HOW TO HAVE SEX IN A POLICE STATE: ONE APPROACH
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In 1983, Americans Richard Berkowitz andMichael Callen published the book How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, which is credited as being the first piece of safer sex literature for gay men. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic and in the absence of state action people with HIV and their friends banded together and took things into their own hands. Through advocating the use of condoms and by sharing available HIV prevention information, safer sex in the late 80s and 90s was conceived as a way as a way to take collective accountability for addressing the epidemic, care for one another, and resist fear-based and abstinence-only responses.
Thirty-years after the publication of How to Have Sex in an Epidemic we face a new type of emergency here in Canada. State neglect in the response supporting people with HIV is now coupled with intensified forms of state control, surveillance and criminalization. Canada is among the most punitive countries in the world for HIV-positive people, where the state is turning towards criminalization instead of public education and support.
An anonymous collective of people living with HIV and our allies produced this document. We have no leaders, no spokespeople, and no meetings. Copy this, share it, add to it, and adapt it to your own setting. Join us by doing it. Time is running out!
This could save your life. Canada specific but strategies are applicable whenever/wherever you interface with the state re: your sexual health and/or the law.
