#Aids History

[yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere]

as a queer person #FellowTravelers already means a lot, but THIS episode8-finale ep-ending scene? this scene means absolutely the world, it's everything, for all of us.🌈

can't watch it without sobbing.

(please do check the WHOLE post, and watch How to Survive a Plague 2012, it's a MUST watch (+everything you spot in this post)

+important reading about AIDS/HIV: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/139102124?shelf=about-aids-hiv

+ a special episode where we hear(literally) from listeners of the show who were lovers, nurses, relatives, students, and friends of people who died from AIDS. (have tissues nearby):https://open.spotify.com/episode/4rTjExVqMVoEtCVPISSW5t?si=Dx09EVStQAiNHoTYvwZvFw & https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-a-bit-fruity-with-matt-ber-117844074/episode/stories-from-the-aids-crisis-191687576/ +ofc THIS ep w Peter Staley :https://open.spotify.com/episode/1bpmgbS56oqjpLdhFqPhFQ?si=PKVw0V_MRx-ajGmVF-GM4Q (this ep of the podcast vid on ytube link below in the post(also ep on iheart link below as well!)

(+IMPORTANT) (Nov,2023)-A Bit Fruity Podcast (created by Matt Bernstein (gay American Jewish man) Ep with Moe Dabbagh, a gay Palestinian American with family currently in Gaza. ‘Queers for Palestine & The Power of Pinkwashing’. Palestine has been occupied for more than 76 years now, since 1948 year. This ep gives you a LOT of information, especially if you are one of the people who can’t see right through the propaganda; or the ones who go ‘well if you’re gay then go to Gaza and see how that goes for you’. Queer Liberation is a liberation of Palestinian people. We can’t have one without the other. Free Palestine. Free all the people that are not yet free. This is where we start!! Ep on youtube :https://youtu.be/Xsgdk-DDSXc on spotify :https://open.spotify.com/episode/62WOjKJYih6lhuisP8tmZH?si=soRArGs1QeWqEzEaiSVlUg on iheartcom:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-a-bit-fruity-with-matt-ber-117844074/episode/queer-palestinians-the-power-of-129612460/(keep learning & keep showing up!)

!!.http://alqaws.org/siteEn/index & https://queersinpalestine.noblogs.org/ + https://www.instagram.com/queersinpalestine/

-sometimes i think about gay people who lived centuries ago who thought they were all alone who imagined a world where they could live openly as themselves who met in secret spoke in code defied everything and everyone just to exist and i’m like..i gotta sit down. whew i gotta sit down....THIS POST:https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/764660637347561472/katherinebarlow-phantom-tail-mortuarybees?source=share

+ also queer history/facts from RWRB(Alex engaging with queer history)(thank you SO. MUCH. CASEY MCQUISTON!!)-GREAT POST here on tumblr!!-many links here, lots of information! (Waterloo Vase, Stonewall, SCOTUS decision 2015, Walt Whitman, Laws of Illinois 1961, The White Nights Riots, Paris Is Burning, THAT David Wojnarowicz photo 'If I Die Of AIDS-Forget Burial-Just Drop My Body On The Steps Of The F.D.A' https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/757305651356729344?source=share (I encourage you to research more about David!!) , Thisbe & Pyramus, The V & A, James I & George Villiers and MORE!!) https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/757308307835895808?source=share (Learning about things referenced in Red, White & Royal Blue, thank you @ elipheleh)

+ https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/743725164968214528?source=share

+ https://yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere.tumblr.com/post/746941244472786944/so-alright-here-are-the-moviesmedia-that-make

BOOKS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BISEXUAL HISTORY & ACTIVISM:https://www.tumblr.com/ruimtetijd/686000390089621504/list-of-books-about-bi-history-and-activism-from &https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/139102124?shelf=bi-bisexual-characters-done-well &https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q--nIkJu0OS0BgiyZmdKVwOVg1G90SFzWijNDWFTt58/edit#heading=h.wqkaxpi7o5je

+ https://www.queeringthemap.com/

+ https://www.aidsmemorial.org/interactive-aids-quilt

+ https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/752340111366160384/this?source=share

