[LJI Exhibit B: Week 4] What does this look like to you?
[Warnings: homophobia, police abuse]
SUNY Geneseo was a great place to go to college in the mid-1990s, most of the time. There was, unfortunately, the small matter of the incredibly inept "health center" - which is fully deserving of these here scare quotes.
Now, I realize that in most of upstate New York, time and awareness and science have all marched on. Not so then. Then, if you went to the "health center", being openly gay + having flu-like symptoms = "We'll test you just to make sure, but you probably have AIDS and you're going to be dead within a year." This just added extra Responsible Adult Cluelessness to the atmosphere that had some anonymous group of someone or other retaliate to the National Coming Out Day sidewalk chalking by our campus pride group with such charming statements as these:
Gay is not OK
Assholes are exits, not entrances
Straight and Proud
Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks!
...yeah. And the very worst one of all: Over the top of a stick figure walking out of a pink triangle-shaped closet with the word FREEDOM, someone wrote "to die".
Fortunately, there were more clued-in folks on campus, and I'd like to think I was one of them. I wasn't one of the "peer health educator" team that gave demonstrations like slowly stretching a condom over a forearm to give the lie to the "but I'm too big, baby!" line that some guys liked to use to try to convince whoever they were sleeping with to go without, or the discussions about how you can't just tell by looking whether someone has an STD or not. But, for a little while, I had a girlfriend, and (even after we broke up) the two of us were sometimes part of a panel discussion called, "What does a straight person look like?"
And...I carried condoms. Not because I necessarily expected to be the one using them, but because I didn't particularly feel any shame about getting them from the various free distribution points, and if I was at a party, I was a lot closer by than such locations when some people decided that maybe they'd be having some sex. It was just a thing that I did.
Apparently, sometimes in some places, that's the wrong thing to do. Because, you see, condoms can be used as evidence of "loitering for the purpose of prostitution".
Yep. The NYC Department of Health hands out free condoms, and the NYPD confiscates them as evidence. Especially if you're young, LGBTQ of some sort (especially trans), and not white. Or if the cop just thinks you look like a whore.
Luckily, I was in school far away from The City, and white, and with a reasonably feminine gender presentation overall. And the police never stopped me, anyway. And 35-year-old me doesn't get invited to That Sort Of Party the way that 18-year-old me did. But if I did, I'd still be carrying condoms with me. That doesn't mean I'm planning to sleep around, or that I'm "infected", or that I'm a prostitute. And even if any of these things were true - doesn't it cause less harm to have the condom than not?
SUNY Geneseo was a great place to go to college in the mid-1990s, most of the time. There was, unfortunately, the small matter of the incredibly inept "health center" - which is fully deserving of these here scare quotes.
Now, I realize that in most of upstate New York, time and awareness and science have all marched on. Not so then. Then, if you went to the "health center", being openly gay + having flu-like symptoms = "We'll test you just to make sure, but you probably have AIDS and you're going to be dead within a year." This just added extra Responsible Adult Cluelessness to the atmosphere that had some anonymous group of someone or other retaliate to the National Coming Out Day sidewalk chalking by our campus pride group with such charming statements as these:
Gay is not OK
Assholes are exits, not entrances
Straight and Proud
Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks!
...yeah. And the very worst one of all: Over the top of a stick figure walking out of a pink triangle-shaped closet with the word FREEDOM, someone wrote "to die".
Fortunately, there were more clued-in folks on campus, and I'd like to think I was one of them. I wasn't one of the "peer health educator" team that gave demonstrations like slowly stretching a condom over a forearm to give the lie to the "but I'm too big, baby!" line that some guys liked to use to try to convince whoever they were sleeping with to go without, or the discussions about how you can't just tell by looking whether someone has an STD or not. But, for a little while, I had a girlfriend, and (even after we broke up) the two of us were sometimes part of a panel discussion called, "What does a straight person look like?"
And...I carried condoms. Not because I necessarily expected to be the one using them, but because I didn't particularly feel any shame about getting them from the various free distribution points, and if I was at a party, I was a lot closer by than such locations when some people decided that maybe they'd be having some sex. It was just a thing that I did.
Apparently, sometimes in some places, that's the wrong thing to do. Because, you see, condoms can be used as evidence of "loitering for the purpose of prostitution".
Yep. The NYC Department of Health hands out free condoms, and the NYPD confiscates them as evidence. Especially if you're young, LGBTQ of some sort (especially trans), and not white. Or if the cop just thinks you look like a whore.
Luckily, I was in school far away from The City, and white, and with a reasonably feminine gender presentation overall. And the police never stopped me, anyway. And 35-year-old me doesn't get invited to That Sort Of Party the way that 18-year-old me did. But if I did, I'd still be carrying condoms with me. That doesn't mean I'm planning to sleep around, or that I'm "infected", or that I'm a prostitute. And even if any of these things were true - doesn't it cause less harm to have the condom than not?