Monday, December 27, 2010

QUEERMONTON Why limit the win? Health equality for gay men should be health equality for all - May 17, 2010

"Where is the anger?" was a recurring question a few weeks ago at the Deliberative Dialogue on Gay Men’s Health – a conversation in Montréal that brought together some men working on health and gay issues from across the country in one room. A few of those assembled wanted to know where the fire that once fueled the gay rights movement had gone. Throughout the day my often already rosy face moved to violent shades of red. When I spoke it felt as though a caged bird was let out, too dizzy with space to do much more than flap its wings. These were the ways I answered the question—the anger is here.

At one point the anger was raised right after someone rightfully bemoaned the fact that same sex marriage had assuaged a large portion of the gay community who now felt there was nothing more to fight for. The search for the anger was thick with the implied idea that some gays are now so enshrined in the system that they don't even know the ways they are still repressed and disadvantaged. On this we all agreed.
At this point, sensing an opening, I spoke up and shared that, as far as I could tell, the anger regarding health and other inequalities existed in the belly of emerging queers and other diverse communities. From across the room someone agreed. Where he is from, he said, the anger is being directed towards gentrification and other issues that affect queers and marginalized communities in insidious ways, including and beyond homophobia and heterosexism. Our bridged comments held the air for a few seconds and then collapsed, whisked away by the flow of conversation—going the opposite direction.

The thrust of people's comments kept relating back to the ways in which gay men were disadvantaged within the Canadian health and education systems—true, but not just true for gay men. The remedies being volleyed about to increase healthy outcomes seemed, to privileged gay men, to be addressing only the ways in which gay men were being disadvantaged. Focusing only on gay issues with an inability to see how struggles are interconnected, nor able to recognize the strides forward that have been made in the last 30 years, along with their collateral implications and complexities, seemed archaic to me, and ironic since so many of the men in the room were responsible for the leaps forward that gays have made. It was like talking to soldiers who could not see the victories for their own wounds (later this in itself seemed like an issue worth talking about).

Earlier in the day, when we were all still defining ourselves within the group dynamics, I said the only way I can conceive of focusing on gay men's health was if I understood the work was being done in concert with other groups working to establish health equity. The comment was informed by the idea that if you solve a simple problem you only positively affect those directly involved; if you solve a more complex problem you help those directly involved and those affected by related issues that are less complex. Why limit the win? If we are working towards health equality for gay men and we understand we must improve the overall quality of life for gay men to improve health, why just open the door enough for ourselves? Why not work with others to take apart the doorframe, ensuring everyone can get in? This may sound overly simplistic but so too is focusing on just one community or hoping that anger will push us forward.

In a speech entitled "At the Same Time," collected in a book by the same name, writer Susan Sontag shares her thoughts on what it takes to be a great writer. Happening to read the speech upon returning from Montreal I can’t help but apply her wisdom for authors to some gay men's health advocates who may be singly focused: "A great writer of fiction both creates—through acts of imagination, through language that feels inevitable, through vivid forms—a new world, a world that is unique, individual: and responds to a world, the world a writer shares with other people ..." With the gains gay men have made in the last 30 years it is not enough to continue forward in just our own name. We need to work at creating a world for gay men to flourish, where others can thrive, and at the same time, be responsive to a world that both wants, and does not want, true progress. Gay men will succeed. We are strong. But if gay men do not work with other communities for health equality the question will not be about where is the anger, but rather, why are they angry with us?

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