Trobicana - I Say Them Very Quietly

Work in progress, detail-4 © Peter Solarz

Vintage title cards that need no further explanation.

No thoughts just hit different by sza on repeat

“During the 1980s and 1990s (and often still today) bisexuals were vilified as being the disease vectors who “spread AIDS to the general population,” as if they themselves were not part of society. In reality, bisexual health workers and activists designed and developed some of the first city, county, state, and federally-supported safer sex protocols now in use around the country. In San Francisco, bisexual activists David Lourea and Cynthia Slater worked to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS before they, themselves, died of the disease. As early as 1981, they were providing safer-sex education in the city’s bathhouses and BDSM clubs, and by 1983, Lourea had been appointed to San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s AIDS Education Advisory Committee. In 1984, he convinced the city’s public health department to include bisexual men in its weekly “New AIDS Cases and Mortality Statistics” reports, a model later adopted by other public health departments across the country. Slater started the first Women’s HIV/AIDS Information Switchboard in San Francisco in 1985.

Other bisexuals have made important contributions to HIV/AIDS prevention, including Rob Yaeger at the Minneapolis AIDS Project and Alexei Guren, who as well as founding Pridelines, was involved with the 1983 founding of the Health Crisis Network in Miami, Florida which did outreach and advocacy for Latino married men who have sex with men. From 1992 to 1994, Lani Ka’ahumanu was project coordinator at Lyon-Martin Women’s Health Services in San Francisco for an American Foundation for AIDS research grant—the first grant in the United States targeting young high-risk lesbian and bisexual women for HIV/AIDS prevention and education research.”

Making Bisexuals Visible by Loraine Hutchins

Who is your dad, now?