Talking the Talk is not Walking the Walk
Real Stories Gallery made an appearance today in front of the City of New York. Rachel in her articulate way was able to get approval from the city to hold a most unusual summer event on the Laight Street block where Tristan’s Moon, the gallery, is located. She is walking the walk.
Meanwhile, I can’t even count the number of emails that have been flying around. I posted three. The other 200 or so are pretty much the same.
People want me to apologize. To them.
Obviously, for saying some of the things I said.
But there’s a subtext, too. Sometimes they only allude to it. Other times, they go right for it.
They want me to apologize for bringing S-E-X into what for them is: “a rational discussion of HIV/AIDS.”
Thirty some years into it, they want me to apologize. After thirty years, what exactly IS a rational discussion.
They feel it is inappropriate for me to say that boys do sex work and they want me to say I am sorry I said that.
This from the most sexualized culture in the history of mankind.
I wish you luck on getting that apology.
You people sell cars through sex. You sell jewelry through sex. You sell cigarettes through sex. You sell motion pictures through sex. You sell Esquire magazine through sex. You sell television through sex. You sell every piece of clothing those boys wear through sex. You sell beer through sex. Your furniture advertisements feature the selling of sex. The branded sneakers you wear employ the tools of selling sex. The biggest-selling drug in the world is Viagra. You buy it. You sell it. You wear it. You read it. You watch it. You eat it. You drink it. You consume it like it was water. Sex.
But don’t say sex. Especially in relationship to a disease. And especially not in the name of children.
I am here to tell you that the children you sell out are selling sex and not unlike the way you sell sex. They might be standing on a street corner, but we all are.
The Internet is a street corner selling sex and the street corner.
I am not here to say that I find the hypocrisy astounding because I only find it ordinary.
If every one of the corporations that make a profit on the selling of sex were to contribute something to the eradication of HIV, the disease would have been wiped out twenty years ago.
Your children are selling sex in order to survive.
“But they are NOT our children.”
That is where you are sadly mistaken.
Talking the talk at me on the Internet is not walking the walk.
Walking the walk is very, very different.
They ARE our children. Every last one of them.
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