Pages

Email!

musings...

If you like what you see here, or if you have anything you would like to share do send an email:
psychonauterotica@gmail.com

Monday, December 9, 2013

not an admonition

To call myself a "Buddhist"
is a very culturally specific form of identification... It is necessarily a postmodern, Eurocentric, and globalist form of an identification which would trace a majority of its historical roots in what we think of today as Asia.

This is an observation, not an admonition.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Hepatitis and HIV ... a preliminary exploration


Hepatitis and HIV

The worlds of HIV and viral Hepatitis are similar, but different.

In Australia, HIV largely impacts gay men. Viral hepatitis, on the other hand, disproportionately and largely impacts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people who are imprisoned, ethnicised communities where hepatitis B is endemic in countries of origin, and young people.

In other words, the people who are impacted by viral hepatitis in Australia are, on aggregate, less politically enfranchised than the single group most affected by HIV, gay men.

Another way of framing this, in an Australian context, is that viral hepatitis largely impacts on poor people and disenfranchised people.




More comparisons

Why, on aggregate, are the communities who are affected by HIV so different from those affected by hepatitis?

In Australia, HIV is largely transmitted through unprotected anal intercourse between casual partners of unknown status. At the same time HIV was identified about a half a decade sooner than hepatitis C (which was once known as “non-A, non-B” hepatitis).

Also, there is a “neatness” to HIV and the way it is understood which is not so true for hepatitis.

For example, you either have HIV or you don’t. You are either HIV positive or you are HIV negative. If you have it, you will not clear it, either on your own or with treatment. There is no vaccine.

On the other hand, there are 5 known types of viral hepatitis, known as hep A, hep B, hep C, hep D, and hep E. Each of them has different window periods, differing forms of transmission, different courses of treatment, and different possibilities for clearance as well as reinfection. Some of them can be vaccinated against (hep A & B, which can impact also on D), and others you cannot (hep C and E).

Further examples: Hepatitis B is easily cleared by most people (95%) if it is contracted when you are an adult. However, if you got it when you were a child from your mother, you are more likely to have it for the rest of your life (chronic hep B). Hep B is treatable with antiviral medication, but, like HIV, you have to take the medication for the rest of your life.

Hep C, on the other hand, has a lower rate of clearance when contracted as an adult. Unlike hep B or HIV, treatment for hep C can effectively cure you of the virus (i.e. you can become hep C negative after having been hep C positive). Still, you can also get it again.



In terms of transmission, hep B in Australia is largely transmitted from mother-to-child during childbirth, and is sexually transmissible as well from having penetrative sex (vaginal/anal) without a condom, and is also moderately transmissible through unprotected oral sex. Hep C, on the other hand, is not classified as sexually transmissible unless there is direct blood-to-blood contact in the context of sex play. The highest rates of transmission of hep C in Australia is through sharing injecting equipment.



There is so much more to learn.



While HIV theoretically has two forms (HIV-1 and HIV-2), worldwide when one says “HIV”, we are most likely to refer to HIV-1, because HIV-2 is mostly isolated to West African regions.

Yet: All the various viruses that are collectively known as viral hepatitis are also quite different from one another in their structure. For example, hep B is DNA, whereas hep C is RNA.

Hepatitis viruses are also found in diverse prevalence around the world. For example, hep A, which is transmitted through oral contact with contaminated fecal matter, is primarily found in countries with low standards of food hygiene. It is quickly cleared by most people (i.e. there is no chronic hep A), and once cleared, offers immunity, and thus tends to occur more sporadically and epidemically (ubiquitously in a time-limited way) in populations.

One the other hand, hep B is more likely to be found endemically (ubiquitously and indefinitely) in certain countries. At the same time, unlike hep C, both hep A and hep B can be vaccinated against, which means that they are largely preventable without having to engage in any significant behavioural change. Indeed, in Australia, at this point children born in Australia are vaccinated against both hep A and hep B. This means that hep A has been largely eradicated in Australia (given that it has been vaccinated against and is quickly cleared without treatment, even when contracted), while hep B will be largely seen in communities that trace themselves to hep-B endemic migrant communities (e.g. the two largest groups with hep B in Victoria are Chinese and Vietnamese communities).

As there is no vaccine for hep C, and it is blood-to-blood transmitted, we largely see it in significant proportion among people who inject drugs who share injecting equipment, plus a significant minority of people who get hep C from contaminated tattoo equipment (e.g. home-done tattoos with poor infection control).


Prevention
Whereas the introduction of needle and syringe programs (NSPs) in Australia led to rapidly lower rates of HIV among people who inject drugs, the same outcome has unfortunately not been true for hep C. The reasons are complex. They are related to how the use of NSPs were encouraged, and the sorts of health promotion messages that were encouraged.

“Don’t share fits” (i.e. don’t share needles) is a fantastic message for preventing the transmission of HIV through injecting drug use. However, this does not work quite as well for preventing hep C transmission. My understanding of this includes that HIV does not live very long outside of the body compared to hep C. In other words, if there was a bit of HIV-infected blood left on the tourniquet or the communal water used to rinse needles, etc., this would be less likely to lead to seroconversion. However, if there was a bit of hep C-infected blood left on the tourniquet or the communal water used to rinse needles, etc., this would be enough to lead to the spread of hep C among people who inject drugs, even if the needles themselves were not being shared.

Health promotion and hep C prevention messages, therefore, had to expand to become about not sharing any injecting equipment whatsoever, thus moving away from a focus on needles and needle-stick injuries, and into more information about standard infection control procedures for all people who might come into contact with any blood of this nature.




Strategy

In a sense, the coalition of workers around HIV makes a particular sort of strategic sense; in Australia, the AIDS Councils have evolved over time to include many aspects of broader gay men’s health. The NSW-based one (the AIDS Council of NSW), where I used to work, has evolved in its brief to include a broader commitment to the health of all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, who have a visible enough commonality to one another (in our non-normative diversity of gender and sexual practice/expression) that this coalition makes a particular type of political sense.

However, it is more difficult to see what this means in doing hepatitis work.

Because of the huge differences culturally between communities who are impacted by hepatitis, it seems difficult to imagine what sort of coalitionary practice would make the most sort of strategic sense in moving forward in this field. Viral hepatitis seems infinitely more intellectually challenging and politically fraught when compared to HIV.

It is striking that, by numbers alone, hepatitis impacts on 9 times more people than HIV, and is the cause of the fastest preventable form of cancer in Australia (liver cancer).



In considering the relative political strength and resource-density of HIV work in Australia that I have been involved in (at the AIDS Council of NSW), I want to propose a number of strategic decisions and political commitments that we could make in the field of hepatitis that might be of similar weighty import. I admit that my bias, given my professional background in health promotion, is in the social justice aspects of health. I believe any work in health promotion is necessarily incomplete without a proper consideration of the many broad justice issues which impact on access to testing, prevention, and treatment of disease.

There are a few positions I believe are worth exploring, therefore…

Just as in HIV, we know that people who are living with viral hepatitis experience stigma around their experience. People with HIV have historically borne the brunt of stigma for being too sexually promiscuous, or for homosexual deviance. Similarly, people with hepatitis (C, especially) are stigmatised for their association with injecting drug use.