+Thank You Howard Ashman, I love you forever, so many of us are here and sane because of Your legacy and impact.(DISNEY-QUEER SONGS-MUSIC-POST):https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/753605532240216064/howard-ashman-i-love-you-forever-so-many-of-us?source=share &https://www.tumblr.com/yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere/754612616112046080?source=share

about Howard, about AIDS, listen to the song 'Sheridan Square' if you haven't yet, Howard wrote it with Alan Menken. And yes, it makes me sob every single time i hear it: .https://open.spotify.com/track/5p61V1pNfa4qoZIxm6apex?si=a32ca6011ab44782 &https://youtu.be/-4fr8JGkeO4 &https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97-NzeIkkJI&list=OLAK5uy_l7U2qdUmOPfgWwmsCA0cc_-KDxwjMj5zM +Learn more :https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/05/sheridan-square/ & please research more about Howard, there's a lot of Him in THIS IMPORTANT post because we, queer people, owe him so so much.

♥.https://open.spotify.com/playlist/19uKl8PZixNjsMBBqSP1bf?si=e6186d9a0a824679 &https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0X8DlZ8X0q9Pzvqq857XlV?si=fa85b32666b94e74 &https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6vdBgNpWvIwjCLD2JrJwxj?si=3274258c86f842

+ :

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+ https://twitter.com/beames_josh/status/1500938296209199108 + https://twitter.com/beames_josh/status/1500935379154657281

+once you're here check out this important posts:

bi ig highlight : https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18280848235083086/

also i recommend this podcast ‘A Little Queer Podcast’ by two incredible bisexual people Capri Campeau and Ashley Whitfield. episode linked here, ‘Debunking Bisexual Myths and Stereotypes’ :https://open.spotify.com/episode/3wcP8HBIY0IyVxROjpZPNg?si=TIHDv-eFQi-mdsCS6zKzNA (all covered here for real!) +also check ‘A Bit Fruity Podcast’ by Matt Bernstein (very educating one!!)

[queerism1969]

[troutreznor]

Pride, NYC, mid '80s. My friend Jason, in the middle, with other members of Act Up.

photo & caption by Mariette Pathy Allen [website] [instagram]

[cbrownjc]

I’ve been thinking about this book that amc-Daniel wrote about the growing AIDS crisis. The back blurb says it was first published as a running series on Kaposi Sarcoma during the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic, which was before it was even called AIDS. Which means Daniel would have been in his late-20s at the time when writing about it (circa 1981). 

This means that Daniel was writing a running series for some newspaper (or maybe multiple papers) about this illness that seemed to be infecting only gay men (which is what was thought about the disease at the time - the original name for AIDS was GRID: “gay-related immune deficiency.”) Given how Daniel frequented gay bars, plus lived in both San Fransisco and New York, he might have even known a person or two who contracted it.  

If Devil’s Minion did happen in the past (and the hints even from the showrunners and cast is that it did), and it happened for the same length of time that it did in the books, then that also means Daniel was still writing, and was specifically writing a lot about this topic, even when he was entangled with Armand (and possibly Louis as well too in the show’s version of it). 

[ineffable-rohese]

Good Omens, or the Disruption of Gay = Death

CW: historical homophobic violence and death

@queerfables recently wrote an excellent meta on slash fiction and the concept of "Taking Away the Glass". I had some thoughts, which I was going to add as a reblog, but this seems to spiraled away from the original post, so I'm posting this on its own, but I'm referencing their ideas and references, so maybe go read that first.

This is especially for those of you who are, say, under 25 (which is apparently most of Tumblr), and who haven't had much opportunity to learn queer history. Let me say, I'm not a queer historian. I am a queer who has lived through recent history and can reasonably clearly remember the last at least 35 years of it, and I was fortunate to have had schooling that did include some earlier queer history and didn't shy away from queer topics. (I recognize now what a revolutionary bit of teaching that was.)

I also want to acknowledge that I'm writing from a place of relative privilege, as a white cis woman living in a progressive part of North America, and that some of what is history for me is still life for others. I am speaking from my own personal experiences here -they are by no means universal. But I think it's important for us to share our stories, so this is part of mine.

When You're Dying in America, at the End of the Millenium

Fables quotes a video by thingswithwings as saying "Homosexuality, or just loving touch between two people of the same gender, is equivalent to death in this media narrative." In the 1980s and 1990s, when Good Omens was written and first published, that wasn't a metaphor. When I was a baby proto-queer, what I heard about being gay was that it killed you.

My formative memories of what it meant to be gay weren't pride parades or even riots. It was gay men dying by the thousands and governments and religious leaders ignoring them at best, and welcoming their deaths at worst. To be gay, and a gay man in particular, was to be marked for death. It wasn't until a straight white boy who got it from a blood transfusion died that AIDS became something that "normal" people had any empathy for and governments really started to act.

