I’m a healthcare worker, Queer activist, and consider myself to be pretty well-informed and connected and yet if you had asked me about PrEP as recently as September, I would have wondered what you are talking about. I’m up here today because I feel that the word PrEP needs to be on the lips of every sexually active person and the people they love.
PrEP which stands for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis is a once a day dose of an anti-retrovirus drug called, Truvada; which is also used for people who are HIV Positive to help keep viral loads low, but in people who are negative, if exposed to HIV, kills the virus before it has the chance to infect you. Numerous studies have shown it to be pretty darn effective.
Being newly single, and sexually active, this naturally piqued my interest; if a one a day pill can help prevent an unwanted condition, why wouldn’t I be on it?
But for good measure, I took to social media to see if anyone in my extended networks had any thoughts or experiences with it. The results were somewhat unsurprising, but worth breaking down:
Two people reached out to me privately to tell me their stories, which were well-received and appreciated, but I wondered why they didn’t feel safe to say publically they were PrEP users. Until I saw some of the other public responses (most of which were positive), but there were a strong current of people who were telling me that I weren’t being “sleazy” I wouldn’t have to worry about this or that they felt that this pill will encourage “bad” behavior.
This line of thought is nothing new…54 years after the Birth-control Pill hit the market and 41 years after safe and legal abortion was won, people are still saying that contraception will encourage “bad” behavior.
Well I’ve got news for them. “Bad” behavior does not need encouragement. At all. And furthermore, there is nothing bad, dirty, or shameful about sex. We owe it to ourselves, our partners, and the people we love to first and foremost, enjoy ourselves, but also to do everything we can to protect ourselves and other.
We as a society need to come to grips with the fact that sex-positive and queer-inclusive sex education not being a part of our public school curriculum is nothing short of a public health crisis; creating a layer of young people with lots of misinformation and questions who are afraid to seek out answers for fear of judgment. This is dangerous. Silence, in this case, literally equals death.
I, along with my Doctor, Dr, Chan, did decide that going on PrEP was the right decision for the type of life I lead. I was very fortunate to thus far not experience and of the side effects (nausea, vomiting etc.). And if you’re wondering, it didn’t encourage and more or less “bad” behavior.
To conclude, I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss how equally important access to this drug is to it’s availability. I am lucky in that I have a good job with good health insurance, so access to PrEP was no issue for me. But there are so many people in vulnerable demographics (I think of sex-workers and IV drug users especially) may not be as lucky and cannot afford to pay the over $1500 out-of-pocket cost of a monthly supply of Truvada. PrEP has the potential to make new HIV infections a thing of the past, but it cannot do that if no one’s heard of it and people who need it the most cannot access it.
These are the facts, but our challenge as healthcare providers, law-makers, activists, and people who want to see a world without HIV/AIDS is to overcome them. We have come so far already; research in tandem with activism has taken HIV for a death sentence to a chronic, but mostly manageable condition, and now we have the capability to prevent it in the first place. We need to be screaming about this from rooftops, flyering every gay bar, I also liked Dr. Nunn’s idea about using sites like grindr and scruff as tools for outreach, and also making the phrase “ask your doctor about PrEP” as recognizable a slogan as “get tested” and “know your status” is now!
I don’t know the firefighter who stood in the window, fist raised in solidarity with the protesters rallying outside the Providence Public Safety Complex a week ago. I don’t think anyone could tell who the figure was or what occupation the person might be employed in. All I could see was a silhouette, a literal shadow of humanity, demonstrating commonality with the protesters as a human being with emotions, thoughts and concerns.
All I could see was a human being, making contact, sharing the same pain and concern as those assembled below. I could have made up a thousand stories about the figure in the window, guessing at his or her reason for choosing to raise a fist in solidarity, but somehow, I never doubted the intentions of the act. Somehow the simple gesture of raising a fist in shadow communicated both solidarity and sincerity.
Commissioner 
If in the future I film police officers at protests laughing or taking a dismissive attitude towards the activists, will Commissioner 
The 
Civil rights activists spoke yesterday in South Providence as part of the seventh annual 
Yesterday’s “
The crowd started to build around 7pm at Burnside Park, with marchers working on their signs in the park with the materials provided by the organizers. There were less marchers this time and the crowd tended to be whiter, though there was substantial representation of people of color.
The plan was to rally at Burnside Park, march past the Providence Place Mall and to the steps of the State House, where there would be a four minute moment of silence for Mike Brown (one minute for every hour his body laid in the street) and then a “speak out” in which anyone could step forward and let loose whatever was on their mind.
The march through downtown and to the state house was guided by the police, whose red and blue lights provided an almost stereoscopic illumination. There were chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “This is what democracy looks like” among others. There were many signs of support from passing motorists and mall patrons, but also one or two negative reactions.
The big surprise of the evening was finding, upon our arrival at the State House, a phalanx of police officers standing at the top of the state house steps, protecting the building. It was an intimidating reminder of police power to have between 15 and 20 armed officers silently observe the protest from on high.
There was a solemn and somber four minutes of silence, interrupted only by the occasional chime of an unmuted cellphone, then the speak out began. I’ll have a rundown of what the speakers spoke about in a later post, after I’ve sorted out all the video, but for now let me present some highlights.
The growing militarization of police forces and the crackdown on human rights is world wide, from Hong Kong to Mexico to Ferguson.
As the night wore on, and a light drizzle of rain and dropping temperatures thinned the crowd of protesters, over twenty people participated in the speak out. For the most part the listeners were polite and patient, and everyone who wanted to speak had their chance.
