This article discusses how HIV is perceived in contemporary gay culture in the USA. The sad thing is that the stigma remains high while awareness seems to be lowering. During the early years of HIV/AIDS, many of us in the gay community were made aware of HIV on a daily basis. We saw the commercials, there were bowls of condoms on the counters at the bars, there were sick people living like burning flames & there were a lot of funerals.
We became sensitive to the matter. We tried to take in all those things that could help us avoid becoming +. It didn't always work. Over time, the death rates lessened, the commercials became less frequent & we start assuming we were more safe. This false sense of security lulled some of us into believing we could be lax in our efforts to protect ourselves & prevent the spread of HIV. Those of us, who thought that way, were wrong.
Here are some numbers:
- 80% of Americans reported hearing little or nothing about HIV in the last year
- Nearly 20% of gay/bisexual men in 21 major US cities are +
- Of those infected, nearly half don't know that they're +
This is a new era for gay people & those young ones out there probably never went through the drama of seeing people drop like flies from this illness. They never watched the horror of someone being told they were going to die because HIV was a death sentence. They didn't read in every paper that gay people deserved the HIV that came their way because it was some divine wrath. Ignorance may be bliss, but in this instance, it's deadly.
It's time to get the boy's in the band to start playing their song again & get these young ones to see the danger before them. Just because people don't talk about it as much as they used, just because people aren't dying at the same rate or because there are more meds doesn't make HIV any less deadly.
Cya
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