“I was recruited to the group the first time I came to this park. With the exception of the occasional contract worker, these organizations run on the labor of volunteers from within the gay migrant community. One of the most common techniques grassroots organizations use to spread this information is peer education. “Every time we give out a condom, we are initiating a dialogue to show them that you should protect yourself and others by engaging only in safe sex,” one volunteer told me. The goal is not simply to get condoms into the hands of those who need them but to build a culture conducive to practicing safe sex.
SWEDEN TEACHES MIGRANTS HOW TO HAVE GAY SEX FREE
They organize outreach activities, pass out free condoms and lubricants, and publicize testing services.
Often led by migrants or former migrants, they perform the vital work of reaching out to the working class MSM community in places like Garden Park. That is where the remaining grassroots organizations come in. In short, while society’s attention may have shifted elsewhere, gay migrants continue to be in dire need of reliable information regarding HIV/AIDS and safe sex. If we could have tested him earlier, he would still be alive. They don’t use condoms and lubricant–they just spit.Ī guy died just a month after he tested positive. People here use liquid dish soap as lubricant. Their comments hint at the magnitude of the challenge: Multiple self-identified gay health workers told me that the local infection rate–the number of infections divided by the number of people being tested–in industrial suburbs is significantly higher than in urban centers. Gay migrants never make the headlines, but they are actually in a worse situation and much less informed about HIV/AIDS prevention. “If you watch the news, you see many reports on increasing numbers of college students getting infected with HIV through male-to-male sex,” one health worker told me. Meanwhile, as unprotected sex between young adults and teenagers became a growing contributor to HIV transmission among these demographics, the government and media shifted their focus to sex education at schools and colleges. The past decade has seen well-off gays retreat from the public sphere in favor of online dating and more consumerist venues. In the days before dating apps and high-end gay bars, cruising spots like Garden Park were the key areas for reaching out to the gay community and educating urban gays about safe sex. Others were support groups started by HIV-positive gay men that gradually expanded their remit to encompass a broader range of LGBT issues. Some of these groups were established by health professionals and academics who then recruited gay men from the community to conduct outreach. Hundreds of grassroots LGBT organizations received their first funds from HIV/AIDS prevention projects in the late 1990s. This arrangement marked the starting point of gay organizing in urban China by helping provide the resources and opportunities needed to unify the community and set the stage for later fights against homophobia and HIV-related discrimination. In a bid to reach marginalized communities, state-affiliated health workers partnered with LGBT Chinese to raise awareness and pass out prophylactics. In China, HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives targeting the country’s MSM population date back to the early 1990s, when rising HIV infection rates caught the state’s attention and pushed it to take action. Their grassroots HIV/AIDS testing and prevention organization–funded by the local Center for Disease Control–is the only LGBT-focused group in the entire industrial zone. The volunteers there that night knew their business well. “Take them anyway,” replied the volunteer in a well-practiced tone. “I don’t need any,” one cruiser complained. At the same time, five volunteers made the circuit of the park grounds, offering contraceptives and talking to those assembled about where they could get tested for HIV. Hundreds of gay men, most of them migrants, sat chitchatting in circles or wandering the bushes looking for potential sexual partners. It was a Saturday night in Garden Park, the most popular gay cruising spot in a South China industrial zone, and the place was packed.