poslink Issue 100, Spring 2022

Our living story

by Timothy Krulic with contributions from David Menadue and Max Niggl.

Next year, Poslink turns 25 years old.

Its earliest pages uncover a community of people living with HIV rebuilding from a time of policy neglect and cuts to services. Issue 1 still has visual impact and vital news from a volunteer board, executive officer and assistant. I think it shows that everyone has something to offer to this still unfolding, living story of our community response to HIV in Victoria.

Poslink’s story begins, however, with the national masthead, Positive Living.

First published by People Living with HIV and AIDS Victoria (now Living Positive Victoria) in 1989, Positive Living became a leading source of HIV related news, advocacy and journalism in Australia. Editorial responsibility for the magazine eventually transited to NAPWHA. But key contributors, including Bridget Haire, Colin Batrouney and David Menadue stayed on board to maintain a high quality of content for our new newsletter, Poslink.

In preparation for this retrospective, all editions of Poslink published from 1998, are now available online in our new-look archive. The Australian Queer Archives, based at the Victorian Pride Centre in Melbourne, still house hardcopies of the earliest 10 editions for the public to see and to hold. Featured on the cover of this issue, they provide compelling reading.

1998 was a turning point in the epidemic. Rapid advancements in ART gave new hope to many. Promoting understanding of treatments and side effects was a major purpose of the newsletter. Lived experience opened up conversations about the reality of battling side effects. A fresh-faced PLHWA Victoria advertised its new services. Treatment events, featuring Vanessa Wagner and her ‘Wheel of Misfortune’ offered a lighter, if slightly unhinged, collaborative way to access information.

Reading Poslink from the mid-2000s reveals a time when our community was smaller and less visible. We regularly shared personals ads and letters to the editor. Planet Positive began as an open invitation from two contributors, David Menadue and Daniel Donnelly. In it, they outlay the limited opportunities for positive connection at the time. You can still read some of the back and forth as members mark out a space all of their own in bars and pubs across Melbourne.

Our newsletter was a source of connection but also discussion. Often, these were led by outspoken presidents, like John Daye and Greg Iverson. Writing in a context where stigma and silence was contributing to a widening sero-divide, Greg admired Tobin Saunders’s (aka Vanessa Wagner) ability to be out and open about his HIV status on the celebrity season of the popular reality television show, Big Brother. Greg called this the “fuck ‘em all” approach towards stigma. For him, Tobin exemplified,

“That feeling of no shame, claiming what is rightfully ours in a society that purportedly prides itself in its diversity, acceptance and support.”

Pandemic fatigue was making itself felt, too. As successive governments disinvested in the response there was an increase in rates of transmission among gay men in Victoria. One piece, written by David Menadue, stands out. Well before we knew about U=U, he outlined the role positive people played as part of the shared responsibility of HIV prevention. Strategies that could invoke more stigma were contrasted against tools that might facilitate honest conversations about the challenges of maintaining safe sex when fear, desire, self-esteem, uncertainty and drugs, dark rooms and parties were all at play. Without funding for a positive voice campaign, David encouraged readers to write in to share their own experiences and strategies in the magazine.

The following decade saw a renewal of the community response in Victoria. In 2011, then president Paul Kidd welcomed the move to Coventry House in an update to members. Working effectively and collaboratively with Positive Women and Straight Arrows became standard. Poslink shared news, events and stories from all three organisations until Living Positive Victoria and Straight Arrows merged in 2017.

By this time people living with HIV were inhabiting a vastly different world. Beyond biomedical advances, websites, email and social media had completely changed now we connected and communicated. These platforms offered a far more sophisticated and dynamic way to engage community members with health information, news, events and consultation. Grassroots initiatives, like The Institute of Many, demonstrated new ways we could see, connect with and support each other.

What could print and the written word still have to offer?

Space will always be needed to unpack complex health advice. Although treatment information has become easier to keep up with, entire issues are still dedicated to mental and sexual health and maintaining a good quality of life as we age.

Most of all, Poslink remains an essential outlet for our unique advocacy and voices. As Max Niggl writes in this edition, diverse stories of living with HIV convey the emotion that’s needed to spark social change. Critical perspectives on the social, political and biomedical dimensions of HIV are a mainstay. Over the past few years alone, our contributors have led conversations on HIV and gender inequity, PrEP, U=U, discrimination in criminal, migration and public health law, drugs and consumption, sex work, and the racism, sexism and queer phobia that intersect with stigma.

