Research project - AIDs crisis

[0PT1M15T1C]

A lot of things have really changed for me in the past year, but writing has been something that has really helped me throughout everything, including lately with what has been happening in the world. Previously in school, it was just slowly adding on and reviewing topics we had been learning for years, I retain information well, but when I'm not interested in a topic, it makes anything around it tedious. As much as school sucked for me, my interest in writing only really spiked this past year, suddenly in school we started talking about topics such as our laws, voting, human rights, and most importantly for me, my personal project that I did on forensics (and absolutely rocked, by the way). Very quickly writing became a thing that has made a major difference in my life, and I'm so glad someone mentioned Scarleteen to me, because I was only able to further dive in and explore more things. This year, my grades in English and Social went from an 80% and 85% right up to 90% and 95% purely because finally we were talking about current events that impact us every single day. During this pandemic, writing has really been a thing I've been using to my advantage and particularly one thing caught my eye, I noticed people (specifically older people), mentioning this isn't the first time they've gone through something similar when it comes to either social distancing, panic and isolation, and I think that's the next topic I want to kind of work on, with being out of school it's honestly devastating not being able to have our little class debates and discussion about tough topics and issues that are presented to us, in my opinion I had one of the best class groups for this, and I really miss it. But just because I can't be with them everyday doesn't mean I can't keep exploring issues that affect us today. I sent my friends what I wrote as far as research on gender, then on sexuality and safe sex, as well as one on human rights and they're amazed I write that much - specifically they have an issue with how late I'm willing to stay up researching and writing on topics I'm interested in. I actually was made fun of a little bit for being able to write the amount I can, for example, while it took the class over two weeks to write a business letter (no one stayed focused) I had it done in about two hours and got 95% on that.

The main thing I saw this being compared to was the AIDS epidemic as well as issues with being under threat of nuclear war. I think war is a bit of a larger issue to tackle because there's a lot about it, so I started doing research about HIV/AIDs and realized that never once was any of that brought up in our health curriculum which is insane to me. I started out by asking my mom about some of this because she's lived through all of that, and although she said that there hasn't been anything quite like COVID-19 in her lifetime, she did mention quite a lot of similarities between what happened with the AIDs epidemic and what is currently happening, there was an awful lot of hatred that I'm just now finding out. I didn't know it was originally called GRID, that people were being killed for it, that people would hook up and then send coffins to people's houses, that as many people died in the way they did because we didn't know anything about it. I also didn't realize how common it was, my mom knows people who have it and have partners who've lost their lives because of it, I didn't know the struggle around medication which I'm quite honestly predicting something similar is going to happen - a private company may develop a vaccine and make it extremely expensive so they can profit. The main similarities I'm noticing is that just like with that epidemic, we don't know much about the coronavirus, however thankfully medical technology has improved greatly. There's also a lot of hate going on with this and calling it the "Chinese virus" that because of hate, people chose to let a man die because they were too scared to perform CPR, similar to how people would refuse to give treatment to people who were living with HIV/AIDs just because they were assumed gay. I really wish we had learned more about this in school, but right now, I want to do research on my own.

I know Heather for example lived through this and I'm not sure about other people on here, but I'm wondering if you lived through that time, what was that like for you? - if I may ask. Too, are there any good resources (aside from the binging I've been doing here at scarleteen on this) that you might recommend me looking into? I've done a lot on my own, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.
Was it mainly medical and social advancement that helped with that?
I'm also curious on maybe if there were any activists during this time that really pushed for change that anyone can think of?
Although I have my own ideas for part of this, I'm curious what people think could be used to help (other than social distancing, something I've been doing because it's freaking important, and something my mom who has a staff of about 200 people is very much so voicing. She's been really doing a lot with that which is so cool, I love having a loudmouth mom because it's taught me to not be quiet) to deal with what is currently going on, what are your ideas and opinions?
Too, I wonder what some ways are to after all of this are to fight the current government I have (UCP - for me, this is Jason Kenny), and stand up to that, maybe create some change? Also, it's the the freaking government setting poor examples right now, still meeting publicly, it was a whole mess and there was a whole lot of call-outs because they aren't abiding by their own things they've announced for this - it's deeply frustrating.

Another thing that deeply pisses me off is that still, gay people cannot donate blood, that's freaking crazy. I knew that for a while but doing more research just angers me that we still do this. Blood has to be tested either way and like knowing that when I'm older I'd be seen as not eligible for donating blood because I'm into guys is insane.

Currently, a lot of people my age are choosing to ignore the standards set by WHO and other organizations including my provinces health advisor which is frustrating but I don't really want to be part of that so instead, I'm writing, because it's about the only thing that has kept me sane. I hope all of this is okay for me to ask, and I'd love any input, although I'm not a professional writer of any sort I'd love to hear anything anyone has to say about this, or maybe find out some more that I may not have found otherwise.
As I mentioned I've been reading a lot through Scarleteen (archived boards, current boards, as well as articles such as https://www.scarleteen.com/blog/al/sexu ... on_hivaids there's still a lot more articles from Scarleteen on this so I'll still have to look through a lot of those) but idk, I still wanted to ask, so I hope that's alright.

