I was in a Red Cross museum last weekend, where a woman kindly showed me around a series of exhibits aimed to showcase the courage of those involved in humanitarian efforts and the ongoing need for people to show such charity to help the world's needy. She showed me a white bus that was used to bring rescued people home from a concentration camp, talking about the horrors endured within until I could almost feel the road beneath the wheels or the stench of death inside the bus. It was deeply moving. We talked about wells, joked about the drought in London and then she showed me a tent used after the earthquake in Iran to provide shelter for those made homeless by the disaster. All very timely reminders of the need for us to provide help in emergency.
Then, the section on HIV and AIDS, saying that 39.4 million people worldwide are living with the virus, how many have died, breaking it down by region of the planet, then down to the country and the city I was standing in. It was a strange moment to see something like that in a museum, to know that they viewed it, HIV, me, as a humanitarian crisis. The attendant was talking to someone, but the guy stood near me obviously saw that the statistics were making me reflect on something and he started to say what a tragedy it was that so many people in Europe had the disease now. I said something vague about infection rates being skewed by the numbers of people who had effectively become pharmaceutical refugees from African countries where HIV is rife making diagnosis among heterosexuals seem higher than it might actually be for Europeans. while it remains a crisis for gay men.
The man shook his head sadly, saying that he'd thought infection rates among gay men should have almost totally disappeared by now, he never heard anything about help for gay people these days and surely gay men "should know better than to get themselves infected."
I guess we should. I couldn't bring myself to say, "I knew better and I managed it," but it was there in my throat, catching like a bolus of tears. It's amazing how fast it flips from being nothing, a complete non-issue, then suddenly it's a knot in my chest, I am those Africans, I am those needy children, those medical accidents. Except I'm not, because they're victims of HIV, I'm someone who doesn't deserve that charity because I knew better. It doesn't matter that I have an unassisted lifespan of ten years, it's all my own fault because I knew better.
There's an article in the Observer over the weekend saying that a group of patients who were infected by transfusion in the 70s and 80s are pushing for £750,000 compensation because the last payout was based on the assumption that they would die shortly. The payouts were upwards of £45,000 and yet the people who were "given tainted blood" say they now live in poverty and are unable to work or form relationships because of this. So, the medical system which saved their lives once and was sued for it is now to be sued again for saving their lives again.
Ingrates, victims like that do bring out an angry streak in me, I have to say. While I'm sure they're pushing out of personal gain, it perpetuates this sense that there's Good AIDS and Bad AIDS, that there's the poor, unwitting victims of AIDS - and the article talked in terms of AIDS instead of HIV, when AIDS almost never happens in Europe any more and only very rarely is the cause of anyone's death unless they aren't adherant to medication - blood transfusion victims, rape victims, the children of drug users, people from third world countries or from socially marginalised groups. All these are the victims of Good AIDS and people will endlessly fund charities for them.
The gays, though, well, we brought it upon ourselves. We get Bad AIDS because we know better.
It strikes me that HIV provides a very politically expedient route to vent racism and homophobia, that no-one wants African blood or gay blood from a blood bank, not for the risk of transmission because all the nice white heteronormative heterosexuals feel sorry for us and want us to be victims, but wouldn't want gay blood or dirty black blood, regardless of the HIV status of Africans or gay men. The safe sex message is essentially that you shouldn't worry too much about AIDS unless you're having sex with a man who has ever had sex with a man or an African. Otherwise, if it's part of a holy union and monogamous, you're laughing.
A convenient excuse for religiously motivated oppression, I say.
Tags:
HIV, AIDS, living with HIV, going gently, Red Cross, marginalisation, racism, homophobia, veiled bigotry, the mask of benevolence, good AIDS, bad AIDS, blood transfusions
Strange position to find myself in at the moment, being offered work as a journalist for an HIV charity's magazine. I can't help but find myself wondering at whether or not this is a sensible thing for me to get involved with. Obviously, I want the journalistic experience, it's a matter close to my heart and I think I have useful things to say to people about the issues around HIV. However, I feel slightly odd about getting work off the back of my HIV status and could see how readily not the charity itself, but the general HIV third-sector industry could be somewhere that I could exploit the combination of my skill set and my status to make relatively rapid progress.
