November 2009 Archives

A few days ago, I published a piece that managed to re-posted on numerous blogs (here, here, here, to name a few) that critiqued the use of "serosorting" as a rationale for refusing to have sex with Poz men when condoms are used. A flurry of interesting and highly productive conversations came out of this piece that center around a number of problematics: Rationality vs. Emotionality (as noted in Daniel's response piece); Responsibility vs. Recklessness; and Individual Rights vs. Collective Ethics, to name a few.

But alongside these productive conversations came what I see as a highly vitriolic and slanderous response that emerged in the responses on Qweerty -- a kind of mainstream gay blog that gets quite a bit of traffic. I see a big part of the issue here as resulting from the title the folks at Qweerty assigned the repost:

As you can see, they've suggested here that I called people who refused to sleep with Poz men "assholes." I didn't, and I don't think that -- just to be totally clear. I don't know much about Qweerty, but in the past I've certainly seen comments there that suggest a pretty conservative readership when it comes to sex. But I had no way of anticipating the anger and vitriol that has spilled out in the comments against me and my arguments. I certainly understand that these issues are highly emotional, but most readers did not engage the arguments -- they opted instead to call me names. Ouch.

But I'm a big boy. I can take a bit of name-calling. You work long enough in HIV prevention, and you realize that someone's going to smear your name if you say anything that differs from the party-line prevention soundbites. So in the interest of making something productive happen out of this violence, I wanted to take a moment to see if there were underlying logics in the nearly 100 comments that were enabling the anger -- logics that anyone interested in unpacking the politics of prevention should be interested in. Here we go.

1) "I take it this was written by someone Pos." & "hell no. he sounds like som sort of con man": A number of readers suspected that I must be HIV-positive for writing this. I think this is INCREDIBLY telling about the kind of divisive and polarizing kinds of conversations that are all too common in our communities. I'm not HIV-positive, but why does this matter so much? The subtle underhanded suggestion here is that I must be HIV-positive because I seem to be trying to coerce negative men into having sex with me.

2) "Trevor, you have no idea about the breadth of the stigma associated with HIV+ status; and only the few of us very long-term poz, and their friends and boyfriends, who witnessed and were subject to it do.": Let me try to translate: I've got the misery, keep your hands off. This is clear boundary-drawing, attempting to say that I have no right to discuss this issue because of my negative status. All too common when discussing issues of stigmatized minorities.

3) "What a nut. He seemed to also want to outright say -- but didn't -- that it was the duty of negative guys show their commitment to positive guys by fucking them.": Like the comments in #1, these readers presumed that I believed there was some kind of charitable commitment necessary for neg guys to be coerced into fucking poz guys. Again this is really not the point. The point is that there are prevention discourses circulating that making refusing sex with poz men seem entirely logical, and I'm challenging the logical bases by which that refusal becomes obvious or rational. Fuck whoever you want, but don't pretend like it's obviously just about self-preservation

4) "Hoppe is using the same tired rationalizations the community used in the eighties. I'm glan [sic] folks are seeing through this bulls-t. We have to stop aids in our community now. We've known the transmission method for years. And the available strategies have been obvious for years: positives only with positives, negatives only with negatives, honesty and caring for everyone, peer group pressure on thoughtless barebackers, condoms always for negatives except in a monogamous relationship when trust is rock solid. If anyone's feelings are hurt by this, tough s-it.": I think this comment speaks for itself. Here the claim is made that the only strategies for prevention transmission are 100% serosorting, shaming people who don't use condoms, and only allowing for unprotected sex within relationships. And I say: Tell that to the 68% of new infections that are estimated to be the result of condomless sex with people's primary partners. And obviously the pathologization of "thoughtless barebackers" is the kind of shaming that does nobody an ounce of good.

5) "I'm fed up with having to dance around the constantly shifting, ever increasing sexual minefield that horny, unconcerned poz men represent.": In this readers's mind -- and in many others -- the responsibility for transmission rests squarely on the backs of poz men. As if neg guys share none of that responsibility. As if the men leaving the backroom are akin to murderers. This is worse that stigmatization, it's criminal slandering -- and its the kind of hateful logic that Public Health scholars and institutions have too often served to promote and help disseminate in their efforts. I'm not saying poz guys are totally without any responsibility here, but c'mon.

and finally, my absolute favorite:

6) "Is it wrong to refuse to take a ride on a train you know has no brakes? Jesus, how can anyone write such a self serving, irresponsible idiotic article?": Wowzer! There's a lot going on here. First, it obviously equates having sex with Poz guys to getting on a train headed for certain death. I don't think I need to explain why that's the most disingenuous comparison I've heard in months.

