Cue Republican:
“Reagan and Bush weren’t so bad… it’s not like anyone died or something….. !
*not even a self-shaming awkward silence later*
We need to repeal Obamacare! Get rid of civil rights and the brown people. Stop science funding.
No money for libtard reseach! Tax support religious schools. Destroy the environment for the investments of the rich. Police every protest and convict those criminals with felonies.
No one will die, quit panicking, you snowflakes!“
Never forget.
“Yet there was a time when you could walk around London or New York and see these gaunt faces, marked with sarcomas, and everyone you hung out with was dying. The official culture was in denial. Sometimes it was easier to be. I remember seeing Derek Jarman at a play. At that point he was blind. I didn’t want to see him like that. And then my friend was queer-bashed on the way home. Freddie Mercury died. Keith Haring died. Eazy- E from NWA died. Denholm Elliott died. Rock Hudson died. Fela Kuti died. And my uncle who wasn’t famous or even my actual uncle died. One of my friends lost seven people who were all under 30.”
I’ve such harrowing memories of this time. At 17 I lost a cousin and several friends (only in their 20s) – in one year. So many good, talented people gone before they had a chance to live. The lack of compassion or concern from the wider world was probably the hardest part to grasp. How can people be so cruel and unkind, even to their own children?
And how much of that hateful ignorance remains? We don’t talk about it much, anymore but it’s always there. Never forget.
A generation of artists were wiped out by Aids and we barely talk about it
This is a request.
Learn your queer history. Learn about AIDS. Learn about how the leadership of this country looked away and did nothing to help our community for years. Learn about how they joked AIDS was god’s punishment for being gay. Learn about how, in the community, everyone was touched. Everyone lost someone. Learn how the AIDS crisis gave birth to the modern gay rights movement. Learn about how that crisis brought the community together after two decades of infighting. Lesbians took care of gay men who were dying. Found families were everywhere. Our history is too important to allow our politicians to sweep the horrible awful legacy of inaction under the rug.
Learn your history kids. Think about the people who died to make your life now, as a young queer person in the world, a whole lot better than it was back then.
YES
Learn about how bi men were blamed for the epidemic by both straight and gay people, and especially for its “leap” to those innocent straight people.
Learn about how Newsweek publicly blamed bi men for the epidemic in 1987, calling them “the ultimate pariahs” and “amoral and duplicitous and compulsive.” How Cosmo did the same two years later, promoting the popular stereotype of bi men as dishonest spreaders of AIDS.
Learn about how bisexual activists like David Lourea and Cynthia Slater were at the cutting edge of safer sex education, bringing it into bathhouses and BDSM clubs in San Francisco in 1981, when doctors were still calling it “a rare gay cancer”. Or like Alexei Guren, in Florida, organizing healthcare outreach to Latino married men who have sex with men.
Learn about how it took two years of campaigning to get even the San Francisco Department of Public Health to recognize bisexual men in their official AIDS statistics (the weekly “New AIDS cases and mortality statistics” report),
Learn about the women who got HIV, both cis and trans, who often had no resources or support. And the incredibly high risk trans women faced for HIV even in the late 1990s, and how difficult it still was for them to access healthcare.
Learn about how bisexual activists like Venetia Porter, of the Prostitute’s Union of Massachusetts and COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), were the ones who first advocated for both cis and trans women, and injection drug users, with AIDS.
Learn about how Cynthia Slater, who by then was HIV-positive, organized the first Women’s HIV/AIDS Information Switchboard in 1985. About how bi activist Liz Highleyman started one of the first needle exchanges in the US in 1991, and bi author/activist Lani Ka’ahumanu and Cianna Stewart started the Safer Sex Sluts to do safer sex outreach to young high-risk lesbian and bi women in 1992.
Learn about how bisexuals are still erased from HIV/AIDS history. How frequently we are told that we were not affected by the epidemic, that we are less oppressed as a result, that we did not participate in this movement or in the larger movement for gay rights. That we were not demonized, that only gay men were disowned or refused cemetery plots for having AIDS. How our erasure is used against us.
Transgender History by Susan Stryker is a very good resource and covers trans history from the 1800’s to early 2000’s. best of all, Stryker is a trans woman, she knows what she’s talking about and is in the community.
All the above. If you can, too, find Longtime Companion or And the Band Played On (based on the book by Randy Shilts whose journalism of the time is essential reading) – both films delve into the 80s AIDS crisis and what it was like for so many in the community.
horrifying fun fact of the day: so greenwich village, which is the neighborhood in nyc where the stonewall riots took place and which was a v important gay center from like the 50s-80s, is now super swanky and full of touristy boutiques and expensive apartments and stuff. st vincent’s, the local hospital which had the first aids ward on the east coast, closed a couple years ago and is being replaced with luxury condos. all of this is sad enough, BUT i just found out that one of the reasons it’s so gentrified now is that the aids crisis was really awesome for real estate. ppl were dying in thousands and leaving empty apartments behind, which their landlords would then rent at higher prices until only rich ppl could afford to live there 🙂
elaphaia said: also during the aids crisis landlords would shut their heat off in the winter knowing it would kill ppl so they could then rent 4 higher 🙂
Reminder that the cishet dominated government didn’t just ignore the effects of HIV/AIDS because of how concentrated the deaths were in other communities because they hate us, but also because they materially benefited from it – because they owned most of the buildings, because our partners and other kin had no legal right to our possessions, and because they commodified and monopolized antiretrovirals to bilk us.
Never forget ACT UP NYC that consisted of marginalized members of the LGBT community, many of whom were dying of AIDS. All of whom fought hard and valiantly against AIDS and HIV/AIDS discrimination. Never never forget about the brave men and women who smuggled drugs for AIDS patients into the US because the FDA was taking too long to approve drugs here and people were dying.
Never forget that people were often kicked out of their housing because they were unable to afford rent and treatment, because their partner died, or because of outright discrimination.
Enjoy your luxury apartments. I hope you remember the men and women who died so you could live there.
Just remembered Mimi’s line in RENT. “It’s nothing/they turned off my heat/and I’m a little weak on my feet.”
Jesus. I know this was before a lot of tumblr’s time, but we can’t forget this shit.
Pass this around and never forget.
The Doctor Is Out 