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CHEST Research update: Koko Jones talks about T-Talk, our new study for trans women!

By Joshua Guthals, June 18, 2013

Koko Jones is one of the Peer Health Navigators for “T-Talk,” a new study at CHEST that focuses on the health prevention needs of trans women in New York City. Our T-Talk Peer Health Navigators (or PHNs) are women who are leaders in the trans community. They will work with the participants of T-Talk to develop coping skills, and to achieve the goals of gaining access to professional medical care, social support, and other critical services.

This past weekend Koko attended Philadelphia’s Trans Health Conference (PTHC) alongside CHEST’s other PHNs, Savannah Hornback, Ida Hammer, and Vanessa Nasert. Koko explains: “This annual conference draws thousands of attendees. It’s a chance for a lot of people around the country to come together and discuss important issues affecting the trans community. Many of the people at the event this weekend were people I had met through online social networking over the years  — and we were all finally in one place together to discuss these important issues face-to-face. People pointed out the many barriers that the trans community faces when seeking appropriate health services.” (For more information about the many presentations at PTHC, click this link.)

Koko continues: “At the Philadelphia event we led a very successful presentation about CHEST’s new study called T-Talk, which is led by trans women for trans women. This led to a very lively Q&A that brought to light the barriers to quality healthcare that trans women face, specifically trans women of color. Several women spoke up during the Q&A to say that they felt invisible inside of the larger LGBT community. Others said they felt there is not enough cultural competency among health-care providers. Women also expressed concern that there was a lack of employment opportunities for trans women which reduced their access to affordable health-care.”

Inset: CHEST’s PHNs discuss “T-Talk” at the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference, June, 15, 2013. Photo by Katrina Goodlett

What is CHEST’s new study about? “T-Talk is a peer-led intervention that was developed in response to the acute health prevention needs of our community of transgender women in New York City. The women participating in this study and intervention will attend sessions aimed at reducing sexual health risks, substance use, and internalized stigma and increase resilience,” said Koko. “The skills that our participants will be learning will help them develop self-motivated change as well as change negative thinking patterns that lead to unhealthy behaviors.”

The women participating in this study will be compensated for the first study visit and the follow up appointments. They will receive up to $205 for their time. To learn more about the T-Talk study, please call 212-206-7919, or log onto our website at http://chestnyc.org/T-Talk

“By God’s Grace, I am what I am”: A Pride-month look at “Call Me Kuchu”

By Joshua Guthals, June 17, 2013

“They kept on saying we are not here. But as of late, we are here.” — David Kato

This past Saturday evening I was fortunate to attend a screening of the harrowing 2012 documentary film “Call Me Kuchu.” It is currently showing at Quad Cinema here in NYC – and, for the next week, filmmakers and activists are answering audiences questions after screenings. You can watch the full “Call Me Kuchu” trailer here  and you can click here for the schedule of NYC screenings that include Q&A sessions with the filmmakers and Ugandan LGBT activists. I highly recommend this film.

The movie, which won the prize for best documentary at the Berlin Film Festival and the Amnesty International Human Rights Award, closely follows recent efforts to pass the “Anti-Homosexuality” Bill in Uganda. The film does this by immersing viewers into the struggle-filled lives of several outspoken Ugandan LGBT activists. Among them is David Kato, who proclaims early in the film that he is the ‘first gay man to be open in Uganda,’ and the Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who during the course of film is expelled by the Anglican Church of Uganda for his tireless defense of the LGBT community. Senyonjo, a straight man with wife and children (and a PhD in human sexuality), dreams of setting up a safe house for “kuchus” (a derogatory colloquial term for gay and lesbian people) in the capital city of Kampala. Kato, meanwhile, is busy documenting hate crimes against LGBT Ugandans as advocacy officer for the underground LGBT organization called Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).

As “Call Me Kuchu” begins, homosexual behavior is already a crime in Uganda, one subject to life imprisonment. However, a new, harsher “Anti-Homosexuality” legislation is now proposing to invoke the death penalty against “aggravated homosexuals” and to force anyone suspected of homosexual behavior to take an HIV test to see if they are ‘knowingly’ spreading the disease. Further the bill seeks to expand Uganda’s judicial authority to allow the county to extradite and punish Ugandans living anywhere in the world who are suspected of engaging in same-sex behavior. And if passed the Anti-Homosexuality legislation would convict – for up to three years – any non-‘homosexual’ persons who fail to report to authorities the occurrence of any suspected same-sex activity within 24 hours seeing it transpire.

Among the particularly shocking revelations of the “Call Me Kuchu” is that American evangelical Christians such as Scott Lively and Don Schmierer held sermons and workshops in Uganda, aggressively preaching to Ugandans that gay people in Uganda were sodomizing and recruiting their young boys into the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ with the goal of defeating a ‘marriage-based society’ to replace it with one of ‘sexual promiscuity.’ Rather unsettling then that right around the time of their sermonizing that the “Anti-Homosexual” Bill was introduced.

