F***sheet, GMFA's monthly newsletter kicked off in 1993 and was another example of their confrontational ethic.
The barebacking panto horses
"One of the campaigns I am most proud of," says James, "was
the Bareback campaign. We had huge arguments about it at our meetings,
and at one point it looked like we were never going to be able to complete
the project, there was so little consensus. But we agreed that there needed
to be a campaign to reflect the way that many gay men, positive and negative,
were organising their sex lives. We knew that lots of men had made the
decision to fuck without condoms if their partner had the same status
as themselves - but hardly anyone was talking about it.
"We took that debate and ran it in the press: positive men barebacking
with other positive men, negative men barebacking with other negative
men, and positive men who under no circumstances would bareback. The campaign
looked at the reasons why men make these decisions and the risks that
they involve. The campaign treated gay men like grown-ups, able to make
informed decisions for themselves, rather than just telling them what
to do. And that is for me what GMFA is about. No one has the power to
say 'do it this way, or that'. As volunteers, we are all equal and we
all have equally valid opinions."
[Some will remember the fuss caused by the pantomime horse cartoons humorously
cavorting across the adverts. Complaints of "obscenity" and
"pornographic filth" were made to Positive Nation when we ran
the ads and it went to The Advertising Standards Authority who ultimately
dismissed the complaint. Ed]
page 4 of 6
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