LGBT+ History Month, National HIV Testing Week, Middlesex and me

Friday 11 February 2022 is my 44th birthday, and it’s also National HIV Testing Week and LGBT+ History Month. On this special day for me, I would like to share my thoughts on how we can create happier and healthier communities.

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Middlesex University LGBT+ Network

11 min readFeb 11, 2022

What are the things you enjoy most in your role and working at Middlesex?

I love the diversity of our students and my colleagues at Middlesex. It is certainly never boring working here — and I don’t think we celebrate who we are nearly enough.

As LGBT+ Network Co-Chair I enjoy helping to create a #TeamMDX culture where everyone is not only accepted for who they are but actively supported to thrive and give their best in their work and studies. I love that working on LGBT+ inclusion over the years has given me the opportunity to meet so many inspiring colleagues from different areas of the University.

Ant Babajee with the Middlesex University group at Pride in London 2018

What does LGBT+ History Month mean to you?

Middlesex has given a springboard to success for so many trailblazers in the LGBT+ community: Sue Sanders co-founded LGBT+ History Month in 2004; Joseph Galliano was editor of Gay Times for many years and is now setting up the first national LGBT+ museum in King’s Cross through the Queer Britain charity he helped to create; Lewis Oakley is one of the country’s foremost bi visibility activists and host of the Bisexual Brunch podcast; and last but not least, we mustn’t forget to mention that the comedian and Drag Race judge Alan Carr is one of our theatre studies graduates.

Sue Sanders introduces LGBT+ History Month 2022 at the National Gallery

For me, LGBT+ History Month is about giving visibility to all-too-often hidden lives and stories. If we do not record, read, listen to and celebrate these precious histories, they will soon be lost forever. For my undergraduate dissertation I researched the fate of gay men in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Writing more than two decades ago, I was struck by how there had been precious little research, there was no national memorial, and there had been no official apology from the German government. Thankfully there has been some progress in the intervening years, and I will never forget visiting the memorial in Berlin in 2015 — an incredibly moving experience.

Can you tell us a bit about National HIV Testing Week?

This week — Monday 7 February to Sunday 13 February — is National HIV Testing Week 2022. It’s an annual campaign to promote regular testing among the groups in our society most affected by HIV. The latest figures for England (from 2020) show that more than four in every 10 people diagnosed with HIV received their diagnosis late, when the virus had already significantly damaged their immune system.

National HIV Testing Week advert featuring Dr Ranj Singh — Dr Ranj Singh would like you to give HIV the finger — find out where and how you can test

The biggest challenge we face around Human Immunodeficiency Virus is the stigma and shame that surrounds it. But it really is better to know your HIV status and to take control of your health. There are lots of different ways to test these days — it is now so much easier to get a test than when I tested positive 15 years ago.

Sadly, there have been countless cases over the years of how people have been pushed out of the workplace when their employer discovered their positive status. People living with HIV are legally protected against discrimination by the Equality Act 2010: HIV is defined as a disability, and an employer is required to make reasonable adjustments for the employee.

Ant Babajee at Middlesex University for National HIV Testing Week 2018

However, just because I and others living with HIV are protected from discrimination does not mean that it isn’t a huge step for someone living with HIV to take even to tell their manager in confidence about their status. In fact, coming out about my status at work — in a blog post about what Pride means to me and in My MDX Day interview in 2017 — was one of the things I was most fearful about doing. I feel incredibly fortunate to work at Middlesex, where my difference is not only accepted but celebrated, and where I have been actively encouraged to go further in my HIV activism and advocacy. Middlesex signed up to the free Positive Allies scheme for employers a few years ago, and we will be renewing our commitment to that charter mark over the coming months.

Last year was a particularly productive year for my HIV activism and advocacy: for National HIV Testing Week 2021 I was interviewed for the regional ITV News covering Somerset, where I grew up and was diagnosed in 2007; I wrote about the award-winning Channel 4 drama It’s a Sin for our LGBT+ Network blog; I recorded a podcast in the summer with a friend and colleague at the University of Plymouth; and in the autumn I curated a playlist on Box of Broadcasts, I took part in a panel discussion for the Open University, and recorded an interview for Brook, who hold the HIV prevention contract for Barnet. Oh — and I graduated with a postgraduate diploma in public health in the summer, which I had been studying part time since 2017.

I want to send my heartfelt thanks and admiration to my academic colleagues teaching on that course, whose support over the years was invaluable. Studying public health opened my eyes to social and health inequalities, and the need for more than just warm words to make our communities and society at large fairer and more equal, so that everyone has the chance to live a happy and healthy life. I once heard HIV described as a condition that thrives on poverty and marginalisation, and there are countless examples around the world where that continues to be the case.

I am unique, and each of us is unique — a wonderful collection of our background and experiences. Each of us is a beautiful Venn diagram where we sit in the centre. I have an intersecting identity: I am a middle-aged, mixed-race white and South Asian, cisgender gay man, living with a highly stigmatised long-term health condition. That long list tells you something about the possible barriers I might face, but it certainly doesn’t tell you everything about me. Labels are useful but they can be limiting.

