It's astonishing to say to you but ... over 25 years into the HIV pandemic ... I find the most stigmatizing part of the communities that stigmatize HIV positive gay men is other gay men. Because somehow they feel that HIV has sucked up all the oxygen out of any other description of being gay, that being gay equals AIDS equals HIV equals AIDS ... and they want to disassociate from that ... I have found that the greatest discrimination positive gay men face is from the heterosexual community at large who don't really know much about it, because its not in the white heterosexual community in Britain. But it comes from their brothers in the gay community who want nothing really to do with them. Also what worries me um.. is that the major AIDS agencies in this country running and managing, directing AIDS. They are run by HIV positive sorry HIV negative personnel or those who have chosen not to disclose.  Um ... We haven't quite worked out what their agenda is because for instance I mentioned if they're prepared to hallmark a venue where unsafe sex or rather sex takes place by saying it's safe because there's a condom machine somewhere on the premises. That could not be something someone who is HIV positive conscious and deciding they want to stay well and healthy could possibly come up with. Cause anyone whose been to a back room knows that there may be a condom machine on the wall but that does not mean that it gets used and to hallmark such a venue as if everyone going in was using a condom and staying safe is to misunderstand and misrepresent the HIV positive gay community of men. And I feel it stigmatizes them as to think that this is all they want to do with their lives. To go to back rooms where it may be hallmarked as a safe venue, cause that creates more and more HIV infections and reinfections. Already a lot of HIV positive gay men feel uncomfortable going to venues where they might be singled out. In the early days of AIDS where people looked as if they had AIDS, they had that look, you must recall what that look looked like. Where there was muscle wasting and its called lipoatrophy around the face where the face had collapsed in, muscle wasting on the body, lipodsytrophy, a thing called buffalo hump where the body does strange things cause that's what the drugs caused you to do. And if you looked like that you generally didn't go out because you got singled out and you weren't made to feel welcomed, you were ... They probably were very  scared of you or these guys that looked like that. They were probably very scared. And a natural response of an animal to something that he fears he might become is to expel it from his vision or attack it, that's what animals do. Sick animals are often attacked and killed. We need to learn from the animal kingdom as to why we stigmatize HIV positive gay men. I think a lot of it is a very real response of fear that we could end up like that and we don't want to. We want to lock Dorian Gray's portrait in the attic. We don't want it in front of us. But this is the early days of AIDS, but even today ... gay men who look as if they're HIV positive, gay men who look as if they might be ill, don't go to lit venues where they feel they might be noticed, which is why the most exploded area of the gay community, the commercial gay community is dark rooms, back rooms where there's no lights, or parks where there is no lights, where they can't be seen. In London the biggest cruising ground is Hampshire Heath, miles and miles of open heath land, beautiful, at night there's no light, you don't know who you're having sex with. A lot of HIV positive men do go up there, cause they feel they aren't going to be singled out or even noticed, but the risk of that is, no one can make a judgement about them, no one can see what you look like, they can't make an informed consent about having sex with you, cause they don't know what you look like. You don't know what they look like, you don't know what you're picking up. I've even had doctors who made the bizarre ridiculous statement of saying to gay men who went to Hampshire Heath to only have sex with other HIV positive men who were on their same combination of drugs. Can you imagine the conversation, you walk up to someone and say "hey, what combo are you on? Can we fuck?" You don't have those sort of conversations; no one has those sort of conversations. But these guys don't feel safe walking to a bar or club and because that's all we are, that's all we do. We only go to clubs and pubs. Where else do we meet each other? Heterosexuals meet everywhere, why do we as gay men only meet in places where we are made unconscious, where alcohol is sold and drugs are used and unsafe sex is promoted. Why is that the only place we feel safe in? And because the stigmatization out there, instead of reeducating other uninfected gay men as to what HIV positive gay men are about. we don't go or they don't go they just go to places where they  aren't noticed. But I can understand the stigma to a certain extent because no one wants to become HIV positive when they're conscious. It's just that when you're unconscious, you're on drugs, when you're drunk, out of it, off your face, it doesn't really much matter, and that's when the danger comes in.