Today is World AIDS Day. Read the 2025 post.
It’s my own little personal tradition that I publish an essay on World AIDS Day. I’ve been doing this for about five years now.
Emma and Hester of the Safe Space podcast quoted AIDS Activist & Historian Sarah Schulman’s words, “These people, our friends, are rarely mentioned. Their absence is not computed. And the meaning of their loss is not considered.”
This aspect of the HIV / AIDS epidemic is not talked about or mentioned.
Why? Our society tends to gloss over / ignore the impacts of loss because they are uncomfortable by grief. Stigma plays a huge part as well.
Instead of reducing people to a diagnosis, let’s mourn the loss of culture because their bright light is no longer here, and hasn’t been here in a while. And how we are worse off now, as a community / society, as a result of their absence.
I have survivor’s guilt that I and so many people literally began our lives in the 80s, meanwhile people had their lives unexpectedly stolen from them. The Village People’s 1979 performance, memorialized on YouTube, of “Ready 4 the 80s” is hard to watch. People had no idea what was to come that was already existing but wasn’t identified / named / labeled until June of 1981. Kind of like how we were in 2019 before COVID-19’s arrival, but let’s be clear the AIDS epidemic was much worse. I continue to be eager to learn the perspectives of those who spent their adolescence and above in the 80s on this topic.
My PhD uncle who is my cousin’s father did not want my aunt’s bestie from the 70s who was HIV positive to be a houseguest for a weekend in 1987 when she was pregnant with my cousin. (My PhD uncle and I both suffer from health anxiety.) My PhD uncle thought at the time that bestie could give my aunt and their in-utero child HIV. TW – Aunt’s bestie committed su!cid3. This was in 1987, nine years before protease inhibitors and combination therapies that significantly improved patients’ outlook and future.
Now, there are over 40 drugs that treat HIV.
I went through each day in the 80s not knowing that HIV / AIDS existed. Do you know how much of a privilege that was? But there were also times in the 80s that I didn’t know my a** from my elbow in the mid-80s when Los Angeles and California was terrified of the Night Stalker. (And one of Night Stalker’s victims lived in the same area where we lived.) But, in 1984 or possibly 1985, I do remember dancing along to the Miami Vice theme in a tutu. It was around this time I also remember experiencing my first emotion of jealousy / anger at a literal hanger because the hanger was wearing a dress that I wanted to wear. (Maybe I’ll elaborate on my 80s memories in subsequent posts.)
Fast forward to 1991, I first learned about HIV / AIDS as a fourth grader in November when Magic Johnson courageously shared his diagnosis when stigma was intense. We had a class discussion about it and I’m so grateful I grew up in a progressive state. (The blue state-red state dichotomy didn’t start until after the 2000 election if memory serves.) It was a year before mandatory fifth grade sex ed, so I assume we talked about how HIV is not transmitted via casual contact. (Now, a certain political party believes that sex ed is a “pornography.” Truth is stranger than fiction.). And then I learned more about people who endure an HIV diagnosis when Pedro Zamora joined the Real World San Francisco cast in 1993/1994.
A more contemporary example is Gina Tew. Gina Tew has so bravely shared her journey on TikTok when she was newly diagnosed with AIDS 1.5 years ago.
I’m not sure how I can reconcile my 80s survivor’s guilt other than enjoying every day to the fullest bc each day is a gift.