We need to speak out against the pathologisation of all drug use.
We need to be more mindful about the ways in which skin penetration is associated with a particular intensity of illegality.

i.e. We need to support the decriminalization of ALL drugs, with a strong evidence base to indicate how this will lead not only to better health outcomes for people who currently use drugs (who will be less afraid to seek support), but may well actually reduce the frequency of drug use (just as the decriminalization of homosexuality is highly correlated, internationally, with the proper controlling and managing the rates of HIV seroconversion).



We need to speak out against the injustice that is the existence of colonially-brought prisons on Aboriginal land, which have led to the disproportionate incarceration of Aboriginal people in this country, and the introduction of this institution which is an independent risk factor for the spread of disease. Correlated issues include speaking out about Aboriginal deaths in custody from correctional neglect and abuse, the privatization of prisons which turns the detention of racialised people into a product for profit, and the strategic targeting of prison guard unions to educate on the evidence for introducing NSPs into prisons all across Australia as a way to minimize the spread of all blood-borne viruses within prisons.



Furthering this, it is important for us to become more cognizant and participatory in all immigrant justice work, including looking into the exploitative conditions that students and skilled migrants are brought into Australia, who may well become entrenched in systems which rely on employer-driven visas (like 457 visas) for international recruitment, driving down wages in Australia, impacting on Australian employment conditions, subjecting these visa holders to an overattribution of blame for these diminishing conditions, as well as problematic routes (or lack thereof) to permanent residency status, thus compromising on the health of all Australians due to the relative lack of health entitlements of these workers.

Another form of immigrant justice would be to take a less paternalistic stance on the health of culturally diverse communities, particularly the highly racialised communities who bear the disproportionate brunt of hepatitis B in Australia (Asians, Arabs and Africans). This is not about “blaming” Anglo-Australians nor our existing health system for the failure to address this inequity (for indeed, many communities with hep B have had hep B prior to contact with Australia), but rather about imagining what sort of country we want to be and to be serious about the accountability for the health and wellbeing of all human beings who find ourselves present on this land.

This means increasing our commitment to overt anti-racist work, and, from a bureaucrat’s perspective, the support of community-driven responses to health inequity, health literacy and political empowerment.



On aggregate, we also see that viral hepatitis, compared to HIV, affects people who are on the lower socioeconomic end of the population. As a determinant of health then, we must also speak out about the widening gap between the rich and the poor in this country, which is, in itself, a sort of spiritual tax on the “liver” of society, the seat of vitality and strength. By disenfranchising a relatively larger and larger number of people within our society, we are complicit in maintaining the economic conditions which propel people to risky behaviours. There is evidence to show that it is not only poverty alleviation, but the narrowing of the wealth-poverty gap within societies, which is highly correlated with better health outcomes for ALL people across the board, both the rich AND the poor.


Thursday, November 14, 2013

on Atheist Fundamentalism

Here's why atheist fundamentalism is problematic.

1. It is potentially colonising of Aboriginal spirituality (at the very least through a blanket denial about the legitimacy of uniquely Aboriginal ways of apprehending or sacralising phenomena)

2. It is rooted in its own improvable metaphysical and ontological faith-claims
(e.g. that all of reality is encapsulated by and reducible to the material sphere and the rationally cognizable)...

3. Denying teleology requires a teleological presupposition that the capacity to make this very denial is a superior proposition than its less sophisticated predecessors

4. What is not fully apprehended cannot either be properly denied.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

in Defence of Inaccessibility

Of course I have been inoculated with the aspiration of egalitarianism, equal access to opportunity, social relationships, a healthy and happy sexuality, and so on.

Then also there is its shadow virtue... that of Inaccessibility 

Also known pejoratively as elitism
or perhaps more "sacrally", as esotericism



And So What?

There are the implications of such an assumption that the intentionally inaccessible is/can be elitist... The implications being that we assume many other things about elitism too. A web of words and fantasies of ways of doing or being with regard to the world that evoke often negative impressions, negative feelings.

The implications of the latter assumption that the intentionally inaccessible is/can be estoeric... This connotes more of a sense of mystery or wonder about what is kept inaccessible... There may be a vigour in the pursuit of this inaccessible thing, a fetishistic pursuit of inaccessibility itself, where the chase is as much a part of the goal as the goal is in itself.

And so this is the point, for me... That the inaccessible may actually potentiate a state of rebellious possibility... a sort of "larrikinism" where the mere suggestion at the inaccessibility of a thing motivates an indignant chase, a letting go of the bliss of ignorance into a state of desirousness, passion, Truth-seeking.

When I stumble upon some roots of a Truth,
I can sometimes see how it can manifest itself in the simplest of forms...:
The calm satisfaction of a broth of perfectly brewed noodle soup, brimming with warm silky nutrition
The unselfconscious sigh of a lover you know you have been deeply pleasing with your touch
The breath of fresh blue sky breeze and the smell of the Eucalypt trees that leave soothing trails in the insides of my forehead...

The ways that Truth can be so simple,
yet sometimes also simplified, diluted, diminished
through a person's refusal to linger upon the encounter in contemplation, digestion, rumination

The ways I know in myself, when I have been too eager to explain the value of a thing or a thought, the value of an insight or imagining... When I have been to quick to interpret what I have not long taken the time to get to know...


And So What?

The Mystery implicit in any Truth itself, or any encounter with Truth hereafter...
The Mystery that suggests that language is the first colonist... In the beginning was the "word" and the whole Mystery of the world became "settled" by homeless wanderers, the first differentiated and self-identified splices of consciousness... Wandering here and there, carving boundaries upon the face of sublime chaos, of perfect pure potential, and then Naming it. Turning it/them/ourselves into things, utilities, clothes and pots and pans and silk and sex toys.

The Mystery that sees a tree and imagines wood,
that builds houses and then, just as quickly, razes them,
that sifts the sand from the ash,
 calls the former debris, and the latter our ancestors,

The Mystery that elucidates and encloses and enlightens and destroys
The Mystery that carves out pieces of reality which come in various degrees of accessibility to any given person in any given moment
and yet refuses to ever allow itself to be "Known" in any linguistic sense of the Known...

In one of my Sanskrit classes when I was studying at the University of Sydney, we learned from my Professor Andrew McGarrity that there is some evidence to suggest that words like
"Knowledge" (English)
"Gnosis" (Greek)
"Jnana" (Sanskrit)
evolve from a similar ancestral root... We can tell their common ancestry by their similarity of meanings in their respective languages to one another, and also in their commonality of an awkward combination of consonant sounds (K-Nowledge ... G-Nosis ... J-N-[y]ana)

started to take on different meanings as they differentiated themselves from the root possibility of the "knowing" of something, the apprehension of a thing.

In English, for example, to have "Knowledge" of something means to have information about it, often acquired through some material source such as a direct physical encounter, or a conversation with another person.