The gay representation I rember in the media as a moderately sheltered child from the 80s and 90s with left-of-center middle class white parents was news about AIDS, Philadelphia (death from AIDS), Ellen (cancelled after she came out), and eventually RENT (desperately trying not to die of AIDS or capitalism). I knew a very small handful of out gay adults, and no trans adults at all.

My first time being in a large group of queer people was a vigil for Matthew Sheppard, who had been beaten and left to die tied to a fence. I remember being terrified. I wasn't out yet. I knew people who hated us might be there, this group of mostly young queer people gathering with candles to cry over a boy we'd never met, and over the many others who had died just for being what we were. I'd never even kissed a girl yet. I only knew my queerness in relation to death.

In the last decade or so of the 20th century, being queer was about grasping any bit of joy you could from a world that very clearly would prefer you were dead. It was defiance and anger and fear every time you held your love's hand, or kissed them in public. My second date with the person who would become my spouse was interrupted by some dude in a truck shouting slurs at us was we walked down a quiet street. We laughed it off - no one had thrown anything, or beaten us, so it wasn't a big deal. It should have been a big deal, but we couldn't let it be. When you're marked for misery and death, you can't let the little things get to you. You just hold each other's hands as tightly as you can and defiantly keep walking.

An Angel and a Demon and Immortality

Good Omens was written during some of the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic (which is still ongoing, by the way), before there were effective treatments, when gay = death. It is a mainstream, mass-market book. It wouldn't be shelved in the "Gay and Lesbian" section at the book store, it would be shelved with humour, or possibly fantasy.

And yet, here we have these two beings. An angel and a demon, with an unlikely friendship, and who are very clearly written as gay. Or, at least, as percieved as gay by outside observers. Aziraphale in particular is (in one of my favorite lines) "gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide," and "THE southern pansy" (self-proclaimed). Together, they are "consenting bicycle repairmen" (Neil Gaiman's explanation for context) who Anathema was safe with the whole time.

Whether you caught the subtextual shippyness of their relationship (and to be honest, I only did a little when I first read it), they were very obviously written as precieved-gay characters, in a story where their precieved gay-ness wasn't the cause of their downfall. Yes, an 11 year old calls Aziraphale a faggot. But he doesn't get arrested or beaten of killed - he just gets covered in cake. And he loves cake! The attempted insult just rolls off him like water off a duck's back, because he has no pressure not to be visibly gay.

Becuase, see, unlike us humans, unlike his gay contemporaries, he is not marked for death. He's an angel. He's immortal. Even more, he was made by God, exactly how God wanted, presumably, and that is intelligent, English, and so very gay.

Niel and Terry are saying so much here. You can be gay and loved. You can be gay and have a deep relationship. You can be gay because that's how God made you. You can be gay forever, through all time, with someone beside you, finding joy in your life.

You can be gay and not die. You can be gay and live.

[ufonaut]

It's been murder on a daily basis for ten count them ten long years and we're expected to pay taxes to support this public and social murder and we're expected to quietly and politely make house in this windstorm of murder but I say there's certain politicians that better get more complex security alarms and there's religious leaders and healthcare officials that had better get bigger fucking dogs and higher fucking fences and queer bashers better start doing their work from inside Howitzer tanks because the thin line between the inside and the outside is beginning to erode and at the moment I'm a three hundred seventy foot tall eleven hundred thousand pound man inside this six foot frame and all I can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure and the need for release

Seven Miles a Second (1996) #1

(David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger)

[easays]

I wrote about my Mom, AIDS, Vampire: The Madquerade (with a brief shout out to New York by Night), and Buffy for Polygon. I hope you read and share, and most of all, that you, too, find yourself in a vampire story.

[phierecycled]

this probably wasn’t intentional but i found it beautiful

the image on the right is from The Ward by Gideon Mendel, who captured a collection of images in a London hospital during the AIDS crisis, showcasing the life and love that could be found within these wards which other media often depicted as lifeless

[a-queer-seminarian]

For Good Friday, here's a little bit of queer Christian history: In 1993, painter Maxwell Lawton envisioned the crucified Christ with AIDS. Archbishop Desmond Tutu loved and defended Lawton's painting.

ID: a white genderqueer person with short brown hair sits in front of a candlelit altar. A couple other images pop up during the video — find them under the readmore.

