I hadn't heard about PEP411.com before this video, but it's quite wonderful. This video is aimed at young Black men, detailing how you can get your hands on post-exposure prophylaxis within 36 hours after a potential exposure to HIV. The sooner the better, theoretically, though the science behind the timing is somewhat murky. What we do know for sure, however, is that when begun soon after exposure, it can dramatically reduce your odds of serconversion. The drugs are essentially a cocktail of anti-retrovirals, just like those prescribed to HIV-positive people. Taken immediately after exposure, it is thought that the drugs are able to inhibit the virus from taking hold of your immune system.
Here's the video:
Although I will note that the video states that "limiting your number of sexual partners" reduces your HIV risk. I resent and disagree with this widespread assertion, and believe it is this prevention message that has led some men to the idea that boyfriends are "safety zones" from infection. A recent modeling study estimated that the majority of new infections in major metro areas among MSM today are the result of sex with primary partners.
I was overwhelmed by the turnout last Friday night for the forum in Chicago, "What is justice for the black gay man?" I'm not particularly good at estimating crowd size, but the room was very spacious and it was standing room only. In attendance was a regular who's-who of Black gay men and their allies in Chicago, including a few local politicians and government officials. In this regard, I want to applaud the organizers of the event for bringing together a fabulous group of Black gay men and their allies for a discussion devoted to some rather difficult topics.
I was excited to hear the panelists, of course -- particularly E Patrick Johnson and Keith Boykin, both of which have done some pretty groundbreaking work in their respective fields for advocating for LGBT issues broadly and for Black gay men specifically. Johnson's performance work, "Pouring Tea," I particularly love for the way it brings to life an extremely diverse set of experiences of Black gay (or otherwise same-gender-loving) men living and thriving in the South. Keith's critical work on the down low was also I think an incredibly important invervention into the stigmatizing discourses around this issue that became hyperbolic when writers like J. L. King (who went on Oprah to spread his pathologizing understanding of the phenomena) and Benoit Denizet-Lewis, who wrote a grossly distorted piece for the New York Times. Denizet-Lewis has actually made something of a career of pathologizing gay men, which probably explains mainstream media's love for his alleged "exposes."
So needless to say, I was eager to hear these thinker's thoughts about how best to advocate for and understand the experiences of Black gay men. I expected to hear about social justice rooted in a denial of access to social benefits, racism, pathologizing discourses about Black MSM's sexualities and behaviors, an HIV epidemic that is crippling agencies working with these populations and disproportionately infecting Black men, and an interwoven network of stigmas that makes daily life for these communities trying at best, and unbearable at worst. Alongside these problems, I also wanted to hear about the ways in which many Black gay men are surviving and even thriving despite these obstacles.
I didn't really hear either of these things. Instead, I was shocked and nearly appalled when it became clear that justice for the speakers was primarily about "loving yourself" and "being true to who you are." Indeed, the problem that was posited as the most trying for Black gay men was their own internalized racism and homophobia, a kind of pathologizing and psychologizing approach to social injustice that I found utterly baffling. No, it wasn't pervasive systems of racism, homophobia, sissyphobia, and pozphobia that are systematically embedded in social institutions and cultures that should be the focus of social justice movements -- but rather the internal psyches and emotions of Black gay men themselves.
This is not far from the latest self-help craze for Oprah to latch onto, "The Secret," which proposes that to succeed in life we merely need to imagine ourselves as successful, wish for that to be true, and think positively. If we aren't rich, then it's our fault for not wanting to be rich. If we don't have health care, then it's our fault for not wanting to become insured. This isn't just offensive, it's downright manipulative for the way that it seduces people into believing that the onus of achieving loosely defined "success" in life falls entirely on individuals. Nevermind the vast libraries of scholarship that illustrate the ways in which various forms of social inequality make achieving these markers of success difficult if not impossible for many social groups -- particularly those born into poverty but also those marked by certain socially ascribed characteristics such as race, gender, and sexuality. Under this individualistic / rational framework, you are a free agent whose choices in life are the only factor that will influence whether or not you grow up to be a CEO or a garbage collector. As a sociologist, this is the kind of ignorant, distorted, and highly conservative perspective on the world that erases the foundations for a politics of social justice.
