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      The abortion rights movement can learn from the Aids activism of the 80s and 90s | Moira Donegan

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      The abortion rights movement can learn from the Aids activism of the 80s and 90sMoira DoneganAct Up employed a multiplicity of tactics and responses while maintaining a laser-focused singleness of purpose It was already chaos, and now, it was going to get worse. The US supreme court’s decision wasn’t exactly a surprise – everyone knew it was coming – but the rage in the room felt palpable. The language of the opinion had been taunting and cruel; the punishment from the court felt vindictive, personal. People were already dying for lack of access to healthcare; the ruling would push people in need even further to the margins. Now, the most vulnerable faced criminalization, harassment and even death, and for what? For the conservative Christian values that none of them had voted for? For a regressive, punitive, and cruel vision of gender and sexuality that most of the world had long since left behind?The ruling was Bowers v Hardwick, and the year was 1987. The supreme court, in a virulently homophobic opinion, had upheld a Georgia law criminalizing gay sex between consenting adults. At the time, the Aids crisis was gripping gay America. Out of bigotry and indifference, both the federal government and the pharmaceutical sector were dragging their feet. Meanwhile, thousands of people, mostly gay men and IV drug users, were dying slow, painful, premature deaths, at the margins of a society that hated them and feared their disease.The moral stakes couldn’t have been more clear: a backwards and oppressive understanding of gender was creating needless suffering and death. It wasn’t the birth of Act Up, the radical grassroots activist group that confronted the Aids crisis in America, but it was the moment when Act Up was energized into the powerful force it would become. At the group’s regular Monday night meetings at New York’s Lesbian and Gay Center, the crowd swelled with outraged queers ready to be organized.The reproductive rights movement now faces a similar moment of rage and revival. Since the Dobbs opinion reversed Roe v Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, there has been an outpouring of pro-choice sentiment from previously unorganized or apolitical citizens. Meanwhile, an onslaught of horror stories is pouring out from conservative states: miscarrying patients going into septic shock before they can be treated; women forced to carry dead or doomed fetuses for weeks; little girls, raped and impregnated by men they thought they could trust, fleeing their states to get the abortions that will allow them to reclaim what’s left of their childhoods. This is just the beginning: there will be more of these stories, many more, and they will get worse.Like the gay community in 1987, American women are now faced with a moment of profound terror, anger, and grief whose full extent is yet to be seen. A slogan advanced in recent years by the pro-abortion group We Testify attempts to destigmatize the procedure: everyone loves someone who’s had an abortion. Soon, everyone will know someone who has needed an abortion, and struggled to get it.Moments of feminist rage aren’t uncommon in American politics, but the ability to harness women’s anger for political ends has been a trickier feat, especially in recent years. The Women’s March, which followed Donald Trump’s election, drew in giant numbers for street protests, but was unable to harness its support toward a specific agenda. The organization was hobbled by infighting and lack of direction. Later, the #MeToo movement was able to generate public conversation and remove a number of high-profile abusers from positions of power. But #MeToo was not able to translate its moral authority into a political platform.Act Up offers a different model, one with a proven record of success. Like feminists and abortion rights supporters now, Act Up was composed of people of varying backgrounds, commitments, and ideologies. They had different priorities, skills, and ideas; different perspectives and styles. But they all shared the same goal: to combat the Aids crisis, and to improve the lives of people with Aids.The writer and teacher Sarah Schulman, an Act Up veteran, attributes the group’s success to “a strategy of difference facilitating simultaneity of response”. In other words, a lot of different kinds of people were using different tactics, all in pursuit of the same things. Under this broad but well-defined agenda, the group was able to transform its varied constituency into an asset – not a liability.Over the five years that it was most active and influential, 1987-1992, the group was able to successfully lobby to lower drug prices, get more people included in trials, extend Aids benefits to women, and cut red tape to get more treatments to market. Their loud, aggressive, and irreverent public demonstrations at the FDA building and in the offices of pharmaceutical executives were carefully targeted and publicized, meant to garner publicity and also to be as uncomfortable and inconvenient as possible to the powerful people who were standing in their way. Now, the mainstream media scolds protesters for holding demure vigils outside the home of Brett Kavanaugh in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Back then, Act Up went down to DC to protest outside a politician’s home, too. They found out the address of the rightwing, anti-gay North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, and with the news cameras rolling, put a giant condom over his house.Maybe one of the great lessons of Act Up is this willingness to embrace irreverence and joy, something the reproductive rights movement, to their great credit, have also embraced. But another virtue is that the group employed a multiplicity of tactics and responses while maintaining a singleness of purpose.Feminism, as a movement, has long had a problem of unsustainably expanding responsibilities. Because women exist in all walks of life, any social problem can be cast as a feminist problem. But no movement can take on responsibility for every injustice in the world. Like Act Up, the reproductive rights movement would be wise to assign itself an expansive understanding of a narrow remit.Act Up aimed to combat the Aids crisis and improve the lives of people with Aids, a purview that enabled different factions within the group to take on issues of drug access, housing discrimination, sex education, and the power of the Catholic church. Likewise, the reproductive rights movement would be wise to dedicate itself only to the emergency at hand: abortion access, and the lives of people who need abortions. It is there that they can do the most good for those affected, and it is where they can reshape, as Act Up did, both the public debate and the facts on the ground.Much of this is already happening. In the years that the right has been ascendant and abortion supporters have been on the defensive, large, national non-profit advocacy groups have mostly been on the back foot. But in the places they have vacated, a vast network of small but mighty local organizations, and abortion funds, have stepped in to help those seeking abortions with material needs. These groups represent an essential intervention in material service provision. They can also form the foundation for what feminism needs now: an organized political movement.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsAbortionOpinionUS politicsAids and HIVLGBTQ+ rightsHealthcommentReuse this content More

