Categories: health & reproductive rights Feminist Organizing and AIDS Activism December 1, 2020 | Rise Up Collective Today is World AIDS Day, and we are taking the opportunity to draw your attention to some of the extraordinary resources from the archive that highlight feminist organizing around AIDS and how communities came together. Several newsletters included articles on “Women and AIDS,” identifying specific concerns for women (who were rarely included in early education efforts). In an issue of OtherWise, Regan McClure writes: “This article is written for women who have always passed over the media’s AIDS information, assuming it didn’t apply to them.” Read – “Women and AIDS”, OtherWise (p. 5) (Mar. 1990) Read – “Women and AIDS”, The Womanist (p. 26) (Spring 1989) Read – “Women and AIDS”, The Womanist (p.22) (Fall 1992) Diva: A Quarterly Journal of South Asian Women, dedicated an issue in 1992 to “Women and AIDS,” including reflections, articles, and poems. Editors Leela and Amina Sherazee wrote: “South Asians living with AIDS and HIV, and those who self identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual are…the communities creatively educating, developing, and providing support and lobbying for treatments and demanding better health care all around.” Read – Diva on Women and AIDS (Sept./Dec.1992) Our Lives included an article in its Spring 1988 issue addressing the intersections of racism, stigma, and the then-ongoing lack of public health information directed to Black communities. It ends with the observation: “What was once a cruel, untrue, homophobic joke about gay men is now a worldwide death threatening virus that knows no colour, sex, sexuality, age, or geographic region.” Read – “What Black women need to know about AIDS”, Our Lives (p. 5) (Spring 1988) This button, from AIDS ACTION NOW! focuses attention on women who are HIV+ or living with AIDS. AIDS ACTION NOW was established in 1988 and has been an important force in the fight to stop the AIDS epidemic. Writing for Rebel Girls’ Rag, Lesli Gaynor and Darien Taylor provided a report from Canadian AIDS Conference contrasting it with their experience at the American-held “Keeping Women in Focus” Conference, both taking place in April 1991. The article reveals a top-down approach of the Canadian AIDS Conference, which did not adequately engage or support people living with HIV/AIDS.Read – “Fired Up, Fighting Back”, Rebel Girls’ Rag (p. 2) (July/Aug. 1991) Author Rise Up Collective View all posts
