Who Talks About AIDS Anymore?
The latest Newsweek has a huge special report on the AIDS Epidemic: "AIDS at 25." It's filled with stories on the history of the disease and the newest treatments, the world-wide epidemic and profiles of people with HIV. It's timely, I suppose, what with the anniversary of the first documented cases of AIDS in being twenty-five years (1981) this year.
Yet while I was reading it, all I could think was, "Who talks about AIDS anymore?"
Seriously. When was the last time you went to an AIDS benefit or saw a showing of the AIDS quilt? What was the last groundbreaking new play or movie or novel or song about the AIDS epidemic? When was the last time you wore a red ribbon?
AIDS was the epidemic of the 1990's. AIDS was Rent and Angels in America. It was the Quilt on the National Mall and every star wearing red ribbons at the Oscars. It was Magic Johnson and Ryan White.
In 2006? We have not yet found a cure, but many people diagnosed as HIV-positive are going on to live long lives, thanks to the various "AIDS cocktails" on the market. The spread of AIDS has slowed, thanks in no small part to the increase in condom usage. AIDS isn't the national pandemic, the great tragedy, that it was in the 1980's and 1990's...at least not in this country.
So we don't talk about it as much any more. Pardon the phraseology, but as diseases go, AIDS isn't so sexy any more. (It's been surpassed by the yellow-armbanded prostate cancer and the pink-ribboned breast cancer, among others). There aren't as many rallies and protests. There isn't as much fundraising and celebrity campaigning. Can you name one celebrity today closely associated with the AIDS movements? Elizabeth Taylor doesn't count! Today's celebrities have moved on to poverty (Bono) and politics (Clooney, Affleck, Goldbergh, Stone...oh, take your pick. They're all against Bush these days).
I'm not saying AIDS has been solved or that it isn't a national tragedy -- with more than 25 million living with HIV in Africa, not to mention over 8 million in Asia and over a million here in the United States, it's clear not only that the problem is huge, but growing. But we don't treat it as such any more. Most of us worry more about getting bird flu than HIV. If we are religious about using condoms, it probably has more to do with being worried about getting pregnant or catching some unnamed STD than it does about catching AIDS specifically...or it's simply because, as children of the 80's and 90's, we were socialized to believe that having sex, unless you're married or something, means using a condom, no questions asked. Regardless, AIDS does not present the major fear or motivation that it once did, at least not to us sheltered white social liberals.
Slowly but surely, AIDS is changing from a "gay" disease to a "black" disease. We no longer assume that someone with AIDS is gay, and while AIDS is still and may forever be associated in many ways with the gay community, fact is, this isn't a disease contained within any one community any more. (Besides, it stopped being PC to write AIDS off as a gay disease somewhere around 1996).
That hasn't stopped us from 'othering' the AIDS virus, however. But now, instead of being that disease that happens to gay people, it's that disease that happens to black people. Specifically, black people in Africa, that far away hotbed of war, poverty, and disease, filled with people we don't know and don't understand. More people are becoming infected with HIV every single day in Africa than we could ever imagine -- there are areas of Africa where a full third of the population is HIV+, and that number is growing. Yet it's not something we talk about. Aside from a few news articles now and again, it merits very little attention in the media. (Even the Newsweek cover story focused more on Americans living with HIV than the 25+ million Africans who have it.) It is, after all, something that is happening "over there." It's not our disease anymore.
The face of AIDS may have changed in the past 25 years, but not its effect -- apparently, AIDS is still the way our society gets to write off populations of people we don't want to care about ...gay men, intravenous drug users, promiscuous women, urban poor...and now whole Third World countries.
Yet while I was reading it, all I could think was, "Who talks about AIDS anymore?"
Seriously. When was the last time you went to an AIDS benefit or saw a showing of the AIDS quilt? What was the last groundbreaking new play or movie or novel or song about the AIDS epidemic? When was the last time you wore a red ribbon?
AIDS was the epidemic of the 1990's. AIDS was Rent and Angels in America. It was the Quilt on the National Mall and every star wearing red ribbons at the Oscars. It was Magic Johnson and Ryan White.
In 2006? We have not yet found a cure, but many people diagnosed as HIV-positive are going on to live long lives, thanks to the various "AIDS cocktails" on the market. The spread of AIDS has slowed, thanks in no small part to the increase in condom usage. AIDS isn't the national pandemic, the great tragedy, that it was in the 1980's and 1990's...at least not in this country.
So we don't talk about it as much any more. Pardon the phraseology, but as diseases go, AIDS isn't so sexy any more. (It's been surpassed by the yellow-armbanded prostate cancer and the pink-ribboned breast cancer, among others). There aren't as many rallies and protests. There isn't as much fundraising and celebrity campaigning. Can you name one celebrity today closely associated with the AIDS movements? Elizabeth Taylor doesn't count! Today's celebrities have moved on to poverty (Bono) and politics (Clooney, Affleck, Goldbergh, Stone...oh, take your pick. They're all against Bush these days).
I'm not saying AIDS has been solved or that it isn't a national tragedy -- with more than 25 million living with HIV in Africa, not to mention over 8 million in Asia and over a million here in the United States, it's clear not only that the problem is huge, but growing. But we don't treat it as such any more. Most of us worry more about getting bird flu than HIV. If we are religious about using condoms, it probably has more to do with being worried about getting pregnant or catching some unnamed STD than it does about catching AIDS specifically...or it's simply because, as children of the 80's and 90's, we were socialized to believe that having sex, unless you're married or something, means using a condom, no questions asked. Regardless, AIDS does not present the major fear or motivation that it once did, at least not to us sheltered white social liberals.
Slowly but surely, AIDS is changing from a "gay" disease to a "black" disease. We no longer assume that someone with AIDS is gay, and while AIDS is still and may forever be associated in many ways with the gay community, fact is, this isn't a disease contained within any one community any more. (Besides, it stopped being PC to write AIDS off as a gay disease somewhere around 1996).
That hasn't stopped us from 'othering' the AIDS virus, however. But now, instead of being that disease that happens to gay people, it's that disease that happens to black people. Specifically, black people in Africa, that far away hotbed of war, poverty, and disease, filled with people we don't know and don't understand. More people are becoming infected with HIV every single day in Africa than we could ever imagine -- there are areas of Africa where a full third of the population is HIV+, and that number is growing. Yet it's not something we talk about. Aside from a few news articles now and again, it merits very little attention in the media. (Even the Newsweek cover story focused more on Americans living with HIV than the 25+ million Africans who have it.) It is, after all, something that is happening "over there." It's not our disease anymore.
The face of AIDS may have changed in the past 25 years, but not its effect -- apparently, AIDS is still the way our society gets to write off populations of people we don't want to care about ...gay men, intravenous drug users, promiscuous women, urban poor...and now whole Third World countries.
posted by Melissa at 8:03 PM
1 Comments:
Yay! You figured out links! Hope you're staying dry in this crap weather, babe.
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