"Sexual health, activism, and the arrival of HIV/AIDS": The Surprising History of Venereal Disease

 

This week I attended a talk on the history of gay sexual health which was organized by the University of Cambridge. I decided to attend this event because I wanted to fill the gaps in my knowledge surrounding the activism that was so essential to bringing about an end to the AIDS crisis. I listened to two presentations: one by Richard McKay, a fellow at the University and the other by George Severs, a PhD student in the History department.

McKay's work seeks to contextualize the AIDS crisis by considering the various relationships gay men in America and Britain had to sexual health in the decades leading up to the epidemic. In the 1960s, more and more gay men contracted syphilis — a phenomenon which cast doubt on the dominant thought then that gay sex presented no risk to men. At the time, scientists were baffled. But McKay believes that today it is clear that one factor responsible for this uptick in venereal disease was the mass exodus of gay men to cities after World War II. Gay men formed dense sexual networks in these cities which sped up disease transmission. McKay argues that you can trace a lineage between the gay community's response to the syphilis outbreak and the community's response to the AIDS crisis. The syphilis outbreak prompted sexual health activism which sought to reduce the stigma and emotional pain surrounding venereal diseases, and it was brought to an end by the advent of a miracle drug (penicillin) as well as developments in contact tracing — tools also important in the AIDS crisis. Ultimately, McKay believes that studying the 1960s allows historians to develop a more comprehensive view of "the embryonic queer life" developing in North America and to disentangle the, for many, implicit associations between disease and queer sexuality.

I appreciated his talk because it highlighted a lesser known aspect of gay sexual health. It made me wonder what other stories are missing in the history of gay male sexual health and sexual liberation. I was also intrigued by the fact that he chose to use the term "venereal disease" in his talk rather than "sexually transmitted disease" or "sexually transmitted infection." I'm curious about what effect language has on how we understand and talk about these issues.

The second speaker, George Severs, contrasted gay activism in America with activism in Britain by  focusing on the London chapter of ACT UP!. He argues that the American chapter gets more attention because its founder was charismatic and antagonistic, and its movement was successful. By contrast, the British chapter, which relied on both mass protests and artistic expression, never entirely found its footing and eventually disintegrated due to financial lawsuits and controversies. Still, he credits the chapter with paving a path for future activists to dispute discriminatory policies in the workplace.

What I enjoyed about Sever's talk was the opportunity to reflect on how activist movements are exported and adapted to other countries. His presentation made me realize just how many lenses you can look at the AIDS crisis through, many of which, he acknowledges, are often obscured. Both he and McKay underscored the fact that most historical narratives on this subject center white gay men to the exclusion of other groups. I was left wondering about why this is and how historians can remedy this issue.