{"id":107291,"date":"2016-04-01T15:31:32","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T15:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/04\/01\/hey-young-ones\/"},"modified":"2016-04-01T15:31:32","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T15:31:32","slug":"hey-young-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/04\/01\/hey-young-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey young ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

88linesabout44fangirls-blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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prismatic-bell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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and-bisexual<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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anamatics<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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This is a request.
<\/h2>\n

Learn your queer history. Learn about AIDS. Learn about how the leadership of this country looked away and did nothing to help our community for years<\/i>. Learn about how they joked AIDS was god\u2019s punishment for being gay. Learn about how, in the community, everyone was touched. Everyone lost someone. Learn how the AIDS crisis gave birth to the modern gay rights movement. Learn about how that crisis brought the community together after two decades of infighting. Lesbians took care of gay men who were dying. Found families were everywhere<\/i>. Our history is too important to allow our politicians to sweep the horrible awful legacy of inaction under the rug.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Learn your history kids. Think about the people who died to make your life now, as a young queer person in the world, a whole lot better than it was back then.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

YES\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how bi men were blamed for the epidemic by both straight and gay people, and especially for its \u201cleap\u201d to those innocent straight people.\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how Newsweek publicly blamed bi men for the epidemic in 1987, calling them \u201cthe ultimate pariahs\u201d and \u201camoral and duplicitous and compulsive.\u201d How Cosmo did the same two years later, promoting the popular stereotype of bi men as dishonest spreaders of AIDS.\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how bisexual activists like David Lourea and Cynthia Slater were at the cutting edge of safer sex education, bringing it into bathhouses and BDSM clubs in San Francisco in 1981, when doctors were still calling it \u201ca rare gay cancer\u201d. Or like Alexei Guren, in Florida, organizing healthcare outreach to Latino married men who have sex with men.\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how it took two years of campaigning to get even the San Francisco Department of Public Health to recognize bisexual men in their official AIDS statistics (the weekly \u201cNew AIDS cases and mortality statistics\u201d report),\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about the women who got HIV, both cis and trans, who often had no resources or support. And the incredibly high risk trans women faced for HIV even in the late 1990s, and how difficult it still was for them to access healthcare.\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how bisexual activists like Venetia Porter, of the Prostitute\u2019s Union of Massachusetts and COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), were the ones who first advocated for both cis and trans women, and injection drug users, with AIDS.\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how Cynthia Slater, who by then was HIV-positive, organized the first Women\u2019s HIV\/AIDS Information Switchboard in 1985.\n<\/p>\n

\nLearn about how bisexuals are still erased from HIV\/AIDS history. How frequently we are told that we were not affected by the epidemic, that we are less oppressed as a result, that we did not participate in this movement or in the larger movement for gay rights. That we were not demonized, that only gay men were disowned or refused cemetery plots for having AIDS. How our erasure is used against us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Look up the die-ins. Groups of dozens, HUNDREDS, literally laying on the steps of hospitals and breathing their last because hospitals wouldn\u2019t take them and their families wouldn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

Look up Ryan White, an 11-year-old boy who got HIV through a faulty blood transfusion in the days before reliable testing and was denied an education out of fear he\u2019d infect other kids.<\/p>\n

Do you know what AIDS was, in those dim days? My mom worked in a hospital. An AIDS patient was brought in and immediately put in the same isolation room they\u2019d use for stuff like SARS, smallpox, and anthrax. Entering his room required that you enter another room first and take off all your clothes. A fresh set of scrubs would be given to you. Then you had to triple-glove, double-boot, double-mask, double-gown\u2013yes, a surgical gown just to enter the room\u2013and when you left you did all this in reverse and then got a decontaminant shower. Nobody knew how this disease was spread. <\/p>\n

And the people. In charge. Did NOTHING.<\/p>\n

When older queer activists speak, loves, LISTEN. Our history is short and foggy and all too often appropriated by straight people for brownie points. It\u2019s not all the repeal of DADT and getting married.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Psychology today also did an article blaming bisexual men in the most scare-mongering way possible. This was a supposedly\u00a0\u2018objective\u2019, semi-scientific magazine. I still remember reading this over 20 years later.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

88linesabout44fangirls-blog: prismatic-bell: and-bisexual: anamatics: This is a request. Learn your queer history. Learn about AIDS. Learn about how the leadership of this country looked away and did nothing to help our community for years. Learn about how they joked AIDS was god\u2019s punishment for being gay. Learn about how, in the community, everyone was touched. … <\/p>\n

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