In the English language use of the term "Gnosis", however, we seem to inherit it from its use in a more Christian and religious sense of the term, to refer to insight (seeing from within), or a knowledge which may have come from contemplation, rumination, perhaps interaction with a non-material Being, such as, in Christianity, God, or in Buddhism perhaps, resting in a calm Knowing which is its own Subject. The Sanskrit term "Jnana" might mean similarly, and is commonly paired with other words which would denote certain facets of spiritual knowing, usually based on direct empirical evidence... a "6th sensual" knowing.

Relatedly, the negation of the Gnosis and the negation of Jnana take on similar meanings...
To be Gnostic and practice Gnosticism may be to be especially inclusive of contemplative or meditative practice as a way of "knowing" phenomena
To be Agnostic and practice Agnosticism may be to be less inclusive of cotemplative of meditative practice as a way of "knowing" phenomena... In English, of course, the term agnostic would suggest an ambivalence about the truth claims of a practices and worldviews that may be generated or inspired by states of contemplative expression, such as improvable concepts like "God" or "Buddhanature" for which I am sure there would be many other linguistic equivalents in various world religions...

This would be true also of a term like "Ajnana", suggesting agnosticism, often with connotations of being in a state of ignorance. Linguistically, then, Jnana would be normatively more of an aspirational form of knowing, rather than a way in which you and I would normally have knowledge about the world.

And what way is that?

The way which co-evolved with how we pronounced the word...
The loss of the double-consonant sound... The loss of the "K-N" in "know", and its correlative connotative simplification...

We simply "noe" something like we "know" something.


And So What?

All of this analysis is, of course, biased by the fact that this interpretation is the result of my own limited encounters with speakers and fluent writers of these languages aside from English. Without having primary sources upon which I can base my analysis as above, all of this is just speculation.

By confessing my being "just speculative", I have confessed my reverence for the possibility of "inaccessible" knowledge. I have consented to a worldview which agrees that there is a hierarchy of "ways of knowing" and "things worth knowing", and that my current understandings and methodologies will necessarily always remain somewhat disconnected from the phenomena I am attempting to describe.

Yet, without the possibility of this Mystery, for me, I might not even have begun this challenge of Seeking Truth, of being a Truth-Seeker.

Seeking Truth gives me vitality and strength. It challenges me to accountability and honesty, and it keeps me accountable and honest.
Avoiding Truth mires me in habit and fearfulness, or in addictions and cowardice, and it keeps me unaccountable and dishonest.

I am a Human Being.
My understanding of a Human truth, perhaps one of the universal truths that cross human cultures, is that we all have the innate orientation to both Seek Truth and to Avoid Truth.
To Seek Truth, some of us study, contemplate, converse, travel, make love
To Avoid Truth, some of us study, contemplate, converse, travel, make love.


And So What?

There are no answers until there are questions. There are no questions until there is uncertainty. There is no uncertainty unless there is forgetfulness. There is no forgetfulness unless... I have forgotten where I was going with this.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Cranberries

I have been listening to the Cranberries again a lot recently. In particular, their first album:

"Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We?"

Bringing back memories of being in my air conditioned room, aged 13, playing computer games and feeling very special indeed. The super-saturated intense world of child Me, colours more intense, the will to wander great indeed.

7 of Pentacles

7 of Pentacles
Alert and contemplating the fruits of my labour
of what has sprouted and bloomed
and what other seeds I have sown that may soon take root

I wait and imagine the sky, ready to receive more inquiry and wonder
and Awe

I allow myself the grandeur of pride
in my work well done
my garden well made
my home ready, waiting for me to arrive
each day

There is work yet to be done, this is sure ready,
but in the meantime I look forward
to working on my harvest

Asylum

as in... Madness
that spurs move, forced and chosen dislocation, exile
both "self-"imposed as well as
from gargantuan Other;
Tyrant so sick
He permanently burrows himself into all further generations'
responsibilities for Healing.

Oh... young people. Young people who are people who are
all Youth and perspicacity
chaotic sharpness, incendiary and relentless
or else; all too easily defeated
reposed in bed, without glory nor the Will to it

Asylum, as in
sought, chosen
as in, Madness
as in some midnight sky of dangerous noises
inspiring departure

I feel pain, and know asylum
I sought refuge and now see asylum
I speak because I choose to reclaim all metaphor
from the co-optation of government
rendering other humans as the parts of ourselves
that we are unwilling to face

Friday, October 25, 2013

Seroconvert!

From a self, prior, uncertain, forgetful
to one who commits to ancestral memory,
blood awareness

Thursday, October 24, 2013

a brief Ontology of Race

"Race does not exist [biologically]"...
And in a (small 'l') liberal worldview, that is why we do not talk about Racism. Instead, we talk about culture, of language, of religion, of ancestry, of geography, of migrant status. We skirt around issues of Race and Racism, conflating the empty signifier of Race (i.e. its biologically indeterminable nature) with total non-existence.

I'd like to try...:
"Race does not exist [biologically], and yet..."
...Yet... it is ontologically real by virtue of its being a socially meaningful way in which we categorise one another. A lived reality for all of us. Race is a strange residue of the unfolding of human culture and history, the vestiges of power and a lack thereof imprinting themselves upon our bodies. Any recourse to "predictability" (as regard to a person's physical characteristics, assumed or otherwise, and their psycho-spiritual character) posits the meaningfulness of a person's body (and therefore their presumed ancestry) as an indicator of personality or behaviour. Even "unpredictability" is a falsehood, even if it is universally applied to both dominant and marginalised racial groups. Unpredictability itself assumes a blank-slatedness to human character, a non-relation between Bodies and Culture which is as much contingent on falsehood as racialised predictability is.

Presented with the empty vessels that are "Race" and racial categories, I choose to notice how they have been filled by language, by misnomers, by violent avoidance. I acknowledge that I see Race, though not clearly; Racial categories are ever-shifting... They come in and out of being... As non-existent yet hypnotising as waves crashing upon a reluctant shore...

Even in avoiding them, we give rise to new racialised terms... For example, "Ghetto" or "CALD" (culturally and linguistically diverse), which purport to primarily reference class and culture, but are, indeed, deeply steeped in racialised assumptions of normalcy (i.e. Middle-Class White Citizenship).

Race does not exist. Yet Racism is real, the lived experience of Race is real, and it is Racialisation which undergirds our avoidance. Some of us surf upon the proverbial waves of this ephemerality (of Race).

Others of us drown.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

On human rights


Human Rights are not an infallible piece of intellectual technology to address the ills and sufferings of the world... After all, when we pronounce certain groups of living beings as Less-Than-Human, then constantly reiterating the importance of respecting "human rights" is a flawed political strategy for changing the course of our conversation. After all, if I am consistently seeing some group of people as "not-human" or "less-than-fully-human" or indeed, even "irreparably flawed human" (i.e. too broken for use), then Human Rights need not possibly apply fully to these beings...

Do I offer an alternative?

Experiment. Experiment with a discourse and practice of human rights as it exists and as it evolves,
And experiment with noticing how we treat all living beings whom we do not regard as human... Dogs, cattle, chickens, birds, rats, roaches, poisonous spiders, beetles, squid, bears, wolves,
or creatures of our imaginations, like dragons and phoenixes and gnomes and fairies
and still, notice how we react...
and notice how we notice. Then I ask myself, "how am I choosing to see the world in any given moment?"

