#randy shilts

[jennamacaroni]

Later, everybody agreed the baths should have been closed sooner; they agreed health education should have been more direct and more timely.  And everybody also agreed blood banks should have tested blood sooner, and that a search for the AIDS virus should have been started sooner, and that scientists should have laid aside their petty intrigues.  Everybody subsequently agreed that the news media should have offered better coverage of the epidemic much earlier, and that the federal government should have done much, much more.  By the time everyone agreed to all this, however, it was too late. Instead, people died.  Tens of thousands of them.

Randy Shilts, “And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic”

#randy shilts #quotes #what i’m reading #and the band played on

[ano07]

#randy shilts #hiv #aids #aids pandemic #book review #books #am reading #open book #black and white photography #the journalist of castro street #randy shilts biography

[onebluebookworm]

30 Days of Literary Pride - June 3

And the Band Played On: People, Politics, and the AIDS Epidemic - Randy Shilts

#30 days of literary pride 2022 #30 days of literary pride #and the band played on #randy shilts

[narutosfrogwallet]

Extremely Unaesthetic Self Care Saturday

#personal #yes im drinking tea (yes thats tea shut up i know i use way too much creamer) out of a halloween mug #it's the biggest one we have and when i have tea i want a big ass jug of it. #this book is excellent btw. i wouldnt expect anything less from randy shilts

[allthepresidentsmen1976]

anyway it is still so insane and sad to me that "patient zero" was rly just made up by one journalist who probably just wanted to be a bit famous . like it's devastating it's a devastating thing to have made up, to have written a book about, to have put in the collective consciousness of something already terrifying and devastating . it's just a lot to think about yknow

#randy shilts was the guy who created the idea of gaëten dugas being 'patient zero' of the AIDS crisis <- for ppl who don't know

[disasterarea-podcast]

So given the writer’s strike, some people are concerned about their shows and movies being postponed or canceled, and aside from the fact networks have already BEEN canceling shows for no reason for years (I still maintain a healthy anger about what Netflix did to Sense8), I thought I would suggest some books on disasters you might want to read if you’re into that sort of history. Which you are if you’re here, I imagine.

Note: I’m suggesting these books because most books on disasters don’t get a huge audience, and so I recommend them because this sort of writing can be hard on the writer and requires a bunch of research. We throw so much money at true crime, we can spare a few bucks for the stories of people who died in disasters.

Also, please check with these with your local small bookstore or library. Amazon can be great, but let’s lend a hand to those who need us more.

Recommended books:

“The Circus Fire,” by Stewart O’Nan - This is one my favorite books on a disaster, because the whole thing creates a very vivid image of the circus prior to the fire in Hartford in July of 1944. There’s one specific line in the book which always makes me pause because it’s so affecting, about how everyone who escaped being able to hear the sounds of the animals screaming as they died - except all of the animals were out of the tent by then.

“The Only Plane in the Sky,” by Garrett Graff - This, I highly recommend you get on audiobook. It’s an oral history of the events of 9/11 with a full cast, and it’s incredibly affecting to listen to.

“Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic,” by Jennifer Niven - Ada Blackjack was a badass: flawed and weak at times, but hardy and steady when necessary. Half of her story is how she survived, but half is how she was exploited following her rescue. Both stories need to be known.

“Alive,” by Piers Paul Read - If you’re watching “Yellowjackets,” this should be required reading. If you’ve seen the movie adaptation from the 90s, there is WAY more you don’t know. The story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 is a tough read, but a worthy one.

“A Night to Remember,” by Walter Lord - This is to disaster nonfiction what “In Cold Blood” is to true crime. It’s not a long read, but it’s a great one. Lord had the advantage of writing the book while many of the Titanic survivors were still alive and could give a very good description of what they went through.

“Dying to Cross,” by Jorge Ramos - I recommend this not just because it is good, but because it is timely. Nineteen people died in an un-air-conditioned truck as they were attempting to make their way into the states from over the Mexican border. It’s a horrific story, and one that humanizes an issue for whom some people need to be faced with the humans involved and what they go through.

“Bath Massacre: America’s First School Bombing,” by Arnie Bernstein - Harold Schecter also wrote a very good book on the Bath school massacre called “Maniac,” but I have a preference for this version. It’s a good reminder that schools in the U.S. didn’t just become targets in the last twenty years or so.