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      ‘Equality is not within sight’: UN expert warns US to protect LGBTQ+ civil rights

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      ‘Equality is not within sight’: UN expert warns US to protect LGBTQ+ civil rightsVictor Madrigal-Borloz says he’s ‘deeply alarmed’ that prior progress is under threat at both state and federal levels A United Nations expert warned that some US state governments are steadily undermining and eliminating lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse people’s civil rights, and he urged the Joe Biden White House to strengthen protective measures for them.Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the diplomatic organization’s independent expert on protection against gender- and sexual orientation-based violence and discrimination, said he is “deeply alarmed” that prior progress, such as the US supreme court’s legalization of gay marriage in 2015, is under threat at both the state and federal levels in America.Armed left and rightwing protesters face off at ‘drag brunch’ in Texas Read more“Equality is not within reach, and often not even within sight” for members of [LGBTQ+] communities in the US, Madrigal-Borloz said after a 10-day trip in his role with the UN that had various stops across the country.The expert’s remarks come after the Republican-dominated government of Florida this summer enacted a “don’t say gay” law forbidding schoolchildren in kindergarten through third grade from receiving classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.Meanwhile, the states of Utah, Idaho, West Virginia and Indiana are fighting to enforce bans restricting transgender student-athletes from participating in scholastic sports. Supreme court justice Clarence Thomas favorably suggested the right to same-sex marriage could be overturned after the elimination of nationwide abortion rights. And drag queens are increasingly reporting rightwing harassment.Madrigal-Borloz acknowledged that Biden had attempted to blunt some of the anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation through an executive order that he signed in June. The order aimed to dry up federal funding for the discredited practice of “conversion therapy”, which seeks to forcefully change the sexual orientation of LGBTQ+ youth. And it also included instructions for the federal health and education departments to widen access to gender-affirming medical care while also finding other ways to counter laws in conservative-controlled states that ban those treatments for transgender.Nonetheless, Madrigal-Borloz suggested that executive order alone wouldn’t offer much resistance to the “concerted attack” LGBTQ+ Americans are facing from some of their own government leaders.“I am deeply alarmed by a widespread, profoundly negative riptide created by deliberate actions to roll back the human rights of [LGBTQ+] people at [the] state level,” he said in remarks that the UN distributed in a news release on Tuesday. “The evidence shows that, without exception, these actions rely on prejudiced and stigmatizing views of [LGBTQ+] persons, in particular transgender children and youth, and seek to leverage their lives as props for political profit.”Madrigal-Borloz is a Costa Rican attorney who is also a lecturer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His trip across the US included stops in Washington DC, Miami, San Diego and Birmingham, Alabama, the UN’s news release said.The UN, based in New York City, added that Madrigal-Borloz met with state officials and members of LGBTQ+ communities, who informed him of the “significant inequality in relation to health, education, employment and housing” that they are enduring, among other issues.TopicsLGBTQ+ rightsUnited NationsUS politicsHuman rightsReuse this content More

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      Rightwing media embraces Aids-era homophobia in monkeypox coverage

