Tag Archives: Gay

ACT UP and the HIV Pandemic in Australia: Activism, Protest and Lasting Change

Article, Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDS, , , , ,

The history of HIV/AIDS in Australia cannot be told without acknowledging the role of activists who fought for the rights, dignity, and survival of people living with the virus. Among the most influential activist movements was ACT UP—the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—a grassroots organization that transformed HIV advocacy around the world. While ACT UP originated in the United States, its influence quickly spread internationally, including to Australia, where activists adapted its confrontational style to local conditions.

During the darkest years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, ACT UP challenged governments, medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and public attitudes. Its members protested, educated, lobbied, and demanded action at a time when fear, stigma, and discrimination were often as deadly as the virus itself.

The Australian ACT UP movement may have been smaller than its American counterpart, but its impact was significant. It helped shape public policy, accelerated access to treatments, improved the rights of people living with HIV, and contributed to Australia’s internationally respected HIV response.

The Origins of ACT UP

ACT UP was founded in New York City in March 1987 by activist and writer Larry Kramer and a group of fellow campaigners frustrated by the slow response to the AIDS crisis.

At that time, AIDS was devastating gay communities in North America and Europe. Tens of thousands were dying, effective treatments were limited, and governments often appeared indifferent.

ACT UP adopted a simple but powerful philosophy: direct action.

Its slogan, “Silence = Death,” became one of the defining messages of the HIV era.

Rather than waiting for politicians or health authorities to act, activists organized demonstrations, media campaigns, occupations, and protests designed to force change.

The movement rapidly spread to cities across the world.

HIV in Australia During the 1980s

Australia identified its first AIDS cases in the early 1980s.

Like many countries, Australia initially faced uncertainty and fear. HIV was poorly understood, treatments were virtually nonexistent, and public anxiety was widespread.

However, Australia differed from many nations because health authorities worked relatively closely with affected communities, particularly gay men.

Organizations such as the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations and state-based AIDS councils emerged early in the epidemic. These groups emphasized education, community engagement, and harm reduction.

Even so, frustration remained.

People living with HIV frequently encountered discrimination in healthcare, employment, housing, insurance, and social settings.

Many activists felt governments still moved too slowly while friends and partners continued to die.

This environment created fertile ground for ACT UP.

ACT UP Arrives in Australia

ACT UP chapters began emerging in Australian cities around 1989.

The most prominent groups developed in Sydney and Melbourne, although smaller networks operated elsewhere.

Australian activists drew inspiration from ACT UP New York but adapted their strategies to local circumstances.

Unlike the United States, where activists often confronted openly hostile government agencies, Australia’s healthcare system already incorporated a degree of community consultation.

As a result, Australian ACT UP activists frequently focused on improving policies rather than overturning them completely.

Nevertheless, their tactics remained bold and highly visible.

Members organized demonstrations, theatrical protests, die-ins, banner drops, public meetings, media events, and political lobbying campaigns.

They sought to ensure that HIV remained impossible for politicians and the broader public to ignore.

Who Were the Activists?

Unlike traditional organizations, ACT UP was deliberately decentralized.

There was no single Australian founder or national leader.

Instead, ACT UP chapters were driven by volunteers from diverse backgrounds.

Members included:

People living with HIV

Gay men

Lesbians

Healthcare workers

Scientists

Social workers

Artists

Family members of people affected by AIDS

Civil liberties advocates

Many participants had watched close friends die from AIDS-related illnesses.

Others were HIV-positive themselves and fighting for survival.

This personal connection gave the movement its urgency and passion.

For many activists, HIV advocacy was not an abstract political issue. It was a matter of life and death.

Fighting Stigma and Discrimination

One of ACT UP Australia’s most important goals was combating stigma.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, HIV remained heavily associated with fear and moral judgment.

People living with HIV were often portrayed as victims of their own behaviour or as threats to public health.

Many individuals concealed their diagnosis to avoid discrimination.

ACT UP challenged these attitudes directly.

Activists argued that HIV should be treated as a health issue rather than a moral failing.

They demanded respect for the dignity and rights of people living with the virus.

Through public demonstrations and media engagement, they humanized HIV and helped shift public perceptions.

Access to Experimental Treatments

One of ACT UP’s most significant campaigns involved access to new medications.

Before the arrival of effective combination therapy in the mid-1990s, treatment options were limited.

People with HIV desperately sought access to experimental drugs that might prolong life.

Australian activists argued that bureaucratic delays were costing lives.

They lobbied regulators and policymakers to accelerate approval processes and expand compassionate access programs.

ACT UP members became highly knowledgeable about medical research, clinical trials, and drug development.

They attended scientific conferences, scrutinized research data, and challenged pharmaceutical companies when necessary.

This level of scientific literacy was unusual for activist movements at the time.

Their efforts helped create pressure for faster evaluation and availability of promising therapies.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

One of Australia’s strengths during the HIV crisis was the existence of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

The PBS enabled Australians to obtain many medications at subsidized prices.

However, ensuring HIV treatments were included required sustained advocacy.

ACT UP and allied organizations campaigned vigorously to guarantee access to life-saving medications regardless of income.

The principle was simple: treatment should depend on medical need, not financial capacity.

This philosophy contributed significantly to Australia’s relatively successful HIV outcomes compared with countries lacking universal healthcare systems.

Public Demonstrations

ACT UP became known for creative and confrontational protests.

Demonstrations were carefully designed to attract media attention and spark public debate.

Some protests highlighted slow drug approvals.

Others focused on discrimination, funding shortfalls, or inadequate government responses.

Die-ins became a powerful symbolic tactic.

Participants would lie motionless in public spaces to represent those who had died from AIDS.

These visual protests conveyed the human cost of inaction more effectively than statistics alone.

Many Australians who witnessed such events gained a new understanding of the epidemic’s impact.

Relationships with Government

ACT UP’s relationship with government was often complicated.

At times activists worked cooperatively with policymakers.

At other times they became fierce critics.

This dual approach reflected Australia’s distinctive HIV response.

Governments were often more willing to engage with community organizations than those in many other countries.

However, activists remained determined to hold officials accountable.

When policies appeared inadequate, ACT UP members did not hesitate to protest publicly.

This combination of collaboration and confrontation proved highly effective.

The Arrival of Combination Therapy

The mid-1990s marked a turning point in HIV history.

The development of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) dramatically reduced AIDS-related illness and death.

For many people living with HIV, what had seemed an inevitable death sentence suddenly became a manageable chronic condition.

ACT UP activists played an important role in ensuring these treatments became accessible.

Their advocacy helped maintain pressure on governments and healthcare systems to provide rapid access once effective therapies became available.

The impact was extraordinary.

Hospital wards that had once been overwhelmed by AIDS patients began to empty.

Life expectancy increased dramatically.

Communities that had endured years of loss finally experienced hope.

The Human Cost

The achievements of ACT UP came at a tremendous personal cost.

Many activists died during the epidemic.

Others spent years caring for sick friends and partners while simultaneously campaigning for change.

Burnout was common.

The emotional burden was immense.

Every meeting, protest, or campaign occurred against a backdrop of ongoing grief.

Activists were often mourning multiple friends while fighting for their own futures.

This reality gave ACT UP a moral authority that few political movements have ever possessed.

Its members were not merely advocates; they were people directly affected by the crisis.

Legacy Beyond HIV

The influence of ACT UP extends far beyond HIV/AIDS.

The movement transformed how patients engage with healthcare systems.

Today, patient advocacy groups routinely participate in discussions about clinical trials, treatment guidelines, and health policy.

This approach owes much to HIV activism.

ACT UP demonstrated that affected communities possess valuable expertise and deserve a seat at the decision-making table.

The movement also helped establish principles that remain central to modern public health:

Community consultation

Evidence-based policy

Harm reduction

Equitable access to treatment

Patient empowerment

Human rights protections

These ideas continue to influence responses to numerous health challenges.

Why Australia’s Response Was Different

Australia’s HIV response is often regarded as one of the most successful in the world.

This success did not occur by accident.

It resulted from collaboration between governments, researchers, clinicians, community organizations, and activists.

ACT UP contributed by ensuring that urgency never disappeared from the conversation.

While policymakers developed strategies, activists reminded them of the human consequences of delay.

While scientists pursued treatments, activists demanded faster access.

While society struggled with prejudice, activists insisted on dignity and equality.

The tension between cooperation and pressure helped produce better outcomes.

ACT UP emerged during one of the most frightening public health crises in modern history. Inspired by activists in New York but shaped by Australia’s unique circumstances, ACT UP chapters across the country became powerful voices for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Their campaigns challenged stigma, improved access to treatments, accelerated policy reforms, and ensured that the experiences of those living with HIV remained central to public debate. Through protest, education, lobbying, and direct action, they helped transform Australia’s response to the epidemic.

The movement’s legacy can still be seen today in Australia’s public health system, HIV treatment programs, and patient advocacy culture. More importantly, it lives on in the countless lives extended and improved because activists refused to remain silent.

At a time when fear and prejudice threatened to overwhelm compassion and science, ACT UP reminded Australia that people living with HIV were not statistics or symbols. They were human beings deserving dignity, healthcare, and hope. That message remains as relevant today as it was during the darkest years of the AIDS pandemic.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

How HIV Broke the Mould of Pandemics

Article, General Interest, Health Information, Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDS, , , , , , , ,

Few diseases in modern history have altered society as profoundly as HIV/AIDS. Since the first cases were identified in the early 1980s, HIV has infected more than 85 million people worldwide and claimed over 40 million lives. Yet HIV was never a pandemic in the traditional sense. It did not spread through casual contact, airborne droplets, contaminated water, or insect vectors. Instead, it challenged almost every assumption about how pandemics emerge, spread, and are controlled.

In many ways, HIV broke the mould of pandemics. It forced medicine, governments, activists, and communities to rethink public health responses. It transformed scientific research, drug development, human rights advocacy, and patient involvement in healthcare. Unlike previous pandemics, HIV became not merely a medical crisis but a social, political, and cultural phenomenon that reshaped the modern world.

The Traditional Pandemic Model

Historically, pandemics have generally followed a familiar pattern.

Diseases such as plague, cholera, influenza, and more recently COVID-19 spread rapidly through populations. Infection can occur through everyday interactions, making containment difficult. Governments typically respond with quarantines, public health restrictions, vaccination campaigns, or improvements in sanitation.

The public generally fears catching these diseases through ordinary contact. Their spread is often measured in weeks or months rather than years.

HIV was fundamentally different.

The virus spreads primarily through unprotected sexual contact, contaminated blood, shared needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding. Casual contact poses no risk.

This immediately set HIV apart from virtually every major pandemic that preceded it.

A Slow-Moving Pandemic

One of HIV’s most unusual characteristics was its timeline.

Most infectious diseases become apparent shortly after infection. HIV often remained hidden for years.

A person could acquire the virus and remain apparently healthy for a decade or longer before developing symptoms. During that time, they could unknowingly transmit the virus to others.

This long latency period made HIV extraordinarily difficult to track and control.

Traditional outbreak investigation relies on identifying sick individuals and tracing recent contacts. HIV’s delayed progression rendered many conventional public health tools less effective.

By the time the first AIDS cases were recognized in 1981, the virus had already been circulating internationally for years.

The First Pandemic of Identity

HIV also differed because it initially appeared concentrated among specific groups.

Early cases were identified primarily among gay men in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Soon afterward, cases appeared among people who injected drugs, recipients of blood products, and certain immigrant communities.

This led to the dangerous misconception that HIV was a disease of particular groups rather than a virus that could infect anyone.

Media coverage often reflected existing prejudices. HIV became associated with sexuality, morality, and social stigma in ways rarely seen with other infectious diseases.

Some religious leaders described AIDS as divine punishment. Politicians hesitated to address the epidemic. Many families rejected loved ones diagnosed with the disease.

As a result, HIV became not only a public health emergency but also a human rights crisis.

Stigma Became Part of the Disease

Perhaps no pandemic before or since has been so heavily shaped by stigma.

People with HIV frequently faced discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, education, and personal relationships.

Many lost jobs after employers learned of their diagnosis. Some were evicted from homes. Children were excluded from schools despite posing no risk to classmates.

Fear often exceeded scientific reality.

