PUBLIC TOILET SIGNS are changing, and the gendering of elimination is now subject to discussion and debate. This became obvious to me when an older male professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, stared nervously at the new gender neutral sign on the bathroom door in the student center. …
MoreUnderstanding eating disorders within the gay community requires examination on multiple fronts. Personal stories need to be told. Research needs to be put into perspective. The facts need to be absorbed into the larger context of gay identity.
MoreTHE CREATION of new drugs to treat HIV/AIDS has just about run its course. The next generation of therapies will involve modulating the body’s own immune system to better control the infection, and modifying its cells to make them more resistant to continued assault by the virus. The most advanced example of this line of research was recently presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held in Boston. It is the world’s premier meeting on HIV science.
The study involved just six patients, but it demonstrated the proof of concept that it is possible to change the DNA of a person’s CD4+T cells so that they no longer express the CCR5 molecule that the virus uses to enter cells. The modified immune cells can be put back into a patient and they appear to thrive for at least three months and counting. Just how long they might last and how well they function has yet to be determined.
MoreIN THE PERIOD of the first reports of the new syndrome of immune deficiency (1981 to 1985), before we were certain about the primary role of HIV in the epidemic, sides were taken about putative cause(s), and about what the future held for the epidemic, gay sexual life, and the gay community in general. The range of viewpoints fell into several discernible camps.
MoreSINCE THEIR CREATION in the 1980’s as a parallel social service system to serve HIV-positive gay men, AIDS service organizations (ASOs) have wrestled with questions of what they are and who they serve. But never in their five distinct “identity crises” have ASOs been less certain than they are today of their very survival as freestanding community-based agencies. Beginning with the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (haart, better known as “combination treatment” or “the cocktail”), ASOs have struggled to stay relevant as single-disease entities. As the HIV epidemic in America continues to shift from middle-class gay men to lower-income people of color—largely gay and bisexual men—it has become harder to justify the need for agencies focused only on those with HIV when clients’ needs have more to do with their income than with their HIV status.
MoreAS WE ENTER the fourth decade of AIDS, the crisis continues largely unabated. About 1.1 million Americans live with hiv/aids, as do 33 million people around the world. Every year, about 56,000 more Americans are newly infected; roughly half are gay men and half are African American. While the overall HIV incidence in the U.S. remains flat, infections among gay and bisexual men are increasing-the only risk group for which this is the case. Infections are increasing especially among young black gay men.
Globally, 2.7 million people were newly infected in 2008, down from a peak of 3.5 million in 1997. Despite this progress, for every two HIV-positive people who get into treatment globally, another five are newly infected. Most of the 33 million people living with HIV around the world don’t have access to anti-retrovirals (ARVs), the HIV medications that revolutionized treatment in the mid-1990’s, and are not likely to any time soon. In sub-Saharan Africa, where most of these people live, access to something as basic as palliative care (pain medication) is often beyond reach.
On a more positive note …
MoreREMEMBER the “good old days” of AIDS service delivery, back when AIDS itself was still a terrifying epidemic? Not knowing how long we could keep our friends alive, wondering who would be next to fall ill-the tension kept us on edge. In the beginning, those of us touched by the virus, whether ourselves, our friends, or our lovers-we were alive back then, even amid the terror, anger, and death.
We held meetings, founded nonprofit service agencies, and started free clinics. We formed support groups, held auctions, dances, and AIDS walks, and sponsored bike rides. We scraped for money any way we could. We demonstrated, lobbied, wrote letters, organized. We wept, grieved and then wept some more. We found ourselves so far past grief that all we could do some days was laugh at the lunacy of death’s intrusion upon our young lives. We fought with those who feared and hated us. We fought with each other, our allies, among ourselves. We felt immersed in the moment and the times. We experienced a deep connection to each other-and to those who had died. We struggled together to make sense of it all, to bring some meaning into the sadness and sorrow.
By the late 1990’s, it appeared that we were succeeding, too. …
More
THE FACT THAT Ronald Firbank was an innovator in his medium, that he was a humorous commentator on social mores, has long been recognized. That his novels are wise as well as witty has not been generally acknowledged, a fact that may be due to the strong influence of Oscar Wilde upon his work. However, as literary and cultural criticism has come increasingly to appreciate Wilde as a major writer and as a prophet of our age, Firbank’s fortunes have risen accordingly.
MoreSAN FRANCISCO, APRIL, 1983. In one of the earliest spoken-word performances that theatrically represented AIDS in the United States, perhaps the first on the West Coast, an emerging playwright and stand-up comedian named Doug Holsclaw performed Eartha at the White House (later retitled Spice Queen) in a monologue competition sponsored by the One Act Theater Company at a county fair. Holsclaw wrote the piece after reading Larry Kramer’s impassioned call to action “1,112 and Counting,” which had been published in The New York Native on March 12. In an impeccably timed, angry, campy yet earnest soliloquy, Holsclaw’s saucy character narrated a story about his friend Jeffrey, a hustler who had died at a young age during the first year of the crisis. Describing their catty yet tender friendship, Holsclaw’s character joked about how Jeffrey, who “could be Cruella Deville sometimes,” would call him “paprika queen” or “Donna Reed like I’m bourgeois—because I garnish my salads” when they would picnic at Land’s End on Memorial Day. Pausing artfully for both comedic and dramatic effect…
MoreIN OCTOBER 2010, the Smithsonian Institution corrected a decades-long oversight by staging the first major museum exhibition focused on GLBT American figurative art. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, at the National Portrait Gallery, met with critical acclaim and enthusiastic attendance—as well as an explosive controversy worthy of the “culture wars” of the late 1980’s. When reactionary forces demanded the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video “A Fire in My Belly”—and when the demand was met—many people were reminded of the controversy around a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective in 1989 and the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s decision to cancel the exhibit …
More
