Every time my friend Charles uploads photos on Facebook I pore over them in the way one used to watch soap operas. I don't want to live his life, I just want to witness it and remark on its loveliness. Charles is smiling in photo after photo, his handsome broad face alive with joy and surrounded by other radiating faces, as if happiness is infectious. Looking through his photos I realize an LGBT-focused stock photography agency would kill for such shots: happy, healthy, seemingly well-adjusted queer folks living their young urban lives to the fullest.
The majority of Charles' shots are from time spent with Team Edmonton, a group that acts as an umbrella organization for Edmonton-based queer sport and recreation groups. I ask Charles why he spends so much time with the other members, to which he replies, "Team Edmonton provides an ideal platform for like-minded people to simply meet, do stuff together and have fun. It emphasizes a lot on support, openness and respect that I think in some sense, contributes to the positive development of local community." Through his earnest response he articulates what is at the heart of current approaches to gay men's health: it is holistic-based and focuses on wellness and lived lives rather than just on pushing condoms. Organizations like HIM (Health Initiatives for Men) out of Vancouver, and increasingly HIV Edmonton, are looking to help men invest in total healthy lives, along the way preventing new cases of HIV and STIs.
Before HIV and the resulting AIDS crisis, there was not much in the way of gay men's health, sexual or otherwise. Michael Phair, the founder of HIV Edmonton and five-time Edmonton city councillor, says he remembers very little beyond STI nurses doing a bit of outreach at the gay bars and bathhouses. But then AIDS hit, and people like Phair grabbed their friends and hit the ground running, working quickly to organize help for those dying, public education and support for those losing loved ones.
Grassroots efforts like these soon ballooned and blossomed into organizations and became institutionalized, as the response to AIDS quickly became larger than could be handled in a living room or around a kitchen table. Grassroots organizers and members felt pushed aside, left behind. Soon the scope of AIDS was no longer primarily gay men; it needed to grow to meet the needs of women, people of diverse race and cultures, people with addictions and those living in poverty. Many gay men and their communities felt disenfranchised by what they saw as AIDS Inc.
Activist and writer Eric Rofes recognized the dissatisfaction and early on raised his concern that the AIDS-as-crisis model was no longer appropriate for the wellness of gay men. In his books Reviving the Tribe ('96) and Dry Bones Breathe ('98) Rofes advocated for a wellness model rather than one focused on a virus (HIV). He knew that gay men needed to refocus and begin creating what he called "post-AIDS identities."
In AIDS service organizations (ASOs) it was common a few years ago to hear about condom fatigue—a school of thought that suggested HIV and STI rates among gay men were not going down because gay dudes were tired of hearing safer-sex messages and were no longer heeding the warning. In Thriving ('07) Rofes addressed this notion, writing "When are we going to admit that HIV disease among gay men of all colors is not going away anytime soon, and create long-term strategies to promote sexual health, instead of repeatedly defaulting to the same tired state of emergency approaches which haven't worked? Health advocates frequently mistake our boredom at their superficial and vapid analysis for complacency about the health of our communities. We care deeply about the well-being of gay men's communities ... we hunger for a new vision of gay men's health and wellness."
Sadly Rofes died in 2006 and so has not been able to see the emerging tipping point of his work taking hold. We are at an interesting time for gay men's health that I think reflects much of Rofes' work. Organizations like HIM and Gay City out of Seattle bring together grassroots instincts and tactics born at the start of the AIDS crisis and combine them with the resources and institutional support that corporatized-AIDS can provide.
Team Edmonton is a volunteer-run LGBT sports and recreation group, not a gay men's wellness centre, yet people like Charles illustrate that what Team Edmonton is doing works for them. So while myself and stock photography agencies pour over Charles' photos, maybe Pride Centres, health organizations and ASOs around Alberta will steal a page out of Team Edmonton's playbook and begin delivering services that work for gay men in their communities. As they may say at Team Edmonton, the ball is in your court!
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