I Hear What You Are Saying

Reflecting on how we as gay men converse together...



by Ted Kerr
[check out his queer polaroids]

Who gets to disagree with perceived progress within gay communities?

Sitting in a workshop entitled Bringing Sexy Back at the recent National LGBTI Health Summit in the US, the room was engaged largely in a sexy conversation on the semantics on how much they agreed that polyamory should be re-welcomed back into queer culture until one young man swam against the verbal current of the room and stood up for monogamy. The 30 or so people gathered at the session were respectful of him but you could feel even the air in the room seemed to pity him after he spoke.

We live in an age still influenced by homophobia, AIDS phobia and intolerance of difference that leaves gay men to explain to society including the medical profession, the government and the media what they do with their bodies. This tension to report adds stress to conversations within gay communities regarding topics such as barebacking, and polyamory relations. These internal conversations are further troubled by what a friend pointed out to me during the summit, there has been the intellectualization of queer (ness) and AIDS that has emerged in the last 20 years. In light of this I think there is a sense of surveillance within these conversations people are careful to be credible, wanting to be able to justify and validate what they are saying.

In a way, gone is discussion steeped in first person experiences and feelings, in place are theories, and stats. In a way this move towards intellectualizing queer (ness) has benefited progressive thinkers who can reach for academia and queer theory to help back up what they are saying. What I am noticing during many discussion is that largely it is conservative voices that are at a disadvantage since many of them are basing their positions in the personal- their values, their experiences, and their fears. In the face of cool, calm, backed-up, liberal voices, conservative voices often come across as misguided and/or ineffectual. This has got me thinking about the question; who gets to disagree with perceived progress within gay communities?

In theory the answer is everyone is able to disagree. But I think that this is not entirely true. I think that it takes a large amount of social and supportive capital to disagree or share conservative values within the gay/queer context. This capital I mention is what provides someone with the confidence to stand up for what they believe in and know they will be supported if they are ostracized within the discussion. Capital is also the confidence of knowing that you could be right.

I also think that for the most part conservative voices within the gay/queer context come from marginalized communities from within and so are further disadvantaged. The politics of oppression come into play and conservative voices are labeled, judged as being reactionary or to a degree homophobic. Because gay men are being attacked en mass for issues concerning what they do with their body if voices within the gay community then also question what other gay men do with their bodies they are seen as being a voice of the oppressed and are seen to be homophobic and oppressive themselves.

If we step back we can see that there is a thin line between what the majority may be judging gay men for and what gay men may be questioning themselves. But there is a line and as gay men we have the opportunity to question and converse among ourselves about what we do.

I think again about the young man in the Sexy Back session. Sitting there it was obvious that he was overwhelmed by what he was hearing. You could see that notions of sexual liberation 2.0 were bruising the very foundations he had built his gay identity on. In a way coming up and out as gay is for some a series of negotiations of self-acceptance as well as hand picking which lies, myths and truths about the gay experience you are willing to deal with.

For the most part these lies, myths and truths center on promiscuity. In the shadow of AIDS-as-a-crisis there is a mainstream judgment of gay men who have many sexual partners as irresponsible and at the same time there is a fetishization of perceived slutdom both within the gay community and from the straight community. There is a sense for some gay men that having many sexual partners is expected. The young man in the Sexy Back session mentioned this pressure and alluded to the internal work he has had to do to find the truth of the matter for himself along with finding his own personal comfort around articulating that monogamy is important to him. He did not have intellectually rigorous arguments to back himself up. He had his morals and his upbringing to guide him.

I return to the thin line and suggest that for the young man sitting in the Sexy Back room the act of a gay man sleeping around because he feels that society expects it of him and a gay man sleeping around because he wants to looks the same- and maybe it is. The room although respectful of difference was also obviously frustrated with him and his point of view.

I couldn’t help but think that we often confuse localized, internal, focused, conversations about ourselves with larger issues around defying or craving legitimacy from society at large. So engrained in some queer men’s minds are their desires to either oppose or accept mainstream legitimacy that all issues funnel into their relationship with society. Sometimes when we are talking about monogamy or barebacking that is all we are taking about. Maybe we do a disservice by always bringing in a holistic worldview. Sometimes smaller is better.

In the end, in an era where many men bemoan the lack of ‘community’ it is incumbent on us to hear out diverse and opposing voices. While community is built on people coming together it is congealed by diversity and opposing dynamics. Tension creates bonds if respected. As gay men we do not need to justify our actions. We do have an opportunity to silence the surveillance and have conversations among ourselves and be there for each other to see other points of view.