“Into Thin Air,” by Jon Krakauer - I feel like this is a gimme, but it’s a fantastic book from someone who was actually on Mount Everest during the 1996 disaster and knew those involved very well. I happen to like Krakauer’s work anyway - I even like “Into the Wild” despite my feelings about McCandless and his legacy - but it’s understandably my favorite.

“And the Band Played On,” by Randy Shilts - The one thing I will say is that Shilts’ treatment of Gaetan Dugas is *rough* to say the least and outright wrong on some points, God knows. But it’s still an amazing book, and if you come out of it not wanting to dig up Reagan and punch him a bunch I’m impressed at your restraint.

“Triangle: The Fire That Changed America,” by David von Drehle - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is one of the disasters I am most interested in, and I would argue this is the definitive book on the subject. Also, if this book introduces you to both Clara Lemlich and Frances Perkins … I mean, talk about badass women.

“The Radium Girls,” by Kate Moore - Look, I’ll say this. If you know of the Radium Girls, this is a great book on their story. If you don’t know, go in blind and prepared to be horrified.

“Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine,” by Anne Applebaum - Ukraine has always been a target. During the Holodomor, they were victims of one of the worst genocides in history.

“Midnight in Chernobyl,” by Adam Higginbotham - Like the miniseries? This is a great source for more information for what happened at Chernobyl and all of the ass-covering involved.

"Boston Strong: A City's Triumph Over Tragedy," by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge - If you’re interested in the Boston marathon bombing, I really thought this book did a good job of connecting the stories of the victims, the authorities searching for the killers, and the killers themselves.

“Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Tower,” by Peter Apps - As I understand it, Apps did a lot of covering the Grenfell Tower fire for the British press, and it shows. He provides a mountain of information, and you will come out of reading this book absolutely LIVID about what authorities allowed to happen in Grenfell and so many other council estates in the UK.

“Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919,” by Stephen Puleo - I feel as though the molasses flood gets treated like a joke a lot of the time, but y’all, twenty people died. That area of Boston was *wrecked*. The photos of the devastation are terrifying. Puleo treats all of this with the proper respect it deserves.

“In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” by Nathaniel Philbrick - Forget the movie. Read the book.

“The Great Influenza,” by John M. Barry - Want to read about the 1918 flu epidemic? Want to be mad that a hundred years later we didn’t learn a damn thing?

Now, that’s just a start. If anyone wants, I can always post photos of my disaster book collection on Kindle and next to my recording desk. Or if there’s a specific disaster you’re interested in, I may know of a good book about it you can read.

But just remember if SAG and the directors’ guild joins the strike too - there is so much out there to occupy your time until they come back. Entertainment work is work, and it deserves to be supported financially and fairly as such. Rock on, WGA. ✊

[unpretty]

hi kitty! would you mind listing a few of your favorite non-fiction books? any subject is fine, im just interested in expanding my horizons a little and some of the non-fiction you've mentioned has sounded very interesting. thank you! :)

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko

Sandy Hook by Elizabeth Williamson

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

Supreme Inequality by Adam Cohen

Never Caught by Erica Dunbar

A Libertarian Walked Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein (this is kind of the second in a trilogy but i liked it the best of the three, totally recommend reading all of them tho)

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman

Subversives by Seth Rosenfeld

Bag Man by Rachel Maddow

The Feather Thief by Kirk Johnson

Zealot by Reza Aslan

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

American Apocalypse by Matthew Sutton

#original #book recs

[vaspider]

yeah, my bad, that was incredibly vague. specifically I'm mostly interested in the aids crisis, but again, I'd like to avoid any overly sanitized sources if I can

I'm not actually sure why I sent you specifically that ask in the first place? I can find my own research just fine haha. thank you for the help but feel free to just delete my earlier ask!

It's okay! That's just a huge category.

I would start with And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts. It tracks the discovery and spread of AIDS/HIV. Shilts was gay & died from complications of AIDS 7 years after the book's publication in 1987.

We Both Laughed In Pleasure, the journals of Lou Sullivan, covers his diagnosis and death from AIDS, though that's a tertiary part of the journals in relation to his life as a trans man.

