Image of Stigma
In Chapter 1, Warner discusses the difference between shame and stigma. All sex includes shame, but the shame attached to some kinds of sex is more permanent. This kind of shame is called stigma, and Warner provides an image related to the word’s etymology:
Stigma, like its etymological kin stigmata, refers to a mark on the body, like a brand or a tattoo or a severed ear, identifying a person permanently with his or her disgrace. (27)
Stigma is branded on the body, which means it is attached to kinds of sex that are identities people carry around like being gay or lesbian. This kind of shame doesn’t go away based on how people act or dress; stigma means it can’t be washed off the skin, but is a mark left there.
Image of Zoning
At the beginning of Chapter 4, which is about how zoning laws have reduced a public sex culture, Warner provides this image of the transformation he has seen in New York City:
Along Christopher Street, you can tell immediately that something is wrong. In Harmony Video, for years one of the principal porn stores on New York’s most legendary gay strip, they now display $3.95 videos of football teams, John Wayne movies, and music videos by the fundamentalist pop singer Amy Grant. Just up the block stands Christopher Street Books, the store that proudly bills itself as “New York’s oldest gay establishment.” In the front room it, too, sells bargain videos that seem to have been unloaded by a desperate wholesaler in Kansas: Bub Uecker’s Wacky World of Sports, and Spanish-language children’s cartoons. Whose idea of gay merchandise is this? In the back room where the peep show booths are, they are playing films of wrestling matches. A few customers still come in, mostly gay men over forty. They leave quickly. (149)
Christopher Street used to be a central part of queer life, facilitating community for people to be able to cruise for sex and also learn about safe sex practices. Now, the gayness has been expunged. All the former establishments that facilitated queer life have been forced to go in a more sanitized direction.
Image of HIV Prevention in Other Countries
In Chapter 5, Warner discusses HIV prevention in America. He worries that HIV prevention is completely inadequate because its campaigns do not address sex and sexuality. This is because of laws that prohibit public funding going to the “promotion” of homosexuality. The result is that gay men, who are the largest population of people living with and at risk for HIV, are not targeted by prevention campaigns. In contrast, Warner provides this image of campaigns elsewhere:
The prohibition against sexiness in HIV prevention is so powerful that people take it for granted, forgetting that it is even there. To notice its grip on American culture you must first spend some time in a place where they take HIV prevention seriously, like Amsterdam or Sydney. There—by the roadside, at bus stations, in bars—you will see explicit, thoughtful, and attention-getting campaigns about HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual health in general. Many of them are targeted at gay men, and they don’t mince words. They don’t fall back on the vague euphemisms of American campaigns (“Be Careful”); and they don’t rely on fear. (200-1)
Here, Warner imagines a public culture where sex is talked about freely, and this supports safe sex because there is no stigma attached to learning about it. Warner would like to see a similar scene while walking down Christopher Street in New York City, but zoning laws there have reduced public images of sexuality.