"And to what extent have my choices been shaped, liberated, or constrained because of my circumstances, of my background, of my ancestral baggage, of my inheritance, or my lack of an inheritance, of my physical ability or disability, of my sex or my gender or how I choose to do sex or gender, or because of what I have consumed, eaten, drank, during the course of my life til now that has shaped my body, my face, my health, my energy, my virility?"

How would having answers determine the fate of our historical moment and our future, in determining the choices I could or will make?

In asking these questions, I release my need for answers...
I simply wish to ask the questions
and allow the life I lead
to also be the inquiry.

Monday, August 12, 2013

on the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Barry Schwarz covered this Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) phenomenon well, in what he calls the "Paradox of Choice"...:



Where, after a certain point, being presented with more options for choice actually leads to diminishing returns in terms of reported satisfaction for the choices we have made... Basically because we become infected with FOMO.

Facebook triggers FOMO for me.

Xenocentrism

Also from Wikipedia:
"Xenocentrism is the preference for the products, styles, or ideas of someone else's culture rather than of one's own.[1] The concept is considered a subjective view of cultural relativism.[2] One example is the romanticization of the noble savage in the 18th century primitivism movement in European art, philosophy and ethnography.[3]"

Related to Cultural Cringe, which I've explored in a preliminary way in my previous post.

An interesting presentation on Xenocentrism and Ethnocentrism.

Considering:

The habit of Xenocentrism can be manifest in a number of different ways, which includes Cultural Cringe, but can also be ethnic-fetishism (e.g. oh Japanese food is so much better [than our own national / ethnic cuisine]).

Some reflections on Cultural Cringe

What is Cultural Cringe?


According to the wikipedia entry on Cultural Cringe,

"Cultural cringe, in cultural studies and social anthropology, is an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries. It is closely related, although not identical, to the concept of colonial mentality, and is often linked with the display of anti-intellectual attitudes towards thinkers, scientists and artists who originate from a colonial or post-colonial nation. It can also be manifested in individuals in the form of cultural alienation. In many cases, cultural cringe, or an equivalent term, is an accusation made by a fellow-national, who decries the inferiority complex and asserts the merits of the national culture."



in particular, in Australia...:


"The term cultural cringe is most commonly used in Australia, where it is believed by some to be a fact of Australian cultural life.[12] In Another Look at the cultural cringe,[10] the Australian academic Leonard John Hume examined the idea of cultural cringe as an oversimplification of the complexities of Australian history and culture. His controversial essay argues that "The cultural cringe ... did not exist, but it was needed, and so it was invented."


The cultural cringe can be expressed in the almost obsessive curiosity of Australians to know what foreigners think of Australia and its culture.[13]


Some commentators claim the cultural cringe particularly affects local television programming in Australia,[14] which is heavily influenced by imported shows, mainly of American origin. The Federal government has legislated to keep a quota of Australian content (Australian Content Standard and Television Program Standard 23).


Some argue that a form of cultural cringe resulted in anti-heritage attitudes which led to the demolition of many world class pre-war buildings in Melbourne, Brisbaneand Sydney, destroying some of the world's best examples of Victorian architecture.[15] Modernism was promoted to many Australians as casting off imperial Europe to rebuild a new independent identity, and the existing pre-war architecture, which was a feature of Australian cities, was denigrated.[16] This resulted in many calls to demolish the Royal Exhibition Building, labelled the derogatory term "white elephant". It was not until Queen Elizabeth II granted the building Royal status that Australians began to recognise its value. The building became the first in Australia to be given World Heritage status.[17] This reaction against the cultural cringe continues in some fields such as architecture, where local architects are shunned for using introduced styles.[18]


It has also been claimed that cultural cringe has led to federal government information technology contracts going to large foreign multinationals, rather than domestic IT companies.[19]


Another manifestation of cultural cringe is the "Convict Stain". Many Australians felt a sense of shame about the existence of British Convicts in what is now Australia, and many did not even attempt to investigate their families' origins, for fear that they could be descended from criminals. This was known as the Convict Stain, and it made research all the more difficult. It was most evident in sport, where people with known convict heritage were sometimes banned from sporting clubs. For example, in cricket, the Melbourne Cricket Club has a well known Convict Stain policy, making exception for very few, most notably Tom Wills the inventor of Australian rules football. The effect can be reinforced in Britain, where Australian tourists have been asked in jest if they are "returning to the scene of the crime". In recent decades community attitudes have changed, and many Australians with convict ancestors are now more comfortable investigating and discussing their past, wearing their forbears status almost as a badge of pride. Colloquially, attempts by non-Australians to negatively connotate convict pasts are laughed off by Australians, who are now more inclined to associate criminal forbears as evidence for the possession of more positively perceived Australian attributes such as disrespect for authority.[20]"






I am interested in the psychology of Cultural Cringe (CC)...



An experience of many friends of mine here in Australia, disproportionately queer people of colour, who choose to or deeply fantasise about leaving Australia to make a better life for themselves/ourselves in other spaces that we presume to be either more friendly to queer people or to people of colour, or to both. In particular, many acquaintances and comrades of mine have sought refuge in cities like Toronto, New York, and Oakland.






Other thoughts:

About Australian denialism... a sense of a lack of understanding or willingness to understand our own history, both by the Anglo-Australian majority, as well as by many recent migrants (of colour)...

The hapless fixation and fetishisation of American and British cultural values (of which I am, of course, also unfortunately complicit).





Some nuances between types of CC:

e.g. Growing up in Singapore, I also had denigrating perceptions of the culture I was growing up in, believing it (and by extension myself) inferior to "Western" cultural values and norms, which I associated with liberation (from Confucian patriarchal homophobic creatively-stifling values) and Ecstasis (particularly of the American variety). This was, of course, deeply racialised for me too.

Comparing this to the Australian CC, which is not so much "postcolonial" as still deeply imperialist and colonial (Australia, of course, being a country in which the colonist settlers still maintain power and cultural hegemony in determining the self-concept of the nation).




Other thoughts about CC, in terms of devaluing the intellectual and creative contributions of fellow countrypeople, or, when reactively/parochially asserted, they still come across as disproportionately Anglo. So a cycle of CC in me, in my relationship to Australian citizenship. I despair of the internalisation of American-centric values in myself, knowing them to be deeply problematic, while simultaneously I recapitulate certain norms of CC when I lambast Australian cultural production as being myopic, racist, unsophisticated and "backward".





So an exploration of some sort of a remedy, perhaps implicit in a narrative potential in Australia:

Around multiculturalism, internationalism, proximity to Asia, and the unfinished business of engaging with Aboriginal Australian demands for sovereignty. To explore the creative potential in this, not for "international acclaim", but indeed, for personal interest, for creation of new autopoietic patterns within containers of my own making (in which I, along with other queerAustralians[ofColour]) actively choose to give one another recognition, skillshare, etc. and for that to be perfect-in-itself.




More to come...