Unlike influenza or COVID-19, where infection could result from a brief encounter, HIV transmission required specific behaviours. Yet irrational fears flourished.

People worried about sharing utensils, swimming pools, toilets, or handshakes with someone living with HIV.

Science eventually dispelled these myths, but the social damage persisted for decades.

Patients Became Activists

Another way HIV broke the mould was through the emergence of patient activism.

Historically, patients were expected to accept medical decisions made by experts.

The HIV epidemic changed that relationship forever.

Faced with governmental indifference and limited treatment options, people living with HIV organized themselves into advocacy groups. They educated communities, raised awareness, lobbied politicians, and challenged pharmaceutical companies.

Organizations such as ACT UP became internationally known for demanding faster drug approval processes and greater research funding.

Patients became informed participants in scientific discussions. Many learned the language of virology, immunology, and clinical trials.

Their activism transformed the relationship between medicine and the communities it served.

Science Moved at Unprecedented Speed

The response to HIV revolutionized biomedical research.

The virus itself was identified remarkably quickly. In 1983, researchers at the Pasteur Institute isolated the virus later known as HIV.

Scientists soon developed blood tests capable of detecting infection.

Researchers uncovered the virus’s mechanism of action, demonstrating how it attacked CD4 immune cells and progressively weakened the immune system.

This scientific progress was extraordinary given the complexity of the virus.

Yet despite rapid advances in understanding HIV, developing effective treatments proved far more difficult.

The Rise and Fall of AZT

In 1987, the drug AZT became the first approved treatment for HIV.

Initially hailed as a breakthrough, AZT generated enormous hope among patients and clinicians.

However, the drug had significant limitations. It was expensive, caused substantial side effects, and often lost effectiveness as the virus developed resistance.

While AZT extended survival for many people, it was not a cure.

Nevertheless, it marked the beginning of a pharmaceutical revolution that would ultimately transform HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition.

HIV Changed Drug Development

Before HIV, drug development often proceeded slowly and behind closed doors.

The urgency of AIDS forced regulators, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies to rethink the process.

Clinical trials were redesigned. Accelerated approval pathways emerged. Compassionate-use programs allowed desperately ill patients access to experimental treatments.

Many innovations introduced during the HIV crisis later became standard practice across medicine.

The lessons learned from HIV would influence responses to cancer, rare diseases, and even COVID-19 decades later.

Combination Therapy Changed Everything

The greatest breakthrough came during the mid-1990s.

Scientists discovered that combining multiple antiretroviral drugs dramatically reduced viral replication.

Known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), this approach transformed HIV treatment.

Instead of dying within a few years of an AIDS diagnosis, many patients began living long, productive lives.

Hospital wards once filled with dying young adults began to empty.

Funeral attendance among HIV communities declined.

For the first time, hope became realistic.

The impact was so profound that many clinicians describe the arrival of combination therapy as one of the greatest achievements in modern medicine.

A Pandemic That Created Communities

Unlike many pandemics, HIV fostered strong community identities.

Support groups, advocacy organizations, volunteer networks, and grassroots healthcare services emerged around the world.

In cities heavily affected by AIDS, communities created their own care systems long before governments responded adequately.

Friends became caregivers.

Partners became nurses.

Volunteers became counsellors.

Entire social networks developed around mutual support and survival.

The HIV experience demonstrated how communities can mobilize when institutions fail.

Global Inequality Exposed

The success of antiretroviral therapy revealed another uncomfortable reality.

While wealthy countries gained access to life-saving drugs, millions in developing nations could not afford treatment.

The contrast was stark.

In North America, Western Europe, and Australia, HIV mortality began declining dramatically.

Meanwhile, parts of sub-Saharan Africa experienced devastating losses.

Entire generations were affected.

Life expectancy plummeted in some countries.

Hospitals became overwhelmed.

The disparity sparked international debates about access to medicines, pharmaceutical patents, and global justice.

HIV exposed inequalities that had long existed within international healthcare systems.

Prevention Required Behaviour Change

Most pandemics are controlled through vaccines, sanitation, quarantine, or medication.

HIV demanded something different.

Prevention depended heavily on behaviour change.

Safer sex education, condom promotion, needle exchange programs, blood screening, and public awareness campaigns became essential tools.

These strategies often generated controversy because they involved discussions about sexuality and drug use.

Some governments resisted such programs for moral or political reasons.

Yet evidence repeatedly demonstrated that education and harm reduction saved lives.

The HIV pandemic forced societies to confront subjects many preferred not to discuss openly.

The Power of Undetectable

One of the most important discoveries in recent HIV history has been the concept known as “Undetectable = Untransmittable” or U=U.

Research demonstrated that people living with HIV who maintain an undetectable viral load through treatment do not sexually transmit the virus.

This finding transformed both medicine and public perception.

For decades, people living with HIV carried fears about transmitting the virus to partners.

U=U provided scientific reassurance while helping reduce stigma.

It also highlighted the extraordinary effectiveness of modern antiretroviral therapy.

HIV Became a Chronic Condition

Most pandemics eventually disappear, burn out, or become controllable through vaccination.

HIV followed a different path.

Today, there is still no cure and no universally effective vaccine.

Instead, HIV has become a chronic, manageable medical condition for many people with access to treatment.

Individuals diagnosed early and treated appropriately can often expect near-normal life expectancy.

This represents a remarkable transformation from the darkest years of the epidemic.

Few diseases have undergone such a dramatic shift in prognosis within a single generation.

Lessons for Future Pandemics

The HIV epidemic left an enduring legacy.

It taught public health officials that stigma can be as dangerous as disease.

It demonstrated the importance of community engagement in healthcare.

It showed that affected populations must be included in policy decisions.

It highlighted the necessity of global cooperation and equitable access to treatment.

It also revealed that scientific progress accelerates when governments, researchers, activists, and patients work together.

Many strategies used during subsequent health emergencies were shaped by lessons learned from HIV.

A Pandemic Unlike Any Other

More than four decades after the first AIDS cases were reported, HIV remains unique.

It was a pandemic that unfolded slowly rather than explosively.

It challenged social attitudes as much as biological systems.

It transformed patients into activists and activists into policymakers.

It changed drug development, public health, and human rights advocacy.

Most importantly, it demonstrated that pandemics are never purely medical events. They expose the values, fears, prejudices, strengths, and weaknesses of the societies they affect.

HIV broke the mould of pandemics because it defied conventional expectations at every stage. It spread differently, progressed differently, and demanded a fundamentally different response from governments, healthcare systems, and communities. More than a viral infection, it became a catalyst for social change, scientific innovation, and political activism.

The epidemic revealed the devastating consequences of stigma and discrimination, but it also showcased extraordinary resilience, compassion, and determination. Millions of lives were lost, yet millions more were saved through activism, research, and the relentless pursuit of better treatments.

Today, HIV stands as one of the defining public health stories of modern history—not simply because of the lives it affected, but because it changed how the world understands disease, healthcare, and human rights. Few pandemics have left such a profound mark on medicine and society. HIV did not merely challenge the world; it transformed it.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

A Rough History of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDS, , , ,

The HIV/AIDS pandemic remains one of the most devastating global health crises in modern history. Since the disease first emerged into public consciousness in the early 1980s, more than 40 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses, and tens of millions more have lived with the physical, emotional, and social consequences of HIV infection. The history of HIV/AIDS is not only a medical story, but also a story of fear, stigma, activism, politics, science, prejudice, grief, and survival.

Understanding the rough history of the pandemic requires looking beyond statistics and medical terminology. It means understanding how entire communities were transformed, how governments often failed vulnerable populations, and how ordinary people fought for dignity and life in the face of overwhelming loss.

The Origins of HIV

Scientists now believe that HIV originated in Central Africa, most likely in what is now Cameroon or the Democratic Republic of Congo. The virus is thought to have crossed from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early twentieth century through the hunting and butchering of bushmeat. The simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), found in primates, mutated into a human form that became HIV. (cdc.gov)

For decades, the virus spread quietly and largely unnoticed. Researchers later identified evidence of HIV infection in human blood samples dating back to the 1950s. One of the earliest confirmed cases was a blood sample collected in the Belgian Congo in 1959. The virus likely spread slowly at first through urbanisation, migration, colonial trade routes, prostitution, contaminated needles, and changing sexual networks across Africa. (nih.gov)

By the 1970s, HIV had reached several parts of the world, including Haiti, the United States, and Europe, although nobody yet knew the virus existed.

The Mysterious Illness Emerges

The world first became aware of AIDS in June 1981, when the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported unusual clusters of rare illnesses among young gay men in Los Angeles. These men were suffering from a rare pneumonia called Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and unusual cancers such as Kaposi’s sarcoma, diseases normally seen only in people with severely damaged immune systems. (cdc.gov)

Doctors quickly realised something unprecedented was happening.

Healthy young people were developing catastrophic immune failure. Patients became vulnerable to infections that the body would normally defeat easily. Many deteriorated rapidly and died within months.

At first, the disease had no official name. It was referred to in the media as “gay cancer” or GRID — Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Because many early cases appeared among gay men, society often viewed the illness through the lens of prejudice and moral judgement rather than medicine.

This stigma would become one of the defining horrors of the epidemic.

Fear, Stigma, and Panic

During the early 1980s, fear surrounding AIDS spread almost as quickly as the virus itself. Much of the public did not understand how HIV was transmitted. Some people believed they could catch AIDS through touching, casual contact, sharing utensils, or simply being near an infected person.

Gay men were heavily demonised. Religious conservatives described AIDS as divine punishment for homosexuality. Families abandoned sick relatives. Funeral homes sometimes refused bodies. Employers fired workers suspected of infection. Children with HIV were bullied or excluded from schools. (history.com)

The disease also affected intravenous drug users, haemophiliacs who received contaminated blood products, sex workers, and eventually heterosexual populations worldwide. Yet many governments were slow to respond because the earliest victims belonged largely to already marginalised groups.

In the United States, President Ronald Reagan did not publicly mention AIDS for several years despite the rapidly growing death toll. Activists later accused governments around the world of indifference and neglect. (reaganlibrary.gov)

The Discovery of HIV

In 1983, scientists at the Pasteur Institute in France identified the virus responsible for AIDS. The following year, American researcher Robert Gallo confirmed the discovery. The virus eventually became known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus — HIV. (nih.gov)

The discovery allowed scientists to develop blood tests to detect infection. This was a crucial breakthrough, particularly for blood banks. Before HIV screening existed, thousands of haemophiliacs and transfusion recipients were infected through contaminated blood products.

Testing also introduced new fears. Many people avoided HIV tests because a positive diagnosis was widely viewed as a death sentence.

The Grim Reality of the 1980s

The 1980s were marked by enormous suffering. There was no effective treatment for AIDS, and infection often led to death within a few years. Hospitals in cities such as New York, San Francisco, London, and Sydney filled with dying patients.

The symptoms could be horrifying. Opportunistic infections ravaged weakened immune systems. Kaposi’s sarcoma caused dark lesions across the skin. Severe weight loss, known as “wasting syndrome,” left many skeletal and frail. Dementia, blindness, and neurological damage were common in advanced cases.

Entire friendship groups disappeared.

Within the gay community especially, the emotional toll was catastrophic. Men in their twenties and thirties attended funeral after funeral. Some lost dozens of friends and lovers within a few years. Survivors later described living in a permanent state of grief and terror.

At the same time, communities mobilised in extraordinary ways.

Grassroots organisations formed to care for the sick when governments often would not. Volunteers delivered meals, cleaned homes, raised money, sat beside hospital beds, and comforted the dying. Lesbian women played a particularly important role in caring for gay men abandoned by families or institutions during the crisis.

Activism and ACT UP

As frustration with government inaction grew, AIDS activism became a powerful force. One of the most influential groups was the ACT UP, founded in New York in 1987.

ACT UP organised dramatic protests demanding faster drug approval, better healthcare access, increased research funding, and an end to discrimination. Activists disrupted government meetings, shut down Wall Street, occupied pharmaceutical company offices, and used confrontational tactics to force public attention onto the epidemic. (actupny.org)

Their activism fundamentally changed the relationship between patients, governments, and medical researchers. AIDS activists demanded a voice in scientific research and healthcare policy, helping accelerate the development of treatments.

