The Social Side of HIV.
I’ve been on this journey called life for almost 33 years now. It’s been filled with friends, love, plenty of tequila shots, and a cluster of lessons that continue to elevate my understanding of myself and the world around me. Some lessons I’ve taken with a grain of salt and some have been beaten over my head due to my stubborn nature.
My relationship with the HIV epidemic has been an interesting one. One of those lessons I did not take seriously until it was presented to me in a way I’d never heard before. It wasn’t the research for a college newspaper or attending a healthcare summit, but a social experience that sparked my interest in understanding what this virus is and what it means to my community. Once I began to understand the confusion, self-esteem issues, and emotional out lash of Black and Brown people when it came to HIV, it made me want to understand the science.
I was blown away! You mean if I take this little blue pill every day I won’t contract HIV? What are these terms? MSM? TasP? I’m a “Target demographic”? Target? The same phrase used at a shooting range?
The science was cool. But still, what did that mean for me and the lives around me? Taking the reigns on my health boosted my confidence and made me feel like a grown-ass man, but I had more questions. How does someone knowing they are on PrEP affect the way they make decisions when it comes to their sex life, partners, and how “far” they will go? Or wait… is this all some Tuskegee science experiment on Black Queer bodies and we’re all going to end up with stomach cancer by age 35? This “target demographic” you speak of…
I wanted to have these conversations… and with everyone. Screw the charts and stats! How does HIV make you feel emotionally? How does it make you act? Or react?
Why don’t you want to talk about sex?
I think about the traditional American Black family and how sex is not exactly kitchen table talk. Many of us had the “birds and the bees” conversion and that was that on that. Don’t ask questions and the Bible says to wait until you’re married. Period. Most of our understanding of sex did not come from adults, but from our inexperienced peers and porn viruses on ancient desktop computers. If we did not have conversations about sex as young adults, how are we supposed to have a mature conversation about sex as grown adults? When you add a Queer or Trans identity to that, it makes it nearly impossible to speak from educated guidance, but instead from lived experience.
In a sense, we are all still those same kids figuring it out together.
At one point my need to have these conversations give me the label of an “Activist”. I wasn’t sure if it was the viral tweets or my bizarre infatuation, but if that pushed the needed discussion then I was willing to wear the label with pride. It was not long before the CDC among others began to make my hotline bling. I went from talking about this stuff with the homies playing Uno to speaking behind podiums and in front of cameras. I was paid to write about my passion for years. Eventually, that lead me to an invite to The White House to have a conversation with national leaders about the next steps with HIV.
My trip to The White House is still one of the most disheartening experiences I’ve ever had.
Instead of a productive conversation about changing the world, I was aggressively met with more graphs and more charts and more statistics the leaders of this country didn’t know what to do with. It was as if these powerhouse radicals who paved the way were not willing to pass the torch. It was when a middle-aged White woman in a pewter pantsuit said “get off your Snapchats and learn something” I knew how dangerous this was.
The same “12–18-year-old teenager living in a disenfranchised community” you just rattled off stats about… is on Snapchat. They’re not going to pasty websites to educate themselves about sex. They’re in DM’s, MyVidster, and cruising the apps talking to men twice their age. The same cycle of avoiding these conversations in the household was playing out on a larger scale with how this country deals with HIV.
If you want to talk about HIV we have to talk about sex. If we have to talk about sex, we have to talk about what that even means. What does that mean for a Black person compared to a White person? What does it mean for someone with a physical medical condition? Is this $10,000 billboard of smiling happy-go-lucky “twenty-somethings” going to make an impact on every one or just a select few? Over time I learned some organizations need to first be held accountable, then helped.
There is no reason why statistics for Black Trans Women should be clumped together with Black Gay Men. One may ignorantly assume with science and anatomy, but we have to take into account socially how these lives play out (on top of being two separate genders). It’s as simple as job opportunities and the privileges all men carry regardless of their sexuality. Many Trans Women turn to sex work because people won’t hire them. That completely shifts the narrative of someone’s sex life. There are also flaws with research on cis women and HIV. There is no reason why cis women are not included in clinical trials with the advancement of HIV when Black Cis Women are also a heavily impacted community.
On this World AIDS Day, I challenge you to ask questions. I challenge those experts who have the answers to unify your message so that everyone can sit at the table and be fed. Again, the science is there and it’s pretty cool, but until we start putting action behind the social aspects of HIV, the stats and charts and graphs are going to be what they're going to be.
The “H” in HIV stands for Human and it’s time to bring humanity back into a subject that affects everyone.
Thank you to all who continue in the fight.
You are appreciated!
