“the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.”

thank you for giving me a good reason to finish my dissertation and try to make it in the academy

Wait, idk LGBTQ+ history, but they died of AIDS cause, what, hospitals refused to treat them or…?

Oh heck yeah.

When an epidemic happens, public health agencies spend millions of dollars trying to understand what happens: Why are people sick or dying? What caused it? Who else is at risk? Government health departments like the Centres for Disease control and private companies both invest hundreds of millions of dollars into preserving public health. This happened in 1977, when military veterans who all attended the same gathering began to get sick with a strange type of pneumonia, with 182 cases and 29 dead, and the CDC traced the illness to a bacterium distributed by the air conditioning system of a hotel they all stayed at, and in 1982, when seven people died of tainted Tylenol, and pharmaceutical companies changed the entire way their products were made and packaged to prevent more deaths.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic took six years to be recognized by the CDC (1975-1981) because at first the only people dying were intravenous drug users, which is to say, heroin addicts; when it was recognized, President Reagan’s government pressured the CDC to spend as little time and money on AIDS as possible, because they literally didn’t think gay lives were important. So yes, hospitals refused to treat them and medical staff treated them as disgusting people who deserved to die, but also, there was very little funding for scientists to understand what this disease was, what caused it, where it came from, how it spread, or how to stop it. The LGBTQ+ community had to organize and fight to get hospitals to treat them, to fund scientific research, to be legally allowed to buy the drugs that kept them alive, and to have access to treatment. An effective treatment for AIDS wasn’t found until 1995.

And it’s ongoing; a lot of the difficulty of fighting AIDS in Africa is that it’s seen as “the gay disease” (and thanks to European colonialism, even African societies that used to be okay with us were taught to think LGBTQ+ people are bad).  Even now that we have medications that can treat or prevent AIDS, they’re incredibly expensive and hard to get; in 2015, New York businessman Martin Shkreli acquired the exclusive right to make a drug that treats an AIDS-related disease, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. 

Here’s one history on what it was like to have and fight AIDS, one history on how politicians responded to the epidemic, and if you can get a copy of the documentary How to Survive a Plague, it’s a good introduction, because it’s about how AIDS patients had to fight for their lives. A lot of these histories are imperfect and incomplete, because privilege played a big part in whose lives and deaths were seen as important–Poor people, people of colour, trans people, and drug addicts were less likely to be able to afford or access medical care, and more likely to die without being remembered; histories often tend to focus on straight people who got AIDS through no fault of their own, and then white cis gay men who seem more “respectable” and “relatable”.  

I mean, people who will talk about how homophobia led to neglect of AIDS still find ways not to mention that AIDS isn’t just sexually transmitted; it’s hugely a disease of drug addicts, because sharing needles is a huge way the disease spreads. But because society always thinks, oh, drug addicts are bad and disgusting people and of course criminals, that often gets neatly dropped from the histories, and it’s still hard to get people to agree to things that keep drug addicts alive, like needle exchanges and supervised injection sites. But if you want my rant about how the war on drugs is bullshit used to control poor people and people of colour, and drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you’ll have to ask for that separately.

They died of AIDS because

• Hospitals refused to treat them, and when they did get admitted, treated them like dirt so their will-to-live was eroded - refused to let long-term partners visit them, staff acted like they were disgusting nuisances, etc.
• Very little funding was put into finding causes or cures - AIDS was considered “god’s punishment” for immoral behavior by a whole lot of people.
• Once causes were understood (effective treatments were a long ways off), information about those causes weren’t widely shared - because it was a “sex disease” (it wasn’t) and because a huge number of the victims were gay or needle-drug users, and the people in charge of disease prevention (or in charge of funding) didn’t care if all of those people just died.
• Not until it started hitting straight people and superstar celebrities (e.g. Rock Hudson) did it get treated as A Real Problem - and by that time, it had reached terrifying epidemic conditions.

Picture from 1993:

We lost basically a whole generation of the queer community.

As a current AIDS survivor, this is really important information. I was diagnosed not only HIV positive in 2014, but I had already progressed to an AIDS diagnosis. Knowing how far we’ve come with treatment and what the trials and tribulations of those who came before cannot and must not ever be forgotten. Awareness is the number one goal. I often speak to the microbiology students at my university to explain what it’s like to live with, how the medications work, side effects, how it’s affected my daily life, and just raise general awareness.

Before my diagnosis, I, like many others, was clueless to how far treatment has come. I was still under the belief my diagnosis was a death sentence. Moving forward, even if only one person hears my story, that’s one more person that’s educated and can raise awareness.

I believe it’s time for us as a society to start better education of this disease. The vast majority of the people I’ve spoken to are receptive to the knowledge of my status, and I’ve received lots of support from loved ones, friends, and total strangers. It’s time to beat the stigma.

This is slightly off-point, but as for the cost, I wanted to mention that some pharmacies have specialties that let them get special coupons/programs and stuff to save money.