AZT and Early Treatments

In 1987, the drug AZT became the first medication approved for HIV treatment. It offered hope but also controversy. The drug could slow viral replication, but early doses caused severe side effects including nausea, anemia, and fatigue. Many patients still died despite treatment. (britannica.com)

Other antiviral drugs followed, but HIV mutated quickly and developed resistance when drugs were used alone. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, treatment remained limited and imperfect.

Still, for many people, even a few extra months of life mattered enormously.

The Global Spread

Although AIDS initially gained attention in wealthy Western nations, the pandemic increasingly devastated poorer regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

By the 1990s, HIV infection rates in some African countries had reached catastrophic levels. In nations such as Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, entire generations were affected. Life expectancy plummeted. Hospitals became overwhelmed. Millions of children were orphaned after losing parents to AIDS-related illnesses. (unaids.org)

Poverty, limited healthcare infrastructure, stigma, gender inequality, and lack of access to medication worsened the crisis.

Women became increasingly vulnerable to infection, particularly in regions where economic dependence and sexual violence limited their ability to negotiate safe sex practices.

The Breakthrough of Combination Therapy

A major turning point came in 1996 with the introduction of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), commonly known as combination therapy or the “drug cocktail.”

Instead of using a single medication, doctors combined multiple antiretroviral drugs that attacked HIV in different ways. This dramatically reduced viral levels in the body and prevented the virus from developing resistance as easily. (hivinfo.nih.gov)

The results were extraordinary.

Death rates dropped sharply in countries with access to treatment. Patients once preparing for death suddenly regained health and began rebuilding their lives. HIV gradually shifted from a near-certain fatal disease to a manageable chronic condition for many people.

For survivors of the epidemic’s worst years, the change felt almost surreal. Hospital wards that had once been full of dying patients began to empty.

Yet treatment remained inaccessible to millions in poorer countries due to high drug prices and patent restrictions.

The Fight for Global Access

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists pushed for affordable HIV medications in developing nations. Pharmaceutical companies faced intense criticism for charging prices far beyond the reach of many African countries.

International programs eventually expanded treatment access. Organisations such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the Global Fund helped distribute lifesaving drugs worldwide.

Generic medications dramatically reduced treatment costs. Millions of lives were saved through expanded access to antiretroviral therapy.

HIV in the Modern Era

Today, HIV is no longer automatically a death sentence in countries with access to modern healthcare. Antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus to undetectable levels, allowing many people with HIV to live long and healthy lives.

Scientific advances have transformed prevention as well.

PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) allows HIV-negative individuals to reduce their risk of infection dramatically through daily medication. Public health campaigns now promote the principle of “Undetectable = Untransmittable” (U=U), meaning people with undetectable viral loads cannot sexually transmit HIV. (cdc.gov)

Yet the pandemic is far from over.

Millions of people worldwide still lack adequate treatment. Stigma continues to affect those living with HIV. In some countries, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, sex workers, and drug users undermines prevention efforts.

The social scars of the epidemic also remain profound.

The Cultural Impact of AIDS

The AIDS pandemic transformed art, politics, medicine, and culture. Countless musicians, actors, writers, activists, and ordinary individuals died during the crisis.

Figures such as Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, and Arthur Ashe brought public visibility to the disease. Their illnesses forced many people to confront the reality that AIDS could affect anyone.

The epidemic also reshaped LGBTQ+ identity and politics. Many historians argue that the AIDS crisis radicalised a generation of activists and permanently changed public discussions around sexuality, healthcare, and human rights.

Books, films, plays, and memorials continue to document the emotional devastation of the era. The AIDS Memorial Quilt remains one of the largest community art projects in history, commemorating tens of thousands of lives lost to AIDS.

Lessons from the Pandemic

The history of HIV/AIDS reveals both the best and worst aspects of human society.

It exposed how prejudice can deepen suffering during a public health emergency. Marginalised communities were ignored, blamed, and stigmatised when compassion and science were desperately needed.

At the same time, the epidemic demonstrated remarkable courage and solidarity. Patients, activists, healthcare workers, researchers, and caregivers fought relentlessly for survival, dignity, and truth.

The scientific achievements that emerged from HIV research transformed modern medicine. Advances in virology, antiviral drugs, and public health strategies continue to influence treatment for many other diseases today.

Perhaps most importantly, HIV/AIDS taught the world that silence and stigma can be deadly.

The pandemic is not merely a chapter in medical history. It is a human story of loss and resilience that continues into the present day.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

Sources

CDC HIV Origins Overview

CDC Museum HIV/AIDS Timeline

NIH AIDS History Timeline

History.com — History of AIDS

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — AIDS Epidemic Archive

ACT UP New York Archive

Britannica — AZT

UNAIDS Global Fact Sheet

NIH HIV Treatment Information

CDC — Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U)

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 8 (FINAL)

Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDS, , , , ,

The move to Dr. David Austin at Holdsworth House was a good move, made on recommendations from friends. The practise was well located in Darlinghurst, David himself was young, handsome, HIV/AIDS knowledgeable…and gay, as were all the men in the practise, which made communication easy.

The one good thing about David was that he was willing to make me an equal “partner” in my health management. This far down the line, I wanted more control over decisions made in regards to my health. When it came time to change my combination therapy, David would pick out a number of combinations, give me the run-down on them…efficacy, potential side effects…then I would choose the one that suited me.

Between late 1999-2001 I applied for several trials, but was disallowed due to having had CMV. A lot of my focus changed to controlling the ongoing pain from my peripheral neuropathy (which eventually became numbness), I tried acupuncture… through 407 Medical Practise in Bourke St…went to a reflexologist in Queenscliff, who was running a research project with subjects with ongoing PN. I then had regular sessions with Greg Milan, a reflexologist associated with Holdsworth House. Despite some minor improvements using these alternatives, nothing worked in a major way, and it became obvious that it was permanent, and I just had to deal with it…right up until now, where it affects my mobility and balance, controlled through exercise physiology.

Also in late 1999 I started part-time work at the HIV Prescribers Project, thanks to Lavinia Crooks (RIP) at ASHM (Australian Society for HIV Medicine) who managed it at the old (now long gone) Royal South Sydney Hospital, in Zetland. This project ran training courses for doctors wishing to expand their HIV knowledge, and become S100 Prescribers. In mid 2000 the project moved from Zetland, to the ASHM offices in the Albion St Clinic building. I helped to collate the training manuals etc for the courses which were run several times a year.

From photo shoot for The HIV Book Project at Sydney Park

In late 2000, David…my partner, not my doctor…and I decided to do a two week trip through the Red Centre while the Sydney Olympic Games were on. We caught The Ghan from Sydney (back then it alternated between Sydney and Melbourne) to Alice Springs…the end of the line back then…via Adelaide, then coached it up to Darwin. A truly awe-inspiring holiday, away from the madness of Sydney. On returning to Bondi, I then decided to legitimise my writing with a degree in writing from UTS…I was writing regularly for Talkabout then…and applied under the exceptions granted to mature age and disabled students, and was accepted. I quit my job at HIV Prescribers, and entered into a period of educational advancement.

I applied to do a Batchelor of Writing degree, though found university not to my taste. It reminded me a lot of school…which I hated…and many of the first year subjects had nothing to do with writing, which frustrated me. For the second and third years, I juggled subjects around to fit with what I wanted, and at the end of that period I had enough subjects passed to get a Graduate Certificate of Writing, which I settled for. While at UTS I had several articles published in “Vertigo”, the university newspaper, and was office-bearer for the Disability Collective. Dealing with student bureaucrats drove me crazy, and I wrote a number of heated letters blasting the Student Union for not offering reduced costs in fees to disabled and pensioner students. Naturally, all to no avail.

Midway through 2003, while finishing my writing degree, I started at East Sydney TAFE to get my chef’s credentials. Apart from writing, my other passion was cooking. Unlike UTS, I loved TAFE. The students were more down-to-earth, and genuinely loved the learning experience, not being hindered by the strictures of university. I also embarked on a correspondence course to get my Catering Certificate. So, by 2004 I had three new credentials under my belt.

Back to 2001, I went onto my second-last trial…and it was a doozy that I got paid $650 to do. It was called the Caprine Antibody HRG214 trial…more commonly known as the Goat Serum antibody trial…Phase 1. It was done by infusion at St. Vincent’s, followed by a two month observation period. Again, at the end of it, nothing was achieved except a sore arm from the 12 attempts to get a cannula in it, and an all-over skin rash at the end of the second month.

From photo shoot for The HIV Book Project at Sydney Park

The last trial was in 2004, and both David and myself were involved in it. Back in 2000 I was knocked back from doing the T20 trial due to my CMV, but the criteria was made less stringent as time went on, and so in 2004 we both got into the T20 trial. This was an injectable drug vaccine trial that was seen as the possible future for drug regimes. The drug was administered into an area of body fat using a pneumatic gun. Initially, it was great…pretty well pain-free, quick, easy, and very effective according to pathology results. However, because you had to do it twice a day, it soon became notable that injection sites got painful, and you soon ran out of them. It could also cause serious bruising which put an injection site out of action until the bruise cleared. We both got about halfway through, then quit. Evidently a lot of others had similar problems.

Other events for that year were (A) my 50th birthday, a truly big event that I dragged out for two weeks. Highlights included David taking the wrong batch of…cookies…to Palms, and getting banned from The Colombian Hotel in Darlinghurst, due to my tendency to stagger. They later apologised for the behaviour of their bouncers (B) I wanted to open a business, but had no idea about how to go about it. I decided to go through a BGF return-to-work course, to see where it would lead. Fortunately, I ended up with Marie Crosbie as my advisor. She soon clicked that I didn’t really need what the course provided, and asked me what I really needed. Between the two of us, we put together the bare bones of starting a business and (C) we decided to move to a house in Dulwich Hill so we could have room to rescue dogs. We are both Jack Russell Terrier lovers, and that love of rescuing them exists right up to today. There is a notable lack of HIV information at this stage, as everything was now running smoothly, and it was moving further and further into the background of my life.

Dulwich Hill, with our two Jack Russell’s, provided a new approach to many things. I started a high-end catering business called Alderman Catering. This lasted about two years, before exhaustion finally ended it. Catering is a youngish persons business. It takes three days to put a functions finger food together. A day for shopping, a day for prep work, and a long day of cooking packing and serving. It really wears you out. I rejigged my business plans, and fell back into my old retail career, as it was something I knew, and was successful with…but I leapt onto a retail format that is only mew really popular…an online store (I could run it from home with minimal start-up expenses, and minimal overheads) called Alderman Providore, specialist in non-perishable Australian made food products from small, unknown niche suppliers. It was incredibly successful with a constant yearly growth, and then the addition of another specialist store called TeaCoffeeChocolate. What brought it all to an abrupt end was the Global Financial Crisis in 2009/10. Online businesses were the first to crash. I put the business up for sale, and sold it to a woman in Queensland.

From the photo shoot for The HIV Book Project in Sydney Park

It was soul destroying.

Around the same time I started having problems with my blind left eye. It was constantly irritated, like there was something in it that wouldn’t come out. I went to the eye clinic at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at Camperdown. They found that the eye didn’t realise it was blind, and had created a new capillary network to feed the eye. This in turn caused the eye to swell, thus the irritation. They gave me steroid drops, and referred me to the Sydney Eye Hospital. After a consult, they decided to inject a cancer serum (Avastin), that stopped blood flow to tumours, to stop the blood vessel growth. It was successful, however over time, the eye changed colour, giving me two different coloured eyes. Talk about attention grabbing!

Also in 2009; I got out of the shower one morning, caught sight of myself in the mirror, and thought “who is that fat person in here!”…yep, it was me. So off to a local gym, and a new love affair with Les Mills Body Pump classes. The weight burnt away, and started me on an ongoing love of fitness which still goes on today, though in a more senior person way. Fit, healthy, active is my mantra now;

In 2011 we decided to move to Brisbane. No particular reason why…just because we could! So we packed up our home, got a removalist, filled the car, grabbed the dogs and moved to Ashgrove, a suburb of Brisbane. I had been told back in 1996 that due to all the scar tissue in my right eye, due to the CMV, it was highly likely I’d have a retinal detachment at some stage. No sooner had we gotten to Ashgrove than the retina decided it was time. So, into Royal Brisbane hospital for an operation to reattach it. The ophthalmologist also scraped down the scar tissue before reattaching it.

