No Strings Attached: My Journey from Token to Truth-Teller

By Janine Brignola

Many years ago, I stepped away from the work I did within the HIV industry. Not because the work isn’t important, necessary, and needed—but because I felt that if I wasn’t pushing an agenda aligned with what most of the industry wanted, then I was seen as problematic. I felt that if I didn’t accept being tokenized and puppetized (a term I developed), I wasn’t welcome.

After facing discrimination and isolation directly tied to my advocacy, it stopped being worth it. I had already endured mistreatment from family, friends, and strangers—so the last place I should have felt that was within my own HIV community.

Too often, I was told what I should say and how I should say it—by people working in HIV who do not have HIV. And honestly, I couldn’t believe that I, the person actually living with it, was being told how I was allowed to speak about my own experience. This wasn’t isolated—it persisted across the work, in every community. Those of us living with HIV were used as tokens, our stories filtered and packaged. The deeper layers of marginalization—based on how we happened to be born—went largely unaddressed unless a specific of that could be used to push and promote an agenda. We were rarely empowered to lead with autonomy. Rarely seen as worthy of authority. The bias and stigma are so deeply embedded in those claiming to lead the fight that they end up perpetuating the very conditions we’re still fighting to dismantle.

I could never imagine going to someone and telling them how they should feel—dictating their contributions—when I am not one of them. At least not once I learned the rules of so-called acceptable engagement, the ones society teaches us to maintain the status quo. As children, we’re taught to play together, to overlook our differences. But as adults, we’re taught to draw hard lines—lines based on the labels society created to divide us.

Yet every day, in more ways than not, people living with HIV and AIDS are told who they are and what their contribution is allowed to be. Few hold leadership positions, and those who do often either created the role for themselves or have drifted so far from the broader community that they’ve become part of the system rather than challenging it.

It always felt strange to me—this shift in perception that seemed so seamless, so normalized, that it happened to everyone around me before I could even name it. Or maybe I did recognize it, and I just refused to play along. I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted to help. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to prevent others from going through what I had.

I refuse to be a puppet in a game I never asked to be in—a game that has cost me more than it’s ever given. One that has harmed me far more than it’s helped.

A hate website still exists to this day—telling people to report me to the FBI if I date. A site I’ve rarely addressed, not because it didn’t matter, but because it’s just one more layer of a world hellbent on silencing anyone who won’t be controlled. Anyone who refuses to reshape their story, their experience, or their truth into something easily swallowed, digested, and used to further marginalize people living with HIV and AIDS. But my pallet has a taste for something different—something disruptive.

My mentors—Richard Hargesheimer, who took me to my first protest at 15; my beloved Gay Dad, Jack Hillelsohn, who made sure every D.C. trip was a memory and a celebration of me; my dear friend Loretta Dunn, who changed my life when she told me, “Look in the mirror, with no makeup, nothing on, and learn to love that woman—because she is a warrior.”

Beloved friends like Eli Rigatuso, Claire Louise Swinford, Nicholas Snow, and so many more.

Black, Brown, Gay, Trans—and one old Hippie. They are innovators and disruptors who paved the way for so many behind them.

My community—they didn’t teach me to be a pawn.
They taught me to be a Queen.

They didn’t fight and die for me to uphold what doesn’t work.

ACT UP didn’t act up to be told to sit pretty and take whatever scrap is offered.
They shook the system because it needed shaking.

The spirit I carry—the one I now embody—was shaped by these individuals and so many others who showed me that it was not just okay, but necessary, to be emboldened. So, 40-some-odd years into the battle of HIV, I realized that if I was going to step back into this work, I had to step in fully. To lead from a place of authority. To empower myself. No longer waiting for others—or a system—to do it for me.

So I created something that helped me name it.
And finally make sense of it all.

The Puppetized Framework

Unstringing systems of control masked as empowerment

This framework is my way of calling out the systems of tokenization, manipulation, and performative inclusion—especially in spaces that claim to advocate for us. It challenges the idea that visibility equals power and reminds us that representation without agency is just performance.

• Puppetization is the process of being included on the condition that you align with dominant narratives and perform your identity in a way that’s comfortable for others. It’s being invited to speak, but not to lead. To smile, not to disrupt.

• The Puppeteer Class includes organizations, funders, and gatekeepers who offer visibility and opportunity—so long as you're willing to stay on script.

• The Geppetto Effect speaks to those who believe they're helping while still pulling the strings. Even Geppetto, for all his love, controlled Pinocchio. And people forget—Geppetto had a master, too. There’s always someone pulling the strings, even on the puppeteer.

