[BRIEF NOTE] Andrew Sullivan
Nov. 26th, 2005 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldAndrew Sullivan can annoy me. I thought that the hostility derived entirely from his personal and professional indiscretions--his barebacking scandal in 2001, his paeans to testosterone, his ludicrously premature declaration that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was finished. That is, I thought that until I read his recent "The End of Gay Culture" and found that even though I agreed with most of his conclusions, I still felt some sort of visceral hostility towards him.
I thought about this, and it seems to me now that I might envy Sullivan his preternatural luck, professional and personal and medical all at once. His HIV seroconversion doesn't seem to have harmed him, at least not by what one reads over at his blog. This is obviously good for Sullivan and I don't begrudge him his chances, but I feel uneasy about this. Sullivan is inarguably one of the most prominent bloggers in the blogosphere; certainly he is the most prominent gay blogger. The way he seems to easily manage his seropositive status, even as Sullivan becomes something of a role model, brings to mind William I Johnstone's argument in his 1995 HIV-Negative that for some people, HIV seroconversion was the obvious culmination of gay identity.
The "HIV=diabetes" meme that's been going about since the development of protease inhibitors doesn't help. This all is irrational, I know, and unfair towards Sullivan, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not reading anything into this myself. I fear for others, in the main.
I thought about this, and it seems to me now that I might envy Sullivan his preternatural luck, professional and personal and medical all at once. His HIV seroconversion doesn't seem to have harmed him, at least not by what one reads over at his blog. This is obviously good for Sullivan and I don't begrudge him his chances, but I feel uneasy about this. Sullivan is inarguably one of the most prominent bloggers in the blogosphere; certainly he is the most prominent gay blogger. The way he seems to easily manage his seropositive status, even as Sullivan becomes something of a role model, brings to mind William I Johnstone's argument in his 1995 HIV-Negative that for some people, HIV seroconversion was the obvious culmination of gay identity.
[One reason that] gay men may desire to seroconvert is that being HIV-positive appears fundamentally linked to gay identity. "Some people feel they are not 'gay enough' unless they are infected," said Wolf. "They feel that they are not heard or acknowledged if they're HIV-negative, that they are taken more seriously if they are infected -- especially if they are involved in AIDS activism or the AIDS service industry." Wolf wondered whether some seroconversions could be the result of HIV-negative men seeking the attention they think HIV-positive men get.
The "HIV=diabetes" meme that's been going about since the development of protease inhibitors doesn't help. This all is irrational, I know, and unfair towards Sullivan, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not reading anything into this myself. I fear for others, in the main.
