Comments on: Selling AIDS: Wiretap Mag On HIV Prevention Messaging

By: on the death of us | What's that you said?

on the death of us | What's that you said? — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:01:54 +0000

[...] NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to Pull Sensationalistic and Stigmatizing HIV/AIDS PSA Selling AIDS: Wiretap Mag On HIV Prevention Messaging Share This:TweetFacebookStumbleUponDiggDeliciousTweet This entry was posted in media, queer, [...]

By: amorgan81

amorgan81 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:08:57 +0000

Hey Kenyon – thank you for this post! I think we’ve had similar discourse re: messaging and imagery that is counterintuitive and certainly counterproductive to efforts to re-think hypermasculinity, sexism and heterosexism. Since the we are part of you campaign released i’ve seen a plethora of social marketing aimed at oversimplifying the complex and often sensitive issues related to male and black male roles in society, family, communty and relationships.
I think the issue of social marketing and our community re: HIV demands increased dialogue among power players (agencies and groups w/ marketing budgets) to find common ground – I am sick and tired of get tested campaigns and pseudo-homoerotic get tested campaigns and str8 get tested campaigns.

at any rate,

all the best!

A. R. Morgan

By: prof susurro

prof susurro — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:22:36 +0000

this is an interesting take on an old issue – ie marginalizing messages in media and media campaigns. I’m going to be keeping my eyes a little more open to “from the community” PSAs and marketing campaigns from now on. I’m off to read “selling ourselves” and see if it is something for my queer media course next Spring

By: kirkgrisham

kirkgrisham — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:54:12 +0000

That’s wassup Kenyon!

I love that we are able to continue the dialogue. This is really important, and we will only go somewhere with this if we keep talking and keep pressing ourselves as you said, to challenge what we think about sex, gender, race and how that relates to “community.”

Something I flirted with in the article was this idea about knowing what our goals are. I think if young men and women who participate in the working groups to produce these ads, and more importantly the people who don’t but see them, thought about what our goals were for HIV/AIDS prevention, we would create campaigns and policy that combated HIV/AIDS vis-a-vis larger systemic problems, like racism, homophobia, and stigma (to name a few.)

However, often those goals are not really thought out, and we loose sight of radical change when we focus on condoms and testing. These narratives serve to maintain systemic inequality, and being critical of them is the first step, and that sometimes means realizing that they are more prevalent in our society, and affect us in complex ways that we have not always considered.

Keep it up, and thank you.

I hope we get into Mailman too!