Leap forward to early 2015, and problems with my left eye continued. In the intervening years, all the eye’s internal workings had collapsed, so I made a decision to have the eye removed. Another operation, and it was gone. Shortly after, David and I returned to Sydney…we had split amicably in 2014, and are still close friends…and it was here that I had my prosthetic fitted.

In 2017 I was interviewed and photographed for a chapter in the HIV Book Project. It was here, for the first time, that I revealed my rather radical approach to HIV drug dosing In 2011. In an era where we were still dosing on 3-4 drugs twice a day, and guys were opting for drug holidays despite the risks, I opted…without disclosing to anyone…for a different approach. It was risky, but done with close observation to blood test results. Sick of pills, sick of side effects, I halved my daily dosing to once a day, and no pills on weekends. If my CD4s fell, or my viral load rose, straight back to my old routine. In the 5 years I did this, my CD4s continued to rise and my viral load remained undetectable. Interesting, isn’t it! Read my chapter in the book to find out my true feelings about this.

Apart from an extremely painful run-in with shingles in 2014, which has left me with neuralgia and partial numbness in my left arm and hand, and 5 weeks of radiation on a large Basil Cell Carcinoma behind my left ear last year, life is really great. My Jack Russell, Flash, and I live very happily in a social housing villa on the Central Coast of NSW. I’m on a category 3 home support package…with the addition of Assistive Technology funding…so have some cool technology to help me see to do hobbies. Someone comes in to clean, and helps me with shopping. My Exercise Physiology gym is a 2 minute walk away. Friends are close by, and I have great neighbours.

I obtained my Certificate III in Fitness back in 2012, and ran seniors exercise classes locally until 2 years ago, when I got my villa. I avoided COVID, and apart from writing about it, HIV could not be further from my mind. These days, ageing…the one concern I once thought would never happen…is, at 72, my biggest concern. I now use a walking stick to control my meandering feet, and only take antivirals once a day. I’m happy, and content. What else does one need!

So what have I learnt about myself over the last 43 years…and even earlier than that? Well, I’m certainly resilient! I’m an independent guy, and an individual. I’ve retained a sense of humour…though somewhat dark and sarcastic. I’m glad I’ve always been an out gay man, and I am what I am, and where I am, doing the things I love due, in large part, because I’m HIV, and had AIDS. There is a kind of perversity in that! If I had my time over, would I walk the same road? That is a very good question! And one I’ll leave you to ponder. Thank you for reading a very long rant. It is most appreciated. Now, pack it away, and get on with your life.

Nam myoho renge kyo (Buddhist mantra)

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 7

Article, biography, Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDS, , , , , ,

One of the major problems that concerned both my doctor and myself was my weight. Having dropped to 48kg when admitted to Marks Pavilion, and being of slight build, I was having trouble putting it back on. Fortunately for me, the Albion Street Clinic started running a Deca-Durabolin (an injectable anabolic steroid) trial at this time to attempt to counter the effects of Wasting Syndrome, a common problem within the AIDS demographic. I’m not sure this far down the line of it’s duration, but I think it was 6-8 weeks, with a weekly injection, and weigh-in. What I do remember about it was the drastic change to my eating habits. For the period of the trial, I was obsessed with eating! From the moment I woke up, to the time I went to bed…all I thought about was food! I was continually planning my next meal, my next snacks! The (successful) end to this was a meteoric weight gain in a very short period of time. My usual weight was around 64kg…by the time the trial ended I was at 84kg. On going out for dinner with friends I hadn’t seen for a while, one guy exclaimed “What have you done…you look like a teddy bear!”. To be honest, I was thrilled to have put so much on, especially seeing how I had seen myself in the low, and scary, weight range. I’m thankful to say that after the trial ended, my weight dropped back to my usual range.

There is a big problem with surviving AIDS, and spending 18 months recovering and keeping busy with doctors, clinics, hospitals, peer groups, and treatment compliance sessions…and having a lot of same either end, or become more spread out…BOREDOM! Sitting at home watching “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” daily is not a fulfilling experience! But what to do was the big question. Not fit enough to return to full-time work, and not wanting to return to my old profession in retail. As frightening as the whole AIDS experience had been, its lasting legacy was the overwhelming desire to change my life direction. It made me realise how much of my life I’d wasted doing work I hated, and never being brave enough to take the leap to follow my dreams, to step into the unknown with confidence! This was the point where everything changed, where I finally found enjoyment and fulfilment in my life’s choices.

But the question still remained…how to take the first step? I had been receiving “Talkabout” for some time, and recollected that I had seen an ad for volunteering at the…then…PLWHA office in Darlinghurst. A phone call, and a meeting with another volunteer in the Oxford Street offices…and I found myself on the reception desk, initially one day a week, but it was a fun office to be in, so I started turning up daily. This was also my first encounter with computers (other than my experiences in the 80s with owning a Commodore 64). This pushed me to do courses in basic computing, and the Microsoft Office Suite. Around the same time I did a Peer Group Facilitator course with ACON, brought about by me having done a HIV/AIDS survivor group with them. I went on to facilitate some groups.

After around 6 months on reception, Jo Watson…the then Research Officer…asked me if I’d like to work with her as an assistant research officer. The office manager (Ryan McGlaughlin) interviewed me and I got the job. It was here that I wrote my first article for “Talkabout”, a quite humorous piece on my doctor, Cassy Workman. Though not named, it was obvious (by those who knew her, or were patients) who it was about. From this point I became a regular contributor to Talkabout, and 28 years later, I’m still writing for the magazine…with occasional breaks! I also became a member of the Talkabout Working Group. Like many occasions in community groups, funding dried up, and I had to move on.

It was just after this that I was informed that a research position was opening up with another community-funded project called Positively Working. Having survived AIDS, and now being in a position to orientate myself to new work experiences…outside what I had been doing post AIDS… it was a position I slotted into quite neatly. At Positively Working, we were compiling a report (I was working with Sonia Lawless) on the return-to-work needs of guys like me who had survived AIDS, and we’re now faced with the very real situation of…what do I do now; and where the hell do I go now! I personally interviewed a number of the guys, and it was quite eye opening! Once again, after six months the funding dried up. We got the report out, and once again I was faced with what to do!

There was one very interesting…and disturbing…occurance that resulted from my time there. Several of the guys I interviewed mentioned that they had used the “services” of a supposed HIV/AIDS employment service on Oxford Street called “Options”. Evidently Options had been using guys attending there as a free workforce in the office under the guise of “work experience”. I was very angry to hear this, and decided, as a writer for Talkabout, to investigate and expose this issue. I approached the office as a return-to-work client. Not only were they using their clients as an unpaid workforce, they were also not providing the services they were touting, to help guys break back into the workforce. Clients were being placed in front of computer screens with the usual run-of-the-mill employment services, and told to find a job. Contrary to their name, Optoons provided no options.

I wrote a scathing article on them for Talkabout. The editor forwarded the draft onto them, basically saying this is about to come out! Well, didn’t the shit hit the fan! The manager, Peter somebody, demanded to see me. I turned up at his office, and he tried the good old sweet talk! Naw, didn’t sway me. The threats came next, to sue Talkabout, the editor, and me! I was amused! Anyway, to calm the waters, and ensure no action was taken, the editor did a rewrite. I wasn’t happy about it, but at least wanted Options thrown into the spotlight, so allowed a very, very watered down piece to be published. Several months later, Options closed. I just smiled!

I undertook Positive Speaker Bureau training in 1998. My first gig was to a group of nurses at the Albion Street Centre. At the end of the talk, I opened the floor to questions. The final question floored me, as training hadn’t prepared me for this one…did I have survivor guilt? I did…after a long pause…give an answer. Yes, I did! I spent 12 years as a PSB speaker, being quite in demand with community groups, universities, and nurse training talks. I had no problems filling an hour. I was also on the PSB working group.

Two of our major community groups instigated return-to-work groups, but in many respects they missed the mark. The Positively Working report pointed out that one of the major requirements of AIDS survivors contemplating how to move on, or approach a return to the workforce, was choices, be it returning to their previous profession, or taking up education or training, or a myriad of other options such as opening a business, or moving a hobby to a business. What they were finding in the groups that were set up was a repeat of information that wasn’t new to them, or of no use at all. There needed to be more options than resume writing, or interview techniques. One project that did have a different approach was “Reconstruction”, a group facilitated by Pene Manolas. In my own time, I did a number of talks at these group meetings, encouraging guys to follow dreams and desires to find more fulfilment in lives now “reset to zero” and going off in new directions.

In 1999, I was on a very unpleasant…understatement…liquid protease inhibitor called Retonavir. It was very effective, but disgusting to take. Cassy Workman supplied her patients on it with gel capsules and a dropper. Putting it into the capsules made it a lot easier to take. I made an appearance on a popular television series at the time called “Healthy, Wealthy & Wise”, who were doing a segment on HIV and it’s impacts. I can be seen sitting in a park in The Rocks, and filling gel capsules with Retonavir. I guess that was my 15 minutes of fame!

Also in 1999, following my stint with the Positively Working project, I briefly returned to my old retail career…but as a cash office supervisor this time, with Angus & Robertson booksellers in the city. The manager there had a large group of gay friends, so when, during my interview, I explained a long absence from employment on AIDS and recovery, she understood exactly what was going on. It wasn’t why I got the job, but my long retail background on cash handling.

1999 was another busy, and scary, year. I noticed I was having problems walking a straight line up the footpath. It wasn’t neuropathy, as at that stage it wasn’t as bad as now. As I walked, I drifted to the left of the path, and had difficulty getting myself back to the centre. Over a few weeks, it got progressively worse. At one stage I was using a walking stick to maintain balance. Cassy sent me to see Bruce Brew, a well known neurologist at St. Vincents. He was baffled, as was Cassy. At one stage he sent a letter to Cassy saying he suspected it may be PML (Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy is a rare, severe, and often fatal viral brain infection characterised by progressive white matter damage. It is caused by the JC virus (JCV), which lies dormant in most adults but activates in individuals with severely compromised immunity. Common in HIV/AIDS, cancer, or patients on specific immunosuppressants, it causes rapid neurological decline). A very scary prospect! AIDS dementia was another possibility.For her part, Cassy ordered up a raft of tests…iron, folate, B12, cortisol, thyroid, CT scan, gallium scan, Addison’s disease. The last resort was an MRI! And there it was! THE VIRUS…on my brain! It could frightened be seen in the scans! During a drug combination change, it had picked a small opportunity when the new combination was starting to kick in to cross the blood/brain barrier, and up into my head. The solution was actually very simple…when the new combination kicked in, it kicked the virus out.

I was at A & R’s for about 4 months…and encountered the difficulties other guys had of obtaining meds from hospital pharmacies during lunch breaks, and fitting in doctors appointments…when I got a phone call from Bill Whittaker (now deceased) to help out doing data entry for the AIDS Research Initiative, which was run out of Cassy’s medical practice in Little Oxford Street (called Ground Zero Medical, as it was on the site of the original Club 80). So I returned to Darlinghurst!

It turned out to be a double job. On days I wasn’t working for the ARI, I was doing reception work in the medical practice. It was here on a working day in the practice that I developed excruciating pain in my back, in the kidney area. Cassy diagnosed Indinavir sludge, a build up of Indinavir in the kidneys. I was told to drink a lot of water…it didn’t help! I spent a good part of the day in the nurses station with Janice (the practices nurse) unable to keep still because of the pain, which just wouldn’t let up! Cassy checked on me a couple of times, but didn’t suggest I go to A & E. By mid afternoon, Janice took it upon herself to call a taxi to take me to St. Vincent’s. I needed to have a stent inserted in my kidneys to drain the sludge.

I was so disappointed that Cassy had been so blasé about it that I quit her practice. And her as my doctor!

