El cuidado de sí. Saber, poder y discursos médicos sobre sida y su impacto en hombres gay

From the very beginning, the HIV epidemic has been linked to homosexual behavior. There are vulnerability factors such as the violation of human rights, lack of political representation, marginalization and poverty that affect this situation. The high prevalence rates in this sector of the population have contributed to the stigma and discrimination associated with the infection. Additionally, in order to maintain health, medical discipline contributes in the generation of devices for the control and submission of gay men, that binds them to the category of dangerous or diseased. Supported in a biopolitical analysis, this paper explores how disciplinary discourses about homosexuality and AIDS that are built from medical institutions and from the public health officials, may not contribute to the original preventive purposes. In the same range of ideas, it invites to people involved in bioethics to study such statements and consider the ways in which the homosexual body has been demonized, medicalized or criminalized. After an analysis of how AIDS emerges as a locus of power and how the biomedical discourse influences the construction of the homosexual body —supported by authors such as Foucault and Levinas—, the paper suggests how to build a detached essence of being homosexual from AIDS. The joint response to the epidemic, mutual care and real concern for the self and the others, are presented as ways to combat the social representation that perceives homosexuality as sick or abnormal.