Saying monkeypox is tearing through communities of queer men isn't stigmatising - being afraid to sa

[Behind the Aegis]

Saying monkeypox is tearing through communities of queer men isn’t stigmatising – being afraid to say it is

Not since the gruesome heyday of HIV/Aids has a virus been such a threat to the lives of men who have sex with men. As monkeypox rips through queer communities, particularly in London, the cruel legacy of that pandemic casts an unnerving shadow. Conversations in LGBTQ+ spaces – from Highgate men’s pond in the capital to bars and clubs in urban centres – turn anxiously to this new threat.

hose who have had the virus share their experiences: some mild symptoms, others painful and miserable. WhatsApp groups ping with pictures of gay and bisexual men proudly displaying plaster-covered upper arms to confirm they’ve been vaccinated in a flashback to the peak of the national Covid trauma. On the gay hookup app Grindr, some use their profiles to announce they’re abstaining from sexual contact until their scheduled vaccination; in queer clubs, some choose to skip the ritual taking-off of T-shirts, fearing the prolonged skin-on-skin contact of an intimate dance will put them at risk.

This is, of course, quite unlike HIV, a virus that has taken the lives of tens of millions globally, and which ravaged gay and bi male communities in the west. We know what monkeypox is, the symptoms are largely mild for most, and an effective vaccine – developed for smallpox – is available in the UK. For a significant period in the 1980s, no one knew what was causing rare illnesses such as Kaposi’s sarcoma among men who have sex with men. Speculation was rife: could it be, for example, the high use of amyl nitrite (or “poppers”) by gay and bi men on club floors and in bedrooms? Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, a searing play about that early period, explored the panic as gay and bi men watched their friends suddenly stricken by devastating illnesses and suffering often unbearable deaths, unsure about the cause and whether or when it would be their turn.

The brutality of that time feeds into a collective trauma among queer men which, for some, has led to a defensiveness over monkeypox. The response to HIV dripped with stigma: already widespread public hostility to same-sex relations was stirred up by media outlets sensationalising a “gay plague”; “I’d shoot my son if he had Aids, says vicar!” was one Sun headline in 1985; while James Anderton, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police until 1991, denounced gays, drug addicts and sex workers with HIV for “swirling in a human cesspit of their own making”.

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