The Latest Fight Over the Foreskin

via New York Times, by Roni Caryn Rabin

In the late 19th century, Victorian-era doctors described the male foreskin as a “source of serious mischief.”

Convinced that masturbation led to insanity, and that it was the sensitive, responsive foreskin that stimulated masturbation, surgeons started promoting therapeutic circumcision to cure young men of the “sin” of excessive indulgence and prevent its corollary, “masturbatory insanity,” a catchall phrase for various psychiatric and physical disorders that perplexed physicians.

Now, in the 21st century, the foreskin has been exonerated as far as masturbation and mental illness go. But public health experts are making a pretty strong scientific case that cells in the foreskin act as a magnet for H.I.V. and, as such, may increase a man’s risk of acquiring the virus from an infected woman if he is uncircumcised.

Read the rest.

Monday Morning Perk-Up

Death Panel Advisors - watch more funny videos

Is it possible to be GAY and CHRISTIAN?

Click for PDF

Joe Dallesandro in Interview

via Interview, by Glenn O'Brien

...Now Joe is the subject of Little Joe, a wonderful documentary produced by his adopted daughter, Vedra Mehagian Dallesandro, and directed by Nicole Haeusser, which tells Joe’s story, from juvenile delinquent to Warhol superstar to European action hunk to junkie to Hollywoodcharacter actor to charming grandpa living in Hollywood and available for the right part. The film, which was the surprise hit of the Berlin Film Festival, really captures Joe with all his low-key charm. He may have started out as a wild creature, but today Joe is a kind of casual philosopher who really gets it. Joe has often played the wise guy, but here he is a literal wise guy. Here’s a bit from a monologue toward the end of the film: “I think it was because I didn’t have major hang-ups about my body when I was young, and I was so casual about nudity onscreen, that people got caught up looking at the surface. I know what it means to be judged on appearances. I’m a lot smarter than I appear to be. People would tell me I was beautiful, but I never knew what to do with that information. It didn’t register.

I never really thought of myself as a good-looking man. I’m short, I’m stocky—I don’t know where good looks come in. I know beauty when I see it. All I can say is that I had a few good photographs taken where I look better than I do in real life. Beauty is fun. It has a place. But don’t mistake it for self-worth. If you have to be beautiful, do beautiful things for someone other than yourself.”

Read the interview.

Killin' the chickens

Jiminy Glick Interviews 'Ronald McDonald' - watch more funny videos

The Same Old Punch Line

It turns out President Obama is a bit of a jokester after all

by Pistol Pete

President Obama is busy crisscrossing the country in hopes of resuscitating his health care reform plan. He’s staying calm, on message and musing over ludicrous rumors that health care reform will include things like “death panels”, coverage for illegal immigrants and abortions for all. In his speeches (and, incredibly, later aped by Rachel Maddow) he also jokes about covering sex change operations. I’m sure this comment is quite the crowd-pleaser, but as a transgendered man, I am profoundly disappointed by his low-blow comments regarding a much misunderstood and discriminated against group that he simultaneously claims to support.

I wouldn’t have been so shocked by other, less well-informed politicians touting this line, but I expect more from Barack. Unlike many others, Obama knows the veracity of the condition known as Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Throughout his political life, Obama has supported legislation to ban discrimination in employment and housing based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as trans-inclusive hate crimes laws.

Obama knows how serious this condition is: the substance abuse and suicide rates among transgendered individuals are staggering, there is no known cure, and the only effective treatment to date has been the very thing he mocks - sexual reassignment surgery (SRS). Yet still he invokes the same old punch line about gender transition as some sort of outlandish elective procedure that does not address the “real” health needs of Americans.

Perhaps if there were any transgender data collection by our government, or public or private institutions with an interest in actually studying transgendered people, we would have the ability to document how real GID is and how vital SRS is to their survival. Right now, there is a small but growing body of evidence of the brain differences of transpeople, the failed interventions of psychotherapy, and, most importantly, the overwhelmingly positive outcomes in the mental and emotional well being of the few individuals who are able to afford the costly psychological and medical services required by universal GID standards of care.

I understand that politically, SRS in health care reform may be unfeasible, but to use transgendered people as your comic relief is simply cruel. Come on Barack, you’re not George Bush or Bill Clinton - you have a heart and a brain - use them.

