Monkey Pox Madness: What it Means to the Black Community and the World at Large

Monkey  Pox Madness: What it Means to the Black Community and the World at Large

                                     by Lasana Akachi

With the ongoing COVID Crisis you would think that would be enough to occupy a nation, nay a world gripped in fear.  Unfortunately that is not enough for the hapless masses to contend with.  A new menace to the collective health of communities has arisen.   Enter the Monkey Pox.  Monkey Pox, according to the CDC, is a highly contagious virus that leaves bumps and lesions all over the affected person’s body.  It is extremely painful and uncomfortable to those who have had the misfortune to contract it.  The disease is highly communicable and is transferable by touch.

How did this disease come into being?   Why is this happening now in the middle of a still thriving pandemic?    Let’s begin with the rumors and misinformation circulating.   First rumor, it came from Africa from some Monkey Z.  Now even if that is true how does a disease relegated to an animal population make the jump to human beings?  For those who remember the advent of the AIDS virus some 30 years ago, it was rumored to come from a GREEN Monkey somewhere in, you guessed it ..,,…Africa.  So this is the rumour.   Now let’s look at some facts 

Fact one:. Most of the people infected by the Monkey Pox virus (95-98%) were individuals (men) who had sex with other men.  It was approximately 100% men who were having sex with other men who self-identified in the early days of this virus.  This is a fact that has not been widely disclosed to the public at Large.   A primary reason for this is the growth and influence of the homosexual community’s clout in many life areas such as media, public policy, political leadership, and other key areas.   This distribution of the LGBTQ+ members across a wide spectrum of society has aided in creating a buffer or filter for them in the arena of public information and perception.   The need for this was made abundantly clear during the first crisis for Gay people, The AIDS Crisis of the 1980’s.

During the AIDS Crisis of the 1980s, when a then unknown virus emerged that was wreaking havoc in primarily the gay community, they were shunned and vilified in public perception and in actual life.   In New York City and San Francisco there was mass panic among the Gay male populations.   Public health detectives traced the origins of this unknown virus to the public bathhouses where these populations in both cities typically frequented to make their casual connections for promiscuous, anonymous, and unfettered sexual activity.  Once this common ground zero was found in both places (NYC & SF) the public bathhouses were immediately shut down and declared a public health hazard.

The news of the origins of the virus made homosexuals an instant and highly visible target.  They were victims of violence, intimidation, and discrimination.  In the early days of AIDS the homosexual came under serious attack.  If you selveswere “In the closet” then you had better stay at the risk of your own life and livelihood.  This was graphically illustrated in the movie “Philadelphia” starring Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks.  

Then the news of famous Hollywood hunk Rock Hudson revealing he was gay and was dying of the virus, turned public emnity toward the gays to public sympathy and lessened, for a time, the public onslaught on the Gay community.  From that experience they learned a valuable lesson; manage and control your image and people’s perception of you, organize, and politicize your particular group.   The Gay community rapidly transformed themselves into an effective political unit focused upon lobbying, agitation, and activism to pursue the necessary resources and help to ensure the survival of their special needs group.   The male homosexual community realized another thing.   They would have to reach out to factions within their own community.  The lesbians, crossdressers, transgenders, drag queens, queers, hermaphrodites, and other ill defined groups or beings who were marginalized WITHIN the context of what it means gay or queer.  

This was no small feat, as there was great division and antipathy between the various groups of queer folk.   Traditionally Lesbians and homosexual Men hated each other, and had an antagonistic relationship that goes back centuries.  The other sub groups of Men having sex with other men were looked upon with disgust, disdain, and derision by “traditional” men who sexed other men in the “classical” Greek way where the practice of homosexual relations was elevated to a point of reverence and acceptance in that society.   It is ironic that this man to man sexual relations led to brutality and denigration of women led to the formation of groups of women who turned to each other for solace against the depredations of men.  This led to a formal coming together of women known as lesbians.   In the ancient Greek society there were two islands that were known as a haven for these types of practices.   One was the island of Sappho, the other was the island of Lesbos where the term lesbian was derived from.  It is also from the establishment of these all female enclaves in Greece that the legend and myth of the amazons may have originated.   This style of life and the practices that accompany it also achieved a level of status in ancient Greece though confined primarily to the two aforementioned islands.   The homosexual male culture was much more celebrated in ancient Greece culminating with the Olympics, where all of the participants performed Athletic events in the nude, and other debaucheries also occurred during these events.  It was a law that any woman who witnessed these events was to be executed on the spot.  I suspect there were many such executions during this time which did not endear the homosexuals to the lesbians.  It should also be noted that capital of the homosexual male was the warlike City-State of Sparta.