For much of the film, even as the “Anti-Homosexuality” Bill is slowly progressing through political pathways, the LGBT activists and their lawyers are in court separately fighting a series of articles being published by a popular Ugandan newspaper (called Rolling Stone) that is busily “outing” Ugandan citizens. The cover of the Rolling Stone newspaper says “More Homos Faces Exposed” and “Hang Them!” and the article includes collections of undercover photographs of hundreds of suspected ‘homosexuals’ that the newspaper had taken in gay bars and clubs and then published without the patrons’ consent.

And, not so surprisingly, one of the ‘homosexuals’ featured in the first Rolling Stone article is “Call Me Kuchu”‘s outspoken protagonist, David Kato.

And then, shockingly, one night, about two-thirds of the way through the film, David Kato is murdered in his home by three strikes to his head with a hammer. (The motives behind his murder continue to be disputed.) Even as LGBT activists and their sympathizers mourn his death, his funeral services are descended upon by anti-gay protestors, and chaos erupts between opposing sides of this contentious issue. One side screams “He got what he deserved!” while the other side screams “Enough is enough! Let him rest in peace!”

I could not recommend this film strongly enough to anyone who is concerned with human rights issues and LGBT issues, or is interested in an account of the willful machinations of a media and government to incite hate in its populace. During the Q&A with the filmmakers, the audience learned that many of the activists featured in “Call Me Kuchu” have since been granted political asylum in other parts of the world, including Sweden and the United States, due to concern that their lives may be at risk. As LGBT rights continue to expand in many parts of the world, viewing “Call Me Kuchu” – and reading in recent headlines about the regressive anti-gay legislation passed in Russia – serve as stark reminders to me that many people do not yet believe Hillary Clinton’s saying to be true:  “Gay right are human rights.”

I asked the filmmakers during the Q&A session how they responded to having their protagonist murdered during filming and they said they were at first stunned and saddened and then felt compelled to make sure their film reached audiences around the world in order to raise global awareness of the alarming situation in Uganda. And their resulting film is a particularly graceful account of a country that is terrorizing a portion of their population solely because of their sexual orientation, and of the LGBT people at the receiving end of the state-sanctioned discrimination. So please, if you have the chance, head to Quad Cinema and check out this film while it is still playing in NYC.

On self-loathing and other gay stereotypes : A Brooklyn Pride-week look at “The Boys in the Band”

By Joshua Guthals, CHEST blogger

“If we could just learn not to hate ourselves quite so very much”   — Michael, “The Boys in the Band”

Last night the Brooklyn Museum screened the 1970 William Friedkin film “The Boys in the Band.” The film is considered to be the first major studio production to deal openly with gay male issues.  The Brooklyn Museum screening was co-presented by Brooklyn Pride as one of the many events occurring this week — including a Pride Run in Prospect Park, and twilight Pride March on Saturday. (A full schedule of Brooklyn Pride is available here: http://brooklynpride.org/.)

Actor Laurence Luckinbill – who in the film plays a recently out-of-the closet divorcee – was in attendance at the museum for a Q&A after the “Boys in the Band” screening. He explained to us that most of the actors in the film (who were all also original cast members in the off-Broadway play of the same name) have died over the years from AIDS-related complications. Those who have died include Leonard Frey (Harold), Kenneth Nelson (Michael), Frederick Combs (Donald), Keith Prentice (Larry), and Robert La Tourneaux (Cowboy). Luckinbill then discussed the landmark quality of the film and play, including its controversial reception by both gay and straight viewers over the years. For example, although “The Boys in the Band” broke new ground by introducing audiences to a culture of brotherhood among urban gay men (replete with much melodrama and backstabbing), people also felt it was brutally dark and needlessly focused on stereotypes of self-loathing aging “homosexuals” rather than more fleshed out and realistic and, well, happy characters.

Luckinbill (who incidentally happens to be the uncle of Lana and Andy Wachowski) opened up the floor to take questions from the audience, and what ensued in the Brooklyn Museum theater was an involved conversation about gay rights in the 70s through the present day, comments on the rather rapid (and quite recent) assimilation of LGBT identities into the mainstream, and discussion about whether the portrayals in the film constituted a problematic and limiting stereotyping of gay men or a momentous inclusion of homosexuality into American cinema (or perhaps a bit of both). In a Chicago Tribune interview, William Friedkin, the director had this to say on the topic: “I knew that gay characters had not been portrayed on film in any significant way at all, so I knew this would push the envelope in a lot of places around the country and to a lot of people. I was most surprised that most of the negative attitudes about it came from organized gay groups. All that’s changed over the years. You look at [online] postings about it now and the reviews are fantastic. They view it as the way gay life was at the time and is no longer. A lot of critics felt it was trying to keep gay people in a kind of ghetto, in the closet, but now look back and see that it really opened doors to gay characters on TV and in all walks of life as people in the culture.”

I personally was enthralled by the film, it had a vociferousness to it that evoked “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I could see that some may be offended at the stereotyping they perceived, especially if they felt none of the gay male types on the screen spoke for their own experiences … but I personally appreciated seeing these characters struggling with sexual identity, aging, and friendship. A review on Slant’s website mentions that the film was “essentially unprecedented in presenting a whole gaggle of gay archetypes—loudmouth nelly, divorcing dad, dumb and pretty hustler” when Hollywood movies before and after “The Boys in the Band” at best featured “token single homos for comic relief or as tragic victims, preferably of suicide.” I much appreciated viewing a film that spent two full hours dealing with topics that actually impact gay communities, such as monogamy, coming out, violence against effeminate gay men, aging, racism, and alcohol dependency.