Feel the Love... Sister Glo is Back, and Channeling Jimi Hendrix

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

~ Jimi Hendrix

Sister Glo shares her glittery gems of love with LifeLube each Friday.

Friday is for Faeries

How is Toro Castaño healthy?

I lead your archetypal healthy active California lifestyle and I've been doing it for so long that its second nature. Of course this includes being moderately vigilant about the food I buy, avoiding things like hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup. I take powerful supplements filled with stimulants. And, I spend 3 hours at the gym every other day.

Key to everything for me though is balance coupled with a strong "inner foundation." I've been on a journey of self actualization since the age of 12 which coincidentally is the about time I began to feel unbalanced. My biggest struggles have been maintaining psychological fitness and at times battling depression. For me this means; doing self check-in's, seeking professional help when necessary, exercising self help, reaching out to friends, journaling, and perhaps most helpful in resetting, allowing myself to check-out/disconnect i.e. laying on the couch for a day.

I have always been and always will be an irrepressible party girl, albeit a responsible one. These days I do more drinking than pills or powders but I still love to have fun. For me this means hydrating myself, having a game plan, and taking sensible precautions. For example eating protein bars, drinking supergreen juice, and allotting myself recovery time.

Ultimately the old cliche beauty comes from within is pragmatic advice. Whether by design or trait I strive to maintain a curiosity and openness to learning and experience and although I have been accused of having one hell of a sassy mouth deep down inside it comes from a sincere good hearted place. There is something to be said about balancing a healthy cynicism with positive attitude and positive outlook and a big dose of humor (appropriate or in my case usually not).

Toro Castaño
Santa Cruz, California


How are you healthy?
Join in the conversation.
Tell us HERE. Send a pic to the same place.
And we'll blog it, right here.
Read past posts.
Learn more about the campaign.

Policing Caster Semenya's gender

Athlete forced to undergo "gender verification testing"

via xtra.ca, by Shawn Syms

Hair above her upper lip. The deep timbre of her voice. A muscular build. Her flatter-than average chest. A growing fixation on these corporeal cues is replacing the cheers that first met teenaged South African athlete Caster Semenya when she took the 800m gold medal at the world championship in Berlin last Wednesday.

Eighteen-year-old Semenya, who grew up in the village of Fairlee in South Africa's rural Limpopo province, has been forced to undergo "gender verification testing" at the hands of a team that includes an endocrinologist, gynecologist, internal-medicine specialist and a psychologist.

As a long-time member of the queer community, I've met a lot of women with deep voices and/or facial hair. In fact, across most people I've met I've seen a wide range of behaviour and self-presentation across the spectrum of culturally defined "masculine" and "feminine" traits, regardless of whether a person identified as a man or a woman. Or defined themselves in some other way.

Read the rest.

Who's that Queer?

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Alan Mathison Turing was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, stating: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence asking whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the Automated Computing Engine (ACE), although it was never actually built in its full form. In 1948, he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark 1, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers.

During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, known as Britain’s code-breaking center. Turing devoted much of his time to Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. As the department’s head, he devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers.

Turing was homosexual, living in an era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and homosexual acts were illegal. Subsequent to being outed, Turing was charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years prior. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, and although Turing was never accused of espionage, his prosecution essentially ended his career. He died not long after from what was officially declared self-induced cyanide poisoning, although his mother (and some others) considered the circumstances of his death to be suspicious.

Ted Kennedy: The Cause of My Life

Ted Kennedy wrote a personal, touching article last month for Newsweek on the need for health care reform that needs to be highlighted. We all mourn the loss of Sen. Kennedy, but should remember that we can honor his life and his dreams for this country by passing health care reform.

The Cause of My Life

By Edward M. Kennedy | NEWSWEEK

Published Jul 18, 2009

In 1964, I was flying with several companions to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention when our small plane crashed and burned short of the runway. My friend and colleague in the Senate, Birch Bayh, risked his life to pull me from the wreckage. Our pilot, Edwin Zimny, and my administrative assistant, Ed Moss, didn't survive. With crushed vertebrae, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung, I spent months in New England Baptist Hospital in Boston. To prevent paralysis, I was strapped into a special bed that immobilizes a patient between two canvas slings. Nurses would regularly turn me over so my lungs didn't fill with fluid. I knew the care was expensive, but I didn't have to worry about that. I needed the care and I got it.

