Desperate Gay Men Wouldn’t Have Survived AIDS Without the Help of Wise Lesbians says Peter Staley
Share
Peter Staley acknowledges the often overlooked contribution of lesbians in the fight against AIDS and how their very friendship, support, and solidarity saved us.
As a matter of fact it was because of AIDS that we have the acronym LGBTQ.
The L in LGBTQ comes first for a reason.
View this post on Instagram
Well into the mid-1980s the term gay was the only respectable word widely accepted to identify all queer Americans. It was certainly an improvement on queer and homosexual, both still largely considered slurs. The AIDS crisis factored into the “gay/lesbian solidarity” that led to lesbians being more recognized in the community. At a time when some doctors and nurses wouldn’t touch a person infected with the virus, our Lesbian sisters stepped up.
Staley recounts their contribution in his new book Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism.
“As I joined ACT UP, that one example with Dixie became a couple dozen examples of dykes who were about the same age,” longtime HIV activist Peter Staley recalls to Jeff Berry, Editor-in-Chief of Positively Aware.
“Definitely older than I was, who were there based on this impulse to take care of their gay brothers. They were losing their friends but also had this movement memory that gay guys like myself had none of. They had been through the battle with the Equal Rights Amendment. They had been with the reproductive rights movement. Some of them had been part of the post-Stonewall radical gay activism during the first few years after Stonewall, some of them were with the anti-[Vietnam] war movement, and they had lots of experience with civil disobedience. So that allowed ACT UP to hit the ground running. We didn’t have to start from scratch. We had this movement memory transplanted mostly by these lesbians. That allowed us to take to the streets immediately, and do it as radically as we’d like in a semi-safe way, and that was absolutely crucial. ACT UP would not be ACT UP if it weren’t for this beautiful combination of desperate gay men and wise lesbians coming together to fight this together.”
Staley’s new memoir Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism is available now.
