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An IV running into my left arm kept me from dehydrating. My
temperature soared past the 103 F mark. At night, I sweat so much the
sheets got soaked. I didn’t have the energy to get up and walk across
the room, and I could barely eat.
For three days in 1995 I lay in a hospital bed fearing the
worst: that despite my precautions, I must somehow have contracted HIV and
it was beginning to take its toll.
The homophobic doctor who treated me at the hospital thought
the same thing. As soon as he found out I was a gay, he kept trying to
coerce me into getting an HIV test. Concerned that the results would not
be confidential and would become part of my permanent medical record, I
declined to have one, much to his exasperation.
Later, even after the doctor discovered the cause of my
symptoms were due to another ailment, he still tried to arm-
wrestle me into consenting to an HIV test.
When people think of gay men’s health, the first thing that
pops into everyone’s minds—even our own—is HIV and AIDS. Given the
history of the epidemic and how it has devastated the gay community over
the past twenty years, that’s understandable.
But it’s no longer sufficient.
While HIV is still an ever-present element of gay men’s
health, and remains the most prominent disease with which our community
continues to grapple, it is but one of a myriad of concerns that affect
gay men’s overall well-being. It’s way past time that we as gay men
take a broader view of what it means for us to keep healthy. Just a few of
the additional health concerns that need to be addressed under the rubric
of gay men’s health include issues of aging as the first out generation
of gay men gets older; a complete look at sexually transmitted diseases
beyond HIV; anal cancer and early detection such as so-called “anal pap
smears”; mental health concerns, particularly as they relate to living
as gay men in a generally unsupportive society; and the short and
long-term affects of ubiquitous drugs ranging from poppers to ecstasy.
Yet, while there are thousands of organizations around the
country that deal with HIV and AIDS, there are probably less than a dozen
that take a completely integrated approach to gay men’s health.
A growing group of gay activists are working to change that.
“We’re starting a gay men’s health movement that deals
with gay men’s health in its full complexity,” says Eric Rofes, a
professor of education at Humboldt State University in California, and one
of the main leaders of the newly-seeded movement.
This is particularly true for young gay men who have grown up
in the age of AIDS. “For young gay men, the idea of health often amounts
to little more than getting tested [for HIV],” says Kirk Read, a
25-year-old activist and organizer in California. “It’s especially
important that younger gay men know that health care is a broader
issue.”
Rofes and Read, along with a band of health advocates, have
already put together two national gay men’s health summits, the most
recent of which just concluded in Boulder, Colorado, this past July. But
the gathering in Boulder was the last of the national get-togethers and
really signals the beginning of the hard work for this fledgling movement,
not the end. The next step is to set up an array of local gay men’s
health groups everywhere.
“I want to see us blanket the country with gay men’s
health organizations, like we did in the 1980’s with AIDS
organizations,” says Rofes. “I want to see places develop around the
country where gay men can go with their complete list of health concerns,
and get frank, nonjudgmental answers to questions and help for their
problems.”
There can be little doubt there is a strong need for such
groups. I know first-hand how uninformed we can be about even the basics
of our own health.
It wasn’t until I found myself physically depleted and
emotionally distraught in that hospital bed in 1995 that I knew much of
anything about hepatitis. Until then, I thought of it as a disease that
hit travelers to exotic lands. I was totally unaware that a common sexual
practice among gay men known as “rimming” put us at such high risk for
hepatitis, and I knew even less about the devastating affects the disease
has on the human body.
Many times since then, I’ve looked back at my ignorance and
felt utterly astounded. I would have never believed myself so uninformed.
Indeed, I thought just the opposite of myself. I was a totally out,
college-educated gay man immersed in my local, thriving, big-city gay
community. I’d volunteered for two AIDS organizations, and had thus gone
through extensive AIDS and HIV training sessions. As a reporter, I wrote
one story after another about HIV and AIDS, frequently covering the latest
drug development or experimental treatment for HIV-related conditions. The
people I spoke to on a daily basis were gay activists, HIV-prevention
experts, doctors, and drug-company researchers, all of whom spoke frankly
about sex and HIV in unabashed detail. I thought of myself as incredibly
knowledgeable about gay health concerns. It couldn’t have been further
from the truth.
I felt like a naive high school kid being told the facts of
life as one gay friend, himself a nurse, filled me in. What was most
annoying was discovering that there was a simple vaccine I could have
taken to protect myself.
I never had a similar discussion with my doctor. Even though
my doctor knew I was a gay man, he was too squeamish and uncomfortable
about gay sex to discuss with me how I obviously contracted the disease.
Even worse, he failed to tell me that I was also at risk for hepatitis
B—an even more dangerous version of the disease. And he failed to inform
me I could protect myself against that through vaccines, too.
My doctor was not unusual. “Typically, a gay man does not
have a health provider he can talk to honestly and openly,” says Rofes.
And typically, doctors, too, view gay health through the narrow blinders
of HIV care.
That’s why it is so important that the push for gay men’s
health centers comes from gay men themselves. We have to be integral not
only in sparking the creation of these organizations, but in making sure
they are designed to unflinchingly answer our real needs, without apology
or squeamishness.
Mubarak Dahir receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com
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