Aids Crisis - Tumblr Posts
[id: screenshots of tiktok captions. the images say, “but the only reason we still love princess diana is because she did not have the time to disappoint us.”]
begging queer kids to read up on princess diana’s involvement with the community. yes, she was a rich, pretty monarch. yes, she died young.
but the reason why queer people love her is because she used her privilege during the aids crisis to advocate for sick queer men, when very few others would - much less someone of her status.
diana spent years advocating for the health and care of queer people with hiv/aids. in 1987, at the height of the epidemic, she opened the first specialist clinic dedicated to treating aids patients (the first clinic of it’s kind in the uk).
she also fought public hysteria by hugging and shaking bare hands with aids patients, at a time when aids was thought to be spread by skin to skin contact. not only that, she visited patients in the clinic regularly and even comforted them through their sickness.
and when queen elizabeth told her to try focusing on “something more pleasant”?
diana ignored her and kept fighting.
and this is only her work towards the aids crisis. she publicly called out the royal family, brought attention to numerous world issues, and was known as an advocate for empathy and kindness. she’s known and loved as the people’s princess for good reason
[id: screenshots of tiktok captions. the images say, “but the only reason we still love princess diana is because she did not have the time to disappoint us.”]
begging queer kids to read up on princess diana’s involvement with the community. yes, she was a rich, pretty monarch. yes, she died young.
but the reason why queer people love her is because she used her privilege during the aids crisis to advocate for sick queer men, when very few others would - much less someone of her status.
diana spent years advocating for the health and care of queer people with hiv/aids. in 1987, at the height of the epidemic, she opened the first specialist clinic dedicated to treating aids patients (the first clinic of it’s kind in the uk).
she also fought public hysteria by hugging and shaking bare hands with aids patients, at a time when aids was thought to be spread by skin to skin contact. not only that, she visited patients in the clinic regularly and even comforted them through their sickness.
and when queen elizabeth told her to try focusing on “something more pleasant”?
diana ignored her and kept fighting.
and this is only her work towards the aids crisis. she publicly called out the royal family, brought attention to numerous world issues, and was known as an advocate for empathy and kindness. she’s known and loved as the people’s princess for good reason
Reblogging with a reminder of the AIDS crisis. So many queer people were lost and it really wasn't that long ago.
My hairdresser was alive during the crisis. He lost many friends and was shocked to hear that they don't teach about what happened in schools.
It was never mentioned to me in school, despite the fact we learned about all sorts of sexually transmitted diseases, and I had to find out about it from online queer spaces.
So many people died. The least we can do is honour their memory.
This is the start of the first June Tumblr Pride Parade!
Reblog with queer art, memes, historical figures and events, and more!
Here's the post that started this idea, it has more context and ideas of what to reblog with!
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!
1980s AIDS Crisis (TW: CSA)
Oh my god, this has 1980s AIDS crisis written all over it. Gay men were not allowed to donate blood until MAY 2023 because people were scared they would get AIDS since it mostly occurred in gay men. Will’s blood becoming the antidote as a gay man would be revolutionary. The town would see him as a monster and likely refuse the treatment due to his UD connection, but it’s implied they’re turning it down because he’s gay. What am incredible story for Noah Schnapp to tell as he recently (January 2023) Came Out. Honoring those who came before him and encouraging people to advocate for the removal of these laws.
There was a huge stigma around touching people with AIDS. Many people wouldn’t do it. They treated people (even HIV positive ones, those who didn’t have full-blown AIDS) like lepers, alone in an isolated world without human connection (sound familiar?). It wasn’t until Princess Diana visited an AIDS ward and hugged the patients on camera that people began to understand. Freddie Mercury also played a huge role in this movement as he died from the disease. It’s mentioned multiple times, especially in Season 1, that Demogorgons are attracted to blood. Using Will’s blood to lure them somewhere only for it to kill them is so metal and epic and I want to see it NOW!!
