Primary Submission Category: LGBTQ+
Thinking of the HIV/AIDS Crisis as a Cultrual Trauma for Sexual Minorities
Authors: Brandon Moore
Presenting Author: Brandon Moore*
Sociological research on pandemics has largely focused on the rise and response to events like the Spanish Flu and Bubonic Plague and their societal level impacts on culture and health knowledge. However, less attention has been given to how marginalized subpopulations may be uniquely impacted by pandemics and how this could result in a lasting trauma for such communities. Using the case of the American HIV/AIDS crisis from 1981-1996, I argue that this pandemic meets the conditions to be considered what Jeffrey C. Alexander (2004) called a cultural trauma – especially for sexual minority men. Focusing on the discussion of sexual culture and changes to it in 192 narrative life history interviews with sexual minority men, women, and genderqueer individuals as a part of the Generations study, I find that sexual minority men, compared to genderqueer individuals and women, more commonly brought up the HIV/AIDS crisis or HIV knowledge without being asked about them specifically. Furthermore, beyond just bringing up the topic more often, HIV/AIDS seems to stand out as a part of this group’s collective memory. The analysis showcases how carrier groups, framing, and emotions are drawn on in these communities to enshrine the HIV/AIDS crisis as a cultural trauma for their community. While previous literature suggests that the trauma from the HIV/AIDS crisis was concentrated to those sexual minorities adults who lived through the pandemic (Halkitis 2013), this analysis suggests the trauma of the crisis is being shared and internalized in different ways by later generations of sexual minority men who did not live through the crisis. Understanding the HIV/AIDS crisis as a generationally distinct cultural trauma would not only help public health practitioners trying to reduce HIV transmission in such communities, but more broadly it serves as a vantage point to show how pandemics can have intergenerational impacts beyond the generation that directly experienced the pandemic.