Author: Jason Myers
Title: Everyday Stories of MSM living with HIV in Auckland: Exposing and fighting structures of oppression.
Subject Area/Topic: Advocacy
HIV+ men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) are positioned as outsiders as they deviate from constructed norms. This impacts upon their sense of self and therefore affects their everyday lives. Such understandings have been underplayed in the HIV/AIDS research landscape in New Zealand. Discussing PhD research in Auckland, this paper tells the everyday stories of 15 men. Drawing on interview and photo-diary narratives it is suggested that living with HIV might be considered a ‘moving’ experience; both in terms of the physical (re)locations experienced post HIV-diagnosis and in the emotional transitions embedded in such moves.
The 2005 declaration recognises a desire to have all Positive People recognised and acknowledged as equal members of every community. This paper recognises that dominant cultures create and maintain their power through the marginalisation of difference and, through exposing such dominant cultures, attempts to deconstruct this process in a way that allows the research participants (and hopefully people living with HIV more generally) to (re)appropriate at least some power and space in the everyday. By highlighting worlds of difference in a multitude of ways, the paper argues that understanding such difference is fundamental not only to offer power to those who fall outside the boundaries of acceptability, but also to highlight to those who hold and maintain such power that a socially just society relies on their understanding and inclusiveness.
© 2007 Paul Nash webscool@ihug.co.nz - Last Updated Sat 21 June 2008