AIDS and Its Metaphors in LA
We are starting discussion of the section in Sontag called “AIDS and Its Metaphors”. First off, what stereotypes and stigmas do you initially connect to AIDS?
In the reading, Sontag recognizes that unlike cancer, AIDS is medical condition in which people know how and why they got it. “Because of countless metaphoric flourishes that have made cancer synonymous with evil, having cancer has been experienced by many as shameful, therefore something to conceal, and also unjust, a betrayal by one’s body. Why me? The cancer patient exclaims bitterly. With AIDS, the shame is not at all obscure. Few wonder, Why me? Most people outside of sub-Saharan Africa who have AIDS know (or think they know) how they got it. It is not a mysterious affliction that seems to strike at random” (pg. 112). Directly following this passage, she discusses how AIDS targets certain “risk groups”, the first being homosexual men.
Relating this to our LA based course, how did the progression of AIDS in California (not just LA because of the of the large population of homosexual men in San Francisco) develop within different risk groups? How do the associations of AIDS, the knowingness of the medical condition, relate to the people who contract the disease? Is it fair to place blame on people who contract this illness? Generally discuss how the people who contract AIDS relate to the illness and its associations.
I have enjoyed reading Sontag because looking at the way people react to an outbreak of disease in their community has allowed me to observe general tendencies of human nature. People are immediately frightened when they don't understand something. When Matt shared that his mom was a med student in the time of the early and uncertain outbreak of AIDS, he said something along the lines of: "everyone thought they were bound to die too because no one knew what was happening." This statement and Sontag's critical theory "Illness as a Metaphor," can explain why/ how disease is so easily used as a weapon for social hierarchization. In such a state of fear, people want to define the chaos. They jump so quickly to conclusions in order to explain the unexplainable. In the end, as these stereotypes stick and begin to become part of the disease, this artificial definition begins to "blame" the victim. I don't think that it is right to blame the victim--especially when it distracts the community from stepping in and aiding in recovery--but I can understand why/how people rely on the associations that express ultimately are expressed as "blame." As Sontag touches upon, the public heath department has a lot of influential power. Until they start using it to educate the public instead of carelessly protecting themselves, the public will continue to accept misguided social ideals as medical truths.
ReplyDeleteBefore I really understood what AIDS was, I definitely associated the disease with homosexuality. The main reason I associated AIDS with homosexuality was because I thought the only way AIDS was contracted with through homosexual intercourse. After learning more about the disease in middle school and throughout high school, I have learned that AIDS is a disease that can be contracted in many different ways. When we were studying AIDS in depth last year in biology, my mom shared with me the story I shared in class about her experience as a medical student at UCLA during the outbreak. Her story really helped me understand AIDS on a deeper level. The fact that many of her friends quit at UCLA during the outbreak made me wonder about the dangers of the unknown. Although AIDS is clearly more known today than it was during its initial outbreak, I think that there are still many unknown elements to it, which makes it scary. And because of this unknown, I do not think that it is fair to place the blame on people who contract AIDS.
ReplyDeleteI first learned about AIDS through the lens of a famous young boy named Ryan White. At my elementary school there was a wax museum project where each student had to dress up and act as a famous person who had passed away. I decided to dress up as Ryan White a young man who had contracted AIDS because of his hemophilia and he contracted it from a blood transfusion because he had lost so much blood after an accident. This story struck because this poor kid not only had the horrible innate disease of hemophilia but now recieved HIV from this horrible disease. Through this protect I informed myself on the virus and how it works and also vividly remember the stereotypes behind AIDS deriving mostly from the gay community. I remember in Ryan White's biography he explains how he was called gay and was hated on by anyone who was homophobic because of the associations that come with his disease. I think those who contract the disease are left with all the worst ends of the stick because not only do they have to live and most likely die with the disease, but they also live with the societal problems that come with the disease.
ReplyDeleteAids is a terrible disease that has harmed and or killed many people over the years. However sickness set aside, a number of different connotations come with the disease after somebody has been infected. One of them having to do with the thought that members of the homosexual community who contracted the disease were dirtier than members who belong to the heterosexual community. Even though aids effected the gay population heavily, it is important to note that these people were not the only ones to get sick and for the disease, in its early stages, to be associated mainly if not only with men having sex with other men is ridiculous. Another connotation that aids had if you were a member of the heterosexual community was that you had to have contracted the disease either by having sex with very promiscuous women or through use of needles alluding to one being a junkie. As you can see having this disease for the longest time only yielding bad results no matter how you defined yourself, whether black, white, gay or straight and I can imagine it was very tough even if you were able to reach a stable condition after getting aids on account of all of the poor images that were and sometimes are linked with this disease. Now though after a lot of research, people have been able to see more of the real and other causes for contracting this disease and with that I do think that the poor ideas about people with aids have decrease a fair amount.
ReplyDeleteThe main association I connect with AIDS is the reputation of the disease as being completely debilitating and almost dehumanizing, leaving its host without any energy or will to live. The way AIDS was ingrained into my mind, there was little to no possibility for recovery after infection, which definitely contributed to its negative image in my head. While I knew of the disease’s prevalence in homosexual men, I am not sure whether I ever drew a negative connotation to this association: it seemed logical to me that they disease most commonly spreads through sex, so if a man contracts AIDS and has sex with other men who then have sex with other men, the disease could stay within a certain “risk group.” However, as we began to delve more deeply into the science behind AIDS in Biology last year, I became much more familiar with how the disease is actually transmitted, and who and how can contract it. I think that stigmas and stereotypes continue to streamline the public’s view of individuals with HIV/AIDS, but I believe that it is completely unfair to blame the people who may unknowingly or accidentally contract this illness for their symptoms and for the associations that others make about them.
