8xel:

Sometimes I get so fucking angry when I think about HIV and AIDS too long because the blow out in the US was in the 80s and 90s and I think about all the creative and intellectual people who lost their lives to it and have been continuously swept under the rug as if their humanity was just so contrite.

Our entire generation would be different had they all survived, and sometimes I think about that too long and get all mad tears. It stigmatized the entire queer community, and I feel like the community is still trying to recover and get a grip on a time when it was once socially acceptable to call something GRIDS (Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome) as if that made any fucking sense. Pure propaganda bullshit, seriously. Our president wouldn’t even openly acknowledge it. Actually fuck Reagan because it took approx 21,000 deaths in the US before he even said ‘AIDS.’

And HIV is still so disregarded by the media as if people aren’t falling victim to it like wildfire (a huge part of this is because of the shame and inability to believe everyone is capable of contracting it), and if you ever want a reason to hate, then take a class on the history of HIV and AIDS and take a Biology of HIV and AIDS course because you’ll never come out of it the same once you understand the sociopolitical nightmare surrounding it. You’ll be breathing fire about the injustice and not just sexual orientation discrimination but also the gender and racial discrimination that is still choking people to this day. I’m clearly so angry right now.

The shittiest part being there are new preventative medications going around that no one will fucking talk about, and I don’t know what we need to do to get people on board to make this shit cheap and accessible, but I feel like stapling eyelids open and sitting every shit hole broadcast company and pharmaceutical soul sucker in front of a slideshow of what exactly AIDS did to people before there were antiretrovirals (that still aren’t 100%) and how it is just being a decent human being to spread the information. If not for the basic safety of those currently alive, then at least as respect for every person who lost or is currently losing their life because trust me — I have no fucking delusions this ‘problem’ is almost ‘fixed’ because it’s seemingly subdued in the United States.

It is a problem. This is still a problem. Why isn’t anyone discussing how big of a problem this is?