Let's Talk About Stigma...

[rawTOP]

There's a great article in POZ this month - I urge all of you to read it (the reader is a bit irritating, but it's worth the effort)...

http://issuu.com/smartandstrong/docs/poz_hiv_aids_0188/32

Basically the author goes through all the different ways we're divided as a community. Neg guys think less of poz guys because they should have been more careful, etc. Poz guys think neg guys are holier-than-thou assholes. Neg and poz guys think guys who've recently gotten pozzed were foolish and irresponsible. Some poz and neg guys think barebackers are evil - spreading death and disease. Others think guys on PrEP are sluts who are cheating the system somehow. Very few respect our elders who often still suffer from serious HIV-related conditions. And so on...

So do you agree with him? Is stigma as big of a problem as he says? I live in a bit of a bubble. I'm in NYC, have lots of poz friends, I'm part of the bareback community, etc. The majority of people around me are pretty accepting. And in general I think barebackers are some of the most accepting people you'll find. But HIV still scares my boyfriend. My best friend (who's poz) can't stand the thought that HIV is running around his body - he feels unclean and dirty (in his case he's a victim of his own stigma). And at the porn conference a few months ago he heard neg bareback porn stars talking negatively about the poz size of bareback porn. So stigma exists even in the "good places" - I'm sure it gets worse when you get outside of the big cities.

What's your experience been with stigma? And by that I'm talking about the way gay guys stigmatize each other - not so much about how the straight world stigmatizes us - that's another discussion completely.

[And if you're wondering why this is under the Sexual Health Section - it's because I wanted to put it in a place where it wouldn't get lost and it would classify as a mental health issue...]

[TigerMilner]

I read this article this morning and felt it was about time. I really related to what he said about the newly infected among us. Having been pozzed just last year and at a time when I was less active than I have been for years, I was like "you gotta be kidding, NOW?" I've been barebacking for 20 years and was at a point where I thought I must be one of the lucky ones with a natural immunity. The stigma attached has been as bad for me as the illness, which was rough for the first nine months. I am like your friend I guess in that I couldn't stand the thought of this virus being inside me, invading me, increasing daily, and the first doctors I saw weren't going to put me on meds because the virus "hadn't damaged me enough yet". You gotta be fucking kidding me. What other potentially fatal disease is ignored until it damages you enough? I felt dirty, infectious, and very much like a leper. Maybe it was my own stigma that was a problem, as I was very ignorant about what this all means. I thought I knew a lot about HIV/AIDS because I knew people who died, but until it became my reality, I didn't know how little I knew. I have to say that finding this forum helped me alot. It is the only place I could talk about it and not feel ashamed. I never knew there were actually guys who thought it was hot. I'm not there yet, but it was good to know. I also felt stupid. Who goes out in this day and age and gets infected? I kept asking myself over and over. I have known lots of guys who died in the early 1990's and I have lots of friends who are positive, but none recently infected. I felt like my sleazy secret side had been exposed. Talking to the poz friends i have and attending support groups only made it worse, because their experience was so different than the experience of being newly poz in 2012. They really freaked me out. I had sex with a poz top while I was still running a fever of 101.5 and I bred a poz bottom a month after my diagnosis as I began to find my way sexually. One fuck buddy stuck with me, but we used condoms until I was certain I was undetectable. I was sure he would be poz too, but when he turned out to be negative, I really felt like a whore. I mean he and I had sex at least once a week for four years and he didn't get it? I couldn't believe it. It meant a great deal to me that he didn't turn away from me, but it also made me feel even sleazier that I got it and he didn't. I lost all of my other fuck buddies, most of whom were married and not willing to take a risk, undetectable or not.

I am really into the Stigma Project and think I am going to make it my cause. I'm still sorting through it all, but I feel strongly that it is the gay community as a whole who need to come to terms with out collective feelings and elimanate the stigma. This is a disease, not a character defect.

[PhoenixGeoff]

I've been poz for a bit more than ten years now.

I had absolutely no excuses. The very first gay man I ever hooked up with when I came out made sure that I understood that I should always use a condom when fucking or getting fucked. I actually came out in a pretty large and well organized gay community in Toronto where the consequences of HIV prior to the advent of protease inhibitors and the cocktails were readily apparent. I worked in a local bathhouse there prior to enlisting in the Army, and when I came back to visit about a year later, two of my coworkers were dead.

I remember being terrified of other promiscuous guys (and right from the beginning, I fucked around a lot). I remember, later on, once I'd started barebacking, snooping through medicine cabinets after sex to see if I'd just had bareback sex with someone with HIV. In one way, my decision to enlist in the Army was an act of cowardice, an attempt to run and hide from AIDS and from being gay (not that it really slowed down my behavior too much).

In short, I saw the stigma attached to guys with HIV, both before and after effective treatments came out. And I participated in that stigma myself. The dominant emotion I remember from 1990-1995 or so was fear, with the exhilaration of coming out a distant second. And of course, our sex drive is never so high as when we're threatened with death (look at all those babies born in New York in June 2002).

It's gotten much better since then, as HIV has turned from a death sentence into a manageable condition, like diabetes. Sure, it will probably reduce my life expectancy, but not by too much.

There's still a stigma against those with visible signs of AIDS. I had a friend in Phoenix who'd literally been brought back from the brink of death. And he had severe facial lipodystrophy. I did my best to be friendly with him. But I never would have had sex with him. And that was after I'd converted myself. That, too, is unfair on my part, and a lingering stigma.

My experience being stigmatized since converting has been mixed. In places with large gay populations, where I've mostly lived or visited before I started driving a truck, my experience has been pretty unremarkable. I think a big part of this is that I've insisted on barebacking. Barebacking pigs usually are either poz themselves or understand the risks. And even guys who don't play around are comfortable enough around guys with HIV that it doesn't come between us. My impression is that they don't fuck around with me not because of my status but either because I'm not their type or because they don't fuck around at all.

Things have changed since I've become a truck driver and I've been hooking up while on the road. Often, I'm cruising in smaller towns or rural areas. Or I'm more often dealing with closeted men. Or I'm dealing with other drivers. Many of these guys spend little or no time in cities with gay communities. Some don't even think of themselves as gay (and prefer that their partners don't either). Many have little or no education about HIV, and may regard it as a problem faced only by gay guys in big cities, not straight guys who occasionally fuck around like themselves. They've had little or no experience being around guys with HIV, and what they know of it comes from their peers in their area, which means there's a lot of fear, misinformation and outdated knowledge.

Under those circumstances, there are two results. First, if they get into fucking, barebacking is incredibly common. In fact, I can't recall the last time one of those kinds of men actually brought up using a condom. It's like we're back in the pre-HIV days when nobody used condoms because condoms were only for preventing pregnancy. But second, it's very common for guys I'm talking to online to disappear as soon as I bring up my status.

This has severely tested my moral position of disclosing my status up front and letting my partner decide what he's comfortable with. Because, in the past, most of the guys who've approached me or who I've approached have been fine with it. HIV hasn't imposed much of a penalty on my sex life. That's not so true any more. It's preventing me from hooking up quite a bit, with guys that I know bareback. That's really tempting me to compromise my values, especially since many of the men that are potential fucks are exactly my type.

But nobody said being a pig with a conscience would be easy, did they?