#LGBTHM21 Post #5:

The shadows of two monoliths stretch across any history of sexual health and disease among gay men and other MSM in England and North America:
#HistMed

One is the systemic, community-threatening trauma of the AIDS epidemic, especially in the years before the introduction of highly active antiretrovial therapy in 1996. Activist Eric Rofes likened this period to “an unceasing series of traumatic events.” https://www.routledge.com/Reviving-the-Tribe-Regenerating-Gay-Mens-Sexuality-and-Culture-in-the/Rofes/p/book/9781560238768

The second is the extent to which earlier homophile and activists grappled with psychological and psychiatric discourses that pathologized same-sex attraction and behaviour and contributed to widespread homophobic stigma, shame, and loneliness.

A much-cited event in this story, usually framed as one of progress, was the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the mental disorders in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-II). https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=L-M9DwAAQBAJ&newbks

By comparison, a history focussing on STIs could very easily be viewed as far less important, even insignificant, especially since the “big two” – syphilis and gonorrhoea - became readily treatable once antibiotics became widely available from the 1940s onward.

With luck, the remainder of my posts this month will convince you otherwise!

By the way, I’ll be making a presentation on this history at the end of the month, offering an overview from the 1930s to the 1970s. I have my own ideas on what to include, but what would you like to know more about? https://twitter.com/Mceeves/status/1356192971901775873