Now I face another medical challenge. Last year, I was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Surgeons at Duke University Medical Center removed part of the tumor, and I had proton-beam radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital. I've undergone many rounds of chemotherapy and continue to receive treatment. Again, I have enjoyed the best medical care money (and a good insurance policy) can buy.

Read the rest at Newsweek.

LOVEFEST - Love Thy Brotha - This Sunday in Chicago

Join the Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus for the 5th Annual LoveFest
Entertainment, DJs, Mini-Ball, and more!
THIS Sunday, August 30
3:00 – 9:00PM
Jackson Park (63rd and Cornell)


lovethybrotha.com

How Facebook Ruins Friendships

via Wall Street Journal, by Elizabeth Bernstein

Excerpt:

One of the big problems is how we converse. Typing still leaves something to be desired as a communication tool; it lacks the nuances that can be expressed by body language and voice inflection. "Online, people can't see the yawn," says Patricia Wallace, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth and author of "The Psychology of the Internet."

But let's face it, the problem is much greater than which tools we use to communicate. It's what we are actually saying that's really mucking up our relationships. "Oh my God, a college friend just updated her Facebook status to say that her 'teeth are itching for a flossing!'" shrieked a friend of mine recently. "That's gross. I don't want to hear about what's going on inside her mouth."

That prompted me to check my own Facebook page, only to find that three of my pals—none of whom know each other—had the exact same status update: "Zzzzzzz." They promptly put me to "zzzzzzz."

This brings us to our first dilemma: Amidst all this heightened chatter, we're not saying much that's interesting, folks. Rather, we're breaking a cardinal rule of companionship: Thou Shalt Not Bore Thy Friends.

"It's called narcissism," says Matt Brown, a 36-year-old business-development manager for a chain of hair salons and spas in Seattle. He's particularly annoyed by a friend who works at an auto dealership who tweets every time he sells a car, a married couple who bicker on Facebook's public walls and another couple so "mooshy-gooshy" they sit in the same room of their house posting love messages to each other for all to see. "Why is your life so frickin' important and entertaining that we need to know?" Mr. Brown says.

Read the entire thing.

Circumcision doesn't protect gays from AIDS virus

Previous research has suggested circumcision doesn't make a difference when anal sex is involved. The latest study, by CDC researchers, looked at nearly 4,900 men who had anal sex with an HIV-infected partner and found the infection rate, about 3.5 percent, was approximately the same whether the men were circumcised or not.

via AP, by Mike Stobbe

Circumcision, which has helped prevent AIDS among heterosexual men in Africa, doesn't help protect gay men from the virus, according to the largest U.S. study to look at the question.

The research, presented at a conference Tuesday, is expected to influence the government's first guidance on circumcision.

Circumcision "is not considered beneficial" in stopping the spread of HIV through gay sex, said Dr. Peter Kilmarx, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read the rest.

Panel Takes a ’Raw’ Look at Barebacking: Why We Like It, Why We Still Do It

via EDGE, by Scott Stiffler

Lively, sometimes loud debate; passionate viewpoints accentuated by applause from the crowd; and skepticism towards the establishment’s ability to effectively advocate for public health. It sounds like a contentious town hall event in which the proposed health care overhaul takes a beating--but it was, in fact, an August 13th public forum sponsored in New York City by the nation’s oldest and largest private AIDS service organization, Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC).

Certainly, it’s understandable why high passion would have erupted at a discussion of the most sensitive topic among gay men today: barebacking. Although its topic was every bit as divisive as Obama’s sweeping initiative, the event managed to demonstrate that the town hall format need not devolve into a shouting match.

Actually, it technically wasn’t about "barebacking," at least if the organizers could help it. The conclave’s premise was that the term "barebacking" unfairly stigmatizes gay men who have unprotected sex.

GMHC’s organizers instead chose the no less provocative but apparently more acceptable term "raw" as the title of the event. A poster promoting the night showed a man, shirtless and with back to the camera, displaying the word "RAW" in tattoo form on his back right shoulder.

GMHC Board of Directors Co-Chair Odell Mays moderated a seven-member panel, each of whom had had five minutes to assert his particular point of view around the issue of stigma and unprotected sex. Afterwards, moderator Mays spent the remainder of the evening taking questions and comments from the audience - to which the panel had the option to weigh in on.

Read the rest.

