{"id":513,"date":"2021-03-25T12:24:18","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T16:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/?p=513"},"modified":"2021-03-25T12:24:18","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T16:24:18","slug":"the-issue-is-disease-not-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/2021\/03\/25\/the-issue-is-disease-not-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"“The issue is disease – not sex.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The beginnings of the AIDS epidemic were filled with uncertainty and many questions. However, within a year, it was understood that AIDS – known as GRID [Gay-Related Immune Deficiency] at the time – was sexually linked.\u00a0 Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, however, chose to focus on the subject of disease in a section of their paper, <\/span>How to Have Sex in An Epidemic<\/span><\/i>. They state: \u201cthe issue is disease – not sex\u201d (573). This message is repeated three <\/span>times within the section, almost verbatim, to place an emphasis on the misconceptions of the AIDS epidemic and the misdirection of the \u2018safety guidelines\u2019 during the era.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> While it is true that AIDS can be transmitted through sex, the act of sex itself was not the <\/span>problem. As the paper points out, the epidemic is about disease and its focus should be on the prevention of the spread of the disease. With the statement: \u201cthe issue is disease – not sex,\u201d Berkowitz and Callen highlight the dangerous misdirection of placing sex at the forefront of the AIDS epidemic. They are not arguing that people practice what we may now consider as \u2018unsafe sex,\u2019 however. What they argue is that instead placing the focus on sex – specifically <\/span>how many partners should one have, who should one have sex with, and how many times should one have sex – the focus should be on the nature of the disease. As they point out in their writing, even if a man limits himself to one partner a month, he can still contract the disease from one of them (572). By placing sex at the forefront, the importance of understanding the spread and prevention of the disease is undermined.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> By focusing the discussion on sex, the discussion turns towards the sex practices of gay men. The name \u2018GRID\u2019 itself was explicit in identifying one group: thereby, changing the topic away from the disease and towards gay men. Which then gave the government, medical practitioners, and media an excuse to scrutinize and violate the lives of people within the community. In other words, instead of discussing how many lives were taken and discussing the prevention of more deaths, the discourse focuses on scrutinizing sexuality. What I believe the authors\u2019 purpose in repeating this message was to bring our attention to this problem. The discussion is not focusing on the correct topic – disease and the spread of the diseases is the issue, not sex.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The beginnings of the AIDS epidemic were filled with uncertainty and many questions. However, within a year, it was understood that AIDS – known as GRID [Gay-Related Immune Deficiency] at the time – was sexually linked.\u00a0 Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, however, chose to focus on the subject of disease in a … Continue reading “The issue is disease – not sex.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4640,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4640"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}