If you're looking for media, there's a movie made from And The Band Played On, but I haven't watched it in a very long time. Pose is a very good fictional depiction of a lot of things, and one of the things it's quite good about is its depiction of the AIDS crisis.

That's just the first couple of things that came to mind.

#AIDS crisis #AIDS #hiv

[lgbtqreads]

Hi! I'm working towards creating a queered adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, which at the moment I'm planning on setting during the AIDS crisis either in America or the UK, and I want to be able to do as thorough an adaptation as I can. Do you have any recommendations for non-fiction books on the history of HIV/AIDS and the AIDS crisis, queer history in general in these locations, butch-femme dynamics or on butchness as an identity/presentation and its history? Histories looking at Scotland specifically would also be very useful because nowhere I've checked online seems to have any recommendations, and books that look at queer women's history alongside queer men's history or how these communities mixed and supported one another would be more useful than books looking just at men's history. Any books specifically focusing on queer doctors and politicians, and on the women who nursed men dying from AIDS would be especially appreciated. If there's anyone or anywhere you think would be another good source of advice that is also appreciated!

Thank you!

Here are a few books that address your questions, though Scotland is still a question mark for me:

How to Survive a Plague by David France

It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic by Jack Lowery

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles by Eric C. Wat

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … February 22

1732 – George Washington, First President of the United States (d.1799); His stance on homosexuality, which at the time was punishable drastically throughout the colonies, was noticeably — even dramatically — relaxed in comparison to many of his cohorts. His personal correspondence and diaries bear this out.

Washington's letters state that he was less than thrilled with marital life ("not much fire between the sheets") and preferred the company of men — particularly the young Alexander Hamilton, whom he made his personal secretary — to that of women, as his letters attest. His concern for his male colleagues clearly extended to their personal lives. This was especially true of Hamilton, who he brought with him to Valley Forge, giving Hamilton a cabin to share with his then-lover, John Laurens, to whom Hamilton had written passionate love letters which are still extant.

Washington's passion was reserved for his work and for the men with whom he served closely, notably Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette. When Hamilton was a young soldier — later to be made Secretary of the Treasury by Washington — he was engaged in relationships with other men, as love letters he sent during the Revolutionary War prove.

Historians assert that passionate same-sex friendships were normative in the 18th century. At the same time, however, sodomy and open homosexuality were punishable by imprisonment, castration and even death, both in and out of the military.

While some have tried to make the case for Washington being gay predicated on his special friendships, there's nothing in his papers that could be considered proof. However, if nothing more, Washington was certainly gay-friendly.

The most succinct evidence for this was Washington's clear "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy when it came to same-sex coupling among his regiments at Valley Forge.

Renowned gay historian Randy Shilts makes the case for Washington's ever-pragmatic as well as compassionate approach to same-sex relationships in "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military."

Shilts details how Washington merely signed the order for discharge of a soldier caught in flagrante with another soldier, and suggests that if Lt. Col. Aaron Burr had not forced the issue, the soldier might have remained at Valley Forge instead of being the first documented case of a discharge for homosexuality in the Continental Army on March 15, 1778 at Valley Forge.

The soldier was court-martialed by Burr, but that was the extent of it. Washington did not flog him, imprison him or, as Jefferson had required as part of Virginia law as punishment for sodomy, have him castrated. Washington could even have had the soldier executed. He did none of these things. The soldier just walked away.

What makes this so stunning and an irrefutable proof of Washington's leniency on homosexuality in the military is the context. When Lt. Gotthold Frederick Enslin was drummed out of the corps (literally, because being discharged dishonorably from the military was a dramatic affair that included a solemn drum beat, a tearing of the uniform and a breaking of the sword over the head of the discharged soldier) for homosexuality, it seems that Washington signed the order for discharge more because the case involved fraternization below rank. According to military documents, Enslin had been caught having sexual relations with a private - John Monhart – by Ensign Anthony Maxwell, and Washington frowned upon fraternization among the ranks. Monhart was neither court-martialed nor discharged.