Monday, April 22, 2013

Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy

"Instead, as I have also argued, we may wish to rearticulate our understanding of white supremacy by not assuming that it is enacted in a single fashion; rather, white supremacy is constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated, logics. I would argue that the three primary logics of white supremacy in the US context include: (1) slaveability/anti-black racism, which anchors capitalism; (2) genocide, which anchors colonialism; and (3) orientalism, which anchors war."

[...]


What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced by the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars. For example, all non-Native peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. All non-black peoples are promised that if they conform, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And black and Native peoples are promised that they will advance economically and politically if they join US wars to spread “democracy”. Thus, organising by people of colour must be premised on making strategic alliances with one another, based on where we are situated within the larger political economy. Coalition work is based on organising not just around oppression, but also around complicity in the oppression of other peoples as well as our own."



- Andrea Smith, 'Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy', from Global Dialogue Vol 12 No 2, Summer/Autumn 2010 http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=488

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

BOOK REVIEW: Monsters, Miracles & Mayonnaise

This book is nothing if not charming. I picked it up in Kinokuniya, one of Singapore's last surviving large bookstores (somehow bookstores have not proliferated in the same way as malls. Somehow.) which still allows you to browse books. I opened it in the middle of a comic story about the author as a young boy, discovering that the "itch" inside his shoe that he had been worrying at all day was in fact a cockroach. It's a very short comic (in both senses) story, that perfectly captures a certain innocence and the intensity of the emotion of disgust when one is very young, along with its lingering effects.

Other stories in the book are more fantastical. A story about a man obsessed with obtaining a new "thingy" would be heavy-handed in its allegorical moralizing, but for the well-paced advancement of the story, and extremely appealing artwork. The author, who goes by "drewscape" for this book, sometimes veers into the banal (the first story's conclusion, in particular, I found particularly weak), but the drawings and quirky little ideas or semi-self-conscious observations (one of my favorites were a young narrator's asides on the merits of a pink water bottle for boys) more than make up for any lapses.

This book is not (yet!) available on Amazon, but is probably at various local Singapore bookstores, along with, of course, Kinokuniya. Here's the publisher's page.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

on Vocation

What is my life's work?

This word: Vocation

According to wikipedia:
"A vocation (Latin vocātiō - a call, summons) is an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which he or she is suited, trained, or qualified. Though now often used in non-religious contexts, the meanings of the term originated in Christianity."



I am expressing this curiousity...
What is my life's work? What "occupation" am I drawn to for which I am (uniquely?) suited, trained or qualified?

To what extent am I already doing my life's work? To what extent am I already being financially compensated for what I am doing? To what extent is financial compensation important as part of the definition of "legitimate" vocation?

If my material needs are being met, then what else is there left? To what extent are concerns about an abstract future in which I am completely and utterly reliant on resources acquired and amassed from my own labour playing a part in how I think of work and vocation?



Here are some...:
Vocation is about friendship, justice, creativity, healing woundedness, catalysing knowledges which begin from wholeness (i.e. "I was / We were never really wounded")

Vocation is about...
completing unfinished business, with grace, mindful attention, flexibility, patience...
The unfinished business of the ills unleashed by colonialism, capitalism

Vocation is meditation & washing dishes
Vocation is every moment as "free time", time freely used to do whatever it is that I am doing, not doing whatever it is that I am not doing, being whoever it is I am being, and not being whoever it is that I am not being.


Vocation is in education, exploration, learning
Vocation is on unlearning, keeping still



Vocation is also all the icky stuff:
Impatience, annoyance, anger, betrayals, disappointments
Vocation is the work in integrating all these 
(and seeing, perhaps, how they are already perfect articulations of that which is already integrated).



Vocation, my life's work... Is vocation a luxury?
I am a religious man, sometimes... Religious, intentionally, triggering revolt from my Rational-Atheist self that decries New Age nonsense (and is sometimes femme-phobic, averse to colour, desperately fearful of mistake, conflating all error with utter failure)


I want to start a Business...
My Business is already started! I am in the middle of my daily business, it is none of your business, it is All of your business.

My business is partially allowing deepening, broadening awareness of all the business of the world, and about knowing my capacities and limitations, knowing what is possible and not-yet possible, seeing the arbitrariness of these impositions, and then choosing to act anyway. Or not act. Or assisting others in acting.


So here:

Vocation is:
Availability as an assistant.
A catalyst.

Balancing the fine tipping-point line between innovation and tradition.
Assisting others in their already-excellent work.

Vocation is:
Pouring tea,
putting labels on envelopes,
calling a friend, saying
"I don't know, what do you think?"

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Offense

Just cuz I'm not offended...

Doesn't mean I don't understand why it's offensive
and it doesn't mean I don't understand why others ARE offended,
and it doesn't mean I won't want to hold the person/people/organisation accountable for behaving in insensitive and offensive ways
and it doesn't mean that I don't want to support you/them work through the difficult experience of feeling offense

It may just simply mean:
I'm not offended.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Masters of Integrative and Transformative Studies

next week at the Oases Graduate School.




From their website:

*****
As A Participant In The Program You Will:

- Develop frameworks for social, environmental and personal sustainability.
- Work with and influence processes of social change.
- Engage multiple ways of learning and knowing, through the mind, imagination, heart and body.
- Become more conscious of the choices you make every day and reflect on their ecological, aesthetic, social, spiritual, ethical and other implications.
- Maintain integrity in situations that challenge your convictions and assumptions.
- Sustain spirit in the midst of potentially dispiriting social and ecological realities.
- Create learning moments in your everyday life.


At the core of the program are ongoing Integrative Conversations, creating spaces where you debrief, engage with, reflect on and share your learning and practice with other course participants and course facilitators.

Four other interconnected units (each of 4 days) in first year provide entries into the core foundational pools of knowledge which weave through all other units:


- Ecological; Remembering, discovering and enacting our part in nature
- Aesthetic; Becoming alive to the senses and wonder
- Social; Revisiting relationship – how did we become the way we are?
- Spiritual; Renewing and transcending our inner worlds


*****




My current intention is to do a systematic exploration, over the course of my Masters, of Developmental Justice.... that is, to explore waves of possibility around the metaphor of "justice" that include and go beyond materialist formations of justice... in other words, to include materialist formations (e.g. social justice discourse around economics and the regulation of bodies), AND also conceptions of justice which involve the (interplay between the) psycho-spiritual (e.g. the evolution of consciousness through its various states and stages of manifestation and dissolution), the ecological (e.g. the "world" of the cosmos and its history, which conditions and is conditioned by our sociality), and the aesthetic (e.g. the justice that is enabled through the radical practice of music, art, play, and not simply through a retrospective discourse on these)...

Assimilation // Integration

I am thinking about the differences between Assimilation and Integration.


Assimilation


Etymologically, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word Assimilation comes
from Old French assimilacion, from Latin assimilationem (nom. assimilatio)
"likeness, similarity"


Here, I describe cultural and political Assimilation as the ways in which groups of people who are politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised (e.g. new migrants, colonised people) within a broader polity start to adopt the customs, language, and political ideals of dominant groups. To achieve as much as possible within existing normative frameworks of citizenship.

