Garrett Prestage interviewed by James Waites for the Australian response to AIDS oral history project [sound recording]
- Bib ID:
- 2304308
- Format:
- Audio
- Author:
- Prestage, Garrett, interviewee
- Access Conditions:
- Access open for research, personal copies and public use.
- Description:
-
- 1993 May 26
- 2 digital audio tapes (ca. 122 min.)
- Series:
- Australian response to AIDS oral history project
- Summary:
-
Garrett Prestage, gay community activist, speaks of his childhood spent in Sydney, becoming aware of his sexuality from his early teens; how at university he became very actively involved in the gay movement; his longtime involvement in political activity since his teens; adjusting after graduation his political views such as the elitism in the gay movement failing at times to involve ordinary gay people; how his involvement in organising the National Homosexual Conference lead to organising the first Gay Mardi Gras in 1978; how he realised that ordinary gays were being excluded by Left organisers of the Mardi Gras such as the debate over whether a police permit was desirable even though it might expose many ordinary gays who could not afford to be publicly outed; his realisation of the danger of tunnel vision for the politically active; his focus shifting to community involvement and away from left-wing organisations.
Prestage recalls that after a transition period he became a youth worker for the NSW Dept. of Youth and Community; later developing a gay youth organisation while a youth worker for City Council; setting up 20/10 as a voluntary organisation to provide a street network for gay kids; his search for funding, getting $3,000 from the Drug and Alcohol Authority with which he conducted a 1982 survey of about 350 gay kids in bars and found huge levels of drug and alcohol usage and the published report attracted by the end of 1983 further financial support from the NSW Government turning 20/10 into Australia's first funded gay youth refuge; his growing awareness of AIDS in 1983 as a personal health risk but no advice on protection; the confusion of AIDS symptoms with the flu leading to a decision to be sexually abstinent; his trip to the United States in 1984 and encountering similar levels of paranoia; on returning to Australia he saw the need to promote safe sex education among gays not simply abstinence; his work on and problems with the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON); his rejection of the Grim Reaper icon and the 1985 promotion of Rubber Me to highlight positive safe sex education.
Prestage discusses the resistance from the mainstream community; his life in the United States from 1986-91; his brief return during the Bicentenniel coinciding with an offer from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to undertake a 3 month research project on Western Sydney bisexual males; the problems of educating bisexuals who generally do not identify with gay men; his follow-up study in 1989 contacting casual bisexual males through newspaper ads; how he was flooded by the enormous response; how sex researchers using accepted sexual categories are overlooking the casual homosexual contacts of ordinary straight men who can be very sexually adventurous; his rejection of the concept of bisexuality in favour of more individualised sexualites, human eroticism not gender specific.
Prestage speaks further of his results demonstrating that individual sexual practices do not equate to accepted categories of sexual preference and the need for AIDS educators to be very aware of this; how this study was a model for a Federally funded 1992 project Male Call, a national survey by Macquarie University of men who have sex with men to determine safe sex knowledge and practices amongst Australian gay and bisexual men; his current longitudinal study Sydney Men And Sexual Health (SMASH) involving recurrent interviews and HIV tests every 6 or 12 months of 1,000 men and the problems of recruiting a broad enough sample of men and the administrative problems of interviewing and testing; the opportunity to challenge sexual stereotyping; his realisation that the gay community is very middle class in its prejudices; the gay community's active response to the AIDS crisis; the need for community spirit to respond to a crisis; how people continue to lack a proper appreciation of individual differences in sexuality and still only think in socially accepted sexual stereotypes; how AIDS cannot just be identified with the gay community.
- Notes:
-
- Part of a project undertaken jointly by the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations and the National Library of Australia focussing on the social and political response in Australia to AIDS.
- Recorded on May 26, 1993.
- Digital master available National Library of Australia;
- Index/Finding Aid Note:
- Timed summary and transcript (typescript, 45 leaves) available.
- Subject:
-
- Prestage, Garrett -- Interviews
- AIDS Council of New South Wales
- 20/10 (Organisation)
- Sydney Men and Sexual Health (Project)
- Bisexual men -- Australia -- Education -- AIDS (Disease)
- Safe sex in AIDS prevention -- Australia
- Gay activists -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- Interviews
- AIDS (Disease) -- Government policy -- Australia
- Sexual orientation -- Research -- Australia
- Gay communities -- New South Wales -- Sydney
- Gay men -- Australia -- Education -- AIDS (Disease)
- Men -- Sexual behavior -- Research -- New South Wales -- Sydney
- Other authors/contributors:
- Related Records:
-
This belongs to the Australian response to AIDS oral history project.
This collection contains 109 records. - Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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- Reason for copyright status:
- Until 2063 [Created/Published Date + 70 Years]
Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Sound Recording
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 1993
Copyright status may not be correct if data in the record is incomplete or inaccurate. Other access conditions may also apply. For more information please see: Copyright in library collections.
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