{"id":349,"date":"2016-10-30T21:45:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T01:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=349"},"modified":"2016-10-30T21:45:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T01:45:26","slug":"the-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2016\/10\/30\/the-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"The reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLike all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout… This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through the City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?\u201d (p. 51)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In this passage, Roy is talking to Henry about his diagnosis. Henry is telling Roy that all of his symptoms as well as his biopsies show that he has contracted HIV. Roy immediately denies this and goes on to talk describe all of the power that he has within the circles that he navigates. One thing that I think this passage does is create a different narrative about the types of people who are able to get HIV. Dominant discourse during this time period stated that only specific groups of people were exposed to HIV. This discourse is even shown throughout the scene when Roy says that \u00a0\u201cit afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts\u201d, with Henry adding \u201chemophiliacs are also at risk\u201d (49). This discourse is why Roy believed that he was not able to get HIV. He was ignorant, but also intimidated by everything that having the disease signified given his position of power. With the status and mobility that Roy has, he disrupts this narrative to show that anyone engaged in any kind of sexual activity, specifically thinking about men having sex with men for this play, is at risk of catching HIV. He talks about his ability to call on different people in positions of power equating privilege to cleanliness and exemption from HIV, while designating lower class people as the only ones exposed to the disease. This passage is important because it places a different narrative on the disease and the people that are thought to be impacted by it. This shift made society take the disease more seriously while also trying to understand its origins and the broad array of people it had the ability to impact. Ultimately, this passage sheds light on the attitude of American society toward gay men during this time period because it highlights the cultural stigma, as well as the systematic discrimination, that gay men have, and continue, to face within society. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLike all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout… This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what … Continue reading The reality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2597,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}