A new relationship started with Dr David Austin, at Holdsworth House Medical Centre.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 4

Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDS, , , , , , , , , , ,

Before diving into the 90s, a brief note on sub-cultures (Tribes) within the gay community at this time…or to be more exact, how I placed myself within the community as far as lifestyle went in the 80s and 90s. After coming out in 1980, I intentionally positioned myself in the Clone sub-culture. It was a Tribe I felt comfortable in, and adopted it with ease. It was a badge I wore with pride pretty well for the duration of my active life on the scene. The short hair, big moustache, white or black tee-shirts (and flannelette shirts during winter), Levi 501 jeans and boots were, in my eyes, the look that defined gay masculinity. I was, at times, known to dip into the leather world, but my interest in leather was never sexual! I just liked its look, so never saw myself as a leatherman. For a number of years I was an active member of the Dolphin Motor Club (DMC), and member of a gang known by the acronym G.O.D. (Girls/Guys of Disgrace) which was established by the girls who founded Wicked Women, and whose purpose was to peruse the scene at night, and report any potential problems…problems which had escalated since the advent of HIV/AIDS thanks to the media, and societal homophobia. This morphing between scenes meant I could indulge my fun-side by doing what was known as “gutter drag”…a sort of respectful parody of drag itself, using huge wigs, over-the-top make-up, big frocks…and no removal of facial,or body hair. Cleo’s “reputation” and antics still live on amongst my friends. My life revolved around the Oxford Hotel, and the Midnight Shift night club.

By the 1990s, what I call the Great Diaspora of the gay community began, starting, in many eyes, the slow demise of the gay ghetto. People fled to the far flung suburbs, the north and south coasts, to the hinterlands, to the bush, and even interstate, and overseas. Some from fear, some to get away from the relentless deaths and illnesses, some to find peace and quiet, some to die.The scene has never recovered.

So we enter the 90s! Little did we know that the apocalyptic start to the decade, with death notices filling page after page in the gay rags, and with no end in sight, would morph into a decade of great hope by the time we hit 1996. It was at its start, a time of monotherapy, and trials. At the start of 1990, I had a CD4 count of 453…and going down! Two of my ex-partners died of AIDS. Damien evidently returned to his family in Victoria, and died in 1991. I found out quite some time later, when running into a mutual acquaintance in the Oxford Hotel one might, just as I was about to attend a DMC dinner. Frank…my first Sydney partner, if I don’t count the psycho who dragged me back to Sydney from a happy Melbourne life…I ran into when leaving my hairdressers (Kulture In Hair) in Goulburn St one day in 1994.I hardly recognised the figure slowly shuffling up the street. He died a short time later.

Personally, I had a fleeting relationship with Anthony. My sex lifestyle was pleasantly fulfilled with three fuck-buddies. Paul I met in the bottom bar of the Midnight Shift in the very late 80s and would have had a serious relationship with him if he wasn’t already married to his job. Graeme I met when he and his partner Peter took me home…after picking me up in the Midnight Shift…for a threesome. The next morning I found myself in the middle of a domestic abuse (verbal) situation. It was like I wasn’t even there. Graeme drove me home, and when I asked him up for a coffee, he told me Peter would have him on the clock for his return. Shortly after, they thankfully split up, and Graeme and and I saw each other regularly for a couple of years. Gregg I met at the Oxford late one night. He wore way too much after-shave, and he had a wife and two daughters in Forbes. One of those marry-to-cover-up-being-gay situations. He came to Sydney every month to tutor on computers at Sydney Uni. We saw each other very regularly for about 2 years…until I started to get serious with him.

I quit my managerial job at Numbers Bookshop, and moved to a managerial position with Liquorland in 1990, whose store was situated under Numbers. This job was to be my last for quite some time. Not only was I out as a gay man, but also out as a HIV+ man. To my thinking, a gay man running a business on the gay strip was a no-brainer. Obviously I had the contacts in the community to bring in business…and I did. Under my management, the store shot up the rankings from 43 to 18. However, not everyone was happy with my presence! More on this shortly.

Healthwise, in 1992 I started seeing Dr. Marilyn McMurchie as my HIV specialist, and she started monitoring my CD4 and CD8 counts, and percentages. At that time, my CD4 count was <350 My greatest fears were realised…I was diagnosed as stage 3 HIV infection, and started on AZT (my thoughts on this have already been mentioned.There was a slow decline in my CD4 counts once I started on it. Having been taken off AZT briefly, I was asked to go on a trial using another monotherapy drug called 3TC (lamivudine). A short way into the trial, it was found that nearly all participants had haematological toxicity and become anaemic, so the trial was stopped. I also went on the p24-VLP (Very Light Protein) trial around this time. It was an injectable, and the theory was that by stimulating the p24 antigen, it may stop the decline to AIDS. It did nothing!

It was also the year I had viral pneumonia in my upper right lung. It was pretty serious, and something I may have shaken off more quickly if I wasn’t a chain smoker. It pretty well crippled me for a couple of weeks, and I pretty well took up residence on the lounge, in front of the tv. Recovery was very slow, and my holiday pay in advance saw me through.

In 1993, I went onto DDI (didanosine). I was reluctant to take ddC due to side effects. DDI was vile. The huge chalky tablets (jokingly called horse tablets) had to be ground down to a powder in a mortar & pestle, then you mixed them into whatever liquid made them palatable…in my case, Nestles chocolate Nesquik. Even then, you had to hold your nose when downing it! It was a nightmare to prepare in the workplace…which was only one of several problems I encountered at Liquorland.

When I started there in late 1990. The area manager was a wonderful man, who believed in inclusion and treated all the staff with respect. He left in late 1991, and replaced by Rowan, pretty well his exact opposite. Not only homophobic, but as it turned out…HIVphobic as well. For the next 18 months I was subjected to relentless bullying, by an expert. Always out of earshot of staff, the smallest thing was picked on. With no witnesses, so a his-word-against-mine situation, knowing from experience that head office would take his side. Things came to a head in late 1993 when he installed an assistant manager at the same pay grade as me. With me working 50-60 hour weeks, smoking and drinking heavily, and with a bad diet…I’d had enough. My health was already in decline, and I was losing weight. I arranged a meeting with Rowan to request that I step back to a position of assistant manager to reduce my work load. At the time of the very uncomfortable meeting, he said to my face…”You should consider quitting. You’ll be dead in a couple of years anyway!”. As it turned out, an assistant manager position opened up at the Surry Hills branch. I then went on 2 weeks vacation. Rowan would not confirm the transfer despite a number of calls. A day before I was due to return to work, he confirmed the transfer…he had been hoping I’d quit in the interim. As an act of planned revenge, I turned up at the Surry Hills store…and handed in my 2 weeks notice. Rowan said not one word to me over that period…not even a farewell!

I had started to indulge in my passion for dance music by becoming a resident DJ at The Oxford Hotel in 1990. I DJd there until 1996, and also at the Stronghold Bar (in the basement of the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills) from 1990-1994. This proved to be a handy source of additional income as time went on.

I met John at The Oxford one night just before quitting Liquorland. A gentle, artistic man (his mother thought I was too old for him) we were together for about 8 months. With my health slowly declining, I pushed him away. I didn’t want him (he was HIV-) to have to nurse me through, what I saw at that time, the inevitable end.

In 1993, Carol Ann King started the Luncheon Club and Larder, providing cheap meals and grocery items to HIV+ boys on pensions. Though never attending the club myself, I did become a disability pensioner that same year. Fred Oberg at ACON was instrumental in getting me onto the pension, and a SAS (Special Assistance Subsidy) with the Department of Housing, who paid a percentage of my private rental in The. Dorchester, in Darlinghurst.

At the same time, the Dental Hospital in Chalmers St, Surry Hills started providing free dental care to those with HIV (a trial). Having ongoing bouts of thrush as a result of a declining immune system, I attended there and had a number of teeth removed that were so loose I could have pulled them out. They also devised a small denture to fill a gap at the front lower jaw. I could smile again without covering my mouth to hide the gap.

Prophylaxis was another term we came to grips with. In 1992 I started on Bactrim for my reoccurring bouts of thrush, and Fluconazole to ensure I didn’t get PCP.

I had my 40th birthday 1n 1994. I considered myself very lucky to have reached this milestone, and threw a big bash at the Stronghold bar, where I was a DJ. Tim Vincent, a close friend and owner opened the bar early in the afternoon, put on a long happy hour, and was an open house until the bars usual opening hour. It was quite a crowd, and quite an afternoon.

By May that year my CD4 count was 160, and I was back on AZT! At this stage I estimated I had maybe 2 years left…if I was lucky, or a miracle happened. On the former, I was accurate, little knowing the latter would happen, and a miracle did happen!

Tim Alderman ©️ 2025

Ageing…Gay…HIV…Invisible

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, HIV/AIDS, , , , , ,

I was lying in bed recently listening to an audiobook, part of a gay series, revolving around the staff in a gay cafe in Cornwall, England. One of the younger waiters had just met, and was having a “thing” with an older cafe patron, who was in a relationship that was just no longer working. They were having sex in the waiters home, and the author described their lovemaking in such a realistic, but romantic way that I found myself contemplating my current solo life.

I had to stop the story for a bit. W…T…F was this all about! The fact was that while listening to the lovemaking description in the book…in my head I was thinking…will this ever happen to me again…will I, at this stage of my life, ever have sex with another man again…and no, I don’t think I ever will…and I really miss it…both the sex…and the intimacy!

You see, if I had to write a formula for this stage of my life, it would be; ageing+gay+hiv=invisible!

At 71, I’m probably a bit harsh with my self-assessments!HIV+ (and undetectable)…severely vision-impaired, and with mobility problems stemming from huge doses of AZT in the early 90s, mixed in with AIDS in 1996. I no longer have my own teeth, and the proud owner of one prosthetic eye. I keep myself relatively fit, but have a bjt of fat around the middle, brought about by HIV meds, and which I can’t seem…despite some pretty intensive attempts…to get rid of.

I live in a world that is ostensibly driven by vanity, an obsession with body image, and if you’re male… looks! I can’t get away from it! It follows me around, mocking me. It’s on Facebook, It’s on Instagram, it’s in every magazine I pick up, every television show, movie, advertisement, and gym visit (in past years). At my age, I’m supposed to be past all this, but should I be? I do question the apparent notion that I’m “past it” and if I want to have an ongoing sex life…and I laugh hysterically here…I should be labelling myself as a “Bear” or a “Daddy” or a “Silver Fox”! This is stereotyping at it’s very worst, telling me that to be desirable I have to give up being “me”.

Ageing is a bit of a convoluted thing, in my experience. One minute you are desirable…then you get hit by that reality stick whereby you go out, and no one pays attention to you, or approaches you. Guys walk past you like you just don’t exist. You sink into the wallpaper and furnishings. As a gay guy who was active on the scene, I found ageism to be rife, and was often thrown in your face by younger guys. You were made to feel that you WERE old, and thus no longer desirable. And you were often just in your 40s, so not old at all in the real world.There has always been the joke…that is not a joke on the gay scene…that once you hit 40 you are considered too old to be desirable any more! Well trying hitting 50, 60 or 70! I remember being at the bottom bar in The Midnight Shift one night with a guy who had bought me a drink. We were chatting away, and I mentioned I was HIV+. He just stood up and walked out. One of the few times I have ever felt “unclean”! It is not a nice feeling!

The one thing that drove home to me the real impact of ageism, invisibility, and HIV stigma was the sex apps…euphemistically referred to as “dating” apps! When my 16-year partner and I called it quits in 2014, these apps and web sites were new territory for me. I approached them positively, thinking…foolishly, as it turned out…they would assure me an ongoing sex life. I was totally honest in my profile…both my age (at that time), and my HIV status Well, maybe if I lied about my age, didn’t reveal my HIV status, and uploaded a not-recent flattering profile photo I may have scored a sex life! If you want to feel degraded and humiliated, these are the places to go! Honesty doesn’t reap rewards on these sites! I waited for the messages for fun times to roll in…and waited. Evidently the appeal of sex with a 60-year old didn’t appeal to many, especially someone with HIV!

As well as not going the way I planned, it was my introduction to the language of stigma…phrases like “are you clean?” and “I want you to breed me!” left me feeling deflated! Were these really gay men interacting with me! Did they not know about HIV! Or just choosing to live in ignorance! This is not language you would use with non-HIV guys, so what is it that makes HIV+ guys “unclean”…and have you never heard of undetectable viral loads? Has the entire U=U campaign gone right over your head! Gay men putting other gay men down is not cool!

