Some thoughts on World Aids Day 2015

It's another December 1, and so, hooray, it's World AIDS Day 2015! It's been a mixed year so far. There is a major advance in Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and a series of really lovely books on the subject. But there is also a steep rise in infections in China (among other places), and a fundamental lack of education and care for young people. And this is just the beginning of the list...

Something that I would personally like to see in the new year is the end of HIV stigma perpetuated by the media. Earlier in November I applied for a research opportunity, pitching a project about the relationship between HIV/AIDS advocacy and the mass media, worrying that the topic might be somewhat stale and overdone, when I saw this:

This is the Sun (UK) on November 11, chipping in early on Charlie Sheen's HIV story, channeling their best 1985-Rock-Hudson outfit. Leaving us to wonder: Why is the media stuck in the 80s on HIV stigma? In fact, the National AIDS Trust found that media coverage on HIV is twice as likely to be negative than anything else. And that's not because we're talking about a not-even-so-fatal-anymore disease. That's because the stories are about gay men, about unprotected sex, or actually, about sex in general, in which regard the medial opinion still seems to resemble a Southern Republican of the Reagan/Thatcher era. Not cool, you guys. 

Echoes of this hate and fear-mongering can be found in this collage assembled by Buzzfeed - a mostly downhearted collection of anonymous (presumably young/gay) confessions à la "I feel like being dead would be better than being HIV+" - or in the latest episode of London Spy on BBC, where an HIV diagnosis is purposefully and unapologetically conducted to discredit the protagonist. 

This leaves us with a heap of work until next December. Wouldn't it be lovely if news outlets, for once, offered genuine advice and orientation for people confused and scared by their diagnosis? If people living with HIV (and not dying from it!) weren't facing forced coming-outs and breaking of their private spheres? If people weren't scared to take their test in the first place, thus risking further infections? 

It's about time to push those media into a TARDIS and bring them to year 2016, methinks!

Please read also:

We can't go back to the deadly HIV stigma of the 1980s by Owen Jones

and

What Will It Take to End the AIDS Epidemic? by Jon Cohen

and the many, many resources found on Twitter. 

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance - which is much better than International Men's Day or World Toilet Day, which shared the limelight yesterday. There is a lot to learn today. There are - sadly - many lives to be remembered and to be honoured today. So head over to your Twitter or Tumblr account of choice and listen what all the wonderful and intelligent trans people have to tell you, or go to an TDoR event near you. It's the least we can all do. 

Remember them by their names. Remember them by how they lived, not how they died. Trans lives matter.

Image via "Sylvia & Marsha" on Facebook

If you are unsure where to start, I would suggest Emma Frankland's blog "None of us is yet a robot".

The Photograph: SFGH Ward 5A

Unknown photographer: Shanti counsellor Ed Wolf works with a patient. Image courtesy of the San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library, via shantihistory.blogspot.com

"But hand-holding is a very difficult part of medicine. I do it a lot, and I try to do it right, and it is a very satisfying as well as wrenching part of the experience." - Robert Cohen, AIDS Doctor

The picture above, showing counsellor Ed Wolf comforting an AIDS patient in 1983, is one of the few images I was able to dig up so far from the early 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic began. It is a sentimental little find, transporting the viewer to San Francisco's famous AIDS ward 5A. The ward at its time possibly offered the most prominent window into an otherwise still very secluded community. Before 1985, when Rock Hudson's death hit the ignorant society with a vengeance, social and governmental support compassed near to nothing. The gay and lesbian community found itself left alone, and responsible for the many sick people. 

The Shanti Mission was just one of many projects all over the US where volunteers from the community stepped in and helped the best they could, when the rest of the world did not bother. The seclusion surely was a self-protective reflex as well, a shield against homophobic attacks which condemned the "gay cancer" and decried homosexuality as a sinful, dangerous lifestyle. In the end, they made the community much stronger than ever expected.

The seclusion of the first years might be the reason that only a few pictures are available nowadays, most of them hidden away in archives or private family albums; photo journalism and documentary photography did not really discover AIDS until much later. A greater selection, luckily, is featured in the touching documentary film We Were Here, which also includes an extensive interview with Ed Wolf. Weirdly enough I enjoy the fact that it is so hard to get an insight into the subject: It tells me that, after all, visually witnessing something is only worth so much. To really know what it feels like to be part of a community devastated by a disease, you must have been there, at the right time, at the right place.

This is the second installment of  'The Photograph', a series of pictures that I love, find remarkable or important, and which I will present on this blog on a non-regular basis.

Panti's Noble Call

Here are ten minutes of wise words everyone should have a listen to - delivered by the Irish drag queen Panti (Rory O'Neill). Maybe she should be part of the Gorgeous project, since she's got one of the most important stories to share?!