Mad Ramblings

GOD ARREST YER MERRY GENTLEMEN, NME, 2003

(or the famous  “I used to take him to Arcadia and back” interview)

 The Libertines’ year has been scarred by crack, prison and burglary, so can they put their differences aside and enjoy an Albion Xmas together? Perhaps-if Carl’s dad doesn’t kill Pete first.

Christmas. A time of love, forgiveness and goodwill to all men. This year, nowhere in rock n roll have these principles been stretched further than in The Libertines. First there was the matter of Carl Barat throwing Pete Doherty out of the band. Then Pete burgled the flat Carl shared with his sister, thanks to a rampaging crack and heroin habit, and got six months in prison (reduced to two on appeal). All looked black until Pete was released. There to meet him at the prison gates was Carl, who welcomed him back into the band after a hugely touching reconciliation.

Since then, apart from a somewhat mysterious incident in which Carl got his face bashed in, the good ship Albion has sailed through calmer waters. The Libertines are currently recording their second album, including forthcoming single The Likely Lads, with ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. And here they all are together in an east London photo studio, singing along to Blondie and Billie Holiday, dressed as Dickensian gentlemen (apart from Pete, an urchin) and caning the brandy and beers.

There are still problems-Pete’s been disowned by his father and “issues” around the burglary haven’t entirely gone away-but there’s something heartwarming about the way The Libertines have stuck together, keeping the romance alive in the bleakest of circumstances. It’s a story Dickens himself would have tipped his hat to, a story of adventure and friendship, London and crime. A story of Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas future.

This is a request.

Learn your queer history. Learn about AIDS. Learn about how the leadership of this country looked away and did nothing to help our community for years. Learn about how they joked AIDS was god’s punishment for being gay. Learn about how, in the community, everyone was touched. Everyone lost someone. Learn how the AIDS crisis gave birth to the modern gay rights movement. Learn about how that crisis brought the community together after two decades of infighting. Lesbians took care of gay men who were dying. Found families were everywhere. Our history is too important to allow our politicians to sweep the horrible awful legacy of inaction under the rug. 

Learn about how bi men were blamed for the epidemic by both straight and gay people, and especially for its “leap” to those innocent straight people.

Learn about how Newsweek publicly blamed bi men for the epidemic in 1987, calling them “the ultimate pariahs” and “amoral and duplicitous and compulsive.” How Cosmo did the same two years later, promoting the popular stereotype of bi men as dishonest spreaders of AIDS.

Learn about how bisexual activists like David Lourea and Cynthia Slater were at the cutting edge of safer sex education, bringing it into bathhouses and BDSM clubs in San Francisco in 1981, when doctors were still calling it “a rare gay cancer”. Or like Alexei Guren, in Florida, organizing healthcare outreach to Latino married men who have sex with men.

Learn about how it took two years of campaigning to get even the San Francisco Department of Public Health to recognize bisexual men in their official AIDS statistics (the weekly “New AIDS cases and mortality statistics” report),

Learn about the women who got HIV, both cis and trans, who often had no resources or support. And the incredibly high risk trans women faced for HIV even in the late 1990s, and how difficult it still was for them to access healthcare.

Learn about how bisexual activists like Venetia Porter, of the Prostitute’s Union of Massachusetts and COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), were the ones who first advocated for both cis and trans women, and injection drug users, with AIDS.

Learn about how Cynthia Slater, who by then was HIV-positive, organized the first Women’s HIV/AIDS Information Switchboard in 1985.

Look up Ryan White, an 11-year-old boy who got HIV through a faulty blood transfusion in the days before reliable testing and was denied an education out of fear he’d infect other kids.

Do you know what AIDS was, in those dim days? My mom worked in a hospital. An AIDS patient was brought in and immediately put in the same isolation room they’d use for stuff like SARS, smallpox, and anthrax. Entering his room required that you enter another room first and take off all your clothes. A fresh set of scrubs would be given to you. Then you had to triple-glove, double-boot, double-mask, double-gown–yes, a surgical gown just to enter the room–and when you left you did all this in reverse and then got a decontaminant shower. Nobody knew how this disease was spread.

And the people. In charge. Did NOTHING.

Like off the cuff it’d seem like a random thing to bring up. Except she was a Head of State showing compassion and demanding it, when elected officials were pointing fingers going ‘Plague’.

And yes, also, that marriage rights for queer folk came about because of estranged parents and blood relatives swooping in to take all a couple had built together, because a partner, sometimes even a sick partner who needed funds for their OWN health, wasn’t ‘legally connected’.

It was supposed to be about protection, and then became about exclusion of certain parts of the community and respectability politics of others. Even when those same ‘fringes’ initially had been caretakers and support.

I want to make sure that everyone knows: People who have HIV/AIDS are not a danger to you. They are people. They are not contagious–you can not get HIV from kissing, daily contact, eating after someone, using the same toilet, etc. You can spend your entire life with someone who is HIV+ and unless you share blood of sexual fluid, there is 0% chance of infection. 

If you are undetectable, meaning you are HIV+ and on medication that has lowered your viral load to undetectable levels, it is statistically negligible for you to be able to transmit HIV to a partner.

If you do not know your status or your partner’s status, be careful and use a condom. 

2.1 million people were infected in 2015. 

1.1 million people died of AIDS related complications in 2015.

24% of all infections are between the ages of 13-24.

44% of HIV young people in the US do not know they are infected.

The highest number of increasing HIV infections is young Gay/Bisexual men of color.

Only 16% of young people with HIV are on medication and undetectable.

Only 22% of young adults have ever taken an HIV test.

Get tested. It is free and anonymous. Go once a year, be responsible. And don’t only care about HIV/AIDS when it is World AIDS Day. There is too much riding on staying knowledgable.

Silence=Death

UNAIDS: Source

So it may or may not be what she thinks black people are doing but it’s definitely what she’s doing.

this is not a new thing

transphobes

institutionalized racism

Don’t mess with a cosplayer. After her boss set up a new dress code banning ponytails and “cultural head wraps,” June J Rivas decided to protest by diping into her costume closet. There are so many more photos and awesome comment reactions.