So I gave up on the apps, after only one contact. And I got tired of guys lining up dates, then just not turning up…not even a message. I don’t need things that put me down!

So 10 years later, I’m living alone with my dog. I have a great social life, but I’m 71 now, and a lot of guys have their own assumptions about that. At this stage, I’m not interested in a relationship…I’ve had enough of those over my time on the scene. As mentioned earlier, it’s not the sex I miss, so much as the intimacy, the sensations of touch, the security of a cuddle. My vision is pretty bad, as is my mobility, and I live on my own…all things I can live with (curtesy of both HIV and AIDS) which brings about certain insecurities in the dating game. I would not want a stranger knocking on my door for “fun times” these days Having disabilities means I am aware of my vulnerability., that if someone attacked me, or tried to take advantage of my situation to, say, rob me, I would have put myself in great danger, and could end up beaten up…or worse! It is a scenario I’m too aware of! Already the odds of meeting people aren’t good!

So let’s drop the assumptions…I am still sexually active! I don’t feel “old”, nor do I look or dress “old”. I’m pretty well adjusted to modern living. Yes, my social circle is quite different these days, as tags such as “gay” and “HIV+” no longer define who I am. It isn’t denial…if anyone asked I’d be quite out about it…it’s more that first and foremost these days, it’s more about just being a person, an individual! Funny how things that used to be important, become less so as time passes.

However, there are still those moments where to be enveloped in another man’s arms, the squeeze, the contact, just the feel and smell of another man would be a nice way to be rocked to sleep. So let’s stop defining people by how they look, or stigmatising them because of their age, or their status, or even their sexuality. We are visible! We are thriving, vibrant, engaging, life-experienced beings, still capable of everything that once made us young and desirable, with a breadth of experience, and life, that suffocates all predetermined notions of being the person YOU think we are. Push our boundaries, and expand your own! To finish with a cliche… there is treasure to be found.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2024

Gay History: From Stonewall To The White Horse: The Bay Area’s Part In Uprisings That Changed The World

Article, Gay Interest, History, Political, , , ,
Flyer for Gay Liberation Front protest at the Examiner Building October 31, 1969, Courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society
Flyer for Gay Liberation Front protest at the Examiner Building October 31, 1969, Courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society

“San Francisco is a refugee camp for homosexuals. We have fled here from every part of the nation, and like refugees elsewhere, we came not because it is so great here, but because it was so bad there. By the tens of thousands, we fled small towns where tobe ourselves would endanger our jobs and any hope of a decent life….”

Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto — Carl Wittman, December, 1969

Cover of Gay Sunshine, October 1970

By the time of the first night of protests at New York City’s Stonewall Inn, San Francisco had experienced months of demonstrations related to gay rights that would continue for the next few years. 

Unlike Stonewall, the disturbances in San Francisco started over job rights, and a bar was not involved. But because the disturbances spread and issues multiplied, they would eventually include at least three bars, including Oakland’s White Horse.

The people who lit the fuse were recent arrivals. Gale Chester Whittington came from Denver in 1968 and Leo Laurence from Indianapolis in 1966. 

Whittington got a job as an accounting clerk at the States Steamship Company (320 California). 

Laurence was a journalist for the underground newspaper Berkeley Barb and the editor of the Society for Individual Rights magazine Vector.They met when Whittington volunteered to write for Vector.

A Vector photographer shared a photo from a shoot of Laurence and Whittington with The Barb. It was paired with an article from March 23, 1969, titled “Homo Revolt: Don’t Hide it.” 

The article covered Laurence’s editorial call for gay revolution in Vector. Since the Barb had sex ads, it was read by several of Whittington’s straight colleagues at the shipping company. The day it was published, Whittington was fired. Because of the editorial Laurence was removed as editor of Vector.

Homo Revolt, Dont Hide It, Berkeley Barb, March 28, 1969

Whittington and Laurence then formed the Committee for Homosexual Freedom. Max Scheer, editor of The Barb, promised to cover their actions. On April 9, 1969 the picketing of the steamship company began with signs saying, “Let Gays Live,” “Free The Queers” and “Freedom for Homos Now.” 

The protests continued for months. In May, The Advocate picked up coverage of the protests and by June the Rev. Troy Perry had begun a sympathy strike at the company’s Los Angeles offices. 

Ultimately the protests didn’t succeed in getting Whittington’s job back, but because the San Francisco Chronicle, The Advocate and The Barb covered the protest (on an almost weekly basis) it spread the word nationally and CHF grew. 

In Whittington’s autobiographical work, Beyond Normal: The Birth of Gay Pride, he mentions that Hibiscus and Lendon Sadler (of the Cockettes) and Carl Wittman (author of Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto) all took part in early CHF protests. Wittman read early drafts of his manifesto to the group.

By May protests spread to a second site: Tower Records. Employee Frank Denaro was fired after a security guard reported to management that he had returned the wink of a male customer. Unlike the steamship company, however, the record store was swayed by public opinion and by June the management offered Denaro his job back.

States Steamship Protest, Berkeley Barb, April 25 – May 1, 1969

Purple rain
News about what was happening in San Francisco continued to spread. Berkeley Tribeprinted a letter saying Laurence’s articles, reprinted in a Minneapolis campus newspaper, had inspired a class in Homosexual Revolution from their Free University. In Beyond Normal, Whittington relates he received a telegram from New Yorkers who were at Stonewall and had been inspired by articles in The Barb. In October, both Laurence and Whittington were interviewed in the L.A. magazine Tangents.

By October 1969, Gay Liberation Front chapters opened in Berkeley and San Francisco. Two protests on Halloween show both coordination and fragmentation between new and old organizations. 

At the first, called “Friday of the Purple Hand,” the Society for Individual Rights worked with CHF and both GLF groups to protest the editorial policies of the San Francisco Examiner. Earlier that week, Robert Patterson of the Examiner had written “The Dreary Revels of S.F. ‘Gay’ Clubs” which referred to gays as “semi-males” and lesbians as “women who aren’t exactly women” as well as referring to both as deviates.

Around 100 protesters picketed the Examiner building, and then had printers ink dumped on them from an upper floor by Examiner employees. The protesters used the ink to make purple hand prints all over the building (which gave the protest its name). The protesters were then attacked by the police Tactical Squad. Twelve people were injured and fifteen were arrested.

Friday of the Purple Hand coverage, San Francisco Free Press

The second event that day was a protest of the Beaux Arts Ball in the Merchandise Mart by Gay Guerrilla Theater and the Gay Liberation Coalition. Laurence reported in the Berkeley Tribe that the protest was focused on the acceptance of laws that only allowed drag on Halloween and New Year’s. He reported:

“I don’t dig drag myself (can’t imagine being a bearded lady)…but by God, I do feel the drags should have the right to do their thing; not just twice a year, but every day; not just at a drag ball, but at work, school, church and on the streets.”

This was among the first confrontations between older gay organizations and newer, more radical groups. Others included a protest of a S.I.R. dinner in February 1972 where Willie Brown was speaking on reforming sex laws (protested because of the cover charge of $12) and a takeover of the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) by the Gay Liberation Front in August 1970. GLF demanded that NACHO affirm its support of the Black Panther Party and Women’s Liberation and organize a national gay strike.

Clearly there was a generational difference between members of homophile organizations and the gay liberationists. Many of the younger generation had ties to the New Left and anti-war movements. 

Laurence had been in Chicago for the ’68 Democratic convention and Wittman had written for the SDS before, for example. GLF members formed a gay contingent for the Nov. 15, 1969 Moratorium March Against the War. And by and large they read the underground press, not the gay press.

Demands for White Horse Protest, Gay Sunshine, October 1970

Horse sense
The most dramatic confrontation between gay liberationists and gay bars came at the White Horse Bar in Oakland. Konstantin Berlandt, a long-time gay activist in Berkeley, was thrown out of the bar for selling Gay Sunshine by the owner Joe Johansen. The Gay Sunshine collective worked with the Berkeley GLF and picketed the bar. A list of demands included one that patrons be allowed to touch one another and slow dance. Within a week the bar capitulated to the protesters.

The White Horse wasn’t the only bar to raise the ire of liberationists.

Leonarda’s also refused to sell Gay Sunshineand a boycott was suggested (it’s hard to know how serious to take this, as the underground press kept reporting the bar’s name as “Leonardo’s”). The Stud also upset writers at the Berkeley Tribe by checking IDs at the door. They may, however, have just been opposed to bars as institutions. The article in the Tribesuggested:

“The bars can’t be liberated, they must be destroyed. They rip off our money, keep us in ghettos playing the same old weary games thinking that we are satisfied, and maintain all the divisions in Amerika — women and men, gay women and gay men, black and white, young and old. The Stud mentality in our heads has to be rooted out and killed too.”

Ultimately it was not the bars but the gay liberationists that disappeared as the 1970s progressed. I asked Gary Alinder, who was a member of Berkeley’s GLF, about burnout and the disappearance of Gay Lib in the ’70s.

“It evolved,” he said. “Gay liberation was a sudden uprising. Most of us were anti-organization. It was not meant to stay around for a long time. It was a burst of energy — an explosion. A second generation would come along that was more organized. But the message — to make people happy in themselves and come out — was valid.”

That burst of energy had a massive effect — it spread through LGBT organizations with programs like gay rap sessions to campuses across the country and created an explosion of new publications. Those publications and organizations did reach people. As a teen who picked up the Detroit Gay Liberator in the early ’70s, and who attended a gay rap meeting on my college campus, I can testify that those of us who followed were grateful for the work of the Stonewall generation.

Reference

Gay History: Debunking The ‘Gaydar’ Myth

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, , , ,
Two people dress up as Gaydar bots during San Francisco’s 2014 gay pride parade. Scott Schiller/flickr, CC BY-NC

Kids are often told that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Even so, people often believe they can rely on their gut to intuit things about other people. Stereotypes often influence these impressions, whether it’s that a black man is dangerous, a woman won’t be a good leader or a fashionable man is gay.

Stereotypes related to gay men and lesbians often operate under the guise of “gaydar” rather than stereotyping. “Gaydar” (a portmanteau of “gay” and “radar”) is a term that first appeared in the 1980s and refers to a “sixth sense” for identifying who is gay. Like many purported intuitions, however, gaydar often relies on stereotypes. 

While many people believe stereotyping is wrong, calling it “gaydar” merely provides a cover for using stereotypical traits – like someone’s fashion sense, profession or hairstyle – to jump to conclusions about someone being gay. Nonetheless, some researchers have published studies that, at first glance, appear to show that people have accurate gaydar.

In some recent work, my colleagues and I have been able to demonstrate how the perpetuation of the gaydar myth has unintended negative consequences. We’ve also identified a mathematical flaw in some previous gaydar research, calling into question the results. 

Stereotyping in disguise

My colleagues and I suspected that even people who would normally try to refrain from stereotyping might be more likely to use gay stereotypes if they are led to believe they have gaydar.

To test this idea, we conducted an experiment. We told some participants that scientific evidence says gaydar was a real ability, led others to believe that gaydar is just another term for stereotyping and said nothing about gaydar to a third group (the control). 

Participants then judged whether men were gay or straight based on information ostensibly taken from social media profiles. Some of the men had interests (or “likes”) that related to gay stereotypes, like fashion, shopping or theater. Others had interests related to straight stereotypes, like sports, hunting or cars, or “neutral” interests unrelated to stereotypes, like reading or movies. This design allowed us to assess how often people jumped to the conclusion that men were gay based on stereotypically gay interests. Those who were told gaydar is real stereotyped much more than the control group, and participants stereotyped much less when they had been told that gaydar is just another term for stereotyping. 

These patterns provided strong support for the idea that belief in gaydar encourages stereotyping by simply disguising it under a different label. 

What’s the big deal?

In some ways, the idea of gaydar – even if it’s just stereotyping – seems useful at best and harmless at worst. But the very fact that it seems harmless may actually be responsible for its most pernicious effects. Using gaydar as a way to talk innocuously or jokingly about stereotyping – “Oh, that guy sets off my gaydar” – trivializes stereotyping and makes it seem like no big deal. 

But we know that stereotypes have many negative consequences, so we shouldn’t be encouraging it on any level. 