• Polished Puppets are those selected to represent a community because they’re seen as safe, palatable, and compliant. They often don’t realize they’re being used to reinforce the very systems that keep us powerless.

• Runaway Strings are the truth-tellers. The disruptors. Those who refuse to be packaged for someone else’s agenda.

• Cutters are the true allies—the ones who use their platforms not to pull strings, but to help sever them.

• String Theory (my version, not the physics one) breaks down the ways control shows up:

  • Funding as leverage

  • Gatekeeping narratives

  • Restricting access

  • Safety vs. Silence

  • Respectability politics

This framework isn’t just about HIV work—it shows up in every movement where those most impacted are told how to show up, what to say, and when to be silent.

And I’m done with it.
Nothing for us without us.
No one leading us that isn’t us.
And no more strings attached.

When Truth Is Too Loud for Comfort

I remember once asking a close friend of mine—a Black woman—how she would feel if someone who wasn't Black came up to her and dictated how she should speak, feel, act, or process her identity. How she should dress. What she should say in public. What parts of her story were too messy or too much.

She looked at me and said, “It would feel like slavery all over again.”

And she’s right. Because that’s what this country has done for centuries: told people of color how to exist—then punished them when they dared to do it on their own terms.

But here’s the thing most people miss:
That’s what it’s like for people living with HIV, too.

For 40 years, we’ve been told how to act, how to speak, how to soften the truth for the comfort of others. We’ve been filtered, scripted, used—but rarely trusted to lead. If it’s unacceptable for someone outside a community to define the experience of being Black, or Jewish, or trans, or undocumented—why is it still acceptable for people who do not have HIV to define the HIV experience?

Why are so many people living with HIV who do hold positions of influence… staying silent? Why are they maintaining the status quo instead of breaking it?

The Hardest Part to Admit

Even among the few of us who do speak out—who put our faces and stories on the line—we’ve been conditioned to turn on each other.
We gatekeep. We compete. We replicate the very power structures we claim to resist.

We fight over scraps—conference scholarships, spotlight panels, a token seat at someone else's table. We let ourselves be divided by titles, popularity, proximity to power. And too often, we let the same industry that puppetizes us handpick who gets to be heard and who gets dismissed.

Rather than recognizing our shared struggle, we let ourselves be pitted against one another—beaten down in a world designed to keep us down. Exhausted by the fight, by the daily reminders at every turn meant to convince us we have no fight left.

But those in power know the truth:
Their power only holds as long as our dissonance does.
And it only remains true if we continue to allow it—by staying more focused on the struggle we’ve been told exists between us, rather than the one we could win together.

We forget that many in our community face compounded marginalization—Black, Brown, queer, trans, undocumented, disabled—and instead of lifting each other up, we start policing who deserves to lead, who’s “legit,” and who isn’t.

We begin reiterating the same narrative that was dictated long ago—upholding and emboldening the problem so it’s always louder than the solution.

It’s heartbreaking, because instead of building a movement, we end up reenacting the very systems that have silenced us for decades.

We become the puppeteers of each other.
And that, too, is by design.

This Has Always Been Bigger Than Me

My commitment to justice didn’t begin with HIV—it began when I was 15, standing with my classmates at a protest for two wrongfully incarcerated Black men. It deepened when I was diagnosed while pregnant, and realized I would have to fight not only for my own life—but for my son’s future, too.

Over the years, I've advocated across more than 40 cities in 11 states. I’ve spoken before legislatures, built programs, and challenged systems meant to silence people like me. And still, I knew I needed to go deeper—to understand the law, policy, and structural tools that shape every part of our lives.

That’s why I created the Puppetized Framework—not just to name the injustice, but to do something about it. This is my truth. But it’s also a blueprint. And I intend to use it, legally and publicly, to build something better.

Because real change doesn’t come from performance. It comes from power. Shared, reclaimed, and used boldly.

So Here’s the Truth:

No one is going to give us freedom we don’t demand.
No system will hand us back the power it stole.

We must stop waiting for permission, approval, or applause.
We must cut the strings—ours and each other’s.
We must lead ourselves.

Because we are not here to be polished puppets in someone else’s production.
We are the writers, the builders, the revolutionaries.

And we are long overdue to own the stage, the script, and the spotlight.

Unapologetically. Together. And with no strings attached.

The Puppetized Framework™ and all associated terms, concepts, and structures (including Puppetization, The Geppetto Effect, Polished Puppets, Runaway Strings, Cutters, and String Theory) are original intellectual property of Janine Brignola.
©2025 Janine Brignola. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized use, reproduction, or adaptation without explicit permission is strictly prohibited.

To request workshop facilitation, licensing, or collaborative use, please visit janinebrignola.com or email janine@janinebrignola.com.