2009: Making Accessibility and Participation a Reality for all GBT Men

by Jesse Pack

[Jesse is the Coordinator of Prevention and Education for AIDS Project Worcester]

We need to recognize the lives and needs of all gay, bi, and trans (GBT) men regardless of geographic location.

Many GBT men do not live in gay-affirming urban enclaves and not every GBT man wants to live in one, yet it seems that members of these larger cities set health policies and priorities that affect the lives of men throughout the country. Many men do not wish to or are not able to sever ties with birth families and communities, nor should they have to in order to be affirmed, loved, and healthy. We should promote programming and research that is relevant to the lives of men who are not situated in urban centers and such efforts should be based on the actual expressed needs of men living in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.

HIV/AIDS is still heavily impacting the lives of GBT men throughout the country and world. We need to continue to prioritize HIV/AIDS treatment and services and HIV prevention. We should continue to support research and development of new prevention technologies such as microbicides, vaccines, and PrEP but we must also support and strengthen behavior-based interventions. We have had success with behavior-based interventions but these interventions were and are often under-funded and poorly supported and have simply not reached a lot of men. Assuming that GBT men throughout the country should have access to GBT-affirming HIV prevention interventions, we need to come up with effective strategies to support those at the grass-roots level who are trying to bring supportive interventions to men in their communities, particularly if local and state governments refuse to fund or support such interventions.

We need to make GBT-affirming, comprehensive sex education available to all youth throughout the US.

We should also continue to empower GBT youth through supportive and leadership-building programs. If the federal and state governments will not support such programming, then we need to come up with strategies to make this a reality, which would most likely involve supporting grass-roots initiatives. We need to make public accommodations and social service programs truly accessible to GBT men. Many of us pay taxes and are members of our communities, but many of these state and federal sponsored programs (homeless shelters, housing, substance abuse, etc) are not accessible to us. A lot of great work has been done over the years throughout the US on creating policies around access and best practices. It’s time for us to hit the ground and hold these programs accountable.

We must continue to acknowledge and embrace the lives of transgender men. In 2004, the National Coalition of LGBT Health released a document outlining major US transhealth priorities. Some of the issues in that document that are particularly pressing- health insurance discrimination, FDA approval of hormonal therapy, and misclassification of surgery as “experimental” by CMS-are issues that we are poised to take on. Unfortunately, I have not seen much movement on these particular problems since 2004.

Are we going to prioritize the health and lives of transgender men or hope that someone else will do it?


*** LifeLube has been asking folks like Jesse from around the country to weigh in on what a 2009 Gay Men's Health Agenda might look like. Click here to read some of the ideas that have been circulated. Please feel free to comment here - share your own ideas, or spout off on whether you agree or disagree with him - or, you could send in a full post of your own here. We will be happy to publish it!