First, stereotyping can facilitate prejudice. In a study on prejudice-based aggression, we had participants play a game that involved administering electric shocks to a subject in the other room. Participants learned only one thing about this other person, either that he was gay or simply liked shopping (people tend to assume men who like shopping are gay). 

In one condition, therefore, the participants knew that the man was gay and in the other they might have privately inferred that he was gay though it wasn’t confirmed, but that wasn’t known to anyone else (who might have accused them of being prejudiced). 

These conditions are especially important for a subset of people who are covertly prejudiced: They’re aware that they’re prejudiced and ok with it, but don’t want others to know. We can identify these people with some well-established questionnaire measures, and we know that they express prejudice only when they’re able to get away with it. 

As we predicted, these covertly prejudiced people tended to refrain from shocking the man who was confirmed as gay, but delivered extremely high levels of shocks to the man who liked shopping. If they had shocked the first man, people could accuse them of prejudice (“You shocked him because he was gay!”). But if others accused participants of prejudice in the second condition, it could be plausibly denied (“I didn’t think he was gay!”). In other words, stereotyping can give people opportunities to express prejudices without fear of reprisal.

Second, stereotypes – even innocuous ones – are troublesome for a number of reasons: They lead us to think narrowly about people before we get to know them, they can justify discrimination and oppression, and, for members of stereotyped groups, they can even lead to depression and other mental health problems. Encouraging stereotyping under the guise of gaydar contributes – directly or indirectly – to stereotyping’s downstream consequences.

But what if gaydar is actually accurate?

Some researchers say that stereotypes about gay people possess a grain of truth, which could lend credence to the idea of having accurate gaydar.

In these studies, researchers presented pictures, sound clips and videos of real gay and straight people to the participants, who then categorized them as gay or straight.

Half of the people in the pictures, clips and videos were gay and half were straight, which meant that the participants would demonstrate an accurate gaydar if their accuracy rate were significantly higher than 50 percent. Indeed, participants tended to have about 60 percent accuracy, and the researchers concluded that people really do possess an accurate gaydar. Many studies have replicated these results, with their authors – and the media – touting them as evidence that gaydar exists.

Not so fast…

But as we’ve been able to show in two recent papers, all of these previous studies fall prey to a mathematical error that, when corrected, actually leads to the opposite conclusion: Most of the time, gaydar will be highly inaccurate. 

How can this be, if people in these studies are accurate at rates significantly higher than 50 percent?

There’s a problem in the basic premise of these studies: Namely, having a pool of people in which 50 percent of the targets are gay. In the real world, only around 3 to 8 percent of adults identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

What does this mean for interpreting the 60 percent accuracy rate? Think about what the 60 percent accuracy means for the straight targets in these studies. If people have 60 percent accuracy in identifying who is straight, it means that 40 percent of the time, straight people are incorrectly categorized. In a world where 95 percent of people are straight, 60 percent accuracy means that for every 100 people, there will be 38 straight people incorrectly assumed to be gay, but only three gay people correctly categorized. 

Therefore, the 60 percent accuracy in the lab studies translates to 93 percent inaccuracy for identifying who is gay in the real world (38 / [38 + 3] = 92.7 percent). Even when people seem gay – and set off all the alarms on your gaydar – it’s far more likely that they’re straight. More straight people will seem to be gay than there are actual gay people in total. 

If you’re disappointed to learn that your gaydar might not operate as well as you think it does, there’s a quick fix: Rather than coming to a snap judgment about people based on what they wear or how they talk, you’re probably better off just asking them.

The invention of AI ‘gaydar’ could be the start of something much worse

Researchers claim they can spot gay people from a photo, but critics say we’re revisiting pseudoscience

Two weeks ago, a pair of researchers from Stanford University made a startling claim. Using hundreds of thousands of images taken from a dating website, they said they had trained a facial recognition system that could identify whether someone was straight or gay just by looking at them. The work was first covered by The Economist, and other publications soon followed suit, with headlines like “New AI can guess whether you’re gay or straight from a photograph” and “AI Can Tell If You’re Gay From a Photo, and It’s Terrifying.”

As you might have guessed, it’s not as straightforward as that. (And to be clear, based on this work alone, AI can’t tell whether someone is gay or straight from a photo.) But the research captures common fears about artificial intelligence: that it will open up new avenues for surveillance and control, and could be particularly harmful for marginalized people. One of the paper’s authors, Dr Michal Kosinski, says his intent is to sound the alarm about the dangers of AI, and warns that facial recognition will soon be able to identify not only someone’s sexual orientation, but their political views, criminality, and even their IQ. SOME WARN WE’RE REPLACING THE CALIPERS OF PHYSIOGNOMY WITH NEURAL NETWORKS

With statements like these, some worry we’re reviving an old belief with a bad history: that you can intuit character from appearance. This pseudoscience, physiognomy, was fuel for the scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries, and gave moral cover to some of humanity’s worst impulses: to demonize, condemn, and exterminate fellow humans. Critics of Kosinski’s work accuse him of replacing the calipers of the 19th century with the neural networks of the 21st, while the professor himself says he is horrified by his findings, and happy to be proved wrong. “It’s a controversial and upsetting subject, and it’s also upsetting to us,” he tells The Verge. 

But is it possible that pseudoscience is sneaking back into the world, disguised in new garb thanks to AI? Some people say machines are simply able to read more about us than we can ourselves, but what if we’re training them to carry out our prejudices, and, in doing so, giving new life to old ideas we rightly dismissed? How are we going to know the difference? 

CAN AI REALLY SPOT SEXUAL ORIENTATION? 

First, we need to look at the study at the heart of the recent debate, written by Kosinski and his co-author Yilun Wang. Its results have been poorly reported, with a lot of the hype coming from misrepresentations of the system’s accuracy. The paper states: “Given a single facial image, [the software] could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men in 81 percent of cases, and in 71 percent of cases for women.” These rates increase when the system is given five pictures of an individual: up to 91 percent for men, and 83 percent for women. 

On the face of it, this sounds like “AI can tell if a man is gay or straight 81 percent of the time by looking at his photo.” (Thus the headlines.) But that’s not what the figures mean. The AI wasn’t 81 percent correct when being shown random photos: it was tested on a pair of photos, one of a gay person and one of a straight person, and then asked which individual was more likely to be gay. It guessed right 81 percent of the time for men and 71 percent of the time for women, but the structure of the test means it started with a baseline of 50 percent — that’s what it’d get guessing at random. And although it was significantly better than that, the results aren’t the same as saying it can identify anyone’s sexual orientation 81 percent of the time. “PEOPLE ARE SCARED OF A SITUATION WHERE [YOU’RE IN A CROWD] AND A COMPUTER IDENTIFIES WHETHER YOU’RE GAY.”

As Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who wrote a blog post critiquing the paper, told The Verge: “People are scared of a situation where you have a private life and your sexual orientation isn’t known, and you go to an airport or a sporting event and a computer scans the crowd and identifies whether you’re gay or straight. But there’s just not much evidence this technology can do that.”

Kosinski and Wang make this clear themselves toward the end of the paper when they test their system against 1,000 photographs instead of two. They ask the AI to pick out who is most likely to be gay in a dataset in which 7 percent of the photo subjects are gay, roughlyreflecting the proportion of straight and gay men in the US population. When asked to select the 100 individuals most likely to be gay, the system gets only 47 out of 70 possible hits. The remaining 53 have been incorrectly identified. And when asked to identify a top 10, nine are right.

If you were a bad actor trying to use this system to identify gay people, you couldn’t know for sure you were getting correct answers. Although, if you used it against a large enough dataset, you might get mostly correct guesses. Is this dangerous? If the system is being used to target gay people, then yes, of course. But the rest of the study suggests the program has even further limitations. 

WHAT CAN COMPUTERS REALLY SEE THAT HUMANS CAN’T?

It’s also not clear what factors the facial recognition system is using to make its judgements. Kosinski and Wang’s hypothesis is that it’s primarily identifying structural differences: feminine features in the faces of gay men and masculine features in the faces of gay women. But it’s possible that the AI is being confused by other stimuli — like facial expressions in the photos. THE AI MIGHT BE IDENTIFYING STEREOTYPES, NOT BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES

This is particularly relevant because the images used in the study were taken from a dating website. As Greggor Mattson, a professor of sociology at Oberlin College, pointed out in a blog post, this means that the images themselves are biased, as they were selected specifically to attract someone of a certain sexual orientation. They almost certainly play up to our cultural expectations of how gay and straight people should look, and, to further narrow their applicability, all the subjects were white, with no inclusion of bisexual or self-identified trans individuals. If a straight male chooses the most stereotypically “manly” picture of himself for a dating site, it says more about what he thinks society wants from him than a link between the shape of his jaw and his sexual orientation. 

To try and ensure their system was looking at facial structure only, Kosinski and Wang used software called VGG-Face, which encodes faces as strings of numbers and has been used for tasks like spotting celebrity lookalikes in paintings. This program, they write, allows them to “minimize the role [of] transient features” like lighting, pose, and facial expression. 

But researcher Tom White, who works on AI facial system, says VGG-Face is actually very good at picking up on these elements. White pointed this out on Twitter, and explained to The Verge over email how he’d tested the software and used it to successfully distinguish between faces with expressions like “neutral” and “happy,” as well as poses and background color.


A figure from the paper showing the average faces of the participants, and the difference in facial structures that they identified between the two sets.
Image: Kosinski and Wang

Speaking to The Verge, Kosinski says he and Wang have been explicit that things like facial hair and makeup could be a factor in the AI’s decision-making, but he maintains that facial structure is the most important. “If you look at the overall properties of VGG-Face, it tends to put very little weight on transient facial features,” Kosinski says. “We also provide evidence that non-transient facial features seem to be predictive of sexual orientation.”

The problem is, we can’t know for sure. Kosinski and Wang haven’t released the program they created or the pictures they used to train it. They do test their AI on other picture sources, to see if it’s identifying some factor common to all gay and straight, but these tests were limited and also drew from a biased dataset — Facebook profile pictures from men who liked pages such as “I love being Gay,” and “Gay and Fabulous.”

Do men in these groups serve as reasonable proxies for all gay men? Probably not, and Kosinski says it’s possible his work is wrong. “Many more studies will need to be conducted to verify [this],” he says. But it’s tricky to say how one could completely eliminate selection bias to perform a conclusive test. Kosinski tells The Verge, “You don’t need to understand how the model works to test whether it’s correct or not.” However, it’s the acceptance of the opacity of algorithms that makes this sort of research so fraught. 

IF AI CAN’T SHOW ITS WORKING, CAN WE TRUST IT?

AI researchers can’t fully explain why their machines do the things they do. It’s a challenge that runs through the entire field, and is sometimes referred to as the “black box” problem. Because of the methods used to train AI, these programs can’t show their work in the same way normal software does, although researchers are working to amend this.

In the meantime, it leads to all sorts of problems. A common one is that sexist and racist biases are captured from humans in the training data and reproduced by the AI. In the case of Kosinski and Wang’s work, the “black box” allows them to make a particular scientific leap of faith. Because they’re confident their system is primarily analyzing facial structures, they say their research shows that facial structures predict sexual orientation. (“Study 1a showed that facial features extracted by a [neural network] can be used to accurately identify the sexual orientation of both men and women.”)“BIOLOGY’S A LITTLE BIT MORE NUANCED THAN WE OFTEN GIVE IT CREDIT FOR.”

Experts say this is a misleading claim that isn’t supported by the latest science. There may be a common cause for face shape and sexual orientation — the most probable cause is the balance of hormones in the womb — but that doesn’t mean face shape reliably predicts sexual orientation, says Qazi Rahman, an academic at King’s College London who studies the biology of sexual orientation. “Biology’s a little bit more nuanced than we often give it credit for,” he tells The Verge. “The issue here is the strength of the association.” 