There’s also a high chance that Will is the victim of CSA by Lonnie. So (this is awful, but I need to include it, I’m so sorry 😣) Lonnie could have accidentally (or intentionally) given Will HIV that went untreated, either because no one knew or they couldn’t afford the treatment. It’s horrible, graphic, and disgusting, but it adds such a richness to the story. Do we think Lonnie was gay and using Will as a proxy (again, so sorry) or is it generational? AKA: it happened to Lonnie and he passed it to Will. Whatever way it comes out, I really hope they use this storyline and shine a light on those that battled with this awful illness and the prejudice that came along with it. HIV/AIDS is not a curse or a punishment from God. It’s a manageable medical condition that should in no way elicit ostracism from society. Unfortunately, people like Will did experience this social shunning and it’s time the world sees it and confronts its prejudice, especially with everything happening in the news. Hug someone with HIV, they’ll appreciate it more than you know. Rant Over. ❤️🩸
Will's blood is The Cure
This is a short theory because it kind of just explains itself: Will is THE CURE because his blood will be able to be used to create an antidote for whatever consequence the UD bleeding into the world is going to carry along with it.
Will was there for A WEEK, survived the Mind Flayer's possession and his body was unscathed. Billy's body seemed to suffer damage by sunlight (granted, it was summer unlike in S2 when Hopper says it was a 'cold October') but Vecna himself tells Max that her brother was 'weak'. Did he mean mentally, physically ... or both?
Will survived without food, but like Erica said in s3, she WOULD drink the green liquid if she had to, because humans can survive a while without food, but without water, the human body dies. So I believe Will survived by drinking whatever LIQUID he could find (slimey and gooey drinkable radioactive UD stuff, my poor son ...) and this created some sort of immunity in him. Using Will's blood, they might be able to create some sort of vaccine or antidote. Hell, his blood in itself might also be able to be used as some sort of weapon.
... i don't think the people of hawkins will see it this way at all, and this is something the group will discover at one point in the season and not straight up. so while Will is the cure, the entire town is going to think he's the CAUSE.
i picture a scared, aggressive hawkins that is ALREADY targeting Hellfire blaming 'Zombie Boy' for this, or at the very least, considering him eddie's replacement as the new 'leader of the cult' because him surviving that week alone in the woods is already suspicious enough.
the 'exorcism' imagery for him in s2, coupled with how the Creel house was 'exorcised' ... yeah
so Will is going to be dealing with his connection with Vecna, hawkins thinking he's some evil, a Forgotten Birthday tm storyline and a broken heart because he's in love with his best friend and doesn't know if his best friend loves him back or if their unique connection was just all in his head this whole time.
Come here, baby gays, and let me tell you the story about how James Somerton made me so fucking angry with a single line that I had to make this post.
As I now know, most of his audience is young queers and there are things we NEED you to know.
The fight for marriage equality was a massive fucking deal and I will tell you why with a very personal story.
My mom was a nurse during the AIDS crisis. And I mean she started working as a nurse out of school in 85. My mom was on the front lines. She worked with so many AIDS patients that it genuinely altered her brain chemistry. My mother was a homophobe before her nursing career. She was a massive supporter of gay rights until she died in July because of what she saw during her career.
And what did she see?
She saw people who had been abandoned by their families dying with their partners at their side.
And then suddenly…the family would materialize, ban the partner from the room, kick them out of their homes they had lived in with their dying partners for decades, and then watched them ban their partners from even attending the funerals or visiting the graves. Imagine being denied your right to grieve.
And why was this possible? Oh simple. They weren’t married. They weren’t legally bound, the partners weren’t considered next of kin because they weren’t fucking married.
I watched my mom pass. It was horrible and painful and traumatic and terrifying. But it was closure. And I wouldn’t have it any other way because I know…that who my mom wanted by her when she passed was my dad. Because she was scared, she wanted her partner by her side and she was terrified she was going to die. My dad couldn’t be there. He had to work, which sounds cold but understand he had been off work for a month by that point and he was the only one who had health insurance. He wanted to be there, we had made plans to take her off the life support when he came back (we were 4 hours from him) but there was a freak accident and she passed the night after he left to return to work.
Why am I telling you this? Because I need you to understand how important this is to some people. So you can understand how big a slap to the face it is to have people say “marriage equality isn’t that important”. You can understand why someone like James Somerton rolling his eyes at marriage equality and implying we weren’t focused on job equality and discrimination (information that is WHOLEY untrue) would make me see red.
It’s not trivial. It’s not meaningless. It wasn’t about “assimilating” or “appearing normal” (we’re already normal).
It’s about people who had their children taken from them because they weren’t the biological parent. It’s about people who never got to comfort their loved ones in their final days. It’s about people who weren’t able to comforted by their partners in their final days.
