Op-ed: Telling Our Stories Makes a Difference

Even
though AIDS has dramatically retreated from our conversations and consciousness
since powerful medications began to stem the tide of death, it continues to
haunt our community — and so many others around the world. Whether
we are engaging in completely safe sexual practices or willfully barebacking, gay
men’s sexuality can’t escape the shadow of AIDS. Those who are still
getting infected find themselves facing a lifetime of toxic medications, which
are often only affordable via tenuous government funding. Many forget
that AIDS is just as deadly as it ever was for those who can’t access
treatment.          

At almost
every Q&A I’ve done for the film, I’ve been asked about the prevalence of
barebacking, particularly among younger men. The question is generally
asked by men of an older generation, many of whom feel an unspoken rage that
anyone could be so cavalier about continuing to perpetuate this plague. It is only willful barebacking that has kept this epidemic alive among gay men.
Whatever complexities contribute to that reality, it is a truth that must be
addressed. Many of those who fought, suffered, and survived those years take it
very personally — understandably — when others don’t feel any responsibility to
participate in the elimination of this plague.

The
messages supporting prevention that come out of We Were Here are not delivered so much through the
tragic images of men covered in purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions or the ravaged
bodies of other AIDS sufferers, but through the inspiring history of a
community responding to calamity with extraordinary courage, compassion, and
political determination.

In
conversation, in their eloquent Facebook posts, in articles that they’ve
written, younger gay men who have seen We Were Here have told me they are overwhelmed by the
realization of what prior generations have had to endure, by the sacrifices
made to get us to where we are today.  They say that for the first time,
they are able to viscerally imagine what it must have been like in the early
years, when we watched friends and lovers die terrible deaths, in droves.

My
hope is that We Were Here
will help engender a complex understanding of what AIDS has meant to our
community. I hope that the generations that managed to survive the worst
of it will find validation and catharsis in having this story told. And I
hope that it provides an avenue for intergenerational conversation, for
inspiration, and for a renewed sense of pride in who we are, where're we've
been, and where we can still go.

 David
Weissman is director of We
Were Here, which will be available on pay-per-view and on-demand services
nationwide beginning December 9. Weissman moved to San Francisco, where he continues to live, in 1976. He
previously codirected (with Bill Weber) the widely acclaimed documentary The Cockettes.