[Amanda F]

Hi 0PT1M15T1C,

I'm so glad you've developed a passion for writing, and found this topic that is fascinating and meaningful to you.

Heather is a little busier these days because they're working on a new book, but when they're available they may be able to stop in and give you some personal insight if they felt comfortable. Just want you to know it may be a few days.

I'm not familiar with any specific resources off the top of my head, and googling things would probably give me the same results that you have already found. So I'll leave that to others. I'm curious, what do you want to do with the writing you produce? Do you want to publish it somewhere, or post it on a personal blog?

[0PT1M15T1C]

Alright! Good to know, thank you.

I'm not really sure exactly what I want to do with it honestly, I haven't really thought that through entirely, it's still pretty new. I have been looking into that a little bit, but really don't know much about where I'd even start. It's kind of just been something for me personally for a while to work on learning more about changes happening in the world as well as practising researching and writing. I also really didn't know how much was going on around me until this year, because previously I had never really been discussing it. That's one of the major pieces for me, discussing it. I love being able to write because I find taking the time to put it into my own words means I'm actually thinking about what the information I've collected means and taking the time to process that, in turn giving me much better talking points for discussion. I love debates and standing up for what I believe in, things like advocacy have always seem so interesting to me, but before, I just never had an interest in anything personally related to me, or I guess maybe didn't fully understand the concepts and what the consequences were for different things. Oftentimes, I'm the one in class to bring up tough questions and start class debates (or discussions) and I'm really missing school right now for that reason, is because we had discussions where although it was only a few people actually discussing it, the whole class listened to what we had to say and came to talk to us after to learn more. It's awesome and I love that feeling of knowing that I helped someone see something they hadn't really thought of before, I just don't really know how I'd even begin to get into that, especially considering the situation I'm stuck in with a stalker where being loud and being able to express myself is dangerous.

There's so much going on right now where I live it's insane, cuts in education as well as cuts to healthcare. Movements against queer rights. It shocks me everytime, honestly. We had like $36 million going towards a new adolescent mental health facility - that money just disappeared, our Health curriculum is 30+ years old and was being rewritten, well, that was changed. Jason Kenny tried to make it so schools could disclose to parents who was in the GSA as well as what their kids identified as and also has vouched for conversion therapy. I go to a good school for learning about advocacy, our students were the one's to organize walkouts and protests, and I wanted to talk to my teacher about that, and then schools closed. I let my age really stop me from looking into things for a while because I just thought "well I'm a kid, who's going to listen to me?" and "This doesn't even affect me" but it does, the things happening around me have very real consequences for both myself and people I love. And too, I started learning, when I don't back down, people start to listen, that's kind of what the stalking taught me, was you keep going higher until someone wants to deal with it. My mom has been doing the same thing with the people she works with, she manages a staff of like 200 people and has advised them all to refuse work due to unsafe conditions, she's been the one sounding alarm bells that construction season isn't going to happen and that they need to stop, her boss and people above her have thanked her for doing that. She's actually a major part of the reason we have some of the protocols for distance currently in place because she brought it up to the executive level and they're looking into legalities right now and able to plan for the city - bit of a side note, but my mom is pretty cool that way.

[Sam W]

Hi Optimistic,

I was technically alive during what we think of as the AIDS crisis, but was a little kid. So I've had to go back and learn the history of it, because even in the textbooks I grew up with, certain things were downplayed or omitted.

Activism played an immense role in anything being done to address the crisis on a large scale. There were (and continue to be) developments like PEP or PrEP (or AZT in the early days) that also helped a lot, but without activists, those things would not have been pushed for or made as accessible as they are now (and there are still huge issues with access to things like PREP).

I actually wrote for another site about one element of AIDS activism, which was the way death was made very tangible in the efforts to get the government to do literally anything: https://deadmaidens.com/2018/01/16/drop ... ds-crisis/.

If you're curious about the activism at the time, ACT UP was founded in response to the AIDS epidemic and maintains an archive about that time period and their work: https://actupny.org/.

[0PT1M15T1C]

Thank you so much for all of that! A lot of this is so crazy to me, because I wasn't taught a single thing about such an incredibly important piece of history. Even as I'm researching there's things that I didn't know talked about in your writing, so thank you - I still have to look through the ACT UP site.

[Sam W]

You're welcome! And I feel you; I grew up in the bay area in California, whose LGBTQ community took a huge hit during the AIDS epidemic, and I still didn't get very much information in school about the time and the activism that went on.

[0PT1M15T1C]

I kind of wanted to ask a few more questions about this, if there’s anyone who’s lived through that who may see it, or maybe because it might spark some ideas.

The few last questions I kind of had:

- what was it like for you if you lived though the AIDS crisis?
- How do you think that’s shaped your understanding of both the world and who you are as a person, if that changed at all?
- What do you wish young people understood more about the AIDS epidemic/crisis?
- How do you feel about people currently not taking COVID-19 seriously, and treating others hatefully (similar time what happened at that time) because of background or for other reasons?


I’ve just about finished that writing (I took a few days off from doing it, because I felt pretty stuck), but I think even just out of curiosity, those are some of the questions this has all brought up for me.