negative” have “safer sex” all the time…. ugh. I have lost my point.

  7. Comment by matt, 10/10/10, 08:35:

    Isn’t it “Rite of passage” nor “Right of Passage” ? Also, is “passage” meant to be a bit freudian in this context (gay sex) ? If not, it is quite funny, in a not-at-all-funny kind of way. Sorry, just couldn’t resist.

    By the way, Wisdom of Whores is just superb – totally eye-opening

    Matt

  8. Comment by thezak, 12/11/10, 08:58:

    How widespread is the strategy?… of
    “BEFORE we have sex let’s get tested TOGETHER
    for A VARIETY of STDs.”

    Do sexual health checkups reduce the ambiguity and can they be
    like anything else POTENTIAL sex partners do together?…

    If you needed surgery would you want the surgeon to wash
    before operating?…

    If you needed a blood transfusion would you want the blood tested
    before or after the transfusion?…

    see also
    http://notb4weknow.blogspot.com
    http://continuedat.blogspot.com

    “tested together” alerts
    http://www.google.com/alerts
    http://www.google.com/search?q=%22tested+together%22

  9. Comment by Andrew, 22/02/11, 11:04:

    “should note that these data come from men approached at gay venues such as bars, saunas, gyms etc. — places where people go to cruise. They therefore are likely to represent the higher end of the risk spectrum”

    It should also be noted that fewer than half those approached agreed to be tested after they found out what the test was for, which could both explain the high number of people who were surprised at their status and could indicate that the actual infection rate, at least at those venues, is much, much higher.

    As for the notion that we need “more fear”…has it ever occurred to anyone in public health that newly diagnosed are just giving the reactions which get the best response? As one of those “immaculate infections” who thought they were doing everything right, I can assure you that the opposite response of “I’ll just take a few pills” doesn’t get a lot of sympathy. Screaming, crying and hysteria about how my life was over garnered responses which ranged from annoyance to sadism. (One nurse told me I’d be mentally incapacitated by neuroaids within 20 years, and responded to my surprise with “surely i’m not the first person to tell you this). People say things like “its no big deal” because freaking out about how you don’t want lipoatrophy doesn’t exactly make the situation any better, especially when half the time the person testing you has lipoatrophy. This doesn’t mean that young people are blind the the very obvious social, financial and physical implications of HIV.

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