Never afraid of controversy
One of the Positive Campaign Group's earliest and most striking campaigns
was to promote the
symbol '+ve' as an affirmative badge of HIV status. Some volunteers
felt that it was time to stop apologising for being positive or feeling
the need to hide it. The process of coming out as HIV positive was often
likened to coming out as gay, a process that almost all of GMFA's volunteers
were familiar with.
James Quinlan recalls: "As a positive man, there was little support
for me 10 years ago beyond my clinic. What some of
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James Quinlan (left) and Matthew Hodson doing 'the tangle'
us volunteers wanted was the ability to be able to state: 'We are positive.
We do not have a problem with that. If you do, that is your problem'."
Some misunderstood the campaign's intentions. People thought that it was
trying to force everyone with HIV to 'come out' about their status. The
volunteers who worked on the campaign recognised that many people were
either not ready, or simply not in a position to let others know their
HIV status, but the campaign was there for men who were tired of hiding
their status and feeling ashamed. "The +ve campaign helped positive
men who could and wanted to be open about their status, to do just that,"
says James.
GMFA has never run scared of controversy. One of the early campaigns was
a postcard showing a close-up of a sheathed cock entering an arse, over
the caption, 'My friend is positive, fuck him.' Over the years, as images
of naked men became
more commonplace in the gay press, GMFA has adopted other tactics to grab the attention of its target audience.