Related - "Risky Business" forum and podcast in Chicago

Woof Wednesday

The 2009 LGBTI Summit: A Recap of the Madness that was

by Pistol Pete

The 2009 LGBTI Health Summit, which ran August 14th – 18th, was a unique, knowledge-saturated conference where more than 350 LGBTI health professionals and community advocates joined to share the latest information and experiences in all subsets of LGBTI health. The Summit held more than 100 workshops and plenaries addressing such disparate subjects as dating, HIV prevention, data collection, aging, domestic violence, health care reform, social media campaigns, smoking issues, queer youth education and activism, among many, many others.

On Friday, we held the Bisexual Health Summit, thought to be the first conference devoted solely to bisexual health issues. The presentations highlighted the fact that bisexuals have worse health outcomes than both of their gay and straight counterparts, and called for higher visibility of and research on the issue of bisexuals and their health. For me, the best part was connecting with other openly bisexual individuals, especially men, who are often so closeted in a society that rejects the legitimacy of dual sexual attraction. Later, participants of the entire summit were treated to an opening blessing by Sister Porna and the Sisters of the Abbey of the Windy City.

The full summit got underway on Saturday morning, and all I can say is it was bustling; there were so many interesting workshops to choose from that I had to pop in and out of most sessions! Best of all, the top notch knowledge and perspectives I was able to hear were invaluable. While all of the hot button topics were covered – PrEP and PEP, health care reform, and LGBTI aging – other vital, yet less ubiquitous topics took center stage. For example, I had no idea how important data collection was to the promotion of LGBTI health, and I think I could have only learned it at a summit like this.

The summit also had a very positive, assets-based approach to problem-solving. Workshops like “What Vaginas Want,” “Exploring Sexual Pleasure,” and “Body Pride” addressed sexual and personal issues by imploring folks to have a positive, healthy view of themselves and their intimate interests, as opposed to the shaming and hidden sexual past so many of us endured.

The Health Summit also took on the controversial issue of barebacking at a live podcast forum entitled Risky Business. Moderated by Fausto Fernos and Marc Felion of the Feast of Fun podcast, the panelists (including writer and gay men’s health activist Tony Valenzuela, Dr. Braden Berkey of the Center on Halsted, and Mufasa Ali, founder of ONYX, a leathermen’s group for men of color) and audience members debated the affects of bareback porn on the risk behavior and health of gay men.

I was fortunate to have the chance to attend the 2009 LGBTI Health Summit. Being able to meet and connect with other colleuages in the field of LGBTI health and share ideas and experiences has helped me to grow both professionally and personally. I can’t wait for 2011 in (fingers crossed) Portland!

How is Coco Alinsug healthy?

I see a doctor each year for a physical, but even a battery of blood tests can't always pick up potential health problems. In fact, doing fast health tests on my own -- like measuring my waist, inspecting my arches, even looking under my eyelids -- can tell you volumes about my physical well-being.

I know I am too much :) but those are basic stuff that each of us should be aware of. If there is something wrong with your vision, or your pants won’t fit you anymore or you have difficulty in climbing the stairs then those are signs that you need to do some adjustments with your daily habits or whatever.

Take this simple stretch test: Bend over and reach for your toes. If you can easily grab your big toe, you're very flexible. If you can reach only your ankle or shin, add daily stretching to your workout routine. Those are easy exercises and though I don’t exercise that much anymore, I always make sure to do this as often as I can.

Last but not the least is I tend to eat healthy, I am Filipino and God knows we love those chicharones and other fatty and sumptuous stuff but I sometimes shy away from that food, take note, I said “sometimes” hahaha. But I make sure that I don’t crave that food every day, something I always did in the past.

In closing, it is important to have a healthy mind set and if possible a spiritual consciousness.

-- Coco Alinsug
Boston


How are you healthy?
Join in the conversation.
Tell us HERE. Send a pic to the same place.
And we'll blog it, right here.
Read past posts.
Learn more about the campaign.

Wood for Days: The Brits Make Condoms SEXYHOT

NSFW and ADULT - the way gay men's health should be :)

Check out the new XXX booklet from GMFA - "Hot Sex."

Look for more goodies on LifeLube.

Sadness When I Expected Anger: On Public Health and Gay Men

via Trevor's blog, by Trevor Hoppe

I was shocked last weekend in Chicago at the LGBTI Health Summit when I began to cry in the middle of a workshop. It was my fourth session of the summit, and I was feeling a bit worn thin from the weekend's intensity. Nevertheless, I did not anticipate the power of the emotions I felt as I described my anger and intensity over Public Health's treatment of gay men's sexualities.