I describe Assimilationism as ways in which Assimilation becomes concretised as a goal for politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised groups of people. In other words, the goal of Assimilationism is not to challenge the dialectic of Assimilation nor to critique normative frameworks, but rather to succeed within them. To become "like" and "similar to" the dominant.

For a long time, I have self-described as "Anti-assimilationist". Anti-assimilationism is itself one possible attitudinal position I could take within a multicultural perspective. In other words, for me, and for a long time, the goal was for these individuals and groups of people to explore self-determination and develop their own frameworks and notions of success and community, beyond normative ideals, and capitulation to the demands of the dominant.





All that said, my stance has shifted somewhat...

Integration


Etymologically, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word Integration comes
from French intégration and directly from Latin integrationem (nom. integratio)
"renewal, restoration"


Here, I describe Integration as the ways in which individuals and groups of people, both those of us who are politically and materially disadvantaged/marginalised AND those of us who are privileged beneficiaries of our enfranchisement/citizenship actually shape one another.

I would thus describe Integrationism partially as the way that this process of shaping one another (both the dominant and marginal groups) becomes more aspirational, and indicative at least of the possibility for "renewal" and "restoration" of one another in this very shaping. One example could be the ways in which asylum seekers, through participation in broader host cultures, experience a "renewal" and "restoration" of their own self-capacity to maintain traditions or livelihood that would have been politically dangerous or unfeasible in their countries of origin, and simultaneously, that the host culture necessarily enlarges its own capacity to literally hold "the Other" within its self-concept.

Integration is also where the "Centre" and its "Periphery" (Other) both dissolve; are integrated.



Integration, from a few perspectives

In a sense, an Integrationist approach also includes the possibility of the Anti-assimilationist perspective. After all, the very frameworks of "self-determination" and "community" and so on require at the very least:

1. An inculcation into these values as part of an existent political possibility within the diversity of normative political frameworks within a polity.

2. A common language with which people can communicate with one another on these, and thus be also recognised by others as doing and enacting these very values.

When I am in a room full of other people of colour in Australia, as one example, communicating Anti-assimilationist viewpoints, the other presumption is that we are already integrated enough in existing normative frameworks that we could, for example, choose to speak with one another in English (which likely was not the mother tongue of many of our immediate families/ancestors).

With English as an inherited colonial language, which has also become my lingua franca (for better or for worse) in communicating political ideals, it necessarily means that all ideals are communicated within the liberational potential and limitations of that language. In other words, all ideals, along with the colonial English language medium itself, are "integrated" in their very expression, as well as in their intelligibility and coherence to others.

The other point here then, is that an Integrationist approach would also, by necessity, include an Assimilationist approach. In that: I have assimilated enough of normative cultural expectations of me (to, for example, engage the dominant political system, or to speak its language simply to survive), that I am enabled to then also challenge assimilation.



The "Problem" with Integrationism

For strict Assimilationists, Integration is unintelligible, and likely extremely confronting, to choose to hold onto value systems that are not kindly regarded within dominant society. Why choose to fight that battle, when you can play the existing game well and see enough role models of "success" that you could then escape conditions of bare survival? Here, Integration would be likely conflated with Anti-assimilationism, and disregarded as elitist.

For strict Anti-assimilationists, it is likely to be perceived as a cop-out to allow for political engagement to rest on the ways we have already assimilated... Far more viable, particularly for vulnerable and marginalised communities, to focus on the ways that dominant culture has to become more accomodating of difference and diversity, than to acknowledge that this very demand for accomodation is precisely a negotiation which, at its most powerful, compelling, and creative, involves mutuality in transformation and change. Integration would be conflated with Assimilation (the demand strictly for the marginalised person/group to change) and may be disregarded as "scab"-ish.

Another problem here as well is that the term "integration" is often used as synonymous with "assimilation" (so that to "integrate someone/a community" is equivalent to saying to "assimilate someone/a community into dominant society['s norms and values]".

Within an Integrationist perspective, Integration would also have to account for accomodating and integrating its very negation. In other words, a polity which is truly pluralistic and with the potential for integration of large groups of incredibly diverse and sometimes seemingly paradoxical cultural drives, must necessarily accomodate both Assimilationist and Anti-Assimilationist criticisms of Integration, while also necessarily protecting the sanctity of this very accommodational drive which conditions the possibility that such divergent views can even be in dialogue with one another.

In other words, not that X (marginal-individual/community) is "integrated into" Y (dominant/hegemonic-culture/community), but rather:
X & Y are integrated



Integration, Again

This very accommodation of divergent views, therefore, and indeed, the ability for a polity not only to "wrestle" with divergent views, but also to "accommodate" them (while strictly protecting the sanctity of the freedom for accomodation) is the very expression of Integrationism...

** Note: I have throughout this essay meant the word "accommodate" to connote "provide shelter for", rather than its other possible connotation of "merely tolerate"

In other words, Integrationism is not necessarily a "view within" or a "perspective on", but is an "orientation to" cultural politics. It is also a dialectical process that does not belong either exclusively to hegemonic groups nor to marginalised groups.

To "integrate" is to breathe with one another, to hold one another's views, to make room for them, to sleep on them, to make decisions of mutual benefit and with sincerity and a baseline recognition of our common humanity and common drive to alleviate our suffering in our lives.

Integrationism, to me, thus necessarily moves beyond the discursive... into the breath, the body, the bodily tensions and releases which are themselves "digestive" and integrative of diversity and universalism, divergence and convergence.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

HIV Prevention for Gay Men (in Australia)

I wrote this piece October 2010...

So the situation around the industrialised world
is that HIV seroconversion rates are generally rising again
in gay men (and other men who have sex with men, or "MSMs," to use HIV Educator parlance...)

I reckon that HIV prevention work has become stuck in a bit of a defeated, lethargic deadlock...
Our work needs to become more 'holistic'...
in that, even though we understand that the biological transmission of HIV
occurs within the context of specific ACTS,
and often confined disproportionately to specific 'at-risk' groups of people (MSMs, injecting drug users, sex workers (though not so much in Australia), and migrants from high-prevalence countries),
we cannot remain oblivious to the contexts and social circumstances
which condition the possibility for these acts to occur,
and indeed, precipitate the emergence
of even the desire to act in the ways we do...

In other words, we need to question the biological reductionism/determinism
implicit in hegemonic forms of HIV prevention,
which pay only lip service
to the idea that interventions should come in ways
that would be 'culturally appropriate' for the communities targeted

We know:
Unprotected anal sex with casual partners is increasing among gay men...
This is correlated with a rise in HIV infections,
though they have stabilised in the past few years here in NSW...

There is a lack of vision, I believe,
among the 'old guard' of HIV educators,
who see a reduction in HIV seroconversions as too lofty a goal
and who are content to celebrate the stability of seroconversions
at a rate that is EXTREMELY low, by world standards.

Yet, I believe:
If gay men are increasingly choosing not to use condoms,
our JOB as HIV educators is not only to help look for or name
other methods of HIV Risk Reduction Strategies (RRS)
to assist these men in making safe(r) choices about their sex lives
given their CURRENT sexual decisions in the contexts and cultures they exist...