As I’m an out gay man you might assume that I am a massive Kylie fan, and of course you’d be right! But you wouldn’t know from the previous description that my Dad is from Mauritius and moved over to the UK to become a nurse in 1968, shortly after Mauritius gained independence. I have been lucky over the years I have been at MDX to work remotely with colleagues at our Mauritius campus on CRM projects. And I am still holding out for a work trip over there.

You also wouldn’t know from the previous description that my undergraduate degree is in German and history, and that I spent an amazing ERASMUS exchange year at the University of Cologne. It was during my exchange year that I walked in my first Pride parade.

The barriers I face because of how parts of my identity intersect can often make it harder for me to achieve my potential. In situations and places where I do not feel comfortable I have to expend a lot of ‘emotional labour’ — I have to judge whether I can open up about parts of my identity. This grinds you down and it can be exhausting. This is why I am so passionate about ensuring that Middlesex is a university where everyone can be themselves and achieve their potential.

The challenge for anyone from a marginalised community or communities is to find the people who make you stronger and bolster you up, so that you feel able to challenge those people who want to keep you down. My hope has always been that by putting myself out there I can change perceptions about what it means to live well with HIV, and that I might encourage others to take their first tentative steps out of the viral closet themselves. When I speak to other people living with HIV, I am often confronted with heartbreaking stories of isolation, loneliness, rejection and secrecy. And I know it doesn’t have to be that way.

Last month I celebrated the 15th anniversary of my diagnosis. It was a moment to reflect on how much I have grown in confidence and resilience — for me HIV has always been much more a condition of the soul than the body — but also how far we have progressed with biomedical treatment and prevention. We now know that someone, like me, who is successfully on antiretroviral treatment and has an undetectable viral load cannot pass on the virus — this is known as U=U or Undetectable equals Untransmittable and has sparked a worldwide activism campaign.

In the past decade we have also seen the advent of PrEP — pre-exposure prophylaxis, which is also an extremely effective way of preventing the virus by taking a pill on an ongoing basis — as well as the approval in the last few months of long-acting injectable treatment for HIV, giving me the possibility of ditching my daily medication in favour of an injection every two months. When I say we have come on leaps and bounds with HIV in the past 15 years, I really mean it.

Would you like to become a PrEP mobiliser? Take part in Prepster’s Ask Me About PrEP project.

Who do you most admire and why?

I admire those people who have faced adversity and have still succeeded on their own terms, and hopefully had a lot of fun on the way. There have been so many incredibly inspiring people I have met as an HIV activist and advocate. I also admire people in the public eye who use their power and privilege to amplify the voices of those people who are repressed.

“Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further”
— Keith Haring

I particularly admire my friend Marc Thompson, who has come to speak at MDX a few times over the years and was featured in a BBC Two documentary last year. Anyone who knows me knows that I am ever-so-slightly obsessed with Keith Haring — an artist and activist whose work I adore and who is one of this year’s five featured faces for LGBT+ History Month.

Do you have any words of wisdom or advice you’d be happy to share?

Don’t ever forget that your mental health is just as important as your physical health. You need to feel safe, supported and understood to perform at your best in the workplace.

If you are a manager or supervisor, your pastoral role is a vitally important one: you are never too busy to spend five minutes checking in on one of your team members who has been more subdued recently than is normal for them or is showing signs of stress. Sometimes just listening is enough, but are there any ways you can lighten the load for your team member, or you can advocate for them?

My Whole Self MOT from Mental Health First Aid England

As a Mental Health First Aider and an HIV peer mentor with Positively UK, I want to say that a problem shared really is a problem halved. Even if you’re struggling right now, please know that you won’t always feel this way, and talking about what’s troubling you can help you to get a fresh perspective. Speak to a trusted colleague, friend or loved one. There will always be someone who will listen non-judgementally and can provide support.

A fuller version of this interview appeared on the Middlesex University staff intranet in February 2022.
Middlesex University LGBT+ Network runs regular events throughout the year — you can view details of our forthcoming events on our Facebook group.
Would you like to become a PrEP mobiliser? Take part in Prepster’s Ask Me About PrEP project.
Are you living with HIV in London and want to make change? Join NAT’s London Activist Network and help make a difference with me.
Additional sources of support and wellbeing tips for people living with HIV can be found on the HIV Find Your Four website.
As London Friend is celebrating its fabulous 50th anniversary of providing support to LGBT+ people across the capital, I would love you to consider making a donation.

HIV facts:

HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] attacks the immune system and weakens the body’s ability to fight diseases.
Antiretroviral medication — also called ARVs, combination therapy, or HIV treatment — lowers the amount of the virus in the blood to undetectable levels, which stops it from damaging the immune system, and means it cannot be passed on to other people.
HIV treatment is now extremely effective and easier to take than ever before. Many people take just one or a few pills once a day.
A person with HIV should live just as long as an HIV-negative person — especially if they are diagnosed early and begin treatment.
There is still a great deal of stigma about HIV. Stigma is damaging as it prevents people from getting tested, from accessing treatment and from living a happy and healthy life.
Aids [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] can develop when HIV damages the immune system to such an extent that it can no longer fight off a range of often rare infections it would normally be able to cope with. In the UK, the term ‘late-stage HIV’ is now generally used as it is much less stigmatising. HIV treatment stops the virus from damaging a person’s immune system.
HIV cannot be passed on through casual or day-to-day contact. It cannot be transmitted through kissing, spitting, or sharing a cup, plate or toilet seat.