That Washington normally looked the other way with same-sex couples is most obvious in his dealings with Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian military genius he enlisted to help him at Valley Forge. Von Steuben arrived two weeks before Enslin's discharge and arrived with his young French assistant, Pierre Etienne Duponceau, who was presumed to be his lover, in tow, making Enslin's subsequent discharge ironic.

Von Steuben is perhaps the best-known gay man in American military history. Although his sexual orientation is rarely mentioned, his role in winning the Revolutionary War was incomparable and second only to Washington's own. But Von Steuben came to Valley Forge as a known homosexual: he had been implicated in relationships with boys and young men and had been expelled from the court of Frederick the Great for homosexual behavior and was on the verge of being prosecuted when he left Germany for France.

Von Steuben's relationship with Washington was close and there were no conflicts with Washington over von Steuben's sleeping arrangements at Valley Forge with his young Frenchman, Duponceau.

Over the decades of his military service, Washington spent his most emotional and life-altering time with other men. He certainly knew of the relationships between Hamilton and Laurens, von Steuben and Duponceau and yet brought none of them up on charges and historical record confirms that these men were indeed lovers.

1857 – The first Boy Scout, Lord Baden Powell was born (d.1941). The British Army lieutenant-general, Baron and writer is considered the founder of the International Scouting Movement through the publication of his book "Scouting for Boys", published in 1908. Scouting is usually considered to have started on 1 August 1907 with a camp run by Robert Baden-Powell on Brownsea Island. Thereafter Baden-Powell began promoting Scouting in Britain, and Scouting for Boys, the first Scout handbook, appeared in six fortnightly installments in a boys' magazine starting in January 1908. Boys began forming Scout patrols and flooding Baden-Powell with requests for assistance. The Scouting movement developed rapidly from here, first through the British Empire, and shortly afterwards around the world.

Robert Baden-Powell's sexuality has been brought into question by his principal modern biographers, who have found a great deal of evidence indicating he was attracted to youthful men and to boys. While early biographies of Robert Baden-Powell tended towards sanctifying him, two important modern biographies, by Michael Rosenthal of Columbia University and professional biographer Tim Jeal, have reached the conclusion that he was probably a repressed homosexual. Baden-Powell "...consistently praised the male body when naked. At Gilwell Park, the Scouts' camping ground in Epping Forest, he always enjoyed watching the boys swimming naked, and would sometimes chat with them after they had just 'stripped off.'"

Jeal cites a revealing account by Baden-Powell of a visit to Charterhouse, his old public school, where he stayed with a bachelor teacher and housemaster who had taken large numbers of nude photographs of his pupils. Baden-Powell's diary entry reads: "Stayed with Tod. Tod's photos of naked boys and trees. Excellent." In a subsequent communication to Tod regarding starting up a Scout troop at the school, Baden-Powell mentions an impending return visit and adds: "Possibly I might get a further look at those wonderful photographs of yours." (According to R. Jenkyns, the album contained nude boys in "contrived and artificial" poses.) However Jeal also shows that paintings of nude boys were regarded as art, being hung in the Royal Academy each year without causing particular stir. Also Tod's photo's were accepted by parents and school authorities until the sixties, when they were destroyed.

Baden-Powell's admiration of the male body was physical, as being the best example of the beauty of nature, and with that of God, the creator: "A clean young man in his prime of health and strength is the finest creature God has made in the world." As an example he told about some Swazi chiefs with whom he met with some gymnastic instructors. The chiefs were not fully satisfied until they had had the men stripped and had examined themselves their muscular development. Baden-Powell himself did not write about or draw (he was a good amateur-artist) males in an erotic sense.

At age fifty-five Baden-Powell married twenty-three-year-old Olave St Clair Soames. Olave "altered her appearance to suit him, flattening her breasts and shearing her hair." Shortly after the marriage Baden-Powell began to suffer from agonizing headaches: these left him abruptly two years after the birth of their third child when he began sleeping apart from his wife: "With every hint of sex removed from a relationship he could get on reasonably well with women."

1924 – Sir John Richardson (d.2019) was a British art historian and Picasso biographer. He was once the lover of art collector Douglas Cooper.

Richardson was the elder son of Sir Wodehouse Richardson, founder of Army & Navy Stores. When he was thirteen he became a boarder at Stowe school, where he was taught something about the work of Picasso and other innovative painters.

