National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: A Guest Blog by Daniel Bauer

Special Thanks to Daniel Bauer for sharing his work with the Stigma Action Network, 

in celebration of National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

To view the original blog entry, click here.

As a very out and proud gay man and 10 year warrior living with HIV/AIDS, I stand tall in an effort to bring a greater awareness to this year's National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on September 27, 2012.


This morning I was searching the internet to see how this year's awareness day is shaping up; and to find elements of hope that would not only inspire me but also lend a voice to a call to action. In my search, I came across the following powerful statement by Frank J. Oldham Jr., President and CEO of the National Association of People with AIDS. I believe he sums up what I is a very necessary call to action as a gay man - a call to action I feel I must embrace and put into motion. In his words, I share this with you:


"We have a responsibility. To the quarter-million brothers and lovers we have buried. To the allies who have supported our fight for treatment access and civil rights. To ourselves.

We have a responsibility – to know our own status. Every gay man who is active with multiple partners (or thinks his partner may be) needs to get tested every three months.

We have a responsibility – to know how to protect ourselves and others. We’re excited about the potential of treatment-as-prevention and PrEP, but we all still need to keep our condoms handy.

We have a responsibility – to be as open as we can be about being HIV-positive. Sometimes disclosure isn’t safe, and safety comes first – but our brothers need to know they know people just like them who are living with the virus. And any new partner needs to know our status before the clothes come off.

We have a responsibility – to demand access to healthcare for ourselves and for all Americans. It’s not just a human right, it’s common sense. It costs the public sector more to ignore epidemic than to deal with it, and we need our elected officials to know we know that.

We have a responsibility – to demand to be treated as “normal.” We are normal. We should insist on marriage because it’s our right, and because it forces our neighbors to reconsider the homophobia that gave the HIV epidemic its opportunity to explode in the gay community and move on from there.

We have a responsibility – to love. Last year on National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we gave a Positive Leadership Award, NAPWA's highest honor, to Alvin Collins and John Sullivan. Alvin had been one of the unlucky few who, despite the best modern treatment for HIV, don't do well. John stuck to Alvin through thick and thin – and Alvin stuck to John. Alvin died this Spring. We have a responsibility to honor that love.

We have a responsibility. We changed the world in the eighties, insisting on treatment and research when Washington didn’t want to hear us. Today we have the medical and behavioral prevention tools we need to make new HIV infections a thing of the past. We insisted then. We can do it again."

So on this day - I will embrace these words and calls to action above! I hope you too will join and follow me!

I am Daniel and I am living pozitively! Thank you for following my blog!

World Contraception Day 2013: 12 Awesome Posters that Promote Condom Use and HIV Prevention

One hundred years ago (and, in fact, well before that), if you wished to be intimate with some significant other, you’d only have had a handful of contraceptive options. And of those options, no method could, without a doubt, protect against HIV or STIs. But you now live in an era where access to modern contraceptive methods (particularly barrier methods like male and female condoms) are made effectively and are more accessible, a pretty amazing accomplishment when you consider how far we've come in this department.

Hence, each year, we commemorate this awesome feat with World Contraception Day, in hopes to raise awareness of the contraceptive methods available, as well as to celebrate decades of responsible and thoughtful decision-making. As an organization, committed to reducing the prevalence of HIV through eliminating the stigma surrounding it, we celebrate World Contraception Day as a day to celebrate taking control of your health and preventing the spread of HIV through male and female condom use!

On that note-- we’ve compiled twelve noteworthy health posters from the last few decades that promote condom use and preventing the spread of HIV! Be sure to look out for your favorite.

1. Lifesaver. Condoms Can Protect You.

While this poster is rather simple, its message of condom use as a life-saving tool is incredibly accurate. Sometimes you don’t need all of the bells and whistles to pull off an effective condom awareness ad; a few words of encouragement will do.

2. Protect Your Valuables

You wouldn’t let your dog out without a leash, right? That’s the underlying message behind this condom awareness ad: keep your equipment safe! (And, for goodness sake, please don’t actually put your house pets in condoms.)

3. Whatever you call it use it, or call it a night!

To some people it’s a Sling; to others it’s a Thing! What’s it to you?

4. Condoms Can Protect Any Person, No Matter What Color They Are

HIV doesn’t discriminate, and neither do condoms! In fact, you could probably find the condom of your dreams right now, in your closest convenience store.

