"Remembering Well": Sexual Practice as a Practice of Remebering

Kate Bride's article on sexual practice as a practice of remembering looks at the Cawthra Park AIDS memorial in Toronto's 519 district.

"The AIDS Memorial is for the naming of names. The devastations of the epidemic can get lost in statistics. The Memorial, while only listing a small proportion of the people who have died, stands as a symbol of the fight against AIDS, particularly within the communities hardest hit. The AIDS Memorial is a place for grief, healing and remembering. It counters the silencing and denial, the isolation and rejection, that so often marks the experience of People Living With HIV and AIDS."(www.the519.org)

At night, the park in which the memorial is built becomes a venue for public sex, particularly among gay men. Because of much of the public’s awareness and disapproval, the park is a heavily policed in both its design, and by police and concerned neighbourhood resident. Spotlights have been added, and trees and bushes cut down in attempts to discourage public sex in the park. Bride explores the political meanings of the AIDS memorialization, the park's policing, and the practice of the predominantly gay public sex. She explores the gay communities response to the trauma and loss of HIV and AIDS, and suggests that the practice of public sex by the gay community, and even the practice of unprotected public sex, may in fact be a way of remembering. Similar to certain critiques of memorials to the holocaust, Bride asks whether or not memorial sites diminish our memories in that they remember for us. Ultimately Bride argues that no they cannot.With respect to the AIDS epidemic, Bride asks us to ask what it is "we want to remember and how". Public sex may very well be one of these ways.