Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

The example of microaggression I observed this week was in the form of a poster for the AHF, the Aids Healthcare Foundation I saw on a bus.  I considered this a form of microaggression because it was designed and with good intentions and meant to be positive but ends up marginalizing gay men by exhibiting certain stereotypes.  The poster showed 6 men with their arms around each other smiling, standing in a line with either the words “HIV +” or “HIV -” written on their shirts.  Each man had a different shirt representing one color of the rainbow. Yet, on closer observation I realized that they were not wearing shirts, they had been painted on their bare chests.  It bordered the line of sexual objectification and I didn’t like that all the men were clean cut, groomed and in muscular shape.  As a gay man I would feel very offended of this stereotyping of what a person of my sexual orientation looks like.  Not every gay man looks like that and not every gay man is AIDS positive. Furthermore, AIDS does not only affect one group or type of person and I feel like this poster was alluding to certain things.  I felt upset and uncomfortable that this organization would put out such a visual.  I feel they went too far.

This observation affirmed my perception of the effects of stereotypes on people.  I see even more that stereotypes are socially created and it is the media that perpetuates them.  That even helpful organizations like the AHF can use stereotypes will good intentions in mind but that their effects on people could be interpreted differently.  I was a little shocked that I, a straight, HIV negative, woman reacted so strongly that I looked up AHF to learn what it stood for since the poster did not explain the acronym.  I was offended and thought about what children on the bus might think when they saw it.  Children are curious, they might ask what it means and they might come to learn stereotypes from just one small visual.