Educated… UB2

[NOTE:  THIS BLOG ARTICLE IS FROM 2005, AND HAS MANY ANTIQUATED IDEAS IN IT, SUCH AS THE TIME BEFORE PREP, TASP, AND U=U.  IF YOU DON’T KNOW THESE ACRONYM TERMS, PLEASE LOOK THEM UP BEFORE READING THIS ARTICLE.  THIS ARTICLE IS INCLUDED HERE ONLY FOR AN HISTORICAL REFERENCE, AND IS ONLY PARTIALLY RELEVANT PRESENTLY.  PART OF BEING EDUCATED…UB2 IS BEING UP TO DATE; THIS ARTICLE IS NOW OBSOLETE, EXCEPT IN ADDRESSING SOME REMAINING STIGMA IN SERO-DISCORDANT (POZ/NEG) DATING, A TOPIC I EXPLORE IN MORE DETAIL IN OTHER ARTICLES.]

Recently I was browsing through online personal ads in various online services for gay men. I was surprised at how often the term “UB2” came up. This is an appreviation for, “You be, too!”, in reference to a negative HIV status. It seems to say, in those succinct three characters,

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Tsk, Tsk: People with HIV are being disempowered in ways they don’t even know

After recently shifting my focus after 10 years of working with non-profit HIV and mental health social service organizations, I’ve been reflecting on both the positive – and negative – things that I witnessed. With the re-election of President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress, social services and other “liberal” institutions are certainly out of favor and have come under fire as a low priority for the American public and taxpayers.

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Finding Your Voice

I recently saw the legendary drag performer, Miss Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp), do a wonderful homage to Disney’s now-classic musical animated film, “The Little Mermaid,” in her superb stage act. She poignantly and comically draws many parallels between her own life and the life of the fairy tale’s heroine, Ariel, the mermaid who “sells” her beautiful singing voice to the evil sea witch, Ursula, in exchange for getting legs to visit the sea surface, meet, and marry her land-lubber prince. Her identification with Ariel made me think of another analogy: How many people living with HIV “sell” their voice to get the things we need?

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Everyone Line Up: Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl

One of the sound bytes I remember from my days in elementary school was the phrase, “Everyone line up: boy, girl, boy, girl!” For teachers and school administrators, this was an easy of way of doing crowd control for groups of rambunctious kids. But I remember this was also rife with very predictable, homophobic and sexist jokes, where someone inevitably would say, “Hey, [fill-in-the-blank], which are you?”

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An Ounce of Prevention…

Driving through West Hollywood these days, I often see the banners on streetlights and telephone poles with the faces of the “HIV Stops with Me” campaign poster-boys. This public health awareness/HIV prevention program is certainly high-profile, and like everyone else, I hope it does some good to reduce the sadly high number of new HIV infections every year in this country. But I’m not convinced of this campaign’s effectiveness.

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To Have and Have Not: Feeling Empowered to Manage HIV (Regardless of Social Class)

As a mental health professional and licensed clinical social worker, one of things I do with a new patient is to take a thorough “psychosocial assessment” – basically, his or her life story in one hour or less. I ask about family history, history of current symptoms (depression, anxiety), current medications, work history, health experiences, education, social support, hobbies, and cultural background. But I also ask about his or her current and past socio-economic status; what “class” did he or she grow up? I ask this because I think the issue of money in American society is one of the most emotionally-laden, and can shape – positively or negatively – a person’s experience of the world.

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