The workshop was titled, "Destroying Public Health: for the Good of LGBT Health: Critique. Alternatives. Discussion," and was a collaboration between myself and Bill Jesdale. He was going to do a piece on risk, and I was going to do an analytic-polemic piece on the need to destroy Public Health. I had given a similar presentation before at an academic conference (audio; slides), then-titled "Resisting Public Health." But I felt the need to rev things up a bit, so I opted for a more loaded verb.

Read the rest.

Risky Business Podcast is LIVE - WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF BAREBACKING?

via Feast of Fun

On today’s special edition of Feast of Fun, we’re teaming up with Lifelube and Project Crysp in conjunction with the 2009 National LGBTI Health Summit to bring you Risky Business- a raw discussion with a live audience at the Center on Halsted on the sex and intimacy we crave and the risk we’re willing to take.

How do adult films with bareback sex affect our sexual desires and practices?

Are videos depicting sex without condoms a hot but safe way for viewers to find pleasure or is it a dangerous normalization of risk?

We have a panel of experts here to break down the ins-and-outs of condomless sex.

Tony Valenzuela, Writer and Activist whose work focuses on the politics of gay sex, subcultures and assets based perspectives. He’s known as AIDS activism’s most misunderstood man.

Mufasa Ali, Minister and Activist, as well as co-founder of ONYX, a leather group for men of color.

Dr. Braden Berkey, Clinical psychologist whose practice focuses on gay men, and the director of the Center on Halsted’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Institute.

Chuck Renslow, the founder of International Mr. Leather Conference and Convention, was in the audience to talk about why he recently banned bareback porn at IML and the future of the ban.

This is a frank talk about the kind of sex men have in real life and how they “seroadapt” or reduce sexual harm.

For many people, this is just the start of the conversation surrounding sex without condoms, it is not the final word. If you have any questions or insight, please leave a comment and keep the conversation going. Please be respectful and refrain from personal attacks, inflammatory remarks or general hysteria.

Listen to the podcast.

Check out photos from the forum.

A major step forward in LGBTI Health

The LGBTI Summit 2009 in Chicago

A major step forward in the LGBTI Health Movement and a generator of a road map forward

By Chris Bartlett

When I arrived in Chicago for this year's LGBTI Health Summit last week, I was feeling a bit daunted by the numerous challenges that await those of us working in the fertile fields of LGBTI health: The health care access battle currently playing out in Congress and in every state. The invisibility of queer elders. The need for more funding and other support for bi and trans health programming. The recognition that some of our crucial community based organizations might not successfully weather the storm of the current economic crisis. It all felt so heavy.

Some of you know that I dwell in the land of Assets Based Vision (sometimes known as optimism), so I was pondering, on the Orange Line trip to the hotel, ways that I could use the Summit to re-energize myself, focus on exciting priorities, and most importantly, have some fun. So I planned to reconnect with my tribe of queer health folks- many of whom I have known for over ten years, and one (yes, that's you Bill Jesdale) who went to college with me in the distant year called 1985. These folks really have come to feel like an important family for me -- a group of men and women I feel accountable to in my work and play. By the time I got off the Orange Line and trundled over to the Hilton, I was feeling ready to engage.

The tendency at most conferences is for participants to be passive recipients of information, but at the LGBTI Summit we create a space where every participant has the authority (and responsibility) actively to transform their experience-- through creating a last-minute workshop, or through sassily engaging with presenters, or through tweeting critiques from the audience. When people said to me that they wanted more sex-positive workshops, or more engagement with edgy themes, I said-- go ahead-- MAKE IT SO.

And the good news about the LGBTI Summit Chicago is that many people made it so. The Gay Men's Health Agenda gathered further steam as Summiteers participated in plans to move that key policy work forward in Washington, on the state level, and in our local towns. And we also discussed the growth of lesbian, bi and trans health agendas. Engaging plenaries focused attention on movement leadership, the power of data collection (and data caveats-- hence Scout's Law of Fake Queers -- if you misidentify some non-LGBT folks as LGBT, you screw up your data), and our responsibility towards LGBT elders (of course this is my key focus right now, but I can see Elder at the end of my own tunnel). Rebecca Fox, the unstoppable Director of the National Coalition for LGBT Health, was omnipresent at the Summit- exerting her leadership to remind us of this unique moment in history where we can bring LGBT folk to the table of health care access.


