#tw hiv

[beclight]

Ok no fuck it i think it would make sense to send this here. I FOUND THE HIV PANEL. THIS TOOK SO LONG TO FIND. THIS IS THE ORIGINAL

HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHITTTT FINALLY🥹🙏🙏🙏 ive been wondering how the hell it vanished off the internet, im so glad it's been found THANK YOU SO MUCH

[breadsbutters]

thinking about queer!house, who would’ve been just getting out of medical school at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. house who loves puzzles and mysterious diseases. who probably did have to interview patients when he was younger and didn’t have the reputation to back up his behavior, having to deliver a diagnosis of GRID, that has only experimental treatments, a mysterious disease that nobody will fund the research for. the medical community can’t even agree on why exactly people catch it or on how it’s transmitted at first.

in the hallways, the unspoken consensus is that it’s spread through deviancy. degeneracy. queer behavior. that it’s more social contagion than real disease.

it would’ve made him furious. to watch people die, over and over again, from a puzzle that those with power didn’t want to solve. to hear so many become indignant or furious or hysterical at a diagnosis that labels them as queer. maybe it was worse to see those visibly gay men who only nodded their head, accepted that what had already begun killing their friends, their lovers, was killing them too.

everybody lies. whether they’re lying about their sexuality or lying about accepting an awful death shouldn’t make a difference to him. they’re going to die irregardless.

i think living through the epidemic as a young queer man would give additional explanation to a lot of house’s behavior. his general distaste for and mistrust for authority, his willingness to try any treatment no matter how radical or experimental, his conscious refusal to connect emotionally with patients, even down to less obvious stuff, like his consistent refusal to use heroin. he’s genuinely traumatized from living through an epidemic that killed people like him.

[ax3-e0ns]

Headcannon: Remus also likes Disney but for sorta similar reasons as Virgil, except on an entirely different level. 

Roman, Virgil, and Remus could all sit down and watch Beauty and the Beast but while Roman watches with the focus on the romance and Virgil on the Stolkhome syndrome takes, Remus would sit and watch it under the lens that the movie is one whole dissection of the aids epidemic. And because Roman and Virgil wouldn’t have the background understanding, Remus would need to explain how the major director for that movie was not only a gay man but also a gay man who was severely sick with aids and HIV related complications during the aids epidemic and how that information actively molds the very narrative and message of the movie in his eyes.

[crispyclown]

i think i forgot to post this here

[aquitainequeen]

Botswana Cuts HIV Transmission Rates to Children from 40% to -1% in ‘Groundbreaking Achievement’

Over 23 years of work, the country, which still struggles to contain the HIV epidemic, has nevertheless eliminated it among children.

The WHO recently-celebrated Botswana for their “groundbreaking achievement” of stopping the transmission of HIV between moms and their newborns.

The national program has reduced such occurrences from 40% to below 1% since it was launched 23 years ago.

Botswana still struggles with high HIV infection rates, but in the country’s central health district, just four babies have been born with HIV all year, and in 7 other health districts, there’s been no such transmissions.

[steddieonmywaywardson]

So not only was Satanic Panic a Thing in the 80s but so was the fear of HIV/AIDS.

It’s gonna be dark but I’m thinking a Steddie fic in the vein of It’s A Sin that depicts the characters living with/dealing with AIDS and the general public’s attitudes about it.

Eddie’s the new kid in school and he’s got a secret. Steve is just coming out of his King Steve era and finds himself getting to know the theatrical Metalhead when they’re both sidelined in a Pys Ed class.

Cue much slow burn romance, some solid BRO Robin and a Steve who is Done With Hawkin’s High School’s shit.

[just-fandomthings]

My final post of today: a remembrance for World AIDS Day,

“Bury me furiously,” Mark Lowe Fisher instructed his friends before he died from AIDS in 1992. “We are not just spiraling statistics. We are people who have lives, who have purpose, who have lovers, friends, and families. And we are dying of a disease maintained by a degree of criminal neglect… I want my own funeral to be fierce and defiant.”

[unwelcome-ephestion]

La Cage Aux Folles was the first gay musical on Broadway or in the West End, beginning its New York run in 1983. It won Best Musical at that year’s Tony Awards, and ran for four years. Its lyrics and music were written by Jerry Herman, openly gay composer of Mame and Hello, Dolly!, and its book was written by Harvey Fierstein, who performs I Am What I Am, the show’s most famous number, in the video linked.

La Cage Aux Folles is based on the 1973 French film of the same name, though anglophone audiences will know the American remake, The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, better. It’s a wonderful, joyous farce, much of which takes place in drag, celebrating queer families.

The show flopped in the West End in 1986, despite its Broadway success, something which is normally attributed to the AIDS crisis - AIDS was not well known in 1983, when La Cage opened on Broadway, but by 1986 the unfettered, happy depiction of queer families met with increased homophobia. In later interviews, Herman admitted that the AIDS crisis affected the musical in another way, which was that much of the cast was ill as well. Herman himself contracted HIV in this period, but incredibly survived until only a couple of years ago, when he passed away at 89.

Since then, La Cage has been revived multiple times, including a particularly wonderful 2005 cast starring Kelsey Grammar that I’m listening to right now, and received boatloads of awards. La Cage doesn’t deal with the heavy side of homophobia, preferring to combat prejudice with comedy and farce - what is easy to miss is that, in the 1980s, that happiness was radical and was part of what made the show so controversial. Long live La Cage Aux Folles!