HELLO HOMO: AIDS/Life Cycle and World AIDS Day
Hello Homo,
What’s the big deal about HIV? It’s preventable, manageable, and will be curable soon. Why do we need to care?
-David, from Boulder.
Hello David!
This is so important, especially with World AIDS Day approaching. I hear this sentiment a lot. People feel like AIDS and HIV are over with the latest advances in prevention and intervention. This is especially true for how accessible testing and PREP have become with free at-home testing with services like MISTR or free rapid testing at Denver Element or Bee the Vibe. Yet, HIV and AIDS are still a big deal.
I am in the 2025 and final AIDS/Life Cycle ride in June. Being a part of the final ride is crucial because I was a therapist at the LA LGBT Center for over five years. AIDS Life/Cycle not only contributed to the funding stream for my position, but they trained me in HIV/AIDS education, helped me address my own stigma with the virus and those living with it, and equipped me to support those who recently tested positive while I was a crisis counselor. I asked my former colleague at the Center and AIDS/ Life Cycle Ride Director, Cailin Corbett, to discuss this question further.
Cailin Corbett: This is a great question that comes up often. HIV/AIDS awareness has changed over the 30-plus years of the ride, and we have come a long way to destigmatize the virus. HIV is still a big deal because we aren’t quite there yet. We aren’t done. If you take your foot off the gas, you decelerate. There have been so many strides, but we still have many communities who are still disproportionately impacted by HIV and AIDS,
The work that we are doing is really about access to healthcare on a broader spectrum (especially for populations of color and women). HIV and AIDS are one component of our mission and our work, but you don’t stop the transmission just by focusing on HIV and AIDS. You do it by ensuring that people have access to health care, access to food, and that they can be housed. You do it by caring for the whole person, connecting with disproportionately impacted communities, and ensuring that education is not siloed. This empowers them to have agency for their health rights and to advocate for themselves.
So, our relationship with HIV and AIDS has changed, and the fight to end it is not over. Now, more than ever, it requires our continued focus, attention, and commitment to see this mission and this work through.
Since Truvada and Descovy became accessible in 2012, I have heard this sentiment more frequently. When I hear questions like this, I feel protective of people living with the disease and those who have died from it. I am old enough to remember aspects of the AIDS crisis of the late 80s and early 90s. I think it’s also important to acknowledge that there’s still so much trauma from the impact of the disease that lives on in our communities.
I had an illuminating conversation on last year’s ride with a wonderful man who’s done the ride for many years. He told me that he was a young man in the 90s and wasn’t out. He spent his young adulthood actively avoiding HIV and committed himself to not contracting it. He had pride in being negative, doing AIDS/ Life Cycle, and doing all sorts of volunteer work in the HIV and AIDS realm. In the early aughts, he contracted HIV. He carried so much shame about getting it. He felt he “should have known better” and that it took years to accept his status.
That interaction stuck with me as he was directly a part of breaking the stigma around the disease yet was impacted by the stigma himself. The stigma has shifted in many ways and is more covert or subtle in the biases of “there’s so much awareness” that there’s a blame associated with contracting it now.
Knowing that AIDS/Life Cycle is in California and funding goes to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and LA LGBT Center, what would you like OFM readers in Colorado to know about the ride’s impact outside of California?
AIDS/Life Cycle supports many endeavors outside of California. We do this because both SFAF and the Center are huge information hubs. Both organizations are part of Center Link, a network connecting LGBTQ+ organizations across the USA. We share information, resources, best practices, and models through Center Link, taking our efforts far beyond California.
In that regard, our work is being felt in your local community, maybe in ways you can’t easily see. It is doing deep work, particularly around infrastructure and the systems we live within, which is so cool.
I mean, I’m an example of that. I was a therapist at the LGBT Center. I received direct funding, training, and education from AIDS/ Life Cycle. The information that was given to me in-house has now been disseminated into my work across California, Vermont, and Colorado. That information carries on in my client’s lives and into their communities.
I love to use the metaphor of mycelial networks. Mushroom networks work underground and are connected far and wide. You can’t see it, but the connection is there. It’s a thing that the ride does, too. It’s like you can’t quantify how far-reaching the impact is because it does so much more than raise dollars. It raises awareness. It changes people’s lives. A lot of deep work happens that is harder to see on the surface.
So, let’s raise some funds for this final ride and go out with a bang! Readers can donate directly to my fundraising page here. Every donation over $25 will receive a thank-you sticker I designed! (while supplies last)
Thank you, Cailin, for taking the time to answer David’s question.
Follow AIDS/Life Cycle on Instagram @aidslifecycle, and follow me on Instagram @holistic.homosexual for updates on my column. Stay tuned for the next HELLO HOMO! See you next week!
Have a question you would like answered? Submit your questions directly to me at hellohomo@ofm.media.
Disclaimer: Hello Homo is for informational and educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment. Hello Homo (Jesse Proia) is not providing mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment to readers. If you are someone you know is experience a mental health crisis or emergency, please contact 911, 988 or go to the nearest emergency room. All images courtesy of Holistic Homosexual.