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      Rightwing media embraces Aids-era homophobia in monkeypox coverageHealth experts want to talk to men who have sex with men about monkeypox. Stigmatization of gay sex makes that harder The conservative campaign against LGBTQ+ rights has found a new fixation for its hatred: monkeypox. On TV, rightwing commentators openly mock monkeypox victims – the vast majority of whom are men who have sex with men – and blame them for getting the disease. On social media, rightwing users trade memes about how the “cure” to monkeypox is straight marriage while casting doubt on monkeypox vaccines’ efficacy.This aggressive stigmatization of monkeypox – reminiscent of the homophobic response to HIV/Aids in the 1980s – poses a serious challenge to public health advocates and community leaders trying to have honest conversations about the disease with the gay and bisexual men who are most at risk during the current outbreak. Should public messaging highlight the fact that monkeypox is primarily affecting men who have sex with men? And should public health bodies urge gay men to change their sexual practices?The simultaneous threats of homophobia and monkeypox require making a difficult choice about which to tackle first, says the writer and veteran Aids activist Mark S King, a 61-year-old gay man.“I’m about killing the alligator closest to the boat. And right now that means getting information to men who have sex with men about how to avoid this.”Early in the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) struck a cautious note in its communications about monkeypox, which causes painful lesions, fever, and other symptoms. On 18 May, the agency said that “cases include individuals who self-identify as men who have sex with men” while stressing “anyone, regardless of sexual orientation” could spread the disease. But an international study published on 21 July found 98% of recent Monkeypox cases outside of Africa were found in gay or bisexual men, with transmission suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95% of those cases.That’s why King is aligned with an increasing number of US public health officials and advocates who believe the messaging around monkeypox needs to be brutally honest in communicating the risks to the population most affected – even if homophobes are going to pounce on it.Last week, the CDC appointed Dr Demetre Dasklakis, a gay man and renowned Aids activist, as the deputy coordinator of its national monkeypox response. Days later, the agency published guidance for preventing monkeypox through safer sex that includes an illustration of two men in a bed. The article recommended people limit their number of sex partners, avoid anonymous hookups, and “wash your hands, fetish gear, sex toys” after having sex. It also suggested socially distanced or video masturbation as alternatives to sex.Sex-positive public health messages like these have drawn scorn from conservative commentators.“Chastity. Celibacy. Modesty. Disciplined. Not being gross. Keeping your legs closed. All viable options, people,” tweeted the Republican commentator Kathy Barnette in response to the CDC’s guidance.“Still waiting for gay men who are having random sex with strangers during the Monkeypox outbreak to get lectured and scolded by public health authorities the way that the rest of us did for going to grocery stores and restaurants during Covid,” tweeted the Daily Caller’s Matt Walsh.And in late July, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson tweeted a poll declaring that the disease should be renamed “schlong Covid”, tagging the CDC.But King says these rightwing attacks are just a distraction. “We have to ignore that if we are to deliver an effective public message to the community that we care about.”King contracted HIV in 1985 and remembers feeling frustrated over the lack of official acknowledgment of the toll on gay men. “How many years was it until our president said how many people died of Aids, before there was detailed, explicit language on how the virus was transmitted?” he says. “Fast forward to 2022, where we are at least getting all of this great, explicit information out about monkeypox so that gay men can protect themselves. I consider that progress.”But not everyone in the queer community agrees on how to talk about the new outbreak. The prominent rights group Glaad has notably cautioned against framing monkeypox as a disease that primarily affects men who have sex with men in guidance issued to the media. Framing monkeypox as a disease within the gay community will discourage other people from educating themselves on prevention, says DaShawn Usher, the director of communities of color and media at Glaad.“If history has shown us anything, it would show us that a communicable disease like this doesn’t stay within one community,” he said. “Stigma drives fear, and fear then becomes resistance to public health and stopping the spread of the disease.”Usher says the belief that monkeypox only affects some people might also discourage employers from offering accommodations for monkeypox, or prevent workers from disclosing that they have monkeypox for fear of being labeled or outed as queer.There is also disagreement within the queer community about whether and how to discuss changing sexual behavior during the outbreak. Some health authorities’ suggestions that affected communities scale back their sexual activity while the US grapples with vaccine delays can sound uncomfortably similar to conservative attacks on gay culture.Usher says that just telling people to abstain from sex would send the wrong message. “You could still contract monkeypox if you were to kiss someone that had an active case of monkeypox, or if you cuddled with someone without clothes on. I would just encourage people to understand all of the ways that it could be spread.”King says he has received pushback within his community for telling others to consider dialing back their hookups. “I’m getting attacked by people who think that I’m contributing to the stigmatization of gay sex. My response to that is: you’re welcome to go back to whatever kind of sexuality suits you in a few weeks. The vaccines are on the truck. Give it a minute.”‘Like winning the lottery’: Americans struggle to get monkeypox vaccinesRead moreThe activist believes the best way to offer frank public health advice about sex is to remove any moral judgment. “We’ve learned through the last 40 years of HIV that moral judgments only help HIV,” he says. “Moral judgments shame the people who are most at risk, which leads to people going underground, not admitting what their behaviors are, and not wanting to talk about the risks.”That’s not to say there isn’t room to discuss why gay men make the choices they do, King says. “But right now it is a completely worthless conversation when it comes to stopping the spread of monkeypox.”King says it’s a mistake to think that avoiding the realities of monkeypox will reduce homophobic aggression – which has been increasing for many years. The number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes reported have risen substantially over the last decade, federal hate crime statistics show. During that period, US state legislatures have passed an unprecedented number of anti-LGBTQ+ measures, with 2021 deemed the “worst year” ever by the Human Rights Campaign. Many US schools have banned LGBTQ+ books, and attacks on queer spaces are on the rise. In recent months, rightwing activists have stoked fears by promoting conspiracy myths that queer-friendly people are “grooming” children for sexual abuse.“Those people tracking down queer men to bash, they have a pocket full of hatred on any number of issues that will lead them to pick up that beer bottle,” King says. “They might have new language to use while they’re bashing us over the head, but they would still be bashing us over the head.”TopicsMonkeypoxLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More