\\ Hyper Flesh Markup Language //

postervirus:

WORKING CONDITIONS by RYAN CONRAD 

Hustlers, hookers, dancers, rent boys, escorts, trade, or just your average gay university student looking for a generou$ older gentleman to help pay rising tuition costs: we are everywhere.  While very public battles are being waged between radical feminists and anti-sex work feminists over the legalization of sex work in Canada, male sex workers have been largely left out of the conversation and rendered nearly invisible.  While patriarchy and misogyny account for the heightened stakes in the battle between feminists over sex work, male sex workers also face similar safety related working conditions including those gestured towards in the text of this poster.  These working conditions are framed and further compounded by poverty, classism, racism, ableism, hetrosexism, transphobia, sexphobia, serophobia, gender based-stereotypes, and the failure to recognize sex work as a form of labor.  Sex workers, like all other laborers, deserve safe healthy working conditions and the dignity to work without shame, stigma, fear, or exploitation.  This poster was designed in collaboration with Mikiki and with feedback from other sex workers, artists, and service providers.

“EVERYONE HAS AIDS!”

"Whatever else it may be, AIDS is a story, or multiple stories, and read to a surprising extent from a text that does not exist: the body of the male homosexual. People so want—need—to read this text that they have gone so far as to write it themselves. AIDS is a nexus where multiple meanings, stories, and discourses intersect and overlap, reinforce and subvert each other. Yet clearly this mysterious male homosexual text has figured centrally in generating what I call here an epidemic of signification. Of course, ‘the virus,’ with mysteries of its own, has been a crucial influence. But we may recall Camus’s (1948) novel: ‘the word “plague”…conjured up in the doctor’s mind not only what science chose to put into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping’ [p. 37] with the bourgeois town of Oran, where the plague struck. How could a disease so extraordinary as plague happen in a place so ordinary and dull? Initially striking people perceived as alien and exotic by scientists, physicians, journalists, and much of the U.S. population, AIDS did not pose such a paradox. The ‘promiscuous’ gay male body—early reports noted that AIDS ‘victims’ reported having had as many as a thousand sexual partners—made clear that, even if AIDS turned out to be a sexually transmitted disease, it would not be a commonplace one. The connection between sex, death, and homosexuality made the AIDS story inevitably […] able to be read as ‘the story of a metaphor.’" 

Paula Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic. p.19

bunnygloves:

Please Don’t Infect Me, I’m Sorry || GAWKER by Rich Juzwiak

I used to read Rich’s old blog from time to time, but this article really makes him sound like an ignorant dick. It’s embarrassing that some gay men just wait for other people to educate them. 

And then there are passages like this:

“It wasn’t until he got clean that he realized the true value of himself – now he says he’s healthier than he’s ever been. He has an insanely cut-up torso to prove it.”

UGH.

What exactly is it about this article that is making people say it’s a “must read”? 

If I were to write a response article it would be titled, “PLEASE DON’T CONDESCEND TO ME, I’M NOT SORRY FOR BEING POZ: YOU CAN KEEP YOUR FUCKING HUGS, YOU WEASLY COWARD” by Rich “i know it’s wrong but i think HIV people are really dangerous and as long as i never get HIV i don’t really have to confront my fear with anything but bigotry disguised as pseudo-science” Juzwiak

(Source: thedjf)

bunnygloves:

The comments on this Gawker article are making me want to suicide.

…”YOU CAN’T GET MORE AIDS, RIGHT?”

"Not only do journalism’s (and art’s) images create false stereotypes of people with AIDS, they depend upon already existing false stereotypes about the groups most significantly affected by AIDS. […] The reaction of many of us when we see homosexuality portrayed in the media is to respond by saying, ‘That’s not true. We’re not like that’ or ‘I’m not like that’ or ‘we’re not all like that.’ But what are we like? What portrait of a gay person or of a PWA, would we feel comfortable with? Which one would be representative? How could it be? and why should it be? One problem with opposing a stereotype, […] is that we tacitly side with those who would distance themselves from the image portrayed, is that we tacitly agree that it is other. […] we must […] recognize that every image of a PWA is a representation, and formulate our activist demands not in relation to the ‘truth’ of the image, but in relation to the conditions of its constructions and to its social effects." 

Crimp, Douglas. “Portraits of People With AIDS.” in Cultural Studies. Eds. Grossberg, Nelson, Treichler. New York: Routledge, 126-127. (via fuckyeahdouglascrimp)

Reblogging for a second time…

I’d like to challenge people dealing with visual representations of the body (their bodies just as much as the bodies of others) to think of ways to not only shift the terms of their representation (bad vs. good; pretty vs. ugly; shaming vs. proud; etc.), but also the modes of representation being employed to do so.

“AIDS IS NOT A BAD PERSONS’ DISEASE ROSE!”

aan-poster-virus-2011:

ALLYSON MITCHELL

FUCK YEAH.

aan-poster-virus-2011:

MIKIKI with SCOTT DONALD

aan-poster-virus-2011:

DARYL VOCAT

FUCK YEAH AIDS ACTION NOW POSTERS!