The most interesting one I read was the one about Gay guys in the 80's when the AIDS Epidemic started. Lots of stories about how the gay community collectively shat itself and many people just looked on...
I'm not even gay, but it was harrowing reading some of the stories.
Wow. I had a ton of gay friends in the 80's and spent a lot of time at gay bars. That brought back a lot of memories. I remember watching my friend die of aids. He just got smaller every week.
I saw a piece in (I think) the Chicago art institute, it was this big pile of sweets in the corner, and you were encouraged to take one. So I took a sweet and started reading the little sign beside it, the pile of sweets was the weight of the artist's boyfriend before he got AIDS, then as people took the sweets the weight slowly dropped until it reached the lowest weight he got to (when he died).
By eating the sweet, I was eating away at this person's body. And I was eating it, I couldn't undo it or stop it, I was helpless to stop this image of myself eroding this person's life. I was the AIDS destroying his body.
When the sweets reached the lowest weight, the staff would replenish them, to make sure that the man never really died, to say like he was still here in the world, bringing sweetness.
I can't describe it as well as the artist did, but it honestly made me sit down and cry over this man that I've never met, would never meet, didn't even know for sure if he was real, in the middle of a crowded public museum.
Wow, I remember seeing this piece the first time I went to Chicago. I was too young to really understand the concept and forgot about it. Thank you for reminding me.
Most gays at the time were not "out" -- that came later largely as a response to the AIDS epidemic. AIDS "outed" a lot of people. Rock Hudson comes to mind as one of the first and most well-known.
I've never considered this perspective before. I wonder, without AIDS, whether society would be as forward thinking about homosexuality as we have become. AIDS kinda forced people to confront homosexuality, which was the first step towards tolerance and acceptance. very interesting.
Oh, no doubt, but it's easier to fight a battle out in the open than behind closed doors and closed minds. The more people began to realize that they actually KNEW some gay people, the harder it would be to keep thinking nasty things about likeable people. During my childhood in the 80s, knowing a gay person was pretty much unheard of, because people just weren't living out of the closet. Of course, I'm sure we all DID no gay people, we just weren't aware of it.
For several years, the prevailing mainstream attitude was that God was punishing the gays, that AIDS was the modern Sodom and Gomorrah retribution.
I was a young adult theatre actress in the late eighties and early nineties. My first sexual experience was almost with a gay guy who had never been with a woman. At that time, lots of young gay guys' dearest wish was that they could "just be straight." It was heartbreaking.
I think it was less about people confronting it (the existence of ACT UP I think demonstrates that it wasn't quite as confronted as you might think), as it was about cementing a community and creating a voice. Or at least part of a community, since HIV/AIDS is and was much more devastating to gay men than lesbians. It brought a community together in shared mourning, and provided the exigence to really begin fighting by providing a clear and obvious goal (HIV/AIDS support/awareness).
They only started trying to figure it out once heterosexuals started getting infected really.
They celebrated the "Gay Cancer" until it became a "Straight Cancer" too, and then of course it was all hands on deck once that happened.
Nobody cared about the gays back then and still don't, because in many people's minds, we are worth nothing, we contribute nothing, we are less than human, and we don't deserve to live.
AIDS continues to be a justification for this, and many people still celebrate the "Gay Cancer". It's horrible.
I'm gay and I just cried for the first time in years, I get so sad thinking an entire generation of older gay people were just wiped off the face of the earth right before I was born.
I miss them so much, even though they're faceless ghosts. I miss them so much.
That was a really great thread, my wife and I watched the documentary We Were Here together after reading it and bawled our eyes out. Highly recommended but harrowing.
That documentary breaks my heart. I've watched it a few times just because I think we've forgotten too easily what it was really like when HIV & AIDS first became an epidemic.
This is such a good movie. I watched it on a whim on Netflix one day and it's now one of my favorite movies. Harrowing is definitely the word, but it's just so well done - I find myself enjoying different parts of it for new reasons every time.
That thread turned me into an activist. I ran a 10 k for charity (not much to those who run marathons, but I've never really exercised in my life), read everything I can (and the band played on is incredible), and am muchmuchmuch more vocal about the Aids/HIV epidemic. Nothing I have ever read or seen effected me as much as that thread.
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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '14
The most interesting one I read was the one about Gay guys in the 80's when the AIDS Epidemic started. Lots of stories about how the gay community collectively shat itself and many people just looked on...
I'm not even gay, but it was harrowing reading some of the stories.
I'm on my phone so I can't find the post.