I’m suffering from stigma fatigue. This battle that seems endless. There is this feeling of a wall of perpetual ignorance about the subject of stigma. It always gets boiled down to a sound byte of intellect saying, “I’m not rejected therefore there is not stigma.”

Now let me say, I don’t live my life thinking about stigma. If I did I certainly wouldn’t be putting my face and personal story everywhere. So it’s hard to have to wrap my head around this day after day while seeing witnessing the constant dismissal of lived experiences shared by many.

Since we are all in Obama mania mode style, let me say this. It’s like saying that since Obama is president, as monumental of an occasion as it was, that racism no long exists.

There is a fine line between naming something and discussing it, and being a victim. I chose to stay off the victim side of the fence. I think most leaving comments as well are not victims.

I’m not sure what it’s going to take to communicate essential viewpoints and thoughts to the negative population, and at times positive. The negative guys think it’s not their problem and as long as they put Clean UB2 and D&D Free they are fine and why bother with this stuff. Stigma and the effects of it are topics for those who are positive not me.

Yet, at the very same time their very behaviour and attitudes contribute to a cycle that simply increases risk of transmission and they have to be a part of the dialogue.

Now, I admit, as I’m writing this I’m thinking of a select population that do not represent all negative gay men as there could not be one kind of negative guy just as there are not one kind of positive guy.

Maybe we need any guy who wants to be gay to go through a mandatory course to get his gay card. Part of that curriculum would be how to deal with issues of sexual health is an open and honest way.

At the end of the day, I don’t care if you don’t want to ________ me. But how you deal with it, how you treat me, and present your choices, not only directly affects me, but the entire community.

Now we will never know if there has been a negative audience coming to this site. People assume that once again this would only be of concern for us positive folks. I really do hope that some have taken the initiative to come here.

When I write my on blog or elsewhere, I usually write in a very personal way. I think this stems from the days when I used to do a lot of public speaking about very private aspects of my life. When I was getting tired of it I began to call it “emotional stripping” It’s hard for me not to discuss what’s going in intimately with me. I do this so much that people I know sometimes say, “I’m a bit embarrassed when we meet as I know so much about you.” Buy I write everything that goes on…..

Why explain all of this, well, I’m just feeling post- World AIDS Day, kind of sick of stigma. I’ve never thought about it so bloody much in my life, even when I was going through it in the most intense times. At least I never thought about it in an analytic way. It was something that was out there; I was fighting it the only way I knew how. Never did I think about the academic theoretical aspects of this through a sociological lens.

I begin wondering exactly how many ways can I take this subject and turn it on its head, inside out etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an important subject, but I’m suffering from stigma fatigue. Do people suffer from stigma fatigue in other ways? When it’s such a low level constant in our lives, running in the background in the same manner spyware operates without us noticing in the background causing all sorts of havoc, does this subject become like the sound of a fridge either tuned out, or assimilated into the other sorts of noise in our lives.

Sometimes I just want to take the subject and put it back in the box and store it away at a comfortable distance.

When I agreed to this campaign I didn’t realize that there’d be points where I’d find it challenging. The only aspect I feared were hate comments. But how self-centered is that to think that I could generate hateful comments with a mere few posts when it’s taken me three years to finally get one with my writing. That took a lot of work, and I haven’t invested nearly the same amount here.

The difficult part for me is to constantly have to put my mind into the mode of stigma, an inherently negative subject, when I just want to go on and live my life and feel good about things. It’s like I have to get up every morning and meditate on starving children in Africa or something. I know an extreme exaggeration, but it gets the point across. If this example is deemed too much then substitute starving children with poverty, lack of housing, food banks whatever.

Just as my example goes to the outer limits to make a point, the way I live my life goes to extremes as well with regards to how “out” I am. I begin to wonder am I really in touch with the reality of those living regular lives going to their jobs, hanging out with friends, and just plain going on to live their lives.

This post has no particular point, other than it’s hard to not want to find a way to shut it off. On that note I ask, Do others ever get this way even though your lives may not be conducted in such a public way?