So, where do we belong?
Looking around at all of the activity on this site, I must say that I am impressed. Not because I didn’t think that people would respond. What impresses me is the honesty and sincerity with which most of this dialogue is happening. And, above being impressed, I am humbled at being part of this discourse. So to everyone who has responded to my initial posting, thanks. I have been a little preoccupied with some personal growth of my own over the past few days so my blogging comes to you a little late. My apologies.
So, let the blogging continue. . . ! Bryan, your comment about the “internal stigma for the person that is living with HIV” caught my eye. I don’t think that I had thought about internalized HIV stigma before. Shame, guilt and anger are some words that I have heard people (on this website as well) use when talking about their HIV. But I have never equated this to self-stigmatization. But it makes sense, how can we expect someone to love themselves when no one around them will? Nobody wants to be the outsider, but somebody always is. For me, this begs the question “is this our way of ensuring our own survival?” As brought up in an anonymous response, one way of creating solidarity is by “othering” those people in order to celebrate and reward ourselves. So then, I am curious, is the act of stigmatizing gay guys living with HIV one way for the rest of us to ensure that we remain part of an exclusive club of “good gays”?
One anonymous commenter pointed out that yes, although we do judge, we wont find all of the answers by looking inwards. To some degree I agree. But I am a firm believer that all stigmas stem from somewhere within. We have argued for decades that homophobic straight guys don’t like us because we represent aspects of themselves that they are uncomfortable with. By stigmatizing gay guys with HIV, are we just trying to remove ourselves from the image of the fag that (homophobic patriarchal) society has painted of us?
I want to thank Brian F for his comment. It really made me thinks about the concept of feeling “different.” Throughout my years going through the Toronto public school system I have always felt different. Choosing hand-tied bouquets over hockey sticks and sewing club over soccer balls I knew that I wasn’t like the other boys. And believe me, the other boys made sure to let me know that I wasn’t anything like them at all. And I often envied them. Of course I was a super-hit with the little girls and built my social realm within their world (god bless little fag-hags in the making!) there was a big part of me that wanted to just fit in. I have found a home now, with other queers with similar baggage and common ground. We share meals, steal kisses, knock elbows and lean on one another. But we do this with a recognization that as gay men of colour there is a mainstream gay world that doesn’t want us. But in maintaining this space that belongs only to ‘us’ we build fences that keep others out. Stigmatizing others to keep what we have is an ugly part of the culture that ensures that we have somewhere to belong. And as justifiable as it seems, it’s still not right. Now, some of us belong and others don’t. So perhaps a more necessary question is where do we go from here?
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November 22, 2008 03:32 PM
To address the question of whether marginalized men understand the point of this campaign more than others – I don’t know. I don’t want to place marginalized people (whether because of race, language, ability etc) on a pedestal of exhaustive insight. I think the argument I was trying to make is that stigma sucks. Nobody likes to feel excluded or inferior. And at some point in our lives we have all felt that way. And the parallel I was trying to draw between race and status stems from the fact that regardless of how much money or power or popularity you have, they don’t (cant) change. And yet we as a community continue to stigmatize. For me, trying to understand the mechanics of HIV stigma doesn’t come easily. Try as I might, I do not have the lived experience of a poz guy. I do however have a very real set of experiences with racism. So I talk about that. But I ask all you negative guys out there, how often (if ever) have you though about how much it must suck to be shunned based on status? To be perfectly honest, before this campaign, I didn’t think very much about it at all. So if anything, maybe I am just asking you to think.
November 21, 2008 09:58 PM
Hi Vijay,
Nice to see your blog . Regarding your comment “…But in maintaining this space that belongs only to ‘us’ we build fences that keep others out..” - Even with the heat turned up below the melting pot, I feel that cultural background is a big brick wall that is hard to break down. Looking forward to your future blogs to read what you think about inter racial gay dating.
Looks like we are slowly waking up to the fact that people outside the dominant culture lead a different life, even in a culturally diverse city like Toronto. As an gay asian in a ‘white land’, I think you guys are pioneers.
November 20, 2008 09:01 AM
Vijay, I would love to pick up on your discussion of “divisions” within the gay community and how these relate to a productive discussion of stigma. Does this suggest that more “marginalized” gay men seem to get the point of this campaign more fully? Or is there a parallel here that I might be missing?? Looking forward to continuing this–elaborate, please!!
October 31, 2008 05:48 PM
Bryan A”
your comment resonated with me, made things a little clearer for me. I think the association of HIV and AIDS and ones own mortality forces the issue with all human beings (rightly so) . Therefore the bearers of this undeniable truth inevitably become the window into ones own mortality. It’s hard to look at that window at first, let alone be in the same company as it and when it’s someone you love it becomes a complicated association full of guilt and grief and fear/
I think it’s the same feeling one has when you are made aware of anyone’s terminal illness (although people with AIDS can continue to live long and productive lives now). My father passed away not too long ago, of cancer. I had terrible feelings of not wanting to be around him because he was now on the other side, close to the thing that I dreaded most. i wondered at his ability to continue; to laugh; to talk; to take a shower; to do whatever we do when one is alive. I wanted to help him but my need to be able to really help him would never be fulfilled because i couldn’t “cure” him. It was a bizarre feeling, one that I will never forget.
We are able to disassociate with our own mortality when it is a stranger or someone we hardly know by ignoring, denying, rationalizing, stigmatizing… but it doesn’t change the fact that we are all mortal beings and sometimes those behaviours are detrimental to their very purpose. With those that are close to us we are forced to come to terms with the issue of mortality head on.