It must be noted that homosexuality was not confined solely to ancient Greece.  Clearly there were other cultures and countries that had their share of the practice.  However it was in Greece that the practice was converted into an artform, and literally venerated in certain places in that cultural context as a coveted lifestyle.  Thus all the different words and symbols denoting homosexual practices in the western world have Greek origins.

So we now have backstory and hopefully some context to properly frame the connective tissue between Homosexuality, AIDS, and the omnipresent menace of the Monkey Pox.  The similarities of AIDS and Monkey Pox supposedly coming out of Africa, The so-called “Green Monkey” and “Monkey Z” are both similarities to each other in a narrative spawned 40 years ago and being employed today is just too salacious not to be given sufficient scrutiny.

One of the reasons the contemporary homosexual community organized and banded together after the AIDS CRISIS was to prevent a repeat of the scandal that nearly gutted their community and the isolation they experienced 

because of it.  Did you realize during the AIDS CRISIS of the 1980s-1990s so many gays and others practicing homosexual lifestyles died in New York City that the theatre and dance scene was decimated.  Broadway was attending a funeral everyday with the incredible loss of talent and people.   For the ONLY time in New York City history the loss of life was so intense and massive that there were vacant apartments all across New York, so much so that there were incredible REDUCTIONS IN RENTS to fill these rapidly vacated residences due to death from AIDS.

Does the introduction of Monkey Pox in the midst provide a harbinger of similar tidings?   It is hard to predict at this juncture in time.  What is apparent is the inherent danger of Monkey Pox.   This stuff is infectious by TOUCH.  Whereas as bad as AIDS was, you could only get it through direct sexual content or an exchange of fluids like saliva or blood.  This stuff you touch it you are DAMNED!   Remember during the AIDS pandemic when people THOUGHT if you touched an infected AIDS patient you would contract “The AIDS” (That was the name young Black people and then the entire Black community gave AIDS attaching the article The) Homosexuals dread that time being visited upon them again and will do everything in their power to prevent that from happening again, even to the point of misdirection and suppression of data that points in their direction.

Fact is they may have begun to reap the whirlwind already.  Recently in Harlem, New York there was an incident where this has come to the fore.  With the increase in frequency of the “Monkey Pox” there have been people scrambling for some treatment or even cure from the “Monkey”.  Fortunately for this community and anyone else affected there is a treatment for this Pox.   Unfortunately it is in short supply; and many people are anxious about when the next shipments will get in because of distribution issues with shipping and supply train concerns due to the COVID Pandemic.

The issue in Harlem happened because of a Monkey Pox facility being placed in that community without any consultation of the people who LIVE in that particular community.   The facility was placed at a clinic near the Grant Houses in Harlem.  These houses were named after Ulysses S. Grant, former U.S. president and victorious commander-in-chief of the Union forces in the War between the States.  The so-called “Civil War”.    Now at present time Harlem as an entire community has a ZERO registry for Any trace of Monkey Pox.   Yet some unauthorized clinic is plopped into that community without any input from the people, and you have all these individuals coming from places all over the city that have infection rates, and you send them into the community that had 0 infection of this Pox, and you send the infected here.  In the projects.  Now people who live in projects might be under financed, some may be wild, some may even be deemed uncontrollable, but one thing most project people are not is STUPID.  They see lines of mostly presumably Gay white men lined up in their community for hours with a highly infectious disease waiting for a treatment that may or may not be there.   Naturally these people are upset first about the disrespect of placing this facility here without their permission.   Second, the possible infection and transmission of this Pox that wasn’t even registered in this community now has the potential to be transmitted by scores of people coming in who are infected.   As to be expected members of the community came out to confront the lines of Monkey Pox infected folk.  Words were exchanged.  Homosexuals are known to be snarky, condescending and disrespectful to people who challenge them. Things escalated to threats, curses, and obscenities.  Next thing you know, the word went out to the folks in the projects who were Not in the delegation to challenge the communal interlopers.

Next thing you know hordes of warriors came out from everywhere in the projects and proceeded to administer an EPIC beatdown, (with gloves on) to the infected invaders on Friday July 15, 2022. We’ll keep you informed of the aftermath; if any of this episode.