The 11th Gay Men’s Health Summit welcomed guests to learn about how sexual minorities cope with stigma. The theme of the event, which washosted at SFU’s Harbour Centre campus, was “Undoing Stigma.”

Over two days, the summit hosted numerous panels, workshops, and keynotes that addressed issues specific to the gay, bisexual, trans, and queer men’s community and their health, which encompassed mental, social, and physical health.

Each part of the program provided insight into how the health of LGBTQ+ men faces three different kinds of stigma: personal, which is psychological; interpersonal, which encompasses micro aggressions and hate crimes; and structural, which is created by broad social norms at the societal level.

One initiative that was presented was Totally Outright, which was created to reduce stigma and create strong youth leaders within the community. The goal of Totally Outright is to educate “young guys who like guys” in all aspects of gay men’s health.

There was a panel discussion that focused both on issues pertaining especially to young gay men, as well as initiatives launched as a result of Totally Outright. One such initiative is “Think Before You Type,” which addresses sexualized racism common in dating apps such as Grindr.

Panelist Vincent Francoeur spoke of the creation of a space for young gay men as a possible initiative: “a place that would be sexy and cool enough to attract all the guys, not just the ones who are living through difficult time. A place that would put education and communication at the top list of its priorities. A place where there [is] no judgement, and that is inclusive.”

The Resist Stigma project, which will launch towards the end of the year,  focuses on “[engaging] gay, bi, queer, and trans men from all across the country to work towards resilience, community, and empowerment — a challenge for many queer guys,” according to Francoeur.

“We’re creating space and conversation about race, colonialism, sexuality, health, and bodies — topics that a lot of queer guys might not feel safe to talk about,” said Brent Saccucci, Education & Research Coordinator for the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Project started by the University of Alberta Students’ Union, on the Resist Stigma project.

The summit also featured the work of numerous SFU-affiliated researchers, such as Ben Klassen and Patrick Aubert. Klassen’s research focused on the effect that Angles — a Vancouver based gay men’s publication — had during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s in reducing the stigma surrounding people who were HIV positive or living with AIDS.

Aubert’s research focused on end-of-life planning for older gay men, and the negative effects of stigma on their lives. For these men, stigma could represent health care providers neglecting the importance of their partners, or lacking strong familial connections.

Throughout the summit, it became clear that speaking out and sharing your own story — as well as listening to others’ — is a key step they wanted to share for reducing stigma. Sizwe Inkingni, committee member on the Resist Stigma, remarked, “Our stories have power.”

“I’m interested in [. . .] the sincerity and the intensity that [of]people who have encountered paranormal phenomena,” said Paul Kingsbury, a geography professor at SFU.

Kingsbury has accepted a grant for $183,000 to conduct research over the next four years that will focus on those who seek out the paranormal. This includes ghost hunters, UFO hunters, and others who seek out cryptids, mythical animals that have not been proven to exist, such as Sasquatch or the Ogopogo.

Two SFU graduate students, Noel Hawkins and Hilda Fernandez, will be helping Kingsbury on the project, with 82 per cent of the grant going towards training them in the field and giving them the opportunity to co-author articles with the professor.

The grant Kingsbury was awarded is called “Situating the growth of paranormal investigation cultures: a critical study of the lived spaces of the organizations and conferences.” He believes the grant is the result of a “trend which many scholars have noticed in the growth of interest of people spending more time, energy, and money on [paranormal] investigations.”

Kingsbury noted that these shows have taken off with television networks such as the History Channel, Space, and National Geographic, picking up shows about aliens, UFOs, Bigfoot, and other paranormal topics.

He added that the West has been seeing the rise of the “esoteric economy,” wherein more people are commodifying the supernatural or the spiritual. “You can go out and buy healing crystals at trades fairs or spiritual events, tarot palm reading, so there’s been an economic shift in the past decade as well,” he said.

Kingsbury’s research will focus on the investigation aspect. Studies show that there were 250 ghost hunter groups in the UK about a decade ago, and now there are 2,500. He says the trend in North America is similar. Although most research regarding ghosts has been in the fine arts and liberal arts, Kingsbury notes that there hasn’t been much work done in the “lived” experience of ghost hunting.

His research will include studying how knowledge is shared amongst investigators, how they represent their knowledge, and the disputes that may arise in conferences. Having already attended the The Mutual UFO Network Symposium (organized by the world’s largest UFO organization) in California, and interviewing two local paranormal investigation groups, Kingsbury already has a bit of an idea of how his research will be conducted. He has immersed himself in the culture to see how ghost hunters conduct their own research first-hand.

“In the focus group interviews we were surprised to learn that none of the groups charge their clients for their services.

“In fact, it’s considered a taboo or uncool if you’re charging for paranormal investigation services,” said Kingsbury.

“Another thing with that is many of these people that spend quite a lot of their spare time doing these investigations noted that a big point is to bring peace of mind, [and] to bring closure for clients.”

Kingsbury says both of his parents have had ghostly experiences, and that he has been open-minded about whether they exist or don’t exist. However, he isn’t sure if this knowledge early in his life is what piqued his interest for this area of research.

“I’ve always liked sci-fi movies and I have, in my order, anxiety about aliens,” Kingsbury laughs, citing the Japanese horror film Ringu as an example, “So I guess that is [a] pre-disposition for the possibilities of the world. I’ll put it that way.”

A recently discovered method of distinguishing between stem cells and normal cells in one’s tonsils could be key in the fight against tonsil cancer.

Conducted by SFU researchers in conjunction with British Columbia Cancer Agency, the study was published last month in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

Lead author of the study is SFU student Catherine Kang, a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology. She said that stem cell markers have been previously discovered in many types of tissue, but until now there was nothing known about tonsil stem cells.

“The reason why we were interested in finding a way to isolate stem cells from the tonsils was because of the rising incidence of tonsil cancer worldwide,” said Kang.

“What is interesting about tonsil cancer is that 90 per cent of tonsil cancers show the sign of human papillomavirus [HPV] infection.”

She elaborated that, since HPV tends to enter into stem cells to spread its cancer-causing genes, the researchers were curious if the increasing incidence of tonsil cancer might have something to do with the stem cells of the tonsil tissues.

It may be too early in the research to help out those who currently are diagnosed with HPV, but the results are promising in regards to eventually understanding HPV-positive tonsil cancer.

Now that researchers are able to further investigate the disease using the new stem cell isolation technique, they can develop and build upon their existing findings. They hope this can translate into improved patient care.

Before that can happen, more work has to be done to understand how exactly HPV causes this abnormality in the tonsil stem cells. Kang said that it would also be important to determine how HPV-associated cancer in the tonsil progresses from the early stages immediately after one is infected with the virus to later on developing into cancer.

“Since the stem cells are located deep inside the crypts of the tonsil, often covered with inflammatory cells, it has been very difficult for scientists to identify histological changes that could be used to identify individuals at early stages of the disease,” said Kang.

“We need ways of visualizing changes in situ [on site] to detect such early change.”

Kang believes these findings are an important step towards preventing tonsil cancer and providing better care for sufferers.