5. Do the Safe Thing

This cheerful ad gets us every time. Choosing to use contraception is not only important for you, but for your loved ones as well! You wouldn’t want to expose your significant other to HIV, and you would hope that your significant other was just as thoughtful, right?

6. Stop AIDS

While this HIV awareness poster promotes a very straightforward message, it’s undoubtedly effective. Making the link between contraceptive use and HIV reduction is about as clear as it gets.

7. Be Good in Bed

There really is nothing more benevolent than using a condom every time. It's a great way to do your part, much like volunteering to feed the homeless or not cheating on your taxes.

8. Sailors, 1988

This HIV awareness ad presents a pretty clear message, and it targets a specific group that might be at heightened risk for HIV and other STDs. What more could you want from a condom ad? 

9. The Best Cover-Up Since Watergate

Although Nixon probably wouldn't agree with this HIV awareness advertisement, we sure do! Deciding not to cover up with a condom is almost as scandalous as the Watergate cover-up (okay, it's probably a bit more scandalous).

10. Good Boys Always Wear Their Rubbers

Think about it. You wouldn't dare step outside without your raincoat and your little rain boots; you could easily catch something. Engaging in unsafe sexual activity is basically the same thing.

11. Who is HIV Positive?

Awareness ads like these tend to be attention grabbers, and rightfully so! Habitual use of a condom really is to best way to protect yourself against HIV and other STDs!

12. Moroccan Awareness Poster

You don’t need to understand the text in this ad in order to understand the importance of regular condom use, because that’s one message that clearly transcends location and culture. This is one of thousand of awesome promotion advertisements created for display in countries around the world.

So there you have it. Which one was your favorite? And what did you learn? If nothing else, we hope you grasped that HIV and other STDs don’t discriminate between groups of people, making us all at risk of contracting them. Luckily, a condom can significantly reduce such incidents! Stay safe and use a condom!

Happy World Contraception Day!

Is it ever ok to joke about HIV/AIDS? A guest blog by Tom Hayes, Editor-in-chief of Beyond Positive

IS IT EVER OK TO JOKE ABOUT HIV/AIDS? 

A special thanks to Tom Hayes for allowing us to share his piece on the SAN blog. 
To view the original blog post visit this link to Beyond Positive.

Let me prefix this opinion piece by saying this topic is something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, but I’ve never really been able to express it properly – so I’m just going for it.

HIV is a bitch. Let’s get that out of the way. It’s a cruel, opportunistic virus that (left untreated) ravages your body and the stigma from others, and even yourself, can ruin lives.

One of the ways that we as humans, and me in particular, cope with adversity is to make light of the situation. Either through simply shrugging off what’s worrying us (whilst fretting inside) or by cracking jokes.  But is it appropriate to joke about HIV, and if so are there rules about who can make them and to whom?

When I was first diagnosed back in mid-2011 I used to frequent a website known as ‘fitlads’, it was essentially a hook-up site with a very thin veneer of socialising for face saving sakes. I lost count the number of times I saw HIV/AIDS jokes on the forums -they upset me deeply at a time I was still trying to cope with my diagnosis. I ended up leaving the website for that very reason.

Two years on and I’m a different person, I’ve learnt so much about myself, I’m stronger and I’m much more thick skinned. But things still get to me – a shitty message on Grindr for example – it’s times like those where the sometimes quite self-deprecating jokes come out of the bag. It’s a coping mechanism, using humour to overcome the pain.

What about about jokes about HIV/AIDS as a form of entertainment? I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of them. Yes I’ve been known to refer to my work phone (that I use for media, writing, beyondpositive work) as my “AIDS Phone” – but that’s just me, and usually talking to myself.  Then there’s the whole feeling like I’m making a pun every-time I use the word “positive”… I must get my thesaurus out.

Location and method of broadcast have a big role to play. There is a “comedienne” on twitter, who shall remain nameless, who once posted that her cold was “worse than AIDS” – this is a woman with tens of thousands of twitter followers, of which a good number will be HIV-Positive. If I’d seen that back around the time of my diagnosis, or heaven forbid if someone I knew had just died of an AIDS related illness I’d have been mortified.

The jokes themselves in themselves aren’t necessarily a problem, it’s the impact they may have depending on who hears them. So please, think before you joke.

