Transdisciplinary Design

Gay Graveyards, Symbolic Violence and Other Artifacts of Shame

Posted on December 17, 2018

On December 15th, 1973 the American Psychological Association (APA) – the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologist in the United States – ratified a board recommendation to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health (DSM). And, just like that, millions of gays were cured!

 

But, in all seriousness, when did being gay become a medical condition? Due to a variety of pressures from religious groups, conservative values and general ignorance, the 1952 DSM declared homosexuality a mental illness. The scientific classification of homosexuality as a sickness, by arguably the most respected psychological institution in the world, gave people a free pass to discriminate against, attempt to cure (with often violent, crippling and irreversible methods) and belittle human beings with immutable, and natural, sexual orientations.

In their paper Design as Symbolic Violence, Boehnert and Onafuwa  submit that “[d]esign functions as symbolic violence when it is involved with the creation and reproduction of ideas, practices, products and tools that result in structural and other types of violence.” Categorizing homosexuality as an illness incites the violence described in Boenhert and Onafuwa’s publication. In this post, I examine how acts of designed and symbolic violence against the LGBTQ+ community continue to ripple through our ecosystems today.

After the halcyon days of the 1970’s sexual liberation and the blossoming of the gay rights movement, the gay community suffered through its darkest time yet. Originally called GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency), or also affectionately known as ‘gay cancer’ and the ‘gay plague,’ the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s claimed countless gay lives. Ignored as ‘gay issue’ by many at the time, the Reagan and Bush administrations’ egregious erasure and lack of concern for the epidemic stand as poignant examples of symbolic violence.

 

Bush, who notoriously disregarded and ignored the increasingly desperate activism of the ACTUP movement, believed HIV was a gay behavioral issue instead of one of medical research; he famously opined: “here’s a disease where you can control its spread by your own personal behavior. You can’t do that in cancer.” Such proclamations by the leader of the free world gave the American people a license to discriminate against HIV/AIDS victims, a majority of whom identified as LGBT.  Bush’s recalcitrance to fund research and provide relief to the hundreds of thousands of people dying from AIDS cost people their lives.

Members of the gay community still face horrendous discrimination. It wasn’t until 2010 that a U.S. immigration ban on HIV positive people was lifted.  The HIV/AIDS hysteria in the States still permeates throughout the archaic policies of institutions like the FDA, which all together banned donations from men who had sex with men (MSM) until 2015. Now, the FDA only accepts MSM blood if that person has been abstinent for a 12 month period. This discriminatory practice, which might have made sense when HIV antibody blood tests could take up to 3 months to spot an infection, makes little sense today with new RNA tests which can diagnose HIV with 99.89% accuracy within 7-10 days. MSM are free to donate blood in Argentina, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia and many other locales.  The FDA, should follow the lead of other countries, like Italy, and use individual risk assessment to assess blood donors rather than blanket ban populations. Under the current policy, a sexually active monogamous gay couple is barred from donating, while a philanderous straight man, is given the go-ahead.  In the U.S., where 1 in 4 new HIV diagnoses come from heterosexual transmission, this is clearly an act of symbolic violence towards gay men.

Discrimination towards gay men in the healthcare industry is pervasive.  Many gay/bi-sexual men around the world do not get tested for HIV because they fear being discriminated against or disclosing their sexuality. When homophobia becomes a barrier to one’s health the symbolic violence of homophobia transcends into the very real world of actual violence.

I personally have been both physically and emotionally assaulted during a routine STI screening, both in the U.S. and abroad.  The openly homophobic healthcare worker fear mongered me, shamed my sexuality, and insisted that I was insecure in my negative status, stating, “If you’re so sure you’re negative, why are you getting tested again? Sounds like you’re unsure.” After being berated with a variety of remarks, she subjected me to unnecessary and aggressively forceful urethral swabs which left me in both physical and psychological pain. And I’m not the only one. I have close friends who can recount similar stories.

Perhaps if the medical community had not previously labeled homosexuality as an illness, HIV/AIDS research would have been funded from the onset and we would not have lost the hundreds of thousands of gay lives to the epidemic. Perhaps people wouldn’t be scared to disclose their sexuality to healthcare workers. Perhaps I wouldn’t have my story and this opinion piece to share. But, alas, here we are.

I write this piece not from a place of darkness or sadness, but from a place of hope.  I believe when people come forward and share their stories, change happens. I for one refuse to be an artefact of shame.

– DB