I'd call attention here to two comments from the audience after the short presentations by the panelists that I think help illustrate the underlying politics (or lack thereof) in their comments. First, there was a question from a self-identified "successful" Black gay men near the front of the room who noted that he loved himself, his life, and his partner just fine -- but his self-love, well-paying job, and house didn't translate into his ability to formally marry his partner of many years. Thus, I read him as trying to point out the ridiculousness of the panelists' claims about what justice should mean for Black gay men -- it cannot be framed just in the terms of psedo-scientific self-help jargon, but rather must first and foremost recognize the structural and social injustices that make that self-love difficult to achieve. The self-love is the OUTCOME of justice, not the root CAUSE.
Second, a man near me later stood up to ask why it was that the panelists were defining homophobia as a kind of psychological problem, rather than as a pervasive social system of power relations that is embedded in institutions and cultures. Heterosexism, he posited, would perhaps be a better way to situate the claims for justice that could foment a Black gay politics. "No, no" the panelists said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't think that's how we understand homophobia." But it was clear that this was EXACTLY how they were positing homophobia and more broadly the social justice politics that should stem from that form of social inequality -- as I hope is made clear by my (distilled) description of their talks above.
Don't get me wrong, I hope that Black gay men are happy. That's a good thing. But you just don't build a social justice politics based on psychological concepts like internalized homophobia and depression. That's the building blocks for a public health intervention, which increasingly are supplanting actual social justice movements for gay men in general -- Black, white, or otherwise. It's perhaps not a coincidence that these efforts are funded by state agencies that perpetuate these very injustices. The disease or problem in this model becomes not the system and the dramatic injustices it enables, but the various medical problems experiences by minority groups like "self-destructive behaviors" and "low self-esteem." It is precisely though this pathologizing reconfiguration that political movements become neutered and inequality gets perpetuated, reproduced, and made more insidious because these injustices come backed by medical authorities with so-called "evidence."
Let's take care not to fall victim to these alluring models for social change. They may make us feel warm and cuddly, but that isn't going to mean a damn when said happy person gets denied health insurance because he's HIV-positive. Or when he gets fired from his job because a co-worker saw him kissing his boyfriend at a local nightclub. Let's see how happy they are after that.
After shuffling my affairs around a bit, I'll actually be there tonight downtown at the University Center in Chicago for what appears to be a very interesting panel:
Justice for All?
A community forum exploring
What is justice for
the Black Gay man?
Panel includes Keith Boykin
Thursday, January 28 at 6pm
525 South State Street
Keith is usually a pretty solid speaker. And E Patrick Johnson is just a dream! I saw him do his one-man-show, "Pouring Tea" last year and it was WONDERFUL (see clips of his personas here - they're truly great!
Consider it a call to arms: While have a plethora of submissions from white bottoms for "The Bottom Monologues," we are desperately in need of some stories from men of color. Black, Latino, Asian (South, East, or any other direction), and Native American men are all currently grossly underrepresented in our sample.
Please: if you know anyone who might be interested in submitting -- or you write for a blog that reaches men of color, or have any other way to get in touch with gay, bisexual, and other men of color who have sex with men -- *please* help spread the word. If you're unfamiliar, here's the 411:
We Need Your Stories
The “Bottom Monologues” will be a play based on your stories. That’s right — you can have a hand in the writing of a play about your experiences! We’re hoping to collect submissions from gay, bisexual, queer, and trans men from across the world. We could write our own play without your help, but it wouldn’t reflect the complexity and diversity of experiences that we know are out there. We need your help to make sure that no bottom gets left behind! Submit your story today!
What We’ll Do With Your Story
Once we’ve collected the responses, the three of us will sit down and pour over them for a month or two. We’re going to read every word you’ve generously provided us. We’ll be reading for a few things: 1) Similarities that pop up in many of your stories; 2) Major points of conflict or disagreement; 3) And finally, we’ll be hunting for particularly evocative, exciting, or compelling stories.
Once we’ve finished reading, we’ll put similar kinds of stories into theoretical blenders and turn the narratives of dozens of men into one “composite character.” You may not find your word-for-word story about that amazing night in Paris’ Le Depot in the final product, but you can rest assured that it has influenced that direction of the project.
