Speaking Sexuality: The Heteronationalism of MSM

• Author: Andil Gosine
• Pages: 95-115

95

SPEAKING SEXUALITY

In the nearly three decades since HIV and AIDS have been named,

policy makers, researchers and workers in the field have broadened

characterization of the virus and disease from a condition affecting

individual bodies to one that threatens communities, nations and, quite

possibly, the world itself. This shift is demonstrated by contemporary

analyses of the disease which more often emphasize social economic costs

–– especially to states — as well as by the organization of responses to it,

operated and coordinated at community (NGOs), national (state

commissions on HIV and AIDS) and global (UNAIDS) levels of

governance. One simple demonstration of this globalized construction

of the epidemic is the ‘We All Have AIDS’ campaign, which debuted on

World AIDS Day in 2005. The campaign features celebrities like Elizabeth

Taylor, Elton John and Harry Belafonte, as well as political statesmen

like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, appearing alongside

this phrase in posters and on T-shirts. Their mission, campaign literature

explains, is to fight stigma, ‘because if one of us has AIDS, we all have it’

(http://www.weallhaveaids.com). More than ethical humanitarianism, this

doctrine is meant to convey the far-reaching social costs of the disease.

The most valiant efforts calling for recognition of HIV and AIDS as

social phenomena draw attention to this truth of its production (as many

of the essays in this collection point out, it is socially constituted and

experienced), and attempts to hold various actors accountable for its spread

and impact. HIV and AIDS prevention and care advocates, researchers,

health practitioners and policy workers now more regularly point to data

illustrating the relationship between poverty, discrimination, provision

of social services, education and the spread of the disease, and its broader

Speaking sexuality

Andil Gosine

Chapter 5

The Heteronationalism of MSM

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SEXUALITY, SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

social and economic costs, in mobilizing public support. For the most

part, this articulation of the epidemic is considered to be a welcome and

effective approach. Evidence of its threat to economic and social stability

has moved governments, as well as global policy regulators like the World

Bank, to be more vigilant in taking action. While still falling far short of

what most experts have suggested is needed to effectively treat and combat

the disease, worldwide AIDS spending has increased significantly over

the time that it has become articulated as a social phenomenon. Global

spending on HIV and AIDS increased 28-fold from US$300 million in

1996 to just under US$8.3 billion in 2005 and is expected to have reached

US$10 billion by the end of 2007 (UNAIDS 2006). This growth has

happened in conjunction with demonstrations of stronger political support

from a broader set of actors, ranging from presidents to pop stars. On

May 30, 2007, even the once sceptical US President George W. Bush

was widely praised by AIDS activists for committing to a five-year US$30

billion plan to fight AIDS.

While this mobilization around AIDS care and prevention is surely

welcome, it is also deserving of more careful and necessary consideration.

It is important to ask: What rationales have been advanced in the

construction of HIV and AIDS as a social phenomenon? What are the

implications of this articulation? How do we begin to map and make

sense of some of the contradictions engendered through this approach?

How, for example, do we weigh Bush’s funding commitments to HIV

and AIDS programmes against his administration’s simultaneous

heteronationalism and religious fundamentalism? What makes it possible

for both homosexual and homophobic actors to champion a social framing

of the disease? In this chapter, I begin to think through some of these

questions by consideration of one component of contemporary HIV

and AIDS discourses: the figure of the MSM — ‘men who have sex with

men.’ Consideration of the discursive production of MSM in the Anglo-

Caribbean is especially instructive in contemplating some of these

questions.

In many Caribbean states, as in other countries across the world,

references to MSM appear in National HIV and AIDS Plans and other