ReplyDeleteI think that many times associations not only affect those with the illness but also those who belong to this group. Because AIDs had been affecting primarily gay men, all members of this community became a threat and were linked to AIDs. Similarly to how Molina shows how all mexican immigrants became a threat and were treated as criminals whether they had tuberculosis or not. I do not think it is fair at all to place blame on someone who has contracted AIDS, however I do understand that this has been a reality for many people due to fear and many other factors. When we are afraid we tend to categorize people in attempt to rid ourselves of some level of fear and discomfort.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about AIDS in Sontag’s outline that we have used to frame disease in society, my mind doesn’t necessarily jump to the signs/symptoms first. I think about the epidemic and its devastation. I connect AIDS mostly with homosexual males. I think about the movie In America and, now, the stories from City of God.
ReplyDeleteBacktracking, the signs/symptoms that come to my mind are overall weakness and a purplish-gray tint to the body. These are not scientific or even accurate descriptions. Rather, they combine associations with physical attributes. I associate AIDS with weakness because of the deficient immune system. The purple color sets a dark mood and feels a little unnatural. Actual signs like “Sores of the mouth, anus, or genitals” serve as a reminder for how the disease is contracted. The associations that link AIDS and sex might involve irresponsibility, recklessness and harm. So I could see how, following the framework, representations of “weakness,” “darkness,” “unnaturalness,” “recklessness” and “harm” are then assigned to gay men.
On top of that, the “knowingness” of the disease places a certain amount of responsibility on those who have it. I don’t think it’s fair to place blame on those who contract the illness. But the idea of knowing where the disease comes from and who tends to get it makes it harder for people to hide or for their business to stay private.
I believe that AIDS has such stigma behind it because of how it is spread. Most cases occur either sexually or through un-careful use of a syringe (I believe typically while doing drugs), and both of those categories are already stigmatized highly. On top of that the fact that this disease started in and is often in the already stigmatized gay community, so such large stigmas for AIDS develop. People who contract AIDS are most often seen as impure because such ways of contracted as described above usually aren't seen as pure. It is almost always unfair to place blame on any blame on a victim of AIDS, but I do believe that it is fair to place blame on anyone who knowingly spreads the disease.
ReplyDeleteBefore reading more and learning about AIDS lately, I hadn't really developed much of a stance or specific feeling towards it. Now, having learned more about it, I can definitely see the stereotypes and stigmas associated with the disease. Similarly to what Alina mentioned above, I would immediately associate AIDS with being debilitating and "dirty" in a way, someone infected with something that would never go away. After reading Sontag, I see clearly how AIDS was initially portrayed as a disease that targets a specific group, homosexual men. In thinking about the presence of AIDS in our modern age, I don't see as much of a negative perspective. This leaves me considering if the narrative surrounding the disease has changed, or if it hasn't and all that has really changed is the prominence and commonality of it. As far as blame, I don't know if it's completely fair to place all the blame on those who contract the illness. I think there are outside/situational factors that can be considered, but I'm not sure. I do think though that blame could be placed if one has the disease and knowingly gives it to their partner just because they want to have sex. Communication is important and if someone who has been tested knows they have AIDS, it should not be question whether or not to let their partner know.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphors originally associated with AIDS are overwhelmingly negative. For the gay community it sprouted a lot of homophobia and fear. People would refuse to hang with or near any gay people for fearing of contracting the disease. In the non-gay community, there was still a lot of fear and uncertainty regarding the disease. I think its permanence and its most commonly known form of transmission, sexually, were the largest contributing factors to the stigmatization of AIDS.
ReplyDeleteI think, like any disease, AIDS spread within different groups of people in different pockets of life in Los Angeles and San Francisco. After it made its rounds within certain groups then those people become the ones that interact and spread through different groups. In the case of AIDS, it seemed to specifically target gay men, and before they could identify its causes and where it lived in the body, those men went on to donate blood and spread the disease through ways that were not sexual, further dispersing the disease from the gay community.
In many cases, HIV results come back negative despite the presence of the disease in the body. In the 1980's especially and during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, people rarely had blood tests done. To an extent, the victim cannot be blamed for the contraction of AIDS if their partner did not not know/inform them that they had it. However, the carelessness of not wearing a condom is unforgivable.
Like I said during the discussion that we had on Tuesday, it really depends on placing blame on the people who have contracted aids. In the 80's no one would have known that having unprotected sex would result in contracting such a terrible virus. However in this day and age it too depends, it depends on how you contracted it. Whether it be through drugs or unprotected sex or a tainted blood transfusion, people will always feel the stigma and blame. Nevertheless, having unprotected sex in the 21st century, it's VERY unsafe, and contracting an HIV though that is somewhat your/their fault...unless you asked and they lied then it's the other person's fault.
ReplyDeleteMy firm anglo saxon values have led me to conclude that having aids is a matter of personal choice. I mean, people choose to have aids right, isn't that how it works. It's like an on off switch in your body, am I right?
ReplyDeleteMisinformation surrounding aids has led to a stigmatization of the condition. Following the multi step process of signification that sontag identified with TB, there are signs and symptoms with aids such as weight loss and "wasting away" which then get attributed to certain notions and stereotypes such as uncleanliness and filthiness. These linkages then become romanticized and turned into metaphors about how the wasting away of aids patients is linked to some religious act of the soul disappearing or how the prevalence of aids within the gay community was some act of being smited down by god for unholy actions.
And although yes, it is factually true that having unprotected sex will greatly increase an individual's odds of contracting aids, it's still ethically wrong to place judgement on an aids victim. Such an action would be akin to rubbing salt into an open wound, that a person first contracts AIDs which automatically sucks a lot to have, then people get judgemental of them and view them as subhuman which makes the condition of death via one's own immune system worse.