Those Frenchies sure know how to scare you into having safe sex:
The tagline reads Sans préservatif, c’est avec le sida qui vous faites l’amour. Protêgez-vous. (Without a condom, you’re making love with AIDS. Protect yourself.)
Here’s the girly version:
At last I have a couple of days’ peace and quiet after what has been a maddening couple of weeks. With all the media brouhaha about HIV I’ve been working my pert little butt off, — wrangling reporters, issuing media releases, drafting talking points and generally fighting the good fight. I think we got our message out.
With all this action it’s no wonder I succumbed to a nasty cold a few days ago. Spent a day in bed during the week but have been trying to shake it off with only limited success since. Now I think the cold is gone but I have a secondary chest infection which means a nasty rasping cough which is unpleasant for me and distressing to those around me. People are keeping their distance lest they pick up the bug. Fair enough.
Last night I took my cold germs, my husband and my friends Kirsty and Sean to see Keating! at the Comedy Theatre. I don’t normally do entertainment reviews on here (Richard Watts has that territory covered) but I can say that I laughed my head off. Eddie Perfect‘s perfect as John Hewson (in a duet with Keating of “I Wanna Do You Slowly”), and utterly brilliant as Alexander Downer (“Too Freaky”).
The show is brilliantly conceived and the writer obviously loves his subject as much as the audience (no-one under the age of 35 was in attendance) do. An affectionate preach-to-the-choir extravaganza with great songs, strong performances and occasional moments of sheer brilliance.
Today I’m off to the farmers’ market, baking sourdough bread, practicing my Turkish lessons and taking care of a lovely house guest.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before John Howard weighed into the HIV debate. In a radio interview this morning, the PM has said that he doesn’t believe people with HIV should be allowed to migrate to Australia:
“My initial reaction is no (they should not be allowed in),” he said on Southern Cross radio.
“There may be some humanitarian considerations that could temper that in certain cases but prima facie – no.”
Mr Howard said Australia already stopped people with tuberculosis coming in and this was why he supported stopping HIV-positive people as well.
Howard knows as well as I do that Australia already bars HIV-positive people from entry as immigrants in most cases. Applications for resident status by people with HIV are routinely denied on the basis that the individual’s condition would lead to undue cost for the Australian community. Getting past this barrier requires that the applicant prove there are genuine humanitarian or compassionate reasons — via a lengthy and expensive legal process.
But now Howard is apparently considering legislative change to tighten the law further. He knows that the vast majority of people know nothing about the current arrangements and won’t bother to find out. If they did, they’d immediately see this is a non-issue — only a handful of HIV-positive people getting through the process each year (a few years back, my husband was one of the lucky ones) and those that do have genuine humanitarian or compassionate grounds for doing so.
Howard’s already said that “humanitarian considerations” will continue to have effect, contradicting his claim that there is a need for tighter restrictions. This is just an opportunity for grandstanding at the expense of a stigmatised group (last election year it was gay marriage, remember?)
This is blatant dog-whistling, and it’s something Howard has proven himself adept at.
A few years ago Howard infamously offered the opinion that Australia was taking in too many Asian migrants. These days he’s not allowed to make such obviously racist remarks, but substitute “HIV-positive” for “Asian” and nobody blinks.
The yellow peril has become the HIV peril, it’s an election year and Howard’s got the dog whistle out.
ALERT: The News Limited website is running a poll: Should HIV-positive people be allowed in?
ALERT 2: The SMH website is running a poll too: Where do you stand? Ban them or not?
I want one of these doilies, by artist Laura Splan – the design is based on the structure of HIV.
She’s also done doilies of the Hepadna, herpes, SARS and Influenza viruses – if I had the money I’d get a full set.
Besides the biomedical reference, I’m reaching the stage of life when doilies seem appropriate…
I loved this campaign, from the French NGO AIDES, so much I put this image on page 3 of next week’s Positive Living:
The posters show three of the candidates for the French Presidential election (left to right [politically as well as graphically] Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou and Nicolas Sarkozy) with the caption
Would you vote for me if I was HIV-positive?
It’s AIDS that needs to be excluded [from France], not people with AIDS.
Stirring stuff. AIDS and politics still intersect in France, and not only through the juvenile antics of ACT-UP Paris.
Did I mention that Positive Living is out next week? That would explain why I haven’t posted anything recently. Sorry about that.
This short film, by student filmmaker Brian Gonzalez, is moving but somewhat troubling. It’s a bit heavy-handed in portraying the effects of HIV infection — using the visual shorthand of KS lesions is striking, but hardly true-to-life these days — and there’s something darkly disturbing about the central character’s lack of agency and his submission to what almost appears to be coercive sex. But it’s beautifully made with a haunting soundtrack.
(Obviously from the foregoing, the video may not be suitable for everyone.)
What do you think?
(Thanks, P.J.)
I’ve become awfully slack in updating the little widget in my sidebar which displays my latest T-cell count results – it has been updated today for the first time in quite a while. Still fair to middling at 393, but my viral load is undetectable as usual, so no dramas.
Looking at my enormous database of test results, I see it’s been over ten years since I last had a viral load which I could claim was ‘high’ without being called a drama queen — a very respectable 217,450 on 19 March 1996, when I was taking the then-fashionable combination of ddI and hydroxyurea — my last non-HAART regimen. In the decade since, I’ve mostly been undetectable — 35 of 41 tests, including the last 22 in a row. When I have had detectable virus, it’s usually been in the hundreds rather than the thousands.
Something’s working — pity my T-cells haven’t noticed.
More detail here. Or maybe you’d rather watch a short educational film?
It’s Hiroshima Day again. Iris is twenty-one years old.
In his office, my file was already on his desk. He sighed and gave me the bad news.
“I’m afraid this was a positive test,†he said. A clever circumlocution which neatly avoids any reference to the patient. The test is positive, not you. A kind conceit.
I don’t recall what I thought at that moment, but as my heart leapt into my throat I suspect I knew one thing: everything had changed. Forever.
Pioneering gay activist, academic and author Eric Rofes has died unexpectedly in Provincetown, Massechusetts where he was on holiday.
Over a 30-year period, Rofes had an indelible impact on queer thought, was a respected AIDS activist and an iconoclastic thinker whose loss will be significant.
I met Eric a number of times, mostly in connection with the International Gay Men’s Health Think Tank, which he, Brent and Will Nutland co-organised. Eric was a colossus of a man — physically as well as metaphorically, often exasperating, prickly and sometimes surprisingly vulnerable. His written work, especially Dry Bones Breathe, had a significant impact on me.
Here’s a photo of Eric, taken in Berkelouw’s Bookshop, Oxford St, Sydney, on 27 February 2002 on a field trip associated with the Sydney leg of the Think Tank. (We were in the bookshop to talk about gay spaces, particularly libraries and sex clubs — if you know the history of the building which houses Berkelouw’s you’ll probably be able to guess the connection.)
Eric’s death has come as a great shock to a number of our friends. As prickly and exasperating as he was, he will be missed.
