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Posters promoting unprotected gay sex appear in Melbourne
Posters promoting unprotected gay sex appeared all over Melbourne on Thursday (18 September).
‘You can fuck raw,’ proclaim the posters, which were put up overnight.
The posters also feature a blue Truvada pill with the words underneath: ‘PrEP works. No more HIV.’
SEEITCLEARLY2020, a new activist group ‘with the aim of promoting PrEP as the most powerful tool we have to end HIV,’ has claimed responsibly for the posters.
‘Our current poster campaign is designed to shock, it is designed to start a conversation and it has been implemented across Melbourne because of the lack of education and the lack of awareness by existing public health authorities,’ they said in a statement.
‘So we are taking it into our own hands, and we are talking about bareback sex when no other group will.’
Studies have shown that PrEP is effective at preventing transmission of the HIV virus, but the drug is currently unavailable in Australia.
‘We cannot be blind to reality and the reality is that HIV will continue to be transmitted by raw sex if we do not make PrEP fully accessible to Australians,’ SEEITCLEARLY2020 said.
‘We are unforgiving in our messages, and we will continue to shock, we don’t mind if you don’t agree with our message, but gay men all need to believe in PrEP and understand the power they have to create positive change.’
The group has succeeded in getting a reaction from established AIDS groups, even if they did not agree with their methods.
The Victorian AIDS Council (VAC) and Living Positive Victoria (LPV) issued a joint statement on the posters.
‘This is a passionate issue for our community, and the vocal response to the posters strong language demonstrates that,’ said VAC’s acting CEO Kent Burgess.
‘PrEP is an effective HIV-prevention tool, and we still have a lot of work to do to inform the community about how it works. We have some concerns about how the posters might stigmatize gay sex and people living with HIV through simplistic, inflammatory language, but one message is clear: our community wants and needs PrEP.’
While Brent Allan, CEO of LPV, said:
‘PrEP isn’t about giving gay men a license to “fuck raw,” it’s about putting them in control of their sexual health by ensuring that they have the tools they need to stay HIV negative. It’s also about breaking down the barriers between positive and negative men, reducing anxiety about HIV, and challenging stigma,’ said
‘While we have concerns about the appropriateness of the messages conveyed by this campaign, we think it shows the level of interest in and demand for more effective HIV prevention in our community.
‘And though I am not sure that having a discussion about PrEP on the streets of Melbourne is the best place, it’s pretty clear that we cannot ignore this call to action, and we have no desire to silence those who rightly demand access to lifesaving forms of proven HIV prevention. Both state and federal governments should consider their own capacity to act and make PrEP available.’
The post Posters promoting unprotected gay sex appear in Melbourne appeared first on Gay Star News.
Darren Wee
www.gaystarnews.com/article/posters-promoting-unprotected-gay-sex-appear-in-melbourne/
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