The Washington Post this morning has two stories from the HIV/AIDS and cultural fronts that dovetail nicely. In the first, the paper reports that according the city's most recent study, you would face the same risk of contracting HIV from having sex without a condom in Washington D.C. as you would in Uganda or the most heavily HIV infected regions in Kenya. In the second, young people who self-identify as gay or lesbian in DC complain that D.C.'s gay culture is too heavily focused on hooking up and having sex and does not reflect their other interests.
(As an aside, the HIV story in particular highlights one of the challenges of newspapers moving away from paper and onto screens. On the website the paper headlined the story as "DC's HIV, AIDS Rate Up 22 Percent Since 2006" in somewhat larger type than the other headlines, but not in a really eye-catching way. In the dead tree version of the paper, the story ran under a banner front page headline, very large type, "HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C., Hits 3%" which conveyed a good deal of urgency, even if it might have carried some of the same emotion of Captain Renault in Casablanca, shock at finding HIV in DC....)
It's hard to get too ginned up about the HIV story. D.C. has always had an HIV infection and AIDS rate that has run a good deal higher than much much of the rest of the country and the usual social monsters have been trotted out as explanations, everything from lack of training about HIV to poverty, racism, homophobia to language barriers, bureaucratic failures and allegedly heartless politicians. Generally the same remedies offered before are still being offered:
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said he is aware that some advocates have called on elected officials and others to more aggressively and publicly address the crisis. He praised the city's recent efforts, however, and expressed his frustration about the struggle ahead.
"In order to solve an issue as complex as HIV and AIDS, you have to step up," he said. "It's the mayor and certainly other elected officials. But it's also the community. You have this problem affecting us, and you tell people how serious it is and it literally goes in one ear and out the other."
The bottom line is that everyone knows how to avoid contracting HIV but, for a wide variety of reasons, people choose to behave in ways that put them at a much higher risk of catching it. This is not meant to be 'blame the victim" thing, but from the point of view of public health policy in the 21st century, the city cannot make people start choosing safer behavior and stop choosing unsafe behavior. All the education, public comments, PSA's etc etc etc are worthless if, at the crucial moment, someone decides first to have sex with someone they don't know anything about and, second, to leave the condom rolled up in the package in their pocket.
HIV/AIDS will start to drop in DC when enough city residents start seeing they have more of a stake in safer behavior than riskier behavior.
Which brings up the second story. This story also had a 'deja vu all over again' feel to it for me. Once again another group of young people has chosen to take on a gay identity and culture and found that, gasp, it's not about a whole lot more than 'partying', clubbing and hooking up.
Their separate enterprises have led them to an unsettling conclusion about what it's like to be young and gay in Washington: Despite the liberating effects of embracing one's sexual orientation, being young and gay in the nation's capital can feel constricting.
"You come out into this culture that you had no hand in creating, and you're expected to conform to it if you want to have friends or sexual partners," Rosen said. "One of the greatest tragedies in gay life is that you spend the first 18 or 20 or however many years of your life feeling as an outsider -- and then you come out, and still . . . you may not want to come into this fabulous world of big, mega dance club music with all these guys in Hollister T-shirts. It's one way people live, but it's not you. One of the tag lines of [the New Gay] is: 'Be gay and be yourself,' and here, it's often very hard to do both."
I am not sure it counts as a "tragedy" of anyone's life, but it is true that it hasn't changed very much in the decades since I was part of it and I suspect that, as many have before them, these younger people will feel happier when they figure out that a really full and satisfying life contains a lot more than same sex attraction and its issues.
But where the two stories dovetail is in the whole awareness of life's broader possibilities and in the decisions to start pursuing those rather than building up a 'gay' life. One of the most hopeful quotes in both stories came from a young woman who is figuring out that her life might need to be about more than feeling sexual and emotional attraction to other women:
"We get complacent about our rights -- we still need it, but we don't feel the need for it urgently," Prescott said. "For a long time, my biggest issue was gay marriage -- and it's still right up there. But what's the point if neither of you have health care to share, or if 47 million people don't have health care?"
Yep. Now maybe when enough other people also figure that out - and start making choices in line with that reality - the rate of HIV infection might finally start to drop.
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