It is ALSO our job to question and interrogate
the cultures in which unsafe behaviours become desireable
the cultures which precipitate and give rise to the
desireability of these behaviours...
in particular, and especially
unprotected anal sex with casual partners.

No, our job is not to be moral police, of course...
However, we do need to start talking ethics.
Our work needs to be informed by ethical conversations.

Should we remain forever amoral about gay men's sexuality?

I suspect that many of us have become wedded
in significant and unacknowledged part
to the continuing existence of HIV
to justify continuing in the line of work that we have become most familiar with.
many of us have had the experience of being sexually active gay men
synonymous with HIV
and, as such,
may well perceive the discontinuation and eradication of HIV
as a legitimate threat to community.

I write this not to mock or to belittle
...
this is not a cultural trend that is unique to gay people;
it does not make us uniquely pathological...
the experience of victimhood-as-identity is a real, complex reality for many of us,
and indeed, there is even an intelligence in this:

For one, and this is the most obvious one,
we have been and are often still victimised...!
We are victimised by homophobia, internal, interpersonal, and institutional
that make it such that the unique health concerns we have
are stigmatised, marginalised, or ignored completely.
For some of us, perhaps even a whole generation of us,
many of our partnerships, friendships, and even the experience of full participatory citizenship
have been based on organising around this victimhood, and in spaces that existed BECAUSE we were marginalised.

There are REAL, psychological traumas that we can and will face
should we be willing to question this weddedness...
Though I believe that the time is right to do just this,
and rigorously,
we need to do it with a lot of patience,
naked honesty, compassion.

Should we be able to do this,
and by this, I reiterate to mean:
rigorously addressing our ressentiment identities with
patience, honesty and compassion;
we may arrive at some interesting insights.
I will share some that I have come to:



1. As gay men, we are male-socialised

This means that we are socialised into patterns of self-understanding and behaviour
which often take on the form which we believe
will legitimate our claim to rightful masculinity
this can look like
having a lot of diverse sexual experiences
with a lot of different people
which we may associate not only with physiological pleasure,
but also with masculine-gender approval... and these two pleasures
are not necessarily separable...
Some of our risk-taking behaviours
may conform with our own deepest notions and expectations
of ourselves as men...

At the same time, there is an increasing over-reliance
on certain types of technologies and discourses
in order to bolster this sense of our gendered selves
which may actually, in my opinion,
be becoming incredibly toxic.

For example, the increasing abuse of viagra to treat erectile dysfunction,
the chronic abuse of alcohol and other mind-altering substances in order to engage a sexual freedom/release from the social constraints that hold us back from what we believe to be our gendered/animal-authenticity,
in order to be and remain hard,
in order to associate our "presence" in sex to be deeply associated with hardness,
vigour,
athleticism,
etc.

Yes, these lead to high risk behaviours.
I believe we need, AS HEALTH PROMOTERS, to interrogate and question the ways that our culture has been forming around androcentrism, misogyny, and an unhealthy over-fetishism of hard, racist and sexist masculinity.
It is not enough to simply state, "these are the acts that men are engaging in... now how can we ask them to do it more safely?"
It is important for us to ask questions of Why?
and to not accept that the typical qualitative responses of "for pleasure" are enough...
We must be willing to dig deeper,
"And what is the role of pleasure in our lives? What, if any, is our entitlement to pleasure? Where does that come from? Is pleasure the most central goal in our sex lives?"


If we interrogate ourselves in this manner, we may find out some things, which will require further interrogation...:

a. As human beings, we are typically fettered by our attachments to pleasure and avoidance of pain. For gay men (in Sydney), these attachments express themselves in certain patterns unique to our experience here... We can trace patterns of consumption, attitudes, behaviours that may well indicate the nature of these attachments.

Are there institutions, spaces, and health promotion ideas that can be uniquely suited for gay men to address this issue in a safe way?


b. This interrogation is OUR JOB IN OUR OWN LIVES AS GAY MEN. We need to do this for ourselves first and foremost, and in an ongoing way, before we can even consider this as a viable stance for others.


c. This is also our job as HIV Educators.



2. The strategic mobilisation to promote the use of condoms among MSMs was revolutionary.

This revolution was based on a number of different circumstances:
--> People were dying of AIDS(-related illnesses),
and this was debilitating and confronting...
--> Condom use was NOT ALREADY NORMATIVE in our sex lives
--> Culture at large was not particularly accepting of homosexual sex in the first place.

Mobilising around condom use amidst these circumstances has led to several equally revolutionary outcomes:
--> Fewer and fewer people getting infected with HIV
--> The concept of the gay community increasingly being taken seriously by government (at least in Australia)
--> The concept of "gay health" being more accepted as a legitimate concern not only to public health officials, but also to gay men ourselves (that our health was worth thinking about and mobilising around)
--> A proliferation of the discourse of gay sexuality and non-normative gay relationships being taken more seriously

Given that this original mobilisation around HIV/AIDs and condom use was disproportionately headed by gay men ourselves (along with our wonderfully supportive allies), this was truly the synthesis and formation of a powerful new ethics and politics of sexuality.

We noted:
Our sexual behaviours, in their current, unfettered forms,
are killing us.
We need, thus, to CHANGE OUR BEHAVIOURS
and fuck what society thinks, we NEED THE MONEY TO FUND THIS MESSAGE.


Now that is some powerful stuff.

However, at this point, at least here in Sydney, I believe we have grown lethargic and complacent, even "impotent" in our efforts.
Now that HIV is less of a death sentence,
and, at least here in Australia, free/extremely cheap and highly subsidised anti-retroviral treatments mean living longer, healthier lives with HIV,
this is correlated with increasing risk-behaviour among gay men...
More and more gay men are engaging in unprotected anal intercourse with casual partners (UAIC) at least some of the time.

In Australia, although seroconversion rates have remained stable since 2007 (around 1000 a year),
they are about a third higher than they were at their lowest point in mid 2000s (the highest ever was in the mid-1990s).

What we do know is that gay men have been engaging a wide variety of different non-condom-based HIV Risk Reduction Strategies (RRS) to inform our sexual decision making around unprotected anal sex.

These include:
Serosorting (choosing partners of the same HIV sero-status as yourself)
Negotiated Safety (HIV negative partners choosing to have agreements in their relationship to have unprotected anal sex with just each other, conditioned also by getting tested both during and after the window period of their last unsafe sexual encounter, and with a commitment to ongoing communication and re-negotiation of the agreements in their relationship)
Strategic Positioning (choosing to top instead of bottom, as this poses a marginally lower risk of getting HIV)
The use of Undetectable Viral Load (in HIV+ guys),
and Withdrawal from fucking before ejaculation
in order to lower the risk of a seroconversion happening between partners.

This is all fine, and good, and important to engage and talk about as health educators.

But I believe that it is pathetic that we imagine, as health educators, that this is going to be either especially revolutionary, or even especially efficacious in our efforts.

Why?

One...
Gay men have been doing this from the beginning, albeit without naming these strategies with the 'industry' terms as I have defined them above. By simply naming these strategies as a reality, we are not exactly calling for a shift in behavioural patterns en masse into lower risk behaviours.

