In Vienna, it once again became clear that HIV prevention must address pleasure and can also be funny. Some campaigns convey information - others don't take the facts too seriously. We laughed a lot!
"67.5 % of conference participants downloaded porn during the plenary session." If this statement were the result of a study, it would be a groundbreaking finding. But of course it is not. Rather, it is what is always urgently needed in HIV prevention: an idea that makes a name for itself.
The porn claim was not the only lovingly falsified percentage figure at the 18th International AIDS Conference. Anyone returning to the conference centre in the morning after a night out in Vienna may have been greeted by the statement: "82.5 percent of conference participants masturbated last night".
A thesis that is probably much closer to the truth than the first one. And it achieves what HIV prevention is supposed to achieve: You think a little differently about sex than you did before. And about the lecturing professor in the first congress event of the day.
But this is not about exposing anyone. On the contrary: "Safe. Good. Sex.", is the message of the campaign with the steep theses. Behind it is the British Pleasure Project. His credo: "We believe that you can only have safer sex if you know how to have good sex." This is why prevention should not focus on illness and negative statements: "We want to make sex safer by addressing what makes people have sex: the need for pleasure."
The Dutch self-help organisation "Poz & Proud" also has this need in mind. One poster uses a shampooed male bottom as an eye-catcher and calls the anus the "Tunnel of Love", which is both surprising and apt. The subline promises information "about the pleasure (and burden) of the anus". It sounds so good in Dutch that a German drag queen should immediately call herself "Lusten van de Anus". Or do they already exist?
A second poster by "Poz & Proud" also addresses lust - namely that of couples in which one partner is positive and the other negative. It poses the question: "Why should HIV stand in the way of a good relationship?" The picture shows a couple who are obviously very happy and loving each other.
The small print: "In 2009, serodiscordant couples shared experiences of love, intimacy and sex in the era of undetectable viral load." This refers to the fact that HIV therapies also reduce the probability of passing on HIV as the number of viruses in the blood decreases. Under certain conditions, transmission is now very unlikely. (More information on this can be found in the Safer Sex FAQ: "Can an HIV-positive person really not be infectious?")
The University of Copenhagen came up with a particularly daring twist in Vienna: You can train to become a "Master of HIV" there. However, it is questionable whether the Danes are incorporating the topic of lust as consciously as the Pleasure Project and Poz & Proud do.
Whatever the case, associations arise in the minds of the viewers. ICH WEISS WAS ICH TU was certainly happy to be inspired in Vienna!
(Holger Wicht)
Further information on the Vienna conference at aidshilfe.de
Summary: "After Vienna" - Interview with Silke Klumb, Managing Director of Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe
PS: Blogger Werner Bock reported in the Blog of the German AIDS service organisation daily from Vienna and realised that even the non-gay preventionists have funny ideas: He met the superheroes Methadone Man and Buprenorphine Babe. Named after substitute substances, they advertised substitution for heroin users. Even gender parity had been considered!
