Just like Jesus, or a zombie. Or maybe both. Yes, Bipolar Bear is going to come back. Maybe. But it’s in your hands… Continue reading »
Author Archives: Christopher Banks
Cancellation
This will be the last Bipolar Bear blog entry. I don’t know if I will start up again at this stage. Some of my reasons are explained in this post. Continue reading »
Arrival
Airports are the one place where it is completely acceptable to show unabashed emotion without giving a shit who is around you. Airports and natural disasters. Quite a few similarities there, really, although airports probably qualify as unnatural disasters. Continue reading »
depression / friends and family / gay / HIV/AIDS / self-stigma / sex / suicide
How to live with HIV (when you think life isn’t worth living)
Karl Moser’s HIV diagnosis came at a time in his life when he was self-destructing through depression. Not only has he learned how to live with HIV, but he’s also reclaimed the keys to a life worth living. Continue reading »
gay / homophobia / media
6 gems of advice for the troubled bisexual
“I’m 20 and I have equal attraction to women and men. Is this OK or should I keep it to myself?” I’m wondering about Wondering, the troubled correspondent to the Lost In Love column of mX, an irritatingly-spelt piece of litter forced at gunpoint into your hands at rush hour on trains in three major Australian cities. Continue reading »
flourishing / gay / homophobia / wellbeing
Country queer jamboree
A gay festival in a country town is quite a thing to behold. While you expect liberalism in cities, gay people are largely invisible in places where cows and sheep outnumber the people. Continue reading »
anxiety / bullying / depression / employment / gay / mental illness / recovery / suicide / wellbeing
I left work in an ambulance, thanks to my boss
Pete started his career in IT at 22, at a company he loved, with a culture and colleagues that inspired. He left four years later in an ambulance. The incident was the horrific endgame in an escalating maelstrom of workplace bullying by two of his supervisors, who decided to take the company’s less-than-stellar performance in the marketplace out on their employees. Continue reading »
Oily roots and dry ends
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ relationship with shampoo. We both pretend we need each other, and I conveniently ignore the often outrageous claims it makes on its bottles. But now I’m questioning my very existence. Continue reading »
body image / bullying / friends and family / gay / homophobia / self-stigma / wellbeing
The art of being a man
Todd Karehana used to pull out his eyelashes and scratch up his face to look more masculine, after being teased at school for looking like a girl. Now in his mid-20s, he’s realised that “being masculine doesn’t mean you have to wear staunch clothes and grunt at people. It’s just being who you are.” Continue reading »
Ending HIV: How much is that lemon in the window?
Universal testing fails as an HIV prevention strategy for gay men not just on the evidence, as we saw last week, but on the practicality and cost of making it work. Let’s look at some real-world applications of this. Continue reading »