Who Should Submit
Anybody who has anything to say about gay/bi/queer/trans bottoms. That includes guys who identify as a top, bottom, versatile, and those who don’t identify at all. We’re even interested in hearing from straight-identified folks! Wherever you are. Whoever you are. And whatever kind of sex you have. We want you!
Ready to Submit? Click here to be connected to the submission form (external link). The form asks a series of six broad questions for your to consider in responding for the project. We hope you find them useful, but if you’ve got better ideas for what to say, don’t hesitate to submit a different kind of story. That’s expected and wanted. If you have questions about the survey or anything else, don’t hesitate to ask!
So I was tooling around the internet searching for "sissy porn" -- as I'm apt to do -- when I stumbled upon BlacksOnBoys.com, whose hook-phrase -- "Black thugs breaking down sissy whiteboys" -- pointed me there via Google. I had quite a time censoring the photo above, but I thought it was important to cite because of the language used in marketing the porn. For one, it's clear who has the masculinity (Black "men") and who doesn't (white "boys"). There's also the "Who's the slave now, beeotch?" strewn across the top of the image. Wowzer.
I'm reminded here of a friend who visited North Carolina when I was in college from the Netherlands. He said he was out to find the butchest guy in town to hookup with one night. But when I found out who he hooked up with -- the nelliest of the nelliest guys on campus, a cutie for sure -- I was perplexed. I asked him the next day about it, since he had made clear that hotness for him was about uber-masculinity. It turns out that his nelly hookup's black skin was enough to mark his masculinity -- flaming mannerisms didn't much matter. I haven't paid for or seen the videos on "BlacksOnBoys," but I wonder how gender gets performed here. Are the white boys really so femme? Are the black men really so butch? Or does race do all the signifying necessary?
I presume the predominate consumers of this kind of racialized porn are white men, but I can't help but think that some Black guys find it pretty steamy as well. Not sure that there's an easy way to access that kind of information, but it's interesting food for thought.
Curiously, BoB are owned by a company called "DogFart Productions" (perhaps the nastiest name for a company, ever) which owns twelve interracial porn sites -- all of them hetero porn, except for BoB.
Atlanta's gay rag, Southern Voice, has an article on bottom stigma! Well how fabulous! It's an interesting (if fairly short) piece that brings up a number of important issue. I like that they begin with a femme top's story who get's assumed to be a bottom because of his sissy gender performance, and interestingly a versatile guy who identifies as vers to avoid the stigma associated with bottoms:
Even in a city with a gay population as large as Atlanta’s, so many aspects of gay sexuality continue to be marginalized or derided. And although many gay men in Atlanta enjoy being penetrated during sex, the term “bottom” is often used as a slur the same way that “gay” is used on school playgrounds.
“They think you’re soft, or femme, or you don’t know how to use your dick,” said a 31-year-old Atlanta resident who asked to be identified as “Greg.”
“I know that’s not what all bottoms are, but that’s what people think,” said Greg, who is usually the receptive partner during anal sex, but doesn’t identify as a bottom. “I am versatile, and I do know how to use my dick, so I’m not lying. But saying I’m versatile might keep people from assuming all these other things about me, just because I like to get fucked.”
They also talk about intersections with race, and in particular how stigma around bottoming in African-American culture is particularly acute. It's provocative stuff! Read it!