"Man of Sorrows: Christ with AIDS" by Maxwell Lawton. This painting depicts Jesus nude except for his crown of thorns, with one hand on his knee and the other cradling his head. His skin is gray and covered in AIDS lesions. A quote from Matthew 25 is written in the background of the painting: "Then the king will reply, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did to me."

ID: A photo of Lawton, a white man with short brown hair, standing next to his painting in the Cape Town cathedral, with stained glass behind him. The painting is very large, so that Jesus is close to life size.

ID: A drawing of Jesus in a crucified position by Carlos Latuff; Jesus’s loin cloth thing is a rainbow flag. Text reads “Queering the Cross, Burial, and Resurrection. Episode 58 of the Blessed Are the Binary Breakers podcast.”

Link to the episode page.

[ourhistorytoo]

Assotto Saint, born Yves Francois Lubin in Les Cayes, Haiti in 1957. Assotto was an author, editor, dancer and musician in the band Xotika with his partner Jan Holmes. Assotto was named after a ceremonial drum used in Haitian voodoo rituals -- tambou assoto. He took the name “Saint” after the Haitian revolutionary leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Assotto edited The Road before us : 100 gay Black poets and encouraged Black gay men living with HIV to come out and disclose. Writing and publishing work became a means of living life and making sure the legacy of their artistic gay Black artistic community would not be forgotten. You can find his work and other gay Black anthologies like, In the Life, on Internet Archive.org. Sign up for an account and you can check the books out for an hour or 14 days.

[granvarones]

On December 10, 1989, a significant event in New York City would set the stage for Ray's remarkable journey. Thousands of activists, many living with AIDS themselves, gathered for the "Stop The Church" demonstration outside St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their target: Cardinal John O'Connor, an influential Catholic authority whose statements on homosexuality, abortion, and AIDS had sparked outrage. O'Connor, despite being appointed to Ronald Reagan's AIDS commission in 1987, controversially claimed that condoms were only 50% effective at preventing HIV transmission.

Led by AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) New York, the "Stop the Church" direct action made international headlines and introduced the activist group to mainstream consciousness. Amidst this historic event, a queer, HIV-positive visionary named Ray Navarro boldly declared, "Make sure the second coming is safe - use condoms!"

Ray Navarro's became a member of ACT UP New York in 1988. Known for their bold, innovative, and powerful organizing in demanding greater attention, research, and resources for people living with AIDS, ACT UP marked the beginning of Ray’s tireless advocacy for those affected by HIV/AIDS.

For the 1989 "Stop the Church" protest, Ray masterfully incorporated performance art by dressing as Jesus Christ. He reclaimed this religious figure, which had been weaponized against queer and HIV-positive people by Cardinal O'Connor, as a radical savior who believed in safer sex and HIV prevention.

Ray was also a founding member of DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists), a collective of artists who used multimedia to document the work and history of ACT UP. They ensured that police violence during protests, often ignored by mainstream media, was captured and preserved.

Ray's dedication extended to the Latinx LGBTQ+ community, where he recognized the unique challenges faced by individuals affected by AIDS. His bilingual activism bridged gaps and ensured that vital information and support reached this community.

Ray's performance art, challenged stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding AIDS and LGBTQ+ identity. In 1990, after losing his vision to AIDS-related illness, Ray collaborated with artist Zoe Leonard to create the photographic series "Equipped." This project centered on disabled people, shedding light on the complexities of disease, race, class, and sexuality.

Ray Navarro died from complications due to AIDS in November 1990 when he was just 26 years old. His passing was a devastating loss to the LGBTQ+ community and the broader AIDS activist movement. However, his legacy endures through his art, performances, and activism, inspiring subsequent generations of activists and artists.

Ray Navarro's life, art, and activism challenged stigma, demanded justice, and helped change the trajectory of the AIDS crisis. Today, we remember him not only as an AIDS activist but also as a pioneering artist and a fearless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and visibility so that someone like myself could exist, breathe and thrive. His legacy testifies to the resilience and strength of all people living with HIV and AIDS.

