from the archives
This is the way money for AIDS has been spent by AIDS service organizations. The city of San Francisco may get more AIDS funding than some states do.
-by Patrick Monette Shaw
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SF's AIDS Prevention: Orgasm Coach Hires "Ouchy the Clown"
March 28, 2002
Dear Friends,
Just under a year ago, on May 17, 2001 the Bay Area Reporter (B.A.R.), a LGBT community rag, carried a news article by Donald Fraser on page 14 about an upcoming "Sex health fair to tackle taboos." Fraser reported that "Orgasm coach Frank Strona will head [no pun intended] the list of sexperts sharing all at 'Do You Taboo? Exploring Sex Myths and Other Gay Misnomers,' a sexual health fair ... presented by [the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's (SFAF)] Gay Life" program. Among other topics, this sex-positive forum addressed the "Ring of Pleasure," wherein Orgasm Coach extraordinaire Strona explored "the best way to enjoy butt sex [anal intercourse]."
Since it's inaugural debut, Orgasm Coach Strona has been employed by SFAF to conduct additional events and workshops for Gay Life, all of which are paid for using either federal HIV/AIDS prevention or health services funds, City General Funds, or private funds donated to the AIDS Foundation intended to assist people living with HIV and AIDS.
Barely [no pun intended] a week ago, the "Too Taboo?" Gay Life Sexual Health Fair workshop resurfaced in a *paid* advertisement [not a news story] in the B.A.R. It again uses Strona as Orgasm Coach. The ad in the 3/21 B.A.R. (page 13), measured 4-column inches wide by just under 10" high. The ad is intended to increase registration (which is required in advance) for this April Fools day (4/1/02) event. (As an aside, the irony of the event being held on All Fools Day must have gone unnoted at SFAF.) Also notable, in the face of growing national attention and federal audits of the content of AIDS prevention workshops and AIDS service organizations, SFAF tried, cleverly, to omit details about whether the Ring of Pleasure will return as a significant focus of the Sexual Health Fair, and whether Strona will work that Ring of Pleasure "too taboo" topic into his Orgasm Coach spiel yet again.
In *today's* B.A.R. (page 12) the April Fools' joke is on us: The ad has grown by 1.5 vertical inches ? including additional fees for typesetting, photostats, and ad placement accruing additional revenues to the B.A.R.'s publisher, one Bob Ross, in order to pay his staff, or to enable Ross to take yet another trip to Europe ? in order to include a reversed-out banner (white text on black bar) reading "Featuring Ouchy the Clown," and below *that* the Ouchy the Clown logo in which a clown's head graphic pops out of the "O" in clown. More shrouded irony, as in "O" for orgasm.
So why can't Strona, Orgasm Coach to the stars, conduct this repeat workshop without having to subcontract to include Ouchy? Will Ouchy be able to increase registration? How desperate are gay and bisexual men in San Francisco that they need to be enticed by the presence of a clown to get them to show up at prevention intervention "events"? Will Ouchy be able, single-handedly [no pun intended], to reverse the purported Sub-Saharan level of HIV and AIDS in San Francisco, when others (notably Seth Watkins, Tom Coates, Steven Tierney, and Mike Shriver), have failed to do the same?
How much will Ouchy the Clown be paid for his orgasmic appearance at this April Fools event designed to attract fools foolhardy enough to believe that an Orgasm Coach will prevent an HIV seroconversion? And just why do we need to have *two* Sexual Health Fairs in barely under 11 months, between the one held last May and its latest April Fools 2002 recurrence? Was the first event such a failure that it needed to be repeated in the hopes of drawing participants it failed to recruit less than 11 months ago?
Finally, a heterosexual co-worker of mine, appalled at the size of this ad (I reassured him that at least it wasn't in color at additional advertising expense to SFAF) agreed to help me gather empirical, if not scientifically sound, evidence: He called his son on a cell phone, only to be informed by his 12-year-old that "No Dad, I wouldn't be interested in going to a party having a clown, that's old hat. They bring clowns just to make the little kids laugh."
Look, if a 12-year old is offended by clowns, why aren't gay men in San Francisco as equally offended? If a 12-year old won't show up for a party with a well-paid clown, what makes the San Francisco AIDS Foundation think gay and bisexual men will be interested? This not only trivializes AIDS prevention in San Francisco, it proves the rampant, albeit misguided, desperation level at SFAF to attract Gay Life program participants.
Within the past year, SFAF has contracted with the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at UCSF to evaluate the Gay Life program's efficacy and usefulness. The CAPS evaluation of Gay Life, via the "Castro Evaluation Study," may well have been paid for, like a vicuna sweater, with federal funds. Disturbingly, a reasonable person has to wonder whether that nincompoop Tom Coates, Director of CAPS, has recommended that SFAF utilize Ouchy to beef up program attendance in an effort to provide more credibility for, and thusly, attendance at, Gay Life events. More disturbingly, SFAF has acknowledged for years that its qualitative and quantitative (so-called) research shows that gay men have supposedly "tuned out" to prevention messages.
With Ouchy the Clown assisting an Orgasm Coach, is it any wonder gay men have tuned out?
Patrick Monette-Shaw
Independent Community Observer/AIDS Accountability Research Investigator