Phew. I think I need to take a few days off from blogging. This was quite an intense ride. In the end, I'm reminded of something my mentor Eric Rofes wrote before he died (see pp. 6-7 of THRIVING, PDF found here):

I recently published on a gay news website an editorial viewpoint that attempted to open up new ways of thinking about HIV prevention, crystal use, and gay men who occasionally have sex without condoms. I was attempting to offer new vision. I understood the risk of attempting to offer new thinking and introduce complex concepts in a brief article on a popular website, but I did my best to inject some fresh thinking about risk-taking and the hazards of social marketing into a discussion which has become predictable and, at times, trite. At the same time, despite my awareness of the challenge I was taking on, I had not expected the rage reflected in some of the letters of response from readers. A sampling follows:

Patrick Syring from Arlington, Virgina, wrote:

"Your advocacy for barebacking and party drugs is abhorrent and disgusting. Gaymen like you tarnish the rest of us who play safe and cherish life more than you do. I hope you die painlessly but quickly."

Anthony Altieri wrote:

"Your article is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in print. You are obviously a fucking idiot...You cannot blame people's self-destructive behaviors on prevention campaigns. Have you ever heard of a little thing called "personal responsibility"? Probably not. There are plenty of reasons people make unwise decisions: addictive behavior, loneliness, desperation, isolation, lack of purpose in their lives, lack of education, but I am confident you will NEVER find a case of 'I have uprotected sex and use drugs because I saw a poster telling me to use a condom.' The aids [sic] epidemic has been ongoing since the early '80s. DEAL WITH IT. USE A CONDOM YOU FREAKING MORON. Please do us all a favor, unplug your computer and refrain from subjecting the world to any more of your bullshit. Go sit quietly in your bedroom with the lights off, avoiding the realities of life. You seem to be pretty good at that anyway."

Why do conversations among gay men about HIV, barebacking, crystal use, and bathhouses get so ugly and divisive? Why are they argued in such a vehement manner? Are they simply another example of internecine warfare driven by personality conflicts, ego battles, and bad manners? How can we make sense out of distinct visions that seem to underlie these debates: one which argues that the crisis moment of AIDS has passed for gay men and one which berates gay men for taking a single step beyond the bomb shelter we've inhabited since the early 1980s? Why is gay men's sex so frequently the target of such contentious debate and demonization? How did we reach a point where there are such deep divisions among gay men about sexual health and safety? And in what ways do vehement responses to new vision effectively serve to keep out of our movement fresh, innovative thinkers offering fresh analyses?

Amen.

The first time a poz guy disclosed to me before sex, I fucked up. It took me by surprise, and I felt too much emotion to go ahead with sex; I thought it would be easier for him if I was a bastard about it, and so I was hateful to him, and hated myself afterward. I was twenty two years old. I've come a long way since then, but I'm still taken aback when a poz guy discloses before casual sex; it's the same rush of emotion, like sipping from an open fire hydrant, and it's hard to put that out of my mind and fuck afterwards. But it also dials the trust and intimacy up to eleven, and I'd be lying if I said that doesn't scare me, but it does make for good sex.

In my article Solutions to Stigma in the current edition of HIV Australia, I talk about the slow learning process HIV-negative men undertake to overcome HIV stigma and build confidence in their ability to use condoms to protect themselves. My background is in cultural studies but I sometimes get frustrated with social theories' focus on the problem to the exclusion of ideas about solutions; the risk is that HIV stigma looks obvious, natural, and inevitable, when experience tells us that some men overcome it. There's an interest body of work called behavioural economics, bridging neuropsychology and the dismal science, about the way the human brain assesses risk, and the relative persuasiveness of different kinds of framing. There's a subset called prospect theory, which garnered its authors the Nobel Prize in Economics, and I think it shows some promise as a basis for crafting responses to HIV stigma.

Rather than quoting research about the low risk of HIV transmission when condoms are used, this approach suggests we'd do better to think about how people learn, the role of emotion in their thought processes, and ways of framing the issue. Instead of saying "your emotional response to HIV risk is invalid because rationally and objectively the risk is much lower than you think", why don't we say, "one day you will meet the man of your dreams, and there's a 1/10 chance he'll be HIV-positive: with your current attitude, you would miss out on the relationship of a lifetime"?

With that message, you're tapping into some equally powerful emotions - the desire we all have to meet the guy who completes us, and our frustration about how long it takes - but this time, they're weighing on your side. You can bet he'll dismiss that question upfront, but you're planting the seed for later reflection on what he might lose through his stigmatising attitudes. At that point the smart educator will change the subject and leave him to ponder that thought, because defensiveness is the enemy of learning, whether it comes from being challenged, scorned or simply feeling ashamed.