See: Sex Positive

For weeks now I've been trying to write out a proper review of the Richard Berkowitz documentary SEX POSITIVE by Daryl Wein and I've failed so many times. I think there are too many thoughts and ideas and (yes!) emotions all fighting to be heard. And even after emailing Berkowitz himself, and talking with Corey about the film, I'm sort of a little lost on the approach. So, here are the five reasons why I feel you ought to see this story:

1 - I didn't know who Richard Berkowitz was when Corey asked me last year (Corey's interview with Berkowitz at HIV Plus Magazine). And when I discovered who he was I naturally wanted to know more. Because his is a name that the greater gay (queer?) community should know and when I discovered it was wasn't, I was appalled. I couldn't imagine the same happening now. SEX POSITIVE does a great job of filling in the blank you don't know you have.

2 - SEX POSITIVE is a great examination of how one man's life was irrevocably altered by going against the standards of thee mainstream gay community. Berkowitz wasn't simply demonized and made out to be an alarmist, he was ignored and dismissed. He was basically called an enemy of the burgeoning gay community of the late 1970's/early 1980's. He wasn't supported by those he wanted to save because...he was trying to save them. It's so heartbreaking to see his story unfold for me as an HIV positive person living in the 21st century. How can any community turn its back on glaring examples of doing right?

3 - Historically, SEX POSITIVE put me in a frame of mind that I was literally too young to understand what was happening in the world. It places you in the context of Berkowitz's life and his world and via Wein's use of archival footage, it reveals the true enemies of mainstream gay culture (itself). It makes me ask myself which side of the fight I'd be on, if at all. It makes me ask myself what I would do if circumstances where so similar in my life. It begs the obvious questions of us all about personal responsibility, ignorance, and even persecution all within the subculture we belong to. It makes me counter attack those who claim are only out for what's good for me and mine.

4 - Berkowitz's story strikes me very personally because Corey and I are HIV positive, and a lot of the bargaining Berkowitz shares on screen years after the fact remind me so much of the bargaining I've done over the years in terms of having unprotected sex. SEX POSITIVE makes me reflect on how, in the 1980's, gay men like Berkowitz, even knowing they'll keep getting STDs, still engaged in bareback sex, all of which is so personally prophetic when I think over my life and how I'd realized various times that I too was exposing myself to all sorts of nasty STDs including HIV/AIDS...and I still chose to engange in unsafe sex. So smart, all of us, just not smart enough.

5 - SEX POSITIVE is a human story. One that any person can relate to I think, particularly in this present day: HIV/AIDS not being the gay disease it used to be known as. That's the trite thing to say but still, I believe it to be true. And Richard Berkowitz, like so many other people before him, stood up against those who would shut him out of his community and still screamed. Me, so far removed from that place and time, and still not, I see a man who did not lose more than he gained: he never acquiesced and didn't waver. He was his own man.