Sex and Drugs in the AIDS Crisis

As gay men and intravenous drug users began to die in growing numbers in the 1980s following the mysterious collapse of their immune systems, the human and political toll exacted by this new disease was embedded in a particular historical moment. Distinct shades of stigma, shame, and powerlessness were attached to the multiple pathways of transmission. Most historical writing about the AIDS crisis in the U.S. has focused either on the coastal gay meccas or on the federal government. The early years of the crisis in the U.S. radicalized thousands of activists, reshaped municipal politics, and altered the regime of drug development and testing. But AIDS also developed in a landscape less familiar to scholars: in decaying inner-city hospitals, in fledgling volunteer-run gay agencies operating on a shoestring, in municipal health departments already overwhelmed by cuts to social services. This paper highlights instead the macro and micro politics of illness, death, and dying; the role of kinship and community in the emergence of caregiving; and especially the impact of austerity on multiple sexually and racially marginalized communities. In the nation’s segregated big cities, AIDS drove a wedge between black and white gay and lesbian people. Situating AIDS in its historical context, this project thus works to clarify how heterosexism and racism, as well as geography and class, shaped the unfolding of the epidemic on the ground. In this respect, it builds on the scholarship on the queer of color critique in sexuality studies, offering a historical contribution.