ST. JOHN’S, N.L. (CUP) — By the end of 2008, over 33 million people were infected with HIV-AIDS worldwide. Twenty-five million have died in 30 years due to complications associated with the disease. Despite HIV-AIDS being widespread among various demographic groups worldwide, there continues to be a stigma for gay men that puts forth the belief that they are the most infected.

The stereotype stems from several hundred gay men in California being the initial group of people diagnosed in the Western world. The stigma and virus quickly spread to epicentres — Toronto, New York, Montreal.

“At the time, gay men were singled out as a high risk group,” said Michael Connors Jackman, a PhD candidate in anthropology at York University. Jackman finished his master’s degree at Memorial University in 2007 with a focus on HIV in Atlantic Canada. His work includes analyzing a political engagement between art and the effects of the disease. “As the epidemic in Canada escalated in the late ’80s and early ’90s, gay men became the central focus of AIDS in various forms of media.”

Jackman notes films such as Philadelphia that represent gay men as a group affected by and infected with HIV-AIDS.

“For a generation of gay and queer men who have come of age after the emergence of AIDS, the culture of safer sex is part of a parcel of what it means to be sexually active,” he stated.

Robert Teixeira, working on his PhD in sociology at York, thinks this prescriptive parcel is detrimental to gay or queer men.

Teixeira believes that limiting the way in which a person engages in sexual activity, or frightening gay men into using protection at all costs, “blocks out and occludes the noble and vital pursuit of sexual pleasure, and with it, sexual knowledge.”

He notes that the connotations HIV-AIDS brings with it — decline of the human body, illness, carnal vulnerability — are in exact opposition to eroticism which is associated with youth, health, and beauty.

It is no wonder that the stigma was immediately associated with a group of individuals that celebrated love and sex without typical social limitations. Homosexual men, or men who have sex with men (MSM), are now hindered by the fear of a disease that represents the opposite of sexual freedom.

It also brings complications into the act of non-monogamous sex.

“There is a very strong contemporary tendency to believe that we can completely avoid HIV, purge the sexual field of play from this menace, and operate our sexual lives on this willful blindness,” said Teixeira. “Of course, this manoeuvre depends on a concerted effort to mask and deny the prevalence of HIV in our communities and to conceptualize sex as risk-free endeavour.”

To elaborate, in order for gay men to have relatively anonymous sexual encounters, they must either turn a blind eye to the threat of the disease, or must embrace that it exists, instilling fear and altering the sexual experience.

For those that still wish to have sex without protection as a rebellion to sexual barriers, Teixeira notes that there is a frequently asked question of prevention: Do you have HIV?

A denial of the existence of the disease, or at the very least a denial that it can be caught by the individual, must be present in order for the person to continue, even if the answer to the above question is no. Aside from the possible health ramifications, this questioning also adds an element of selection that would not be as prevalent were HIV-AIDS not a factor.

“(This) carries with it many assumptions, that we can interview and select our sexual partners and exclude those who seem to carry too much risk, and conversely that having sex with an HIV-positive person is undesirable in and of itself.”

The stigma associated with a person who is HIV positive is certainly one of disease and danger, even though condoms are available for sexual intercourse. A remaining problem from the AIDS epidemic that affected gays in the ’80s and ’90s is that homosexual men are continuously seen in a light of infection.

“There still remains a strong sense that gays, because of their sexual activities, are all HIV positive,” said Jackman. “The fact remains that gay men are disproportionately affected by AIDS.”

He also brings up the point that the ban on blood and organ donorship, with the latter in effect since early 2008.

“The ban on blood from gay men is a homophobic and discriminatory leftover from a time when testing for HIV was impossible,” he said.

According to AVERT.org, an international AIDS charity organization, only five to 10 per cent of new infections worldwide are due to male-male sex — the exact same proportion as for new infections that occur in healthcare settings. About 60 per cent of new infections are due to heterosexual sex. Therefore, unjust limitations such as these need to be removed in order to rid the LGBT community of a damaging stigma.

“The problem of dealing with stigma is not so much about trying to pretend that gay men are no longer affected by HIV,” said Jackman.

The discussion of status disclosure has pros and cons.

“While some gay men might want to move forward beyond a stereotype of gays as people with AIDS, I think we need to be careful that this does not further stigmatize those who actually live with the disease," Jackman said. "The desire to cast off stigma must not come with the unloading of such stigma onto those most directly affected by the illness.”

SIDEBAR: HIV-AIDS timeline

1955 – 1969 A number of deaths occur with unknown causes. Later examination of the preserved blood samples of several of the cases show early development of the disease.

1982 Due to clusters of homosexual men in southern California becoming sick with similar symptoms, a sexually-transmitted agent is proposed. The disease is termed GRID, or gay-related immune deficiency. After health officials diagnose more cases — nearly half of which are not homosexual men — the term is changed to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

1984 Canadian airline steward Gaëtan Dugas dies of what he called “the gay cancer.” Dugas is said to have infected dozens of men over a period of years and is dubbed by many as “Patient Zero.” However, Dugas is only one in a group of men that had travelled to and from Africa, therefore he cannot be the sole contributor for bringing HIV to North America.

1986 After several years of determining the etiological identification, the term HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, is used.

1987 AZT, the first antiretroviral drug for treating HIV, becomes available to the public.

1988 The first World AIDS Day is held on Dec. 1.

1991 Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock band Queen, dies on Nov. 24, 1991 due to complications with AIDS.

1992 Combination drug therapies are developed. These “cocktails” are thought to be more effective against the slow down drug resistance in patients.

1995 A new inhibitor, Saquinavir, is approved and allows for highly active antiretroviral therapy, lowering AIDS-related deaths significantly in years to come.

1997 Approximately 750,000 Americans are estimated to have HIV.

2000 The World Health Organization approximates that up to 20 per cent of new HIV infections worldwide are due to inadequately screened blood transfusions.

2002 South African health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang promotes natural remedies as treatments for HIV, supporting denialist claims that current Western medicines are toxic. President Thabo Mbeki supports AIDS denialism until his ousting in 2008.

2005 Nelson Mandela reveals to the world that his son has died due to complications with AIDS. He makes the information public to attempt to combat the denialism within the government and to encourage more aid from South Africans.

2007 One in six infections of HIV have antiretroviral drug-resistance mutations, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

2008 – 2010 New treatments are being explored, including a University of Toronto method in which exhausted immune cells are “rescued” and renewed.