[actually-a-dyke]

The first safe-sex poster in response to the AIDs Epidemic, 1983

[principiumindividuationis777]

[cbrownjc]

Oh! You reblogged my reblog of your reblog and added 'wonderful addition' in your tags! Thank you so much! You're one of my very iwtv and dm blogs, so I'm very excited that you thought so. You always have such great meta (and made me feel unalone in the 'Daniel was dying of AIDS when Armand turned him; I don't care what Anne says' camp.. Overdose deaths... don't go that slowly and nobody who was overdosing could be that coherent. Even the most high-functioning addict couldn't have told such cohesive story re: the twins. Not even with their minds. If you have taken that much, you are either passed out or the words coming out your mouth are incoherent *or* your delusions are literally delusional and they tend to be really on a few things. Daniel would not have able to collect his like that. He just wouldn't have been. I didn't pick any of this up when I first read it because I was about 14 and didn't anything about anything. I have since grown-up and gained life experience I wish I did not have. I hope I don't sound like I'm being flippant about this. Or that I'm oversharing. Because I'm not trying to be. As I said, I take this from my own life experience as someone watching what this kind of drug use looks like and how it usually concludes. It's also just something that *really* stood out to me when I reread the Devil's Minion chapter very recently. I sat there and said holy shit, this is AIDS, right? I mean, it doesn't specify anything except Daniel destroying his body and I'm like, okay, well long-term drug use does destroy your body, but it's not all at once like this. This is a metaphor, especially with all the sexual encounters Daniel was having especially in that specific time period. Obviously, the first thing I did was hunt down posts on tumblr to confirm my suspicions only to find that, according to Anne, it was not meant to be a metaphor for AIDS. It was drugs? So, I sat there and went nope, not really how long-term drug use go, definitely not how overdoses on hard drugs go. Anne, I do not think you have been in the presence of a serious addict while they are scary high or even around one for any length of time if you think this is how it goes. I also thought that if it was supposed to be an overdose, then 500ish years-old or not, it should have still affected Armand. A longterm hard drug user like Daniel would have to have taken a lot of something very strong, particularly if we're talking about the drugs readily available to addicts in the 80s. This is one of those things in the books that I reject their canon and insert my own when I think about it. There are a bunch of outstanding arguments for why Daniel was dying of AIDS and then there's Anne's own words that she meant for it to drugs and I just feel like this is one of those occasions where death of the author must be applied. At least for it to make sense in *my* brain.

I am so sorry I just filled your inbox with a wall of text only very tangentially related to the original topic, which was to say 'thank you' and 'yay, one my favorite blogs said this was nice and now I feel less like all my commentary is unhinged nonsense! :D' But a wall text that no one asked for came out. I'm so sorry.

Hi!

First of all, don't worry about the wall of text, it's fine. It's nice getting message from people who just enjoy what I have to say and just want to say thank you! I will never have a problem with that. 🙂

I don't know if you've checked out my tag on the subject of AIDS on my blog, but I have some older posts there that discuss my thoughts when I first read Queen of the Damned and how Daniel was dying in that book. And, to be fair, Daniel wasn't really dying of drugs there, it was cirrhosis of the liver from drinking too much. Which I'm sure Anne chose it because she'd had a history of alcoholism and so could write from experience about it.

But yeah, it's still an addiction he was dying of. Which, by the time I read the book in 1995 was rather jarring that it actually wasn't AIDS, as I said in this post here. I can understand why it wasn't (given when Rice was originally writing that book), but it just can't help but be jarring now, when you read that book after the 1980s I feel.

Given that the showrunner and writers are playwrights, however, I think they well know they can't do Daniel's story in this day and age now without mentioning the AIDS crisis and tying his character into it in some way. It would just ring hollow not to, IMO. And I think they know that given that AIDS-related issues were some of the very first images we see in the first episode of the show, as well as the book we know in-universe he wrote about it.

Anyway, yes I really liked your post, and again, no apologies needed for the length or anything, really! The fact that you see me as a favorite blog to read is so nice to hear! 🤗

[yourbelgianthings]

It is a standard practice to make invisible any kind of sexual imaging other than white straight male erotic fantasies – sex in America long ago slid into a small set of generic symbols; mention the word sex and the general public seems to imagine a couple of heterosexual positions on a bed – there are actual laws in the south forbidding anything else even between consenting adults. So people have found it necessary to define their sexuality in images, in photographs and drawings and movies in order to not disappear.

David Wojnarowicz, Post Cards from America: X-rays from Hell

[ayurvedikindia]

World Aids Day 2023: Measures to Prevent Infection

Explore crucial measures to prevent HIV/AIDS infection on World AIDS Day 2023. Learn about safer sex practices, PrEP, early detection, and more. Stay informed and join the global fight against HIV