The HIV Blame Game: We Debate, You Decide!
Today, I wrote a post calling out Black Informant, a blogger who called out homosexuals for the striking new HIV/AIDS numbers in the District. The blogger then proceeded to call me out, in a post titled "Calling Amanda Hess of the Washington City Paper." Black Informant wants to debate me!
"So now the ball is in your court to make a full and complete case without resorting to cut and paste arguments that deny factual evidence," he writes. "At the end, we’ll let the readers decide their own conclusions." In order to make known the seriousness with which he was calling me out, Black Informant posted my photograph.
I agreed to the challenge, under the condition that Black Informant send over a personal photo, too. He readily complied (above).
Like me, Black Informant has written extensively on both AIDS and homosexuality. We tend to come to different conclusions. I'll post my first response to Black Informant's positions tomorrow.
1:55 pm
"Brotha" Jerry Falwell needs to STFU.
As a Black woman and thus a member of the population that makes up the majority of new AIDS cases in DC, I am horrified by Black Informant's bigoted, nasty and criminally misguided approach to this serious issue.
He asserts that scapegoating the gay Black male community of DC, a community that has suffered super-oppression historically, in the face of this health crisis is the "first step" towards "healing". He says it like this is a new and radical idea, when it’s not. It’s the oldest trick in the book, like the persecution of the Jews (for supposedly poisoning wells) during the plague in the Middle Ages. It’s ignorant and lazy on his part, in some ways blind bigotry is always the easiest answer. Why not jump on the bandwagon of further demonizing a community that already has so few allies? Facts about highest transmission rates being amongst women and children in the District, be dammed.
What’s most offensive about his analysis, however, is that it's totally unproductive. In no way does anything he proposed equal a solution. We all know that AIDS had a reputation as a “gay” disease early on and that that kind of assignation only leads heterosexuals into thinking that they don’t need to take proper precautions against HIV, because they’ve already made the correct “lifestyle choice”. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this Black Informant (pity a man your age couldn’t have found this out another way) but many straight people have fun, active sex lives- which can even include some of the risky activities on that list that you ascribed to gay men. So AIDS really is everyone’s problem. At least those of us who are getting laid.
Okay, my point is that blaming the gay community is a step backwards, not forwards in this struggle. There is a lot of work to be done to stem the transmission of AIDS in our community. I worked as an HIV peer outreach worker for many years, providing young women with the knowledge and the tools that they need to protect themselves. I suggest that the Informant find some productive work to do on this issue himself. If he cares so much, he could perhaps be useful in the field, fighting AIDS, rather than stirring up bigotry and misinformation from a comfortable distance.
2:17 pm
Hell yeah.
2:46 pm
I can’t agree 100% with Black Informant that this is just a gay disease b/c there are several factors combined that attribute to this issue, however, to his point, there are countless cases of down-low men who take part in homosexual relations and then come home to their wives/girlfriends. It is clear that Black men are the group infected most, which (aside from the down-low men) may have something to do with the fact that prisons (where a lot of homosexual activity takes place; my guess is unprotected) are crowded with our men who again, bring the disease back to their "heterosexual" relationships with women. I'm sure it happens in other communities as well, but I point out the Black community because it is obvious that HIV/AIDS is rampant in our community. I'm also curious to know how many of those in the survey that checked off the "I am heterosexual" box were actually honest about it. ALL people need to educate themselves, use protection, and learn to be honest with their partners and with themselves.
2:54 pm
I just wanted to add that I do understand that heterosexual men are also just as capable of bringing the disease back to their wives/girlfriends as well. I was just trying to make a point that supported where Black Informant may have been coming from. However my overall point is that people just need to be smarter when they engage in a sexual relationship and understand that HIV/AIDS doesn't discriminate.
5:09 pm
I live above a bar that plays horrible '80s music every night. And my response to the thundering bass that rocks me gently into insomnia every night is the same as it is to this homophobic rhetoric: people still listen to this shit?