Why Gay Men Should Never Make Ebola Jokes
The past few weeks have been an unyielding rigmarole of Ebola, Ebola fear and fear-mongering journalism. Whether it was a report on quarantines of those who have been exposed, debates on possible travel bans to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, a witch hunt for those responsible at Texas Presbyterian or concerns over whether a dog could carry the virus, the American public has experienced a bout of information overload that would leave even the biggest news junkie ready to change the channel.
Naturally, there is a tendency to lean on humor in times of intense overexposure to such a serious topic. There has been talk about how to dress up as Ebola for Halloween, several comics have made jests about outbreaks at major gatherings and the fear of the virus has almost taken on a cartoonish appeal, given that only one person has died from the disease in the U.S. And who is better at making the sometimes inappropriate, maybe-too-soon, à la Joan Rivers joke than gay men? But as much as the gay community loves a good off-colored pun, the sensitive nature that is the Ebola crisis should strike some place so close to home that nothing could be funny about such an awful tragedy.
For those who lived through the beginning of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, you know all too well how it feels to have your community ravaged by a disease while outside onlookers barely flinch. That is, until a heterosexual person or man-of-interest contracted HIV and an all out panacea of fear spread throughout the nation. And you, the gay man who had lost half, or maybe more of your loved ones, has to watch the news as the entire country rallies around a few people who “mattered.”
For those who were born in the 80s or after, picture this:
It is 1983, and you and your best 20-something guy friends are listening to the latest Madonna song while you get ready to go out to the gay bars. You are not just in the gay community; you are in the community, as this was before the era of gay-is-the-new-black, corporate-sponsored-Pride-parades, gay-dads-on-T.V. You are isolated, confined to the gay ghetto that houses your entire world and all of the people who you love. But life is good as long as you have your friends who now feel like family and maybe a boyfriend if you are lucky.
As Madonna tempts you and your homo clique to take a holiday, you notice a dime-sized red sore on your friend’s hand. He nervously says that it’s nothing and you continue the night as if nothing is the matter. But this is 1983, two years after the gay plague had begun to spread among your community. You know it’s something called AIDS, and that it is probably going to kill your friend, maybe even you.
Now its six months later, and you have to decide which of your friends’ funerals to go to. It is 1984 and the fear of AIDS has crippled the gay community and is even starting to get some pretty decent news coverage. It has taken two of your lovers, many of your friends, and almost all hope of living a normal, happy life. Sure, you have moments of reprieve, but the sheer pain of loss has become commonplace and natural. The worse part is, no one outside of the gay community still seems to give a damn.
Now, it is 1985, and the President finally makes the containment of AIDS a priority. Almost 5,000 of gay men just like you are dead, but the media focus is on only but a few heterosexuals who have unfortunately contracted the virus. As the American masses learned more about the nature of HIV, how it was transmitted and whom it affected the most, the wildfire of fear and panic allays to a slow burn as most people realized that they most likely wouldn’t contract the virus. Even though HIV continues to dominate the headlines, it also becomes a punch line for those who are tired of hearing about HIV-this and AIDS-that. Someone you know, albeit distantly as they are not a part of the gay community, thinks it is funny to dress up as AIDS for a night because it’s ironic, timely and just a joke. And he isn’t the only one.
Ebola is different from AIDS. It is transmitted differently, it affects the body differently and it is targeting a different population. It also has taken nine months to kill the amount of people that took HIV four years. For the many in West Africa who have recently buried their loved ones, the pain is fresh, blinding and wrought with anger and grief.
Imagine burying your sister, your mother or your husband, or maybe all three. There is no infrastructure to control the growing epidemic that has brought crippling fear in your town. The outside world is looking at quarantining your entire country, and you are just trying to survive.
Now ask yourself, do you still think it’s not too soon to crack an Ebola joke?
Gay men now enjoy the luxury of dancing in and out of the gay ghetto that once imprisoned their homosexual identities. We are moving into the suburbs, having babies, getting married and inching toward equality day by day. And as we step further and further away from the struggle and tragedies that quite literally plagued the gay community in the 80s and 90s, we run the risk of becoming as insensitive as the people that we have spent years fighting again.
As gay men, we cannot only care about the issues that directly impact us while we laugh at the ones that affect others. Most of us still cringe when someone makes an AIDS joke because, 30 years later, it’s still not funny. An AIDS Halloween costume will never be appropriate; not yesterday, not today and certainly not tomorrow. So, when it comes to Ebola, just take a minute to think how it would feel to hear someone who has lost no one joking about a disease that just wiped out your community.
http://www.hivequal.org/hiv-equal-online/why-gay-men-should-never-make-ebola-jokes
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