The media has just been eating up Dan Savage! There was this prominent appearance on Stephen Colbert's show, The Colbert Report. Curious here, he seems to have switched around his position form his much-maligned commentary blaming the 70% of African-Americans who voted for Prop 8 in California (a claim that statistician Nate Silver and others have shown to be inaccurate and misleading). But on his appearance on The Daily Show, he concedes that this is misleading, and also thanks Colbert for pointing out he fact that there are black gay men (who are obscured in the Black vs. Gay analysis). He also here is refocusing his attack on the Mormon Church, an attack he will continue in the next video. Have a watch:
That was one week ago. Now, something interesting happens today when he was on Anderson Cooper, sparring with the homophobic Family Research Council's Tony Perkins. Watch how Perkins baits Savage to try to get him to condemn Black voters. Perkins is furious that protests are happening at Mormon temples across the country, an outcome of the Church overwhelmingly financing the Yes-on-8 campaign in California. Perkins is well aware that public sympathy for Mormons is low (they're portrayed often as polygamist misogynists, rightly or wrongly), and thus protests against them are seen as legitimate. Protests against Black churches, however, would not be as politically palatable. I think Dan realized this in the hours after the massive backlash began after he penned that editorial criticizing Black voters. Watch it all happen on CNN:
New data from the CDC indicates that -- while all men who have sex with men are still at a high risk for contracting HIV -- black versus white MSM are contracting the disease at different ages. It seems that black MSM who are seroconverting are doing so in their late teens and early twenties, while their white counterparts are contracting the disease in their 30s and 40s.
This is VERY important information, and should translate directly into targeted prevention approaches for the two communities. Research has already demonstrated that black MSM generally are not engaging in higher risk sexual behavior than white MSM. But I wonder if that data has an fluctuation by age group. That would be very important info in interpreting this new data.
The data on white older MSM I'm sure is in part due to condom fatigue, something I quickly discovered in my research this summer interviewing HIV-negative bottoms in San Francisco. The older guys in my study almost universally hated condoms, and weren't afraid to say so. They were sick of using them. For many of these guys, bottoming was a strategy to avoid having to use them themselves -- that is, to avoid having to put condoms on their own dicks. In this sense, bottoming was a safer sex strategy for many of the men I interviewed.
We need some qualitative, on the ground work, that really digs deep into the practices, norms, and cultures of these different communities, however, before we can really understand where these numbers are coming from.
An unusually detailed study of people newly infected with H.I.V. in the United States has confirmed that the majority of new cases occur among gay and bisexual men and that blacks are most at risk. But the data show that whites and blacks tend to be infected at different times in their lives with the virus that causes AIDS.
Most new infections of white gay and bisexual men occur when the men are in their 30s and 40s, the study found, while black gay and bisexual men are more likely to be infected in their teens and 20s. The results were reported on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The C.D.C. reported last month that the study found that the virus was spreading faster in the United States than had been thought. In 2006, the study found, 56,300 people were newly infected with H.I.V. — 40 percent more than the agency’s previous estimate of roughly 40,000 new cases a year. The study was performed using new technology that allowed researchers to distinguish between new and older infections.
A genetic variation that once protected people in sub-Saharan Africa from a now extinct form of malaria may have left them somewhat more vulnerable to infection by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The gene could account for 11 percent of the caseload in Africa, explaining why the disease is more common there than expected, researchers based in Texas and London say.
The eleven percent figure is interesting -- not quite sure how they came up with that. But it would make sense that a vulnerability of this kind would account for some of the radical disparity in HIV infections in Africa versus other continents.
The variation historically protected against a previous strain of malaria -- not the strain most common today:
The genetic variation, called a SNP (“snip”), involves a change in a single unit of DNA. This particular snip has a far-reaching consequence, that of preventing red blood cells from inserting a certain protein on their surface. The protein is called a receptor because it receives signals from a hormone known as CCL5, which is part of the immune system’s regulatory system.
The receptor is also used by a malarial parasite called Plasmodium vivax to gain entry to the red blood cells it feeds on. Some 10,000 years ago, people in Africa who possessed the SNP gained a powerful survival advantage from not being vulnerable to the ancestor of Plasmodium vivax. The SNP eventually swept through the population and the vivax parasite died out in Africa, to be replaced by its current successor, Plasmodium falciparum.
More than 90 percent of people in Africa now lack the receptor on their red blood cells, as do some 60 percent of African-Americans.
What are the implications here for the disparities in new infections among African-Americans in the United States -- particularly given the data that shows that Af-Am's do not engage in more "risky" sex than their white counterparts? More research is needed here!