COVID-19 saw the end of Poslink in print. Right up until the winter lockdown in 2020, staff and volunteers diligently printed, packed and mailed hundreds of copies of each issue to community organisations and clinics across Australia. We have taken this as an opportunity to integrate a richer visual language into our offering. By engaging members with art, photos and stories from our community and collaborators we hope that each quarterly issue of Poslink gives people a moment out of their busy lives to engage and connect with the issues that matter most to our community.

There is something about telling personal truth that never fails to have an impact on both the teller and the reader. What might you contribute to this story?

Sparking change

by Max Niggl with contributions from Timothy Krulic

The sharing of personal stories is part of humankind’s history.

Since the start of the Australian HIV & AIDS epidemic, it has been a hallmark of the response.

Who could forget the closing plenary of the third Australian AIDS Conference in Hobart in 1988? A group of people walked onto the stage and declared that they were HIV positive and that they were no longer content to remain invisible (including Bev Greet, co-founder of Positive Women). Their stories, their bravery, started more conversations. They certainly grabbed the media’s attention. Suddenly, it seemed the public saw real people with real stories. They were peers deciding to speak out, peers supporting each other and declaring that being silent equals death.

In 1998 Living Positive Victoria named its newsletter Poslink. Contributors were many as we sought to provide our members with treatment information, medical advice, conference reports, articles from dieticians and naturopaths. Reading those early editions was a compelling journey as the new treatments were providing hope to so many.

Over the years since, Poslink has seen many changes and all for the better. But a constant has been telling personal stories.

Why has it been so important to share stories of living with HIV throughout the epidemic? And why is it still so important today?

Peer support, caring for each other and building community can only happen by telling stories. In the period 1984 – 1994, newsletters (remember them?) and the gay press were crucial to communicate to other HIV positive people who did not want to be open about their status. We can’t forget how many were worried about receiving our newsletters in the mail. There could be no sender identification on the envelope, but they could then privately read the articles and the personal stories. Sometimes, it was reading other people’s stories that gave less sense of being alone. Sometimes it gave courage to start telling their own.

The ripples of peers inspiring each other can grow to be enormous. In 2001, I managed to persuade the speakers bureaus of Living Positive Victoria, Positive Women and Straight Arrows to come together as one. It was the first time we had speakers and trainees of different genders and sexualities come together with regular development opportunities, peer support and professional training. Barriers were broken down. Trust was built. Stories identified commonalities. From there on the Positive Speakers Bureau was united in sharing each other’s stories to audiences of thousands every year.

Many speakers have shared their stories in Poslink. They were the human face of HIV to our readership and the wider community. Their ability to speak publicly at a time when stigma was still so visceral meant that many found themselves on the front line of anti-discrimination work. Jeffrey Robertson’s 2004 story of being targeted by a relentless campaign in a regional city, was powerful. He tells of his decision to fight back, share his story with local media and establish Breaking the Chains, an advocacy network to educate regional communities.

At other times, our stories promote insights for living well. By the mid-2000s, Poslink regularly published stories submitted by readers, sometimes anonymously. Many of these stories voiced the struggles we might be tempted to face alone. Challenging topics such as HIV and libido, alcohol and other drugs, anal cancer, negotiating sero-discordant relationships were all in the stories mix as peoples’ lives were being rebuilt with the more effective treatments. Now that ageing with HIV is the distinct experience of many, stories of living long term and maintaining a good quality of life are regular features of our coverage on our unique perspectives on health promotion.

Today our stories continue to shine awareness on the way that stigma intersects with the disadvantage and discrimination that still exist in our institutions and structures.

An interesting through line to our most recent edition are two stories, one by Steve Spencer and the other by Peter Davis published almost a decade apart, which speak to the dualities and challenges of finding inclusive spaces for bisexual men living with HIV.

There have been several editions on women’s perspectives of living with HIV. As Heather Mugwagwa wrote in 2018, HIV is superimposed on the existing disadvantage women face within a gendered social system. These editions have accompanied stories of women accessing their rights, and finding each other, pleasure, love and a new sense of themselves.

Over the last few years, stories have explored trans and Aboriginal experiences. Increasingly, our focus is on the challenges faced by new and temporary migrants. The newest members of our community are of incredibly diverse cultural, gender and sexual identities who seek safety, access to treatments, community connection and a future that lives up to their dreams and aspirations.

From the early AIDS activists to individual empowerment of individuals, it has been the personal narratives that have changed people’s minds and provided enormous support and encouragement.