A bottle of Truvada (a month supply commonly used for treating this) is at least $3,000 out of pocket and insurance doesn’t usually take a lot off of that. But the pharmacy I work at is an HIV specialty and we always get te price down to less than $10.

If you’re on HIV meds and they’re ludicrously expensive, ask your local pharmacy manager if there are any local HIV specialty pharmacies that they know of. They might be able to help.

I think it’s important to emphasize that, while the diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, it is also true that people dying of AIDS because of homophobia is not history only.

My brother’s first boyfriend was kicked out/disowned by his parents for being queer, got AIDS, couldn’t afford treatment, and died.  He died in 2019, at around 20 years old.

In 2019.

Barely more than a kid.

Of a treatable disease.

Because of homophobia.

Because his parents cared more about not being associated with a queer person than they cared about their son’s literal life.

AIDS is not just history.  Neither is homophobia.

Back to history: When AIDS patients held die-ins, they went to hospitals, lay down in front of them, and literally waited to die.

If you’re young & either queer or queer-adjacent, think about the number of people out of the closet you know your own age & think about how many you know your parents age.
They’re not stamping us out of the mould any quicker these days than in the ‘60s, except in lockstep with population growth.

I think, growing up, my picture of relative numbers of queer people & straights was unavoidably impacted by the number of empty seats at our table. That might be the case for you too.
The number of elders you never got to meet.

Remember this when people talk about how small the LGBTQIA+ population is. That it’s “such a small percentage of the population to be catered too”. Remember this and tell them, “that’s because homophobia killed them”.

This picture of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is often included with the “The men facing the camera/in white are the surviving members” but it leaves out something extremely important:

By 1996, all of the men facing the camera in the picture were dead.

Every.

Single.

One.

Eric Luse, the photographer, said this in a more recent article :

By 1996 the obituary list was almost 50 names longer than the entire choral roster. All of the positions plus four dozen more, gone. The obituary list continued to grow, too. The cost and availability of any treatments in the mid-late 90s continued to cause more death.

If you were queer in the 80s and 90s, you knew someone who had it and knew people who died from it. Period. I cannot stress the impact this had on the queer community and those of us who were alive at the time, and I know the scope of it is almost unimaginable to younger people today.

By 1996, there were NO surviving original members of the SFGMC. You need to know that when you see this picture.

Dozens of the men turned away from the camera here in this shot were also dead alongside the men in white. It is vital to recognize that.

There is no hope in this picture, it isn’t a display of a lucky few who avoided death. There is no “Well at least some of them survived” because no, they didn’t, and this time was so fucking bleak and painful it’s astonishing that anything got done. They’d march one week and die the next. Their friends would bury them in the morning and march in the afternoon. This went on for years.

Bigotry and hate and ignorance killed generations of queer people. It speaks to the sheer resilience of the community that from that all but state-sanctioned genocide, we have gained so much ground in the last few decades. Much is owed to the people who refused to stay quiet and who fought even on their deathbeds, so please consider learning about LGBTQ+ history as a way of continuing the fight and showing respect. Many of us coming of age at that time didn’t have that opportunity, and made it a point to learn and get involved as teenagers and young adults because we saw what we were losing.

Sing for two.

We don’t just need to get involved as teenagers and young adults- now that we have the chance, we need to get teenagers and young adults involved. There’s no more excuses for leaving queer youth in the dust, if there ever was.

I actually needed to hear this I think. All I’ve been hearing for the last few years is how terrible America is and I know that reputation is earned but I and so many other people have been fighting this whole time because we love our country and trust our institutions and don’t want to see them fall and I know we’re not the best neighbors to have but we’re trying and it makes me so happy to see that someone, anyone, understands that we’re trying.

Okay but seriously.

I’ve encountered highly traumatized CSA survivors who scream and scream about how minors shouldn’t be looking at porn or whatever. And I get that. I have similar problems; I often find it hard to sympathize with people whose trauma involves being over-sexualized (mine involves being desexualized). But if a rape survivor is saying in activist spaces that no one should have sex ever, y’all would (rightfully) call them out on their bullshit. So I’m allowed to do the same, right?

Keep reading

People’s desire to make teenagers never interact with sexual topics is rooted in old mentality of keeping a young person (typically a woman) a virgin till marriage, regardless of their own opinion. When people who never did any personal education on CSA talk about CSA, they say it’s the sex component that is damaging, not the abuse component. So, instead of analyzing why sexual relationships with adults traumatize children, and coming to the conclusion that it’s the extremely close intimate relationship with a power imbalance that hurts the child, and condemning romantic relationships with children, helicopter parenting, and any other type of inappropriate intrusion in a child’s life, they go after sex. They say children and teenagers can’t consent to their peers either, they say porn is inherently damaging, and they condemn just mentioning sex topics. All while enthusiastically exposing them to non sexual abuse that leaves similar trauma.

On the topic of power imbalances, btw, to prevent further questions, I think it’s damaging for children and young teens but not older teens and adults, because of the process of synaptic pruning and the maturing of the brain area responsible for processing experiences.