Two...
While the correct use of Risk Reduction Strategies may lower our collective risk for another explosion of seroconversions in our communities, I do not believe that this is a brave enough goal. Nor, if it is true that gay men are ALREADY employing these strategies, is this even a GOAL for HIV educators.

Of course, I recognise that circumstances have changed since we first mobilised around condom use:
--> Fewer and fewer people are getting, let alone dying of AIDS(-related illnesses) in Australia
--> Condom use IS NORMATIVE (a majority of gay men use condoms a majority of time with a majority of their partners)
--> Culture at large is increasingly accepting (though not fully) of homosexuality

It is NO SMALL FEAT that seroconversions are not only stable in New South Wales, but also at an incredibly LOW level... (at a rate of about 1:14, when we compare with what is going on in the USA)

Still, I believe we can have loftier goals for HIV education.

When Michel Sidibé, the Executive Director to UNAIDS, came to visit Sydney recently, he praised the Australian response to HIV for both our grassroots movement as well as our government's swift cooperation with gay activists and commitment to harm reduction.

Sidibé ended his speech by suggesting a goal for New South Wales:
To completely eradicate seroconversions.

I take this very seriously.

Is this possible?

Let us dream this.

What would it take?

It would take a revolution in our community, and this is, as I said before, not only about addressing sexual behaviours, but also interrogating the cultural reasons we are wedded to specific behaviours as some of the most authentic expressions of selfhood.

I am expediently taking the stance:
OK, let's not immediately make a commitment to behavioural change as a community.
But let us promote and FUND dialogue, not just in our gay communities,
but with EACH OTHER as health educators,
around the issue of ethics and pleasure.
Let us stop fetishising either extreme of sexual conservatism or sexual liberalism as inherently appropriate approaches to sexuality. We also know that condom-based harm reduction alone is no longer the middle way for health promoters.

So now what?

I believe we need to start focusing on advocating for many other things.
HIV should be one of a whole gamut of health concerns that we should consider in a broader umbrella idea of "gay health."

This means we need to address, AS HIV Educators, not only high risk BEHAVIOURS,
but also high risk CONDITIONS & CIRCUMSTANCES.
We need to dare to devote a lot more of our $ that is being designated to HIV prevention into SOCIAL JUSTICE and holistic health needs.
We need to address bullying, homophobia, legal barriers to full equality (in marriage, military, property laws, etc.).
We need to address our drug addictions, our sex addictions, our ressentiment.
We need to address ongoing oppressions from within and from without our own community, including homophobia, transphoba, sexism, ableism, adultism, racism, classism, and so on.
We need to address white supremacy, male supremacy, capitalist/bourgeois supremacy, etc.
We need to listen to the voices of young gay men
who are saying, quite loudly,
that we want not only the sexual freedom and liberation that we are grateful to previous generations for having won for us, in terms of the liberalisation of sexual choices,
but we also want emotional security, friendship, intimacy.
We are upset about the ways that urbanised, consumer gay culture is intoxicated by sex. We are upset about how young men's beautiful bodies are exploited for marketing and selling us gay badges. We are angry about entering a working world which demands our physical, emotional, and intellectual labour but promises us not satisfaction but exhaustion and intoxication.

If we are serious about HIV prevention
we must recognise that preventing HIV is only of marginal interest for most gay men in our lives. HIV no longer = Death, which is AMAZING.
At the same time, No-HIV does not = MORE LIFE either.

Far more important to me, as an HIV Educator
to promote a life worth living,
not just a disease worth preventing.

in San Francisco...

this is an old piece I wrote when I was visiting San Francisco, on June 13, 2011


In San Francisco ...

In San francisco, I feel playful.

One of my best friends in the world picks me up from the airport... and then suddenly the city sprawls before me like a lucid wet dream;

Testament to local investment in cool politik, the walls of almost every district are replete with effervescent murals showcasing the very finest of contemporary American urban psychedelia and art-activism. San Francisco is easily one of the world’s most muraled cities… A legacy which gifts the city's residents with their own ever-changing art gallery on their way to work and play, everyday.

Here, my heart beats calmly with the slightest tinge of melancholy, for I am both indigenous of and tourist to this land. I have ‘grown up’ here (in my unapologetically spiritualist rendering of the term: as a young adult coming into my own emotionally, sexually, intellectually, spiritually), and so the Bay Area is my HOME…

But I also am legally a tourist, without rights of residence, employment, healthcare, and so on… and then, and then… but still, but still…

In San Francisco, I feel desireable.

I need not leave anything out of my speech, my sway, or my strut: I am artist, poet, queer Asian man, boy, hippie, poseur, superstar, post-loser, young activist, musician, global immigrant. I can take identity politic or I can leave it, but I am blessed with options. On my first night out in the Castro, I am sweetly spoken to by a gorgeous 20something Latino man from central California, whom my compadres had previously checked out while I had been my usual, silently dismissive self…

“Him? A guy like him? He’d never go for a guy like me," I sullenly muse to myself, avoiding his gaze.

He walks up to me and buys me a drink.

And then a few more.

The next morning, we wake up in each other’s arms in an overpriced motel. We hold our foreheads and laugh with each other at the spoils of our drunken frenzy… I remember, a deep, bodily memory: How much I love this brand of foolish freedom. I relish the freedom of enjoying my body not being so rancidly racialised by fucked up, Euro-centric conceptions of masculinity or beauty, or exoticised ideas of who I am because I am Asian;

My skin is smooth. My eyes are black.

My accent is an amalgamation of being raised upper middle class in Anglicised Singaporean and international schools, Americanised by rural New Hampshire, and then Aussified by new citizenship. My tattoos are black and red colours that stand out against the negative space of a gentle tan. THIS is my race, THIS is my ethnicity: several generations diasporic Hakka Hokkien Cantonese Chinese, my thoughts appearing and disappearing in English, my politics maybe Anglo-phonic, but wedded to no nation-state, and my heart singing their constant praises to the beautiful men whom I have loved.

I walk around the grid-planned streets of the Mission and Castro districts sipping on a cup of Philz coffee (with cream and mint), a quintessentially San Franciscan experience… The commodification of drip-coffee cool.

Then I jam electronica with one of the most important people in my life: my ex-boyfriend and ongoing compatriot. We zone for two hours going nuts at his place, doing percussion on electric violin, orchestrating rhythms on synth keys, overlaying the voice of Slavoj Zizek on phat base beats, singing nothing in particular (and then renditioning Sufjan Stevens) while rapping syncopating fingers on nylon-stringed guitar...

I remember 2008, when we were sweeter with our music, so much more languid in the lush comfort of his home in the hills of Berkeley… where it was just me on acoustic guitar and him on violin. We made music as a correlate to how we made love; The strums, the plucks, the bows, our diaphragms sore with relentless outpourings of joy…the subtle intimacies that would grow and erupt from the practiced feel of our instruments that only we will ever understand.

And the sorrow of leaving…

But that was so many years ago, when I was just as foolish as I am now, but not quite as wise... This evening, I am calm and home alone in my brother’s place in Rockridge, Oakland, sipping chamomile tea and smiling...

"I am so lucky."

And yet another fresh, chilly summer's day in the Bay draws itself to a close.