You reactionary. First the guns, now the victim-blaming. Where will it all stop?
You forgot the regular church attendance. I know, it's awful. Soon I'l throw out my last tie-dyed T-shirt and my old Birkenstocks, and my liberal friends won't even recognize me.
It still seems like an important counterpoint to make. Do you suppose someone will make it?
It's a counterpoint made more often in the AIDS press, where this kind of misdirection is harder to get away with, than in the mainstream press. After all, HIV drugs are a complicated subject, and (for example) it's unlikely that the Salon "Life" editor understands them.
I'll see if I can come up with a way of wording "Look, you forgot to mention to all these nice people you're hitting up for some pity that you had a chance at a second life with protease inhibitors, and you threw it away" that sounds a little less hard and unforgiving. The problem is that AIDS is such a cultural and moral bonanza of symbols: it's God's punishment, it serves you right for having such an immoral lifestyle, it's an outward sign of your inner awfulness. There's been a rightful backlash against that, but one that's gone a little too far - such that it's hard to criticize AIDS patients for anything at all without being seen as one of those nasty moralizers. Even when you're talking about blatantly obvious things, like "it's wrong to have unprotected sex if you're HIV-positive."
Okay. Maybe I'll work on it. Without getting all frothing-at-the-mouth and indignant, if I can manage it.
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Date: 2002-02-04 10:01 am (UTC)You forgot the regular church attendance. I know, it's awful. Soon I'l throw out my last tie-dyed T-shirt and my old Birkenstocks, and my liberal friends won't even recognize me.
It still seems like an important counterpoint to make. Do you suppose someone will make it?
It's a counterpoint made more often in the AIDS press, where this kind of misdirection is harder to get away with, than in the mainstream press. After all, HIV drugs are a complicated subject, and (for example) it's unlikely that the Salon "Life" editor understands them.
I'll see if I can come up with a way of wording "Look, you forgot to mention to all these nice people you're hitting up for some pity that you had a chance at a second life with protease inhibitors, and you threw it away" that sounds a little less hard and unforgiving. The problem is that AIDS is such a cultural and moral bonanza of symbols: it's God's punishment, it serves you right for having such an immoral lifestyle, it's an outward sign of your inner awfulness. There's been a rightful backlash against that, but one that's gone a little too far - such that it's hard to criticize AIDS patients for anything at all without being seen as one of those nasty moralizers. Even when you're talking about blatantly obvious things, like "it's wrong to have unprotected sex if you're HIV-positive."
Okay. Maybe I'll work on it. Without getting all frothing-at-the-mouth and indignant, if I can manage it.