AIDS in the '80s: taboo or not?

[SonOfSlobone]

^^^That's also true. But it's worth pointing out that in San Francisco, at least, the gay community organized quickly and got changes made to the regulations governing bath houses which eventually forced them to shut down. In New York, I think, they were just shut down by the health department without any fanfare.

I always thought that was a mistake, because the bath houses could have been a gathering place for education and community pressure in favor of safe sex. I remember seeing a sign at the time that said "out of the tubs and into the shrubs."

I found out later that the famous French philosopher Michel Foucault, who was teaching at Berkeley at the time, used to go to the SF baths even after he knew he was HIV+. Kind of shocking, although I suppose there's no reason to assume he wasn't practicing safe sex. He was one of the first famous people to die of AIDS, in 1984.

 

[KaraBulut]

From what I recall, it followed the Kubler Ross model - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

During the early GRID years, everyone just assumed it was a problem in certain cities (San Francisco, NYC) or in certain communities (the leather community, the baths crowd, Haitians, IV drug users). There was a joke that was popular at the time, Q. What's the worst part of telling your parents that you're gay? A. Convincing them that you're Haitian.".

In areas where it was prevalent people started getting scared and angry when their friends started dying. That's when it stopped being a joke and people started talking about it.

It seemed to hit the urban areas first. During that time, some of the smaller cities and college towns were still in denial. It was later when the test came out that people started realizing the severity of the problem. Since the incubation period was so long, people who were otherwise healthy discovered that they were HIV positive.

It wasn't until around 1987 when the AZT trials started that HIV was anything other than a death sentence.

After AZT and the later generations of retrovirals came out, everyone stopped talking about it again- probably around 1992-1993. Many of us who were around during the early years didn't want to dwell upon the past. And it seemed that everyone breathed a sigh of relief when triple therapy came out and PCP prophylaxis was the norm (and then everyone was put on testosterone, so they looked healthy).

And so, we have a new generation of gay men who don't know the stories from those years.

 

[SonOfSlobone]

Q. What's the worst part of telling your parents that you're gay? A. Convincing them that you're Haitian.

I remember the joke as "What's the worst part of telling your parents you have AIDS?"...

 

[KaraBulut]

I remember the joke as "What's the worst part of telling your parents you have AIDS?"...

Oops. I was multitasking and typed it out wrong. You're correct- the joke was,

Q. What's the worst part of telling your parents that you have AIDS?
A. Convincing them that you're Haitian.

 

[Mako247]

okay so AIDS in the eighties...
lets see I came out in 1980,
and grew up in different parts of the SF bay area for the next 27 years and was in one of the epicenters of the HIV epidemic

did we talk about it? hell yes,
what else could you do when you would see someone walking down the street one day then the next they were dead?
yes me and my friends (the survivors) got thru the period with help from each other. Sometimes we had to laugh to keep from crying. I could tell you tales of driving with friends to mexico to get the latest miracle drugs that were purported to be cures/treatments. The sisters of perpetual indulgence (drag queen nuns) were a great resource back then (anyone remember their bingo nights??)

local television and radio covered it alot though national coverage not that much
one of the best sources for information those days was the Bay Area Reporter (BAR) newspaper. They covered it from the first talks of the "cancer" to "GRID" then to HIV and AIDS
They were also one of few papers that would print obituaries that would actually talk of the cause of death. They are maintaining a obituary website H**p://obit.glbthistory.org/olo/ where you can view the obituaries going back to the seventies

There was also a publication named Diseased Pariah News which was a sarcastic and hilarious 'Zine that covered hiv and aids (we LOVED that zine and would pass each copy to each other) it had articles such as get fat, dont die which covered nutrition issues for those who were ill as well as their Opportunistic Infection merit badge collection which was based on scouting badges but were for OIs such as thrush, toxoplasmosis, PCP etc..I wish their stuff was available online....

There was/is a publication called POZ, which use to be very informative on developing and emerging issues and treatments of HIV/AIDS including some of the more unconventional one (anyone remember jeff getty and the baboon transfusion?) though they have become more of advertising media for the drug manufactures than an informative source (though they are better than nothing)

As far as plays/stageworks one of my favorite of the time was a piece called Pouf Positive by Robert Patrick about a gay man on his deathbed again sarcastic and dark humor
..."Must one go through the five official stages? What are those five stages again: "anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance." Well, back up: here comes my acceptance speech. "I am now, and I have always been a flaming faggot, responsible for style in its every manifestation. I have my own five steps: flippancy, sentimentality, sarcasm, camp, and smut. They've got me through life, and deity dammit, they'll get me through death!"...

when rock hudson got it there as a time when people wouldnt work on the set with him for fear of catching it...

of course in the us this is a primary gay disease, how different do you think it would be if in the US it was a straight disease like in africa?