"Most teachers become teachers because they enjoy lording it over children and teenagers"

You... are you serious? Ok, where's your proof? The teachers that you have had in your state, in the specific schools that you went to. That's enough for you to make a judgement about every other teacher in your district? In your state? In all 50 Goddamned states? About all the teachers who teach gifted students or special needs students? Really? Seriously?

"Many teachers who have the ability to quit or retire"

Yeah, because paying bills and being able to eat doesn't matter. Do you go up to homeless people and tell them "GET A JOB" too? I bet you do.

Look, we all know reopening too soon is a bad idea. And yes, there are some horrific teachers (I've had some!). But throwing all teachers under the bus like that because of your extremely limited experience is... it's just ugly.

P.S- there are art teachers, music teachers, and college professors, too. You hate all of them, too?

1. I meant to put “many” instead of “most” in that part. Thank your for reminding me to edit the original post!

2. I meant “teachers who have the ability to retire or quit” as in “the subgroup of teachers who have the ability to retire or quit”. I did not mean to imply that all teachers have the ability to retire or quit. (Well, technically everyone has the choice to quit their job, it would just be a very very bad idea in some situations.)

3. Teachers have power over children that the state has granted them. The American school system is inherently abusive if not exploitative, and all teachers are complict in that. Yes, even music teachers and art teachers. Whether college/secondary schooling professors are also complicit is something that’s up for debate, usually depending on the structure of the school in question, because you can’t be complicit in a harmful system if the system doesn’t exist in the first place.

People condemn all police and then turn around and make excuses for teachers (I’m not pro-cop by any stretch, I just think it’s hypocritical), who, by the way, are in practically the exact same position to students. They get to manage and control every aspect of students’ lives, even their home life through homework. Students are constantly being told, do this, follow these instructions, do as I say, don’t stop until you’re done, work, work, work. Never any room for independent thought. Never any room for peace and fun and de-stressing.

And that’s not all. Special education teachers are allowed to restrain students in painful, humiliating ways, and put them in isolation rooms. The practice of isolation is inherently traumatizing, especially for children; we aren’t born knowing how to regulate our emotions, we develop those neuron pathways by being comforted by others when we’re upset. By putting an upset child in a room alone, you are eroding those pathways, making it harder for them to regulate themselves. Even if someone’s in the room with them, they are not being comforted, and often get punished later for displaying completely age-appropriate reactions to distress. Sometimes students even die from being restrained- sometimes from an “improper” restraint, sometimes from one that’s completely legal.

But death isn’t the only bad thing, funnily enough- restraints cause trauma, and being restrained many times teaches a child that they shouldn’t struggle when someone is hurting them, since they only release the restraint once you’ve stopped moving and yelling. I physically cannot run away or scream for help because I used to be held down to the floor by an adult much bigger than me and I couldn’t get out until I stopped crying and fighting. I have juvenile arthritis and a multitude of other health problems that are very likely to be directly due to be restrained so often as a child. Teacher are specifically taught methods that cause pain and submission without leaving visible damage so that parents never get clued in to how much pain their child is going through on a regular basis. It’s fucking evil.

So yes, while not all teachers are horrible people, all of them are complicit in a system that hurts students, especially disabled students.

Funny thing: you can get catharsis, and similar satisfaction, in ways that don’t hurt ACTUAL PEOPLE.

Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong to vent. I do think it’s wrong to vent in certain ways publicly, in places like Tumblr or Twitter where such things can be easily taken out of context and misinterpreted.

I complain about adults all the fucking time. Luckily, adults are usually shitty enough to be actually doing things that are wrong, so I complain about that. “Adults should really stop being ageist” is different from saying “Adults should all eat shit and die.” One of those is not okay to say where people who could be hurt by that could hear you.

Okay but seriously.

I’ve encountered highly traumatized CSA survivors who scream and scream about how minors shouldn’t be looking at porn or whatever. And I get that. I have similar problems; I often find it hard to sympathize with people whose trauma involves being over-sexualized (mine involves being desexualized). But if a rape survivor is saying in activist spaces that no one should have sex ever, y’all would (rightfully) call them out on their bullshit. So I’m allowed to do the same, right?

Keep reading

in my experience, people like me have absolutely no guarantee of being helped or even considered human, not even in leftist spaces. I don’t trust leftists to help me, and neither should you. Every human being is inherently flawed, and full of fear and immoralities, and that’s the way it should be.

What should happen is that people in charge should be the best of us. Those that can put aside their fears and insecurities to actually help others. Reluctant leaders, who serve the people before themselves.

There are always going to be hierarchies of power. That’s inevitable, because some people just have the inability to have power. Whether it’s not having access to fertile fields or being a marginalized class or being completely unable to walk, hierarchies will always exist.

I don’t trust people who think that humans will help each other naturally, and I especially don’t trust people who think that violent revolution and the resulting reform will somehow NOT be worse than the inevitable millions of deaths, mostly of marginalized people, ESPECIALLY of disabled people and minors who are stuck in horrible circumstances with people who hate them. And every anarchist I’ve seen has been one of these two or both, usually both. So fuck that.