In 25 minutes weeeeeeeee!
https://twitter.com/CLAGSNY/status/1318779944978288641
If you want to watch, but haven't registered, it's live on FB: facebook.com/clags.org
His "first act as a gay man" was to march to demand the government research AIDS - @Richie_Jackson
Coming out was a political act.
When @Richie_Jackson was accepted into NYU, he got a card from a friend: Congrats and don't get AIDS. @EricBMarcus' French teacher similarly said "Congrats on getting into Vassar - but I hear there's a lot of homosexuals there!"
There were so many AIDS protests in the Village back then, @Richie_Jackson said, you just needed to start walking down the street and people would follow you to start a march.
The whole point of going to NYU was to be gay - but during his first year, 500 men died, and it kept increasing. The government wasn't doing anything, the newspapers weren't writing about it. They had to figure out what to do themselves. @Richie_Jackson
When 100,000 people died of COVID, it was the front page. When 100,000 people died of AIDS, it was buried in the paper. "It wasn't the right people dying."
They started organizations to care for each other and educate each other. And they protested to make the government take action. Every disease since then has been fought faster thanks to that activism.
Parallels between then and now: denial, inaction... even Anthony Fauci! But also the pushback from gay people against suggested restrictions on how to conduct their sex lives - @EricBMarcus
Restrictions were resisted because of whom the recommendations came from - people who had said gay sex was morally wrong - @Richie_Jackson
There was a reluctance - squeamishness - in making the right recommendations. Scientists knew what exactly was the danger behaviors, but were vague or over-inclusive.
"What did the safe sex recommendations do to your sex life as a 19 year old kid?" - @EricBMarcus
"What did they do to my sex life as a 55 year old man?!?" - @Richie_Jackson
"What did they do to my sex life as a 55 year old man?!?" - @Richie_Jackson
"You're right to be afraid right now - but when you get new information, loosen up a bit, let yourself get away from your fear": what @Richie_Jackson would say to his teenage self right now
"Remember phone sex? It was so great!" - @Richie_Jackson on what you can do during a pandemic. ("Everyone still remembers the hold music")
When @Richie_Jackson was tested, his doctor marked it on his chart in a "haphazard scribble - a doodle that only he would understand" - because even getting the test was grounds for discrimination.
All the COVID language - "he's got it," "he's positive" - is triggering. At first, his body would shake in reaction when he heard the language; and it was crippling when people he knew began to die from it - @Richie_Jackson
Post-COVID, we're going to have to learn to trust each other again and to be intimate. We'll have to learn to trust the vaccine - no one trusted AZT in the beginning. - @Richie_Jackson
How are we going to grieve the COVID deaths? @Richie_Jackson also notes that there's not a satisfactory memorial for the people who died of AIDS - that's why there's a moral imperative to tell those stories, so they don't disappear.
There's still stigma around HIV/AIDS in part because we don't talk about it enough - LGBTQ+ youth are being raised to be straight, with gay issues not addressed in school, not to mention safe sex.
"I have never had sex - even now, married - without the fleeting thought of death racing through my mind... the doom is still so present for me that I still can't shake it." - @Richie_Jackson
Just like there were awkward conversations about wearing a condom then, with people losing lovers because of disagreements, there are awkward conversations now - about wearing masks, etc.
You don't know where in their journey the other person is - being intimate with someone is a tightrope act. You want to be open to them, but also to protect yourself.
We have to take care of the older generation of gay people. They're at risk - not only for COVID, but for financial instability and other side effects of the war waged on the gay community. "The ink is not dry" on gay rights.
"I was easing myself into the shadows where I thought gay sex belonged" - @Richie_Jackson reading from #GayLikeMe: amazon.com/Gay-Like-Me-Fa… (which is a great book - I highly recommend!)
As queer people, "empathy is our lifeblood" and because "we live in a world without empathy right now - now is our moment!" We can take our empathy, our creativity, and put it towards activism and changing public policy. @Richie_Jackson
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