CDC’S “HEIGHTENED NATIONAL RESPONSE” TO
HIV/AIDS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMMUNITY
IS CHAOTIC, UNDERFUNDED, AND FAR FROM ITS GOALS
As CDC quietly releases figures revealing 80% boost in HIV in Black gay youth,
advocates call for national AIDS strategy, adequate funding, and political leadership
Launched with much fanfare in March 2007, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s (CDC) A Heightened National Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis Among African-Americans called for “expanding the reach of prevention services; increasing opportunities for diagnosing and treating HIV; developing new, effective prevention interventions, and; mobilizing broader community action.” (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/cdc.htm)
One year later, the Heightened National Response (HNR) effort has been marked by shifting leadership, lack of communication to local leaders and community organizations, and no new funding for any initiatives that are not restricted to HIV testing. It is now widely believed that Madeline Sutton, MD, MPH, CDC Acting Director of Partnerships in the Department of HIV/AIDS Prevention, the latest in a series of individuals responsible for HNR, will once again restructure the initiative in an attempt to address its significant shortfalls.
In response to the failure of the HNR, leaders of the 13,000-person CHAMP Network are calling for a comprehensive, results-oriented and measurable national AIDS strategy, rather than piecemeal, under-funded initiatives that have not resulted in concrete change.
“The CDC released this report last March, and the only change we’ve seen is more HIV for African Americans, not less,” says Kenyon Farrow, Director of Communication at Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP). “This seems like yet another grand vision outlined in a glossy document that is, in fact, ill-equipped to make any real dent in new infections. We need real leadership, real funding and a comprehensive strategy at the federal level if we’re going to do more than give lip service to HIV prevention in our country.”
Advocates note that the HNR anniversary has coincided with CDC’s quiet release of new data revealing that Black gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) ages 13-24 had a nearly 80% increase in new HIV infections from 2001-2005 (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/slides/msm/index.htm). Another new study documents that fully half of all African American girls have had a sexually-transmitted infection (STI), which has been shown to increase the likelihood of HIV infection. HIV/AIDS is the number one cause of death for African-American women ages 25-34.
One year ago, CDC gathered leaders from around the country to announce the HNR, asking them to make specific commitments on pledge cards to amplifying their efforts. Now, leaders from around the country – including those in cities where CDC promoted HIV testing as a part of HNR – say that their pledges were never organized into significant efforts. In fact, many of the existing HIV prevention programs serving Black Americans through federal funds are in danger of losing funding under the Bush Administration’s 2009 budget proposal.
“The US requires countries applying for our global AIDS funding to have a national AIDS strategy, yet we don’t even have one of our own. Instead, we’ve got a chaotic and under-funded CDC dog-and-pony show passing out pledge cards that then get tossed between transient program heads,” says Waheedah Shabazz-El of CHAMP. “Perhaps the CDC should be up front about its own challenges to help Congress and the President recognize the need for a comprehensive national AIDS strategy, rather than rallying hardworking Black community leaders around grandiose plans almost guaranteed to fall short due to lack of resources and coordination.”
I had the pleasure and honor to attend a performance last night by E Patrick Johnson from his forthcoming book, Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales. "Pouring tea" in black gay southern circles is an expression for dishing gossip, and his performance strings together several narratives from black gay men in the South that he collected between 2004 and 2006. The men he interviewed were between the ages of 19 and 93 and from fifteen different states. I was homesick for most of the performance, with several of his guys hailing from or mentioning North Carolina!
The eight narratives, each built around a core theme ("Religion," "Being Transgendered," "Being Gay in the South," "Coming Out," "Sex," "Coming of Age in the 1920s and 30s," "Masculinity and Peer Pressure," and "Being a Southern Diva"), began first with a short audio clip directly from Johnson's interview with them. He would then perform -- word for word (including "ums" and "ahs"), we're told -- a segment of that interview. It was gorgeous! What complicated and fabulously intriguing stories were told.
I was struck by the resiliency in the narratives he performed, and so at the reception following the event I asked him about just that. He said that he had interviewed some 70 guys (I can't recall the exact number), and that resiliency was not a theme consistent accross all the narratives -- but that those were the stories that he wanted to perform. And it paid off!
The book is forthcoming. You must find it and a purchase it when it comes out!!! He'll be launching the book at UNC Chapel Hill. Sigh. Wish I could be there.
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Pam's House Blend
She's a fabulous North Carolinian blogging about politics, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations. What more can I say?
I had the pleasure and honor to attend a performance last night by 
