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Judith Butler How To Survive A Plague

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With the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) crisis starting in the early 1980s, there was in increase of publicity on the Lesbian and Gay (LGBTQ) community, which also raised thoughts of discrimination. This idea of discrimination was focused on greatly in the documentary film How to Survive a Plague. Judith Butler’s ideas presented in her essay Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy can also aid us in analyzing How to Survive a Plague because it deals with the same and similar issues. In her essay, two of the problems that Butler addresses, that are also present in How to Survive a Plague, are the means to which someone is grievable and why it is almost impossible to change the discrimination. At the start of the essay, Judith …show more content…

In order to grieve something, you must have had it. Because of this, it can be understandable that some people may not grieve every life that passes by them. If a person grieves for every person, grief would override them and shut them down. But, that does not mean that a person should exclude grief from someone just because of who they were. Also, in order to grieve, you had to have cared about what you lost in some way, even if it was never noticed. Because of the raised discrimination of the LGBTQ community, members of the community are usually only grieved by other members of the community and are further unrepresented by “normal” people. One of the other large problems brought up by Judith Butler is the reason discrimination had not changed. In her essay, she brings up the point that you cannot be who you are as a member of the Lesbian and Gay community because of the “sociality of norms that precede and exceed” the community (Butler 126). At the time, the essay was written and the film was produced, there were no additional equality measures in place for the LGBTQ community, but since then, Same-Sex Marriage has been made into law in the entire United

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In the 1980s, during the apogee of the AIDS crisis, many conservatives came forward to blame the homosexual community for the epidemic. For instance, according to Armstrong, Lam, and Chase, Kaposi’s sarcomas, along with other diseases, make up a list of conditions that serves as a guideline for the diagnosis of AIDS. In fact, its relation to AIDS is so remarkable that it became a label; in a society that is divided by pre-conceived ideas of morality, it became a visual representation of HIV as a punishment for homosexuality. However, in Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Tony Kushner attributes a greater meaning to the lesions caused by Kaposi’s sarcoma – from death sentence to change, and finally, to redemption. These lesions symbolize the lethality that comes with AIDS, and how it has shaped the sense of community amongst homosexuals.

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In the reading by Peter Redman, he raises the argument that the ‘AIDS carrier” becomes the central representation of the HIV epidemic and how the representations of HIV cannot be narrowed down to one cause. In addition, the ‘AIDS carrier’ is represented as monster and the carrier spreads HIV from the deviant subpopulations to the mainstream. Also, AIDS has been connected to social and moral issues and singles out groups like gay men, black people, and young single women. These groups are then viewed as diseased subpopulations and that causes others to feel disgust and panic. The heterosexual men are then afraid to have physical or emotional contact with men in general and that’s why boundaries of heterosexual masculinity were produced.

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In the 1980s, during the apogee of the AIDS crisis, many conservatives came forward to blame homosexuals for the epidemic. For instance, according to Armstrong, Lam, and Chase, Kaposi’s sarcomas, along with other diseases, make up a list of conditions that serves as a guideline for the diagnosis of AIDS. In fact, its relation to AIDS is so remarkable that it became a label; in a society that is divided by pre-conceived ideas of morality, it became a visual representation of HIV as a punishment for homosexuality. However, in Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Tony Kushner attributes a greater meaning to the lesions caused by Kaposi’s sarcoma – from death sentence to change, and finally, to redemption. These lesions symbolize the lethality that comes with AIDS, and how it has shaped the sense of community amongst homosexuals.

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Male victims of suffer also suffer more stigma than females because males have to bear the stigma of being falsely blamed for the creation and transmission of HIV and AIDS. Since the rise of aids in the 80’s and its disproportionate effect on homosexuals, the blame for the cause of the epidemic was placed, by many, squarely on homosexuality. Male victims of sex trafficking and others who perform homosexual acts are still treated as social pariahs today, and they owes a lot of that treatment to the continued ignorance and sensationalism surrounding the AIDS epidemic. In a study done on AIDS stigma, it was found that “Individuals who associated AIDS closely with homosexuality harbored more negative attitudes toward gay men” (Capitanio, Herek).

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But while there is no right or wrong way to grieve, there are healthy ways to cope with the pain that, in time, can ease your sadness and help you come to terms with your loss, find new meaning, and move on with your life. What you can do Acknowledge your pain Accept that grief can trigger many different and unexpected

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People once used to enslaved people and abused people who simply had different skin tones; they were not conceived as human under the law. Now as history has shown us, that wasn’t justice. In every civil rights conflict we are only able to recognize the just point of view years after the fact and when the next conflict comes along we are blind once again. (Amanda) As I’m writing down this paper we are repeating history once in for all. LGBT communities are just HUMANS who are

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