So topically, we made it happen- the role of public health (including the ways its institutions can impact our health negatively), the health of health organizers ourselves (a touchy topic) , trans-inclusive health care and insurance, the power of resilience in LGBT families, vigorous anti-tobacco activism, poisonous anti-queer stigma, and numerous other hot topics. Keeping up with the spirit of active engagement, the audiences challenged presenters (including me) to show why our ideas made a difference for our health.

And outside the presentations we made it happen relationally. One key moment of the Summit was an impromptu gathering organized by Trevor Hoppe and Erik Libey-- an opportunity for drinks, pizza and chocolate (so much for queer nutrition) but also a chance to meet one-on-one with the presenter who pissed you off, or the Sister who helped to explain community to you, or the Executive Director of a nationally-known LGBT health center, or the famous thinker who transformed trans research. They were all there-- and the Summit is created to break down traditional hierarchies-- so you could meet them all and engage with them as-- gasp-- human beings. There is something to understanding that behind the ideas and the presentations and the research papers, every person in the room had a similar commitment to queer health as they see it.

I should also mention that the Summit is one place where events that enter the realm of the spiritual (a key realm of health) are given their due-- whether that is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence celebrating joy and banishing shame on a bar crawl, 12 step meetings in the morning and evening, the spiritual peace brought on by a good shoulder massage, or a Radical Faerie heart circle bringing together pagans, faeries, and the curious for some moments of sharing those dreaded feelings. When the Summits are most successful, both presenters and participants experience their engagement as relaxing and perhaps even health-inducing.

We reached the apex of ideas, engagement, and relationship at the public forum "Risky Business-- Reclaiming Pleasure"- co-sponsored by the LGBTI Summit, LifeLube and Chicago's impressive LGBT Center on Halsted. At one point, I stood up from the front of the auditorium to look out at the audience-- a mix of generations of the international LGBT health movement, as well as media and Chicago queers. Though the topic (barebacking, unprotected sex, community health, promoting pleasure) was bound to be interesting (and was), I was more interested by the experience of community in the room- the sense that the conversation (both from the panelists and the audience) really mattered, and that despite accusations of LGBT apathy, our communities are more engaged than ever with the key questions of how to build upon our community assets, and how to address the challenges that we will continue to face.


So whither the Summits and the movement? In the ten years since the Summit movement started, dozens of new LGBT health organizations have been created; research has gradually expanded to focus upon the breadth of queer health, access to LGBT-friendly health care has expanded, and three generations of LGBT health organizers have grappled with the key questions of what we mean by LGBT health and how to make it happen. There's no doubt that the movement has been a success, and the Summits have been the major public expression of this movement. To me, the measure of our ongoing success will be our ability (through Summits and the work that emerges from them) to produce specific measurable results in our movement and communities. More funding for LGBT health projects. The jettisoning of homophobic and transphobic policy in Washington and in our state capitals. Growing visibility of bi and trans health programs, research, and activists. Strengthening partnership with the HIV/AIDS movements, and with organizers in communities of color. A strengthening of the fabric (lace? felt? spandex?) of our intergenerational organizing.

We need to be aware of our ongoing goals and intentions, and we need to grow the structure to implement our goals. We have succeeded with a campaign of placing a whole generation of queer health activists in the communities and organizations nationally where they can make a difference. Are we willing to take responsibility and accountibility to bring about the huge visions and projects that were discussed last week in Chicago? Are we responsible to MAKE IT SO?

At the forum at the Center on Halsted, Cornelius Baker, a long-time leader in the LGBT Health, HIV/AIDS, people of color, and many other movements, put his arm around my shoulder and asked me if we were ready to take the work to the next level-- to really insist upon greater power, more accomplishments, and further success. Cornelius reminded me that Eric Rofes (pictured right), one of the founders of this movement, would have wanted to see continued results. So let's map out the strategy, and continue to demand the results.

Rofes indeed was always a visionary. I leave you with a number of questions posed by him in his letter to the 2002 LGBTI Summit in Boulder. I think they remain pertinent questions for our future:

1) Who is responsible for setting an LGBTI health agenda and overseeing its success?

2) What should be our health movement's agenda with the administration in Washington?

3) What structures currently exist to move forward the priority items on our collective agenda?

4) Should we commit to future LGBTI health summits and make a powerful collective effort to build a grassroots movement in the United States?

[check out pics from the Summit]