October 31, 2008 10:19 AM
Hey Murray, thanks for the feedback! I agree with your comment that when we “broaden the “family” that we have created in our lives the rewards of inviting others into our circles is extraordinary!” There is something to be said about the easiness of broadening our circles. Although stigma is often the biggest barrier to this type of community building, as a young person I would have to argue that exposure and opportunity also play a big role in this. I work in HIV prevention and have been privileged to meet, interact, make friends with and connect with gay guys who have real-life experiences with the AIDS crisis in the 80s. But both my work and personal interactions with gay guys my age have shown that there is a lack of connectedness to the issue. I come from a generation of gay guys whose first exposure to HIV is not the loss of a friend, or the witnessing of a community coming together to fight for survival. As a gay kid growing up, all I knew was that AIDS was something that was out there and I was supposed to learn about because it’s how fags die. That was the messaging most of my cohort grew up with. HIV stigma has been ingrained in us as a prevention mechanism before we even know what HIV was. Problematic no?
One way of overcoming this is by volunteering with organizations and participating in buddy programs. The obvious shortcomings being that these avenues are very ASO-centric and often not realistic for many youth. I am not sure what to make of this, but I have felt for years that a major cause of HIV stigma (I prefer Tim’s word “pozphobia”) being so vast in our community is because a newer generation is forming ideas and prejudices about what it means to be HIV + without having actually known (of the opportunity to know) anyone who is living with HIV. At least knowingly.
October 31, 2008 07:27 AM
Bryan A really strikes a chord with me. We need to find a way to be kind to each other, as gay men, because the reality is that we are all coping with this disease. I know it’s not the same as being infected with HIV but guys who do not have HIV do deal with a lot of stress that’s about HIV. I’m not trying to excuse HIV stigma from gay men but can understand the fear that’s probably creating it.
Vijay…I don’t know what we need to do as gay men to change things so that guy’s who are brown or black or whatever don’t experience racism from other gay men…it pisses me off to read that in great, diverse Toronto. I hope other guys will read that and think a bit about it. It’s so ridiculous.
October 31, 2008 07:14 AM
As per the last posting I listed on here, I decided to do a little testing of the premise of stigma surround HIV/AIDS myself with dear friends of mine (who shall remain nameless). Need-less to say we were discussing this new campaign and the simple yet profound premise behind it all. It turns out that the underlining theme from the conversions had was that the reason why they are not so into discussing the whole notion of HIV and the stigma associated with it is the fact that they either;
1. think that is it is merely a matter of time before they themselves become positive,
2. that they would rather not think about it at all (and I surmise that this reaction is linked to the first observation) and
3. they themselves have seen this disease infects many of their close friends, and the question they have is “when will it be me?” or “which of my friends will be next?” and “How would people react if it becomes me?”
I soon realise or rather re-enforce the theory I had that HIV itself is a all encompassing disease that does not only stigmatize those who are positive but also those around them that are not, simply because it gives those that are negative a glimpse into their own possible future. This is very hard for them to accept or even want to deal with so it is projected outwards as hatred of those that are positive. In reality ( at least this is my view) it is their way of dealing with the indirect impacts of having a friend (s) that are positive and feeling rather helpless knowing that there is absolutely nothing that they can do to help that person in the sense of making it go away.
This hypothesis of mine was done on my friends that are gay males. Moreover, from what I know about the male psyche is that they are constructed to be fixers of things and if they cannot fix something, they try to avoid it at all cost. Unfortunately, the result in this case is the idea of stigma. Not saying that this is right or wrong but it does provide some insight as to why there are those that would try as much as possible to avoid those within our communities that are HIV positive simply because they see a glimpse of what they do not want to become i.e. “the other”, “different”.
I have, in the past, been guilty of having strong feelings about not associating with people that I know were HIV+. This admittedly was based on ignorance on my part. But then I found out that two of my dearest friends were themselves positive and I finally realised that the time and energy spent discounting people based solely on their status was not beneficial to me at all. I then began to read about the disease and understand it and to be honest I have come to the conclusion that HIV does not change the person but rather it is the reaction of those around that person that changes the person.
But as I mentioned elsewhere on this site, education does play an important factor in removing that stigma issue. It is important that campaigns such as these are out there. I personally think this was a good start but to deal with HIV/AIDS stigma, it may be beneficial to take a page from the anti-smoking campaigns and make it more in your face and force people to deal with the uncomfortable issues around this disease. Otherwise, it will never end and the cycle will continue.
October 30, 2008 11:58 AM
What a great entry Vijay. Very insightful. I still haven’t made my way through the entire site and kept caught up with all of the discussions so I hadn’t seen Brian’s comment. I am very familiar from my work and when I speak about living with HIV about how we “other” people. In my presentations, this almost always comes up. I’m constantly trying to learn from others and their experiences and your comments that tie race into the mix are really insightful. We are talking about the gay community and focusing on Poz and Neg but within that overarching community (which many still don’t feel a part of), there is so much diversity. Unfortunately, some of us create or contribute to it ourselves and I agree that the crux of that is our desire to create a place where we feel we belong. I know that it can be risky and some work to broaden the “family” that we have created in our lives but the rewards of inviting others into our circles is extraordinary!
October 30, 2008 09:19 AM
Great point about paranoia in the gay community and distancing ourselves from the “undesirables” for so long–GOD so many of us just don’t seem to get it!!