In an interview, Mart Crowley, the playwright, said “I knew a lot of people like [my characters]. The self-deprecating humor [of gay men] was born out of a low self-esteem, from a sense of what the times told you about yourself.  Homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness. If you went in a gay bar you were liable to be arrested if the place was raided. There were not just attitudes but laws against one’s being — against the core of one’s being.” Not only are challenging issues addressed in the movie, they are addressed with frankness and at considerable length. Indeed “The Boys in the Band” felt surprisingly relevant to me some 45 years after its release. Also, learning from Luckinbill that the majority of the flim’s cast (and crew) died of AIDS-related causes was a sharp reminder to me of the “Holocaust of AIDS in the 80’s and 90’s in New York City” (as Luckinbill called it), something that many people my age and younger have only a distant connection.

Luckinbill’s wife, Lucie Arnaz, was also in the audience (side note: she is the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) and at one point she spoke up to say that watching “The Boys in the Band” on this particular evening made her think newly about the importance of self-love – regardless of gender or sexual orientation. She felt the story was a stark look at the psychological damages people experience when they become steeped in self-hatred. Luckinbill echoed her sentiments, mentioning that he felt “The Boys In the Band” was a story about the importance of community, love, and support. These are rather fitting topics for a Pride-week film screening, especially as LGBT populations continue to seek acceptance in their communities.

Read more here: http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/70s-Gay-Film-Has-Low-Esteem-Boys-attitude-2952305.php#ixzz2VYfCsmJJ

And here: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-boys-in-the-band

CHEST is walking in the world’s largest AIDS fundraiser — and we need your support!!!

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! Calling ALL friends, family members, followers, supporters, (and even frenemies):

On Sunday May 19, the staff of CHEST as well as our family and friends will be joining hundreds of organizations, school and community groups, as well as thousands of individuals at AIDS Walk New York (AWNY)! AWNY is the world’s largest AIDS fundraising event—benefitting GMHC and more than 40 other tri-state area AIDS service organizations.

Last year we successfully raised over $2,500 and with your help, we can take it to the next level this year!!! Our goal this year is $5,000 and we need your support!!

To join our team, donate toward our goal, or simply share some words of encouragement, drop by our team’s fundraising page TODAY:  http://tinyurl.com/chestaidswalk.

Join us in making a difference!

Signed,

The CHESTNYC AIDS Walk Team

http://tinyurl.com/chestaidswalk

A Staff Visit to Hunter’s Queer and LGBTQI Spring Luncheon

A Visit to Hunter College’s Queer and LGBTQI Spring Luncheon

by Joshua Guthals, 4/5/2013

Fellow staff-member Aaron Breslow and I recently attended the Spring 2013 Queer and LGBTQI Luncheon at Hunter College as representatives of Hunter’s Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training (CHEST). We wanted to meet students and staff members who are involved in issues affecting LGBTQIA students at the College and also let them know about internship opportunities at CHEST.  We had a chance to meet around fifteen to twenty students and professors, and enjoyed a lunch in a cozy room on the 17th floor of Hunter West.

The event was presented by Hunter’s Women and Gender Studies Program, and the first portion of the luncheon included a discussion around how the program could become a full-fledged Department. As one of the first Women and Gender Studies program in the U.S., the faculty and student expressed their desire for their program to transition into becoming a Department, with the increased funding and resources that would be included in that expansion.

Several students mentioned that they would like to see more courses (within the program and cross-listed through other departments) include issues relating to transgender people — such as trans-inclusive history courses.

Professors discussed several courses and events that may be of interest to LGBTQI students, such as a new course on lesbian and gay literature in the U.S. post-1945 and a course on the experiences of queer persons incarcerated in prisons (a collaboration with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project). A film studies professor also mentioned upcoming screenings of several LGBT-related films in mid-April, such as “Puzzles,” a documentary about a hate crime and “Generation Silent,” a documentary about elderly LGBT people and the unique situations they face as they age. Faculty members also encouraged students check out LGBT-related public policy courses available at Roosevelt House.

Students then mentioned that they felt they had experienced or witnessed bullying of minorities (not just LGBTQI people) on Hunter’s campus and mentioned to faculty members that they would like support on how to build an environment that embraces diversity throughout CUNY schools. One professor encouraged students to put together another QueerCUNY conference — semi-regular CUNY events that in the past have brought together a variety of people from around the country to discuss circumstances that affect queer students on campus.

Aaron and I let people know about internships and volunteer opportunities at CHEST, and explained to them that our Center had been conducting research oriented around promoting strategies to prevent the spread of HIV for more than a decade. Several people indicated interest to learn more and perhaps apply for internships. It was an enjoyable afternoon spent with some very interesting people. And the food was quite tasty too (check out the photo of the smiling Wasabi that went along with the sushi).