AIDS Mary urban legend
You might've heard the legend about the HIV-infected needles stuck in movie theater seats. Snopes.com, the urban legends reference website, debunks a variation of this tale:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/aidsmary.asp
While the legends aren't really true, they highlight the stigma of AIDS patients. Now, there's a stigma behind venereal disease in general. I mean, you might not want anyone to know you have crabs or genital warts, either. But I suspect that the embarrassment that sometimes accompanies those conditions tends to be different (in degree and maybe even in overall character) from the humiliation that often accompanies AIDS. Sometimes it's implied that AIDS patients should feel morally guilty. Is it just the severity of the disease, or is it due to the frequent assumption that male AIDS sufferers are gay?
Or does it stem from AIDS's association with many different kinds of 'taintedness'--being queer, having sexual contact with a gay/bisexual man, injecting oneself with illegal drugs, being a sex worker, or just being poor, period? I'm bringing up that last item due to a recollection that in 16th century London, all levels of society could be afflicted with venereal disease, but usually only upper-class sufferers were the ones who could afford confidentiality of their condition, and I wonder if the case is similar here. And the public's gradual realization that many sufferers are female may also have changed AIDS's reputation as 'the gay disease'. Nowadays, it seems the AIDS patients portrayed in the media are just as often poor South African women as they are gay American males.
It's strange that queer people are frequently assumed to be middle-class or higher, but besides male-to-male sexual contact, the other common ways of contracting AIDS are associated with the lower class. Perhaps this ties into the classism among some queer communities, which someone mentioned in an earlier SAGA meeting.
- Mitra
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/aidsmary.asp
While the legends aren't really true, they highlight the stigma of AIDS patients. Now, there's a stigma behind venereal disease in general. I mean, you might not want anyone to know you have crabs or genital warts, either. But I suspect that the embarrassment that sometimes accompanies those conditions tends to be different (in degree and maybe even in overall character) from the humiliation that often accompanies AIDS. Sometimes it's implied that AIDS patients should feel morally guilty. Is it just the severity of the disease, or is it due to the frequent assumption that male AIDS sufferers are gay?
Or does it stem from AIDS's association with many different kinds of 'taintedness'--being queer, having sexual contact with a gay/bisexual man, injecting oneself with illegal drugs, being a sex worker, or just being poor, period? I'm bringing up that last item due to a recollection that in 16th century London, all levels of society could be afflicted with venereal disease, but usually only upper-class sufferers were the ones who could afford confidentiality of their condition, and I wonder if the case is similar here. And the public's gradual realization that many sufferers are female may also have changed AIDS's reputation as 'the gay disease'. Nowadays, it seems the AIDS patients portrayed in the media are just as often poor South African women as they are gay American males.
It's strange that queer people are frequently assumed to be middle-class or higher, but besides male-to-male sexual contact, the other common ways of contracting AIDS are associated with the lower class. Perhaps this ties into the classism among some queer communities, which someone mentioned in an earlier SAGA meeting.
- Mitra
posted by Mitra at 7:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home