So the next time you think “why waste your time on something as trivial as marriage?” Remember my mother. Look up testimony from victims of the AIDS crisis. Remember the people who advocated for marriage equality were the survivors who were torn from the love of their life.
Remember that we advocated so damn hard to give you the right to grieve.
Genuinely getting upset thinking about how Anthony Perkins contracted AIDs but he didn’t even know it until it was in a fucking newspaper article and just how shitty AIDs patients were treated in the 1980s because of the AIDs crisis
I think it is nice to be a little magical. Today we need this. All that we can read in fairy tales or in books. I think somewhere it is all around us. But nowadays we can think that this magic has been killed and I am try to make it survive as long as possible.
Klaus Nomi
I'm from Planet Nomi where I wear black lipstick so you can see my lips and what I am doing with them.
Klaus Nomi
My music is L-O-V-E because it's a gift, and you only give something when you feel it deeply.
Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi
Goes to show that just being rich doesn't make one inherently shady, especially from a place with a notoriously shady past. That said, one is gonna miss a leader if they were in charge while many live out their milestones (from birth, going to school, college, getting married, to having kids & grandkids, maybe even great grandkids), which was definitely the case with Elizabeth (as despicable as she was). I doubt the same could ever be said of the current king given he'd likely be dead after a much shorter time of reign, with the main reason for mourning likely to stem from uncertainty as to what would happen after more than any emotional attachment (fairly comparable to the cases of Kim Il Sung & Kim Jong Il respectively). If there's one person among the British royals truly deserving of philanthropic recognition, it's princess Diana. In support of the LGBTQ+ people, there's no reason why any of her relatives shouldn't strive to learn from her example.
[id: screenshots of tiktok captions. the images say, “but the only reason we still love princess diana is because she did not have the time to disappoint us.”]
begging queer kids to read up on princess diana’s involvement with the community. yes, she was a rich, pretty monarch. yes, she died young.
but the reason why queer people love her is because she used her privilege during the aids crisis to advocate for sick queer men, when very few others would - much less someone of her status.
diana spent years advocating for the health and care of queer people with hiv/aids. in 1987, at the height of the epidemic, she opened the first specialist clinic dedicated to treating aids patients (the first clinic of it’s kind in the uk).
she also fought public hysteria by hugging and shaking bare hands with aids patients, at a time when aids was thought to be spread by skin to skin contact. not only that, she visited patients in the clinic regularly and even comforted them through their sickness.
and when queen elizabeth told her to try focusing on “something more pleasant”?
diana ignored her and kept fighting.
and this is only her work towards the aids crisis. she publicly called out the royal family, brought attention to numerous world issues, and was known as an advocate for empathy and kindness. she’s known and loved as the people’s princess for good reason
Klaus Nomi was a countertenor and pop star who made a significant impact in the music scene and pop culture.
mod
EVENTS
[id: screenshots of tiktok captions. the images say, “but the only reason we still love princess diana is because she did not have the time to disappoint us.”]
begging queer kids to read up on princess diana’s involvement with the community. yes, she was a rich, pretty monarch. yes, she died young.
but the reason why queer people love her is because she used her privilege during the aids crisis to advocate for sick queer men, when very few others would - much less someone of her status.
diana spent years advocating for the health and care of queer people with hiv/aids. in 1987, at the height of the epidemic, she opened the first specialist clinic dedicated to treating aids patients (the first clinic of it’s kind in the uk).
she also fought public hysteria by hugging and shaking bare hands with aids patients, at a time when aids was thought to be spread by skin to skin contact. not only that, she visited patients in the clinic regularly and even comforted them through their sickness.
and when queen elizabeth told her to try focusing on “something more pleasant”?
diana ignored her and kept fighting.
and this is only her work towards the aids crisis. she publicly called out the royal family, brought attention to numerous world issues, and was known as an advocate for empathy and kindness. she’s known and loved as the people’s princess for good reason
This season had me sobbing. Listen, baby gays, you don’t have to watch this season, but please please please do me a favor: learn all you can about the AIDs crisis. About those we lost. About how people were treated. You cannot forget your history.
I grew up during the tail end of the AIDs crisis. I still remember what a huge deal it was. We lost so many.
