“I felt a sense of pride,” he adds.īut while public attitudes toward HIV have moved on, other forms of anti-gay stigma still linger. Thankfully, from friends to other queer men, everyone has been positive. He lived in Dubai for four years before testing positive for HIV in February. “When I was diagnosed with HIV, I lost my job, I got taken to a government facility, I got deported, lost my house, everything,” he says.Ĭoming back to Britain, he braced himself for the same level of bigotry. McFadzean is no stranger to such hostility. Health experts have long said that stigmatising the LGBTQ+ community at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s greatly slowed down efforts to control it. “So are we alienating people from actually seeking advice where they need it?” Monkeypox ‘brought back memories’ of the AIDS crisis for queer men, says HIV expert “If there are men who have sex with men who aren’t gay or aren’t out who feel unwell or have a rash, they may not report it because they feel this is going to blow their secret,” he says. Yet the sustained focus on gay and bisexual men may carry its own risks, such as discouraging some men to test for monkeypox, McFadzean warns. Health officials have been at pains to stress that monkeypox can infect and be spread by anyone – not just queer men. “The pop-ups from Grindr and the gay press have been great,” he adds, “but the mainstream press needs to take more responsibility.” They’re playing off that stereotype – it’s not helping people,” he says. ‘Gay people love sex, they have massive orgies every weekend’. Even if you’re not openly saying ‘it’s a gay thing’ the inference is there.
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Some international cases have seen a similar trend, with a few patients linked to a Pride event in the Canary Island and a kink festival event in Belgium.īut because of this, McFadzean feels the mainstream media has suggested queer people – himself included – only contract the virus because they’re “having sex with loads of people”.
![old gay men orgies old gay men orgies](https://live.staticflickr.com/7449/10794115175_35cee4959e_z.jpg)
The UKHSA adds that “most” of the 366 confirmed cases in Britain “have been in men who are gay, bisexual or have sex with men”.