The idea that sexual orientation comes primarily from biology is itself controversial. Rahman, who believes that sexual orientation is mostly biological, praises Kosinski and Wang’s work. “It’s not junk science,” he says. “More like science someone doesn’t like.” But when it comes to predicting sexual orientation, he says there’s a whole package of “atypical gender behavior” that needs to be considered. “The issue for me is more that [the study] misses the point, and that’s behavior.”

s there a gay gene? Or is sexuality equally shaped by society and culture?
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reducing the question of sexual orientation to a single, measurable factor in the body has a long and often inglorious history. As Matton writes in his blog post, approaches have ranged from “19th century measurements of lesbians’ clitorises and homosexual men’s hips, to late 20th century claims to have discovered ‘gay genes,’ ‘gay brains,’ ‘gay ring fingers,’ ‘lesbian ears,’ and ‘gay scalp hair.’” The impact of this work is mixed, but at its worst it’s a tool of oppression: it gives people who want to dehumanize and persecute sexual minorities a “scientific” pretext.

Jenny Davis, a lecturer in sociology at the Australian National University, describes it as a form of biological essentialism. This is the belief that things like sexual orientation are rooted in the body. This approach, she says, is double-edged. On the one hand, it “does a useful political thing: detaching blame from same-sex desire. But on the other hand, it reinforces the devalued position of that kind of desire,” setting up hetrosexuality as the norm and framing homosexuality as “less valuable … a sort of illness.”

And it’s when we consider Kosinski and Wang’s research in this context that AI-powered facial recognition takes on an even darker aspect — namely, say some critics, as part of a trend to the return of physiognomy, powered by AI. 

YOUR CHARACTER, AS PLAIN AS THE NOSE ON YOUR FACE

For centuries, people have believed that the face held the key to the character. The notion has its roots in ancient Greece, but was particularly influential in the 19th century. Proponents of physiognomy suggested that by measuring things like the angle of someone’s forehead or the shape of their nose, they could determine if a person was honest or a criminal. Last year in China, AI researchers claimed they could do the same thing using facial recognition.

Their research, published as “Automated Inference on Criminality Using Face Images,” caused a minor uproar in the AI community. Scientists pointed out flaws in the study, and concluded that that work was replicating human prejudices about what constitutes a “mean” or a “nice” face. In a widely shared rebuttal titled “Physiognomy’s New Clothes,” Google researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas and two co-authors wrote that we should expect “more research in the coming years that has similar … false claims to scientific objectivity in order to ‘launder’ human prejudice and discrimination.” (Google declined to make Agüera y Arcas available to comment on this report.)

An illustration of physiognomy from Giambattista della Porta’s De humana physiognomonia

Kosinski and Wang’s paper clearly acknowledges the dangers of physiognomy, noting that the practice “is now universally, and rightly, rejected as a mix of superstition and racism disguised as science.” But, they continue, just because a subject is “taboo,” doesn’t mean it has no basis in truth. They say that because humans are able to read characteristics like personality in other people’s faces with “low accuracy,” machines should be able to do the same but more accurately.

Kosinski says his research isn’t physiognomy because it’s using rigorous scientific methods, and his paper cites a number of studies showing that we can deduce (with varying accuracy) traits about people by looking at them. “I was educated and made to believe that it’s absolutely impossible that the face contains any information about your intimate traits, because physiognomy and phrenology were just pseudosciences,” he says. “But the fact that they were claiming things without any basis in fact, that they were making stuff up, doesn’t mean that this stuff is not real.” He agrees that physiognomy is not science, but says there may be truth in its basic concepts that computers can reveal.

For Davis, this sort of attitude comes from a widespread and mistaken belief in the neutrality and objectivity of AI. “Artificial intelligence is not in fact artificial,” she tells The Verge. “Machines learn like humans learn. We’re taught through culture and absorb the norms of social structure, and so does artificial intelligence. So it will re-create, amplify, and continue on the trajectories we’ve taught it, which are always going to reflect existing cultural norms.”

We’ve already created sexist and racist algorithms, and these sorts of cultural biases and physiognomy are really just two sides of the same coin: both rely on bad evidence to judge others. The work by the Chinese researchers is an extreme example, but it’s certainly not the only one. There’s at least one startup already active that claims it can spot terrorists and pedophiles using face recognition, and there are many others offering to analyze “emotional intelligence” and conduct AI-powered surveillance. 

FACING UP TO WHAT’S COMING

But to return to the questions implied by those alarming headlines about Kosinski and Wang’s paper: is AI going to be used to persecute sexual minorities?

This system? No. A different one? Maybe. 

Kosinski and Wang’s work is not invalid, but its results need serious qualifications and further testing. Without that, all we know about their system is that it can spot with some reliability the difference between self-identified gay and straight white people on one particular dating site. We don’t know that it’s spotted a biological difference common to all gay and straight people; we don’t know if it would work with a wider set of photos; and the work doesn’t show that sexual orientation can be deduced with nothing more than, say, a measurement of the jaw. It’s not decoded human sexuality any more than AI chatbots have decoded the art of a good conversation. (Nor do its authors make such a claim.)

Startup Faception claims it can identify how likely people are to be terrorists just by looking at their face.
Image: Faception

The research was published to warn people, say Kosinski, but he admits it’s an “unavoidable paradox” that to do so you have to explain how you did what you did. All the tools used in the paper are available for anyone to find and put together themselves. Writing at the deep learning education site Fast.ai, researcher Jeremy Howard concludes: “It is probably reasonably [sic] to assume that many organizations have already completed similar projects, but without publishing them in the academic literature.” 

We’ve already mentioned startups working on this tech, and it’s not hard to find government regimes that would use it. In countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia homosexuality is still punishable by death; in many other countries, being gay means being hounded, imprisoned, and tortured by the state. Recent reports have spoken of the opening of concentration camps for gay men in the Chechen Republic, so what if someone there decides to make their own AI gaydar, and scan profile pictures from Russian social media?

Here, it becomes clear that the accuracy of systems like Kosinski and Wang’s isn’t really the point. If people believe AI can be used to determine sexual preference, they will use it. With that in mind, it’s more important than ever that we understand the limitations of artificial intelligence, to try and neutralize dangers before they start impacting people. Before we teach machines our prejudices, we need to first teach ourselves.

Reference

Gay History: Mexico’s Forgotten Drag Ball: Ignacio de la Torre y Mier And The Dance of the Forty-One

Article, Gay Interest, History, Political, , , , , ,

On the night of November 18, 1901, in Mexico City, a disgruntled citizen called for the authorities to break up a party being held nearby. This party was a ball not the first, nor the last of its kind in the city, in which male elites dressed to the nines and danced the night away, oftentimes concluding the evening with a raffle in which the coveted prize was a male escort.

At this particular event, 42 men were in attendance half wore suits, the other half in expensive gowns and wigs. All but one were detained and later subjected to public ridicule; forced to sweep up the streets in dresses in plain daylight where the public was free to throw things and hurl insults at them. This would become a common punishment, not excluding police brutality, for homosexual acts. The incident was dubbed by newspapers “The Dance of the Forty-One” or “El Baile De Los Cuarenta y Uno.”

Due in large part to their social status, and overall influence on the authorities, the names of the detainees were never publicly released after the fact. In addition, all publications mentioning the event were destroyed and banned from further coverage, leaving only folklore and a vague though negative association to the number 41 and the LGBTQ community in Mexico, as well as the legend of the 42nd guest, Ignacio De La Torre y Mier, son-in-law to then-President Porfirio Díaz.

Frida Kahlo, poet Juana Inéz de la Cruz, both queer women whose contributions to Literature and art have cemented them as greats within Mexico’s vast history, are generally depicted as straight. Though tolerance for the LGBTQ community has (slowly) spread, history and religion are still seen as sacred and not to be questioned. This is especially harmful to queer kids coming to terms with their identity because it paints homosexuality as a relatively new development.

Growing up I’d heard relatives occasionally refer to the number 41 when making some kind of tasteless gay joke. I didn’t know what it meant or where it came from, but going by tone alone, I could sense it was a homophobic slur of some sort. A few weeks ago, while reading on the Mexican Revolution of 1910, one name kept peripherally popping up, and this piqued my interest. One dive into a Google black hole later, I found myself reading through every small piece of information most of it in Spanish that I could find on this guy. Significant historical figures have always been whitewashed in favor of heterosexual culture, so it’s no surprise that even people briefly connected to, say, a former President would be difficult to successfully research.

Born into a prominent family of sugar manufacturers, Ignacio De La Torre was brought up knowing only the best. He attended private schools in both Mexico and the U.S., and he was praised as a gifted student, furthermore, he was generally well-liked. At the age of 15, after his father’s passing, Ignacio took over the family business and ran it surprisingly well. The already fruitful franchise thrived further under his direction, due greatly to the tunnel vision like ambition young Ignacio possessed; a stubborn and competitive attitude toward business and finance that made him infamous for his reckless actions.

On one occasion, he even went as far as blocking a river channel that passed through his land for the sake of aesthetic, effectively causing multiple floods in the surrounding towns, yet he managed to avoid legal consequence; the incident was never even acknowledged by the authorities.

More than business savvy, however, Ignacio was known for his recreational activities, often involving alcohol, and his affinity for men. Money allowed him to live lavishly as well as shamelessly, and while Mexico’s toxic general views on homosexuality were no less inflammatory then than they are now, his reputation as a well-respected businessman was never tattered. It helped that he was admired for his charisma. He was so charming, in fact, that President Porfirio Díaz offered Ignacio his daughter’s hand in marriage despite his problematic reputation. Ignacio accepted, but the marriage quickly took a turn.

Not long after they were married, Amada Díaz and De La Torre grew apart; his drinking and dalliances leading up The Dance of The 41 proving to be too much for his bride. Eventually, the pair split up, though they remained legally married and living under the same roof, in different wings of their estate.

Only a few years after his involvement with the raid, Ignacio found himself connected to yet another public figure: future hero of the Mexican Revolution Emiliano Zapata.

Emiliano Zapata was well known amongst peasant workers and farmers as an organizer of protests against Hacienda owners and the monopolizing of land and natural resources. He was also known for his extreme dislike of queer and effeminate men. In addition, it was common knowledge that Zapata held a general dislike for Dictator Diaz, who was the personification of everything the agricultural movement was against. This was the primary source for public speculation regarding his connection to Ignacio De La Torre.

A descendant of a long line of farmers, Zapata was an expert horse trainer. As such, he was hired by De La Torre to get his horses and stables in order. The pair spent a period of six months together, alone for the most part, before abruptly going their separate ways.

Of course whatever official records that may have existed documenting their encounter will likely never be found, as is the fate of most queer history. However, pieces of their connection have been discovered elsewhere; such as in prison records indicating that on one occasion, after the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz in 1911, Zapata personally had De La Torre freed from detainment. In addition, there is an account in Amada Díaz’s personal journals citing the discovery of her husband in a compromising position with Emiliano Zapata in the stables.

Having lost his influence due to his connection to the former President, De La Torre came to realize he was no longer held in as high regard, and his shenanigans landed him in jail on several occasions. In one particular instance, he attempted to pass himself off as Emiliano Zapata in order to pull off a grain manufacturing-related scheme. Upon discovering this, Zapata had him arrested. This is speculated to have been what finally severed ties between them.

Ignacio De La Torre died in New York in 1919 of complications during a surgery relating to a severe hemorrhoid condition. He had fled prosecution in 1913 for his suspected involvement in the assassination of President Francisco I. Madero. He left behind an obscene amount of debt and a tale as colorful as the man himself.

Mexico is a country of rituals and tradition, and it is rich in culture. However, a large portion of that culture is rooted in Misogynist Patriarchal ideals and deeply religious beliefs that have heavily and negatively impacted the progression or lack thereof of LGBTQ rights. It has buried its queer history behind an antiquated belief system, and while our icons are loved and admired, their identities are nearly always erased.

Ignacio De La Torre was not a great painter or writer, and his wealth didn’t make him a philanthropist, but denying his connection to great figures does more harm than good. That being said, the extra elbow grease it takes to track down our past is all the more rewarding when it leads us to characters like De La Torre if only to assure ourselves and the world that we’ve always held a significant place in history.

Today, the national Latinx non-profit organization Honor41 is named in those who attended the dance. They work to promote “positive images of our community, creates awareness about our issues and builds an online family/community” and say that “by adopting 41 in our name, we take away the negative, oppressive power associated to the number; we educate others about this important moment in LGBTQ history; we honor their legacy, and honor our own lives and contributions to society.”

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