American Horror story with a plot that’s actually engaging? What is this, 2013?
; yay lesbians <3
The LGBTQ community has seen controversy regarding acceptance of different groups (bisexual and transgender individuals have sometimes been marginalized by the larger community), but the term LGBT has been a positive symbol of inclusion and reflects the embrace of different identities and that we’re stronger together and need each other. While there are differences, we all face many of the same challenges from broader society.
In the 1960′s, in wider society the meaning of the word gay transitioned from ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ to predominantly mean ‘homosexual’ as they adopted the word as was used by homosexual men, except that society also used it as an umbrella term that meant anyone who wasn’t cisgender or heterosexual. The wider queer community embraced the word ‘gay’ as a mark of pride.
The modern fight for queer rights is considered to have begun with The Stonewall Riots in 1969 and was called the Gay Liberation Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.
The acronym GLB surfaced around this time to also include Lesbian and Bisexual people who felt “gay” wasn’t inclusive of their identities.
Early in the gay rights movement, gay men were largely the ones running the show and there was a focus on men’s issues. Lesbians were unhappy that gay men dominated the leadership and ignored their needs and the feminist fight. As a result, lesbians tended to focus their attention on the Women’s Rights Movement which was happening at the same time. This dominance by gay men was seen as yet one more example of patriarchy and sexism.
In the 1970′s, sexism and homophobia existed in more virulent forms and those biases against lesbians also made it hard for them to find their voices within women’s liberation movements. Betty Friedan, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), commented that lesbians were a “lavender menace” that threatened the political efficacy of the organization and of feminism and many women felt including lesbians was a detriment.
In the 80s and 90s, a huge portion of gay men were suffering from AIDS while the lesbian community was largely unaffected. Lesbians helped gay men with medical care and were a massive part of the activism surrounding the gay community and AIDS. This willingness to support gay men in their time of need sparked a closer, more supportive relationship between both groups, and the gay community became more receptive to feminist ideals and goals.
Approaching the 1990′s it was clear that GLB referred to sexual identity and wasn’t inclusive of gender identity and T should be added, especially since trans activist have long been at the forefront of the community’s fight for rights and acceptance, from Stonewall onward. Some argued that T should not be added, but many gay, lesbian and bisexual people pointed out that they also transgress established gender norms and therefore the GLB acronym should include gender identities and they pushed to include T in the acronym.
GLBT became LGBT as a way to honor the tremendous work the lesbian community did during the AIDS crisis.
Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, movements took place to add additional letters to the acronym to recognize Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, and others. As the acronym grew to LGBTIQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIAA, many complained this was becoming unwieldy and started using a ‘+’ to show LGBT aren’t the only identities in the community and this became more common, whether as LGBT+ or LGBTQ+.
In the 2010′s, the process of reclaiming the word “queer” that began in the 1980′s was largely accomplished. In the 2020′s the LGBTQ+ acronym is used less often as Queer is becoming the more common term to represent the community.
[id: screenshots of tiktok captions. the images say, “but the only reason we still love princess diana is because she did not have the time to disappoint us.”]
begging queer kids to read up on princess diana’s involvement with the community. yes, she was a rich, pretty monarch. yes, she died young.
but the reason why queer people love her is because she used her privilege during the aids crisis to advocate for sick queer men, when very few others would - much less someone of her status.
diana spent years advocating for the health and care of queer people with hiv/aids. in 1987, at the height of the epidemic, she opened the first specialist clinic dedicated to treating aids patients (the first clinic of it’s kind in the uk).
she also fought public hysteria by hugging and shaking bare hands with aids patients, at a time when aids was thought to be spread by skin to skin contact. not only that, she visited patients in the clinic regularly and even comforted them through their sickness.
and when queen elizabeth told her to try focusing on “something more pleasant”?
diana ignored her and kept fighting.
and this is only her work towards the aids crisis. she publicly called out the royal family, brought attention to numerous world issues, and was known as an advocate for empathy and kindness. she’s known and loved as the people’s princess for good reason
anyway stream montero
Matthew Hodson: “ 20 years ago, 2 years after the arrival of combination therapy that effectively treated #HIV, the Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco’s LGBT newspaper ran ‘No Obits’ as its headline. It was the first edition not to report an AIDS death in almost 15 years.”
Happy 37th anniversary or Live Aid 1985!