You Be You; I Will Be Beyonce

People criticize me for coming from a place of loudness, a place of agitation, a place of TMI, and that is ok. It is not my responsibility to make people feel comfortable. I have never nor will I ever act or fail to act out of concern of what other people think. I do me, for me, and for some other cause. I stopped caring or worrying about what people thought of me back in high school. But that is an entirely different conversation to be had, I’m sure.

I am not a Puritan. I am less like Ghandi and Oprah and more like Beyonce with her fist in the air.

I identify more with anger and justice than I do in peace and harmony. I feel like it is important to speak out and take actions rather than be approach life with a passive nature. Passive is posting feel-good memes on your Facebook page and truly believing you are helping the world. But to me, hashtags, memes, online petitions are lazy and ineffective in sparking change. You change when you want to change. You put your ideas into action in the timing that is best. That's just how it happens.

So why do people in today’s world embrace such lazy and ineffective means? I think activism-via-social media, though not an American invention, definitely creates a dumbing down of the people who do it, at least in the American version. Contrast that with the Arab Spring, online activism which had direct and actionable effects toward the democracy of a people. “Meet at the square at 2 pm! Let’s take back our country from Mubarik!” And they did just that.

In America you see this: ”Sign my online petition to proclaim your support of cancer babies everywhere! Oh, and click on my GoFund Me, I need a new car. Click like on this pic in order to get into heaven! Send thoughts and prayers (SERIOUSLY, is there ANYTHING more lazy than ‘thoughts and prayers’??)” I can 100% promise you that sharing or liking a picture of a cancer baby, full of tunes, head shaved, does NOT in any way help that child or anyone with cancer. It just does not. Posting pictures of animal cruelty does NOTHING to stop animal cruelty. Nothing.

For example, I posted the results of my STD tests yesterday. I could hear the tisk-tisk and see the shaking of heads. “OMG, can you believe he is posting and sharing such things?? He is just simply TOO MUCH *clutches pearls*!” But..and finally I am getting to my point (sorry it took so long for me to get here)...it is important to show people that those of us with HIV are not disease-filled slutty people. Within the gay community especially, I routinely see “I’m clean, you should be too”, meaning they are HIV- and will only speak with HIV- people. They imply that people with HIV are somehow dirty and unclean, implying that a virus somehow defines behavior and morality for millions of people.

I have HIV. I got HIV from IV-drug use and/or unprotected sex. How I got this disease definites a moment in time of who I was, but not who I am or who I have become. I rarely if ever have sex. And, as my test results prove, I do not have any other STDs (or any other diseases at all). So...though I have HIV, I am also very “clean”. I care about myself and my health. I am not careless forever just because I was careless in the past.
I do not know much about a lot of things, but one thing I do know for sure is that you can only be you. Nobody else. Whether it is the blue-haired church ladies, the redneck conservative women, or “good” gays, I promise that you will always be someone’s target for disapproval and distaste. That doesn’t mean you need to change (assuming you are not hurting anyone). If you change yourself every time someone gives you their pinch-faced disapproval you would be like that poor Tasmanian Devil, twirling and whirling like crazy. It would be exhausting I am sure. And besides, when someone disapproves of you then that says way more about them than it does you! So...do you, be you, and fuck the haters.