Primary Submission Category: LGBTQ+
Viral Shadows: The Afterlife of the HIV/AIDS Crisis on Queer and Trans Health
Authors: Tyler Harvey,
Presenting Author: Tyler Harvey*
Queer and trans individuals experience a range of social and health injustices compared to their cisgender, heterosexual counterparts in the United States (US). Many theories and models (i.e., minority stress theory) posit how queer and trans individuals are exposed to unique social stressors that harm their health and propose how individual factors (i.e., resilience) can be harnessed to combat such deleterious effects. Yet, there is a gap in theoretical work that explores how historical violence against queer and trans people shapes the structures and systems in which they exist within today and how the legacy of such violence influences their health. Using Saidiya Hartman’s conceptualization of the “afterlife of slavery” as a guiding framework, I posit modern-day queer and trans health in the “afterlife of the HIV/AIDS crisis.” Using primary data and content analysis across disciplines, I attempt to understand how normative logics around gender and sexuality created tactics of oppression during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s that continue to inform the contemporary health of queer and trans individuals. Here, I report dominant themes, including 1) the role of pathologization and stigma towards queerness and transness, 2) the use of rhetoric by the media, politicians, and the scientific community to demoralize queer and trans bodies, and 3) the impact of homophobia and transphobia being codified into laws and policies to criminalize queerness and transness. Based on these findings, the current climate surrounding queer and trans health in the US–ranging from population health inequities to legislative attacks on health care–must be understood within the historical context of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Creating a world where queer and trans people can flourish in their queerness and transness requires contextualizing the history and legacy that has sought to erase and harm them, with the intent of re(contextualizing) their beings and health.