A Day with HIV: Walking the Walk

Maybe sometimes you wonder who I am—the person who manages much of the Stigma Action Network’s (SAN’s) social media—my name is Kirsty, and I have been the Stigma, Discrimination, and Gender Intern at the International Center for Research on Women since February 2013. Every weekday, I come to work and I sit in a cubicle where I pour over the latest in HIV and stigma, distilling that information down to posts that I think you—our SAN users—will find digestible and interesting. I learn a lot about HIV and stigma from writing these posts and from engaging with the SAN’s incredible community of #StigmaWarriors (like you!). However, I have never been so humbled by or able to empathize quite so much with this cause as when I “walked the walk” of a #StigmaWarrior—the day I went in to take my very own HIV test. 

One day shortly after I started this internship, as I was perusing my SAN newsfeed I saw that Whitman Walker would be conducting free HIV tests at my university. While I shared information about HIV testing on Facebook and Twitter,  encouraging people in the DC area to take advantage of this free and quick testing opportunity, before this moment I had never been tested for HIV or even thought about getting tested, as I had little reason to think I would be HIV positive. As soon as I shared this post I was struck by an awful sense of hypocrisy: I sit here, every day in this cubicle and encourage people to get tested, to be greater than HIV, to be greater than stigma, and I have never even been tested. I immediately grabbed my phone and set a reminder to attend the testing event on campus, determined to practice what I preach.

The day the mobile clinic was on campus, I was speaking at one of the Nursing and Health Studies School’s (NHS) events for Georgetown’s Accepted Student Weekend in a building across from where the mobile clinic was parked.  After the event, I calmly headed to the mobile truck, but as I neared, I saw one of my professors and my body went into a panicked autopilot, causing me to walk straight past the truck. I did a lap around the quad, shaking off my embarrassment and riling myself up to try again. This time, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the parents who had been talking to me after the NHS event; again I walked right by the clinic, completely overwhelmed with a mixture of fear and unwarranted, shame. This happened two more times. On the fourth, I walked 15 feet away from the truck and stopped to collect myself. 

If I ever needed a moment to personally reaffirm why it is so important to reduce the stigma surrounding HIV, this was it. I’m normally a very self-assured person, but the reality of (what turned out to be very publicly)  getting an HIV test shattered almost every shred of confidence I possessed. As I was standing 15 feet away from this clinic, trying to be inconspicuous by pretending to stare at my phone, I started to feel annoyed with the situation. I did not like feeling so afraid of being judged, especially for taking part in an activity which should be part of a person’s annual health routine. I knew what I was doing was the responsible thing to do—so who has the right to make me feel ashamed? If anyone chooses to discriminate against me for taking the test, at the end of the day that is their problem and shouldn’t be mine. 

After what I can only describe as a very fervent internal pep-talk, I turned around and briskly walked to the first volunteer and rapidly blurted out: “HiI’veneverhadanHIVtestandIwanttogetone” I didn’t want to give myself another chance to walk away. They directed me into the truck, where I nervously babbled to the volunteer as she handed me a few pages of paperwork and the HIV test that I simply had to brush along the inside of my mouth. 

After taking the test, I was nearly floored when the volunteer told me I would have to leave the truck it had taken so much out of me to enter, and then come back for my results in 30 minutes. I went to grab an iced tea to cool my nerves and kill time before I had to get my results. During this time, that nasty little part of your brain that plays devil’s advocate started to get the better of me. What if the results were positive? What would my parents think? Would my friends be supportive? My boyfriend would probably dump me before I finished telling him. 

A half hour of agonizing and “what if-ing” later, I was relieved to find out that my results were negative. But the sense of unease I had been experiencing for the past hour persisted as I reflected on my experience.

Perceiving stigma and discrimination from practical strangers and then contemplating with so much uncertainty who, if anyone, would be there to support you if those results were positive… that shouldn’t happen to anyone…ever. This experience allowed me to emphasize and truly understand just how important the work of organizations, like the SAN, to reduce HIV stigma is. 

If we want to arrive a world free of such stigma, we all must do our part. We must iterate and reiterate the message that taking charge of your health—by using protection, getting tested, or seeking treatment—is something to be proud about, not ashamed of. Showing empathy and support to all people in the global fight against HIV (even through such actions as making STD/HIV testing a routine part of your life) is a critical component to ending HIV-related stigma and discrimination

I am very proud to say I left my cubicle, and I “walked the walk”. I encourage you all to do the same and take your own steps against HIV stigma. I know I will continue to take my own.

________________________

September 21st is the "A Day with HIV" Awareness event! Take a step against stigma and send a photo to photos@adaywithhiv.com! For more details about this event click here.

Be sure to visit the SAN social media pages to see how we are taking part!