“Is Anyone Going Who Isn’t a Gay White Man?: The Politics of HIV/AIDS Movement Ownership

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: Gender & Health

Abstract

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, gay and bisexual men were the largest affected group and received most media attention. Although lesbians and non-LGBTQ+ allies have always been a part of activism and outreach directed towards the needs of people with AIDS, gay men were more highly visible as activists and organizers. Over the years, however, the demographics of people with AIDS (PWAs) and the organizational infrastructure of AIDS activist groups have transformed enormously. Although MSMs (men who have sex with men) remain a widely impacted demographic, activists and public health officials have increasingly noted how sexual identity intersects with other social inequalities like race, class, and nationality to shape who is most likely be impacted by HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, as grassroots LGBTQ+-run AIDS activism and support groups give way to more formalized, state-sanctioned public health initiatives, more non-LGBTQ+ people are seeing themselves as stakeholders in AIDS activist movements. This paper uses several months of ethnographic observation and supplemental interviews with a group called Radical AIDS Activism group to explore how gay men-dominated AIDS activist organizations navigate the politics of movement ownership in a movement landscape where the stakeholders of AIDS activism are complex and contested. Despite the changing demographics of HIV/AIDS infection and a growing awareness of the need for global coalitions with public health experts, middle-class and White gay men in the organization framed themselves as the beneficiaries of AIDS activism, sidelining the contributions of straight and LGBTQ+ women and decentering the needs of poor and BIPOC PWAs.

Author

• Jaime Hartless, SUNY Farmingdale