At the beginning of WWII, when he was called up, he obtained a position in the Irish Guards, but almost immediately contracted rheumatic fever and was invalided out of the army. During this period he met and made friends with Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, both of whom portrayed him later. He worked as an industrial designer before becoming a reviewer for The New Observer.

In 1949 he became acquainted with art historian and collector Douglas Cooper, with whom he would share his life for the next ten years.

In 1952, he moved to southern France (Provence) in 1952 with Douglas Cooper to Cooper's newly-acquired Château de Castille in the vicinity of Avignon and they transformed the run-down castle into a private museum of early Cubism. Cooper had been at home in the Paris art scene before World War II and had been active in the art business as well; by building his own collection, he also met many artists personally and introduced them to his friend. Richardson became a close friend of Picasso, Léger and de Staël as well. Back then he developed an interest in Picasso's portraits and contemplated creating a publication; more than 20 years later, these plans expanded into his four-part Picasso biography A Life of Picasso, whose last volume has not yet been published.

In 1960, Richardson left Cooper and moved to New York, where he organized a nine-gallery Picasso retrospective in 1962 and a Braque retrospective in 1964. Christie's then appointed him to open their US office, which he ran for the next nine years.

In 1999, 15 years after Cooper's death, Richardson published his biography (The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Picasso, Provence, und Douglas Cooper).

Besides working on his Picasso biography, he has been a contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

Richardson was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to art.

Richardson died in New York City on 12 March 2019, at the age of 95.

1926 – The actor, raconteur, and writer Kenneth Williams was beloved by the British public as much for his outrageously camp persona as for his considerable comedic gifts. (d.1988)

British audiences had long tolerated gay stereotypes in comedy but Williams "pushed the envelope," especially on radio, at a time when homosexuality was only just becoming acceptable to a wider public. His popularity on chat and game shows—where he often displayed a highly amusing, acidulous, and somewhat hysterical temperament—could also be said to have helped to widen general acceptance of non-straight behavior.

The son of a London hairdresser, Williams was born on February 22, 1926. He studied lithography before the war, but was evacuated during the blitz. He performed briefly with the Tavistock Players, an amateur dramatic troupe, but was inducted into the army in 1944. He began his professional performing career in Singapore just after World War II, as a member of Combined Services Entertainments.

In 1948, having returned to Britain, he embarked on a career that would encompass theater, film, cabaret, television, and radio. After a spell in repertory theater, Williams enjoyed critical acclaim as the Dauphin in a London production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (1954) and popular success in three celebrated revues, commencing with Share My Lettuce in 1957.

Williams's vocal talents brought him fame through two classic comedy radio shows of the 1950s and early 1960s: Hancock's Half Hour and Beyond Our Ken.

Especially memorable, considering prevailing attitudes to homosexuality at the time, were the "Julian and Sandy" sketches. Here, Williams played Julian to the actor Hugh Paddick's Sandy: a pair of screaming queens who burbled on cheerfully and provocatively in the gay argot polari to a middle-class audience of millions.

Beginning with Carry On Sergeant in 1958 and continuing through the late 1970s, he appeared in 26 of the slapstick, innuendo-filled "Carry On" films. In these he played characters that were, to a degree that varied from film to film, camp, knowing, and sarcastic. The "Carry On" films stereotyped him as a campy queen and eventually limited his career.

He befriended Joe Orton who wrote the role of Inspector Truscott in Loot (1966) for him and enjoyed holidays with Orton and Kenneth Halliwell in Morocco.

A gifted actor, Williams periodically attempted to play roles more challenging than the campy ones with which he was associated, but audiences seemed uncomfortable with this. His turn as Inspector Truscott in the original production of Orton's Loot (1965) was not well received by the audiences to whom he had become a household name.

Williams was homosexual by inclination but avoided sexual relationships. From his astonishingly frank diaries (published posthumously), it seems clear that he felt safer with the satisfaction afforded by masturbation rather than in an encounter with someone else.

By turns outrageous and conservative, he was plagued by disgust for what he considered to be typical gay lifestyles (promiscuous, disordered, camp, in some way sinful) and admired heterosexual family life. He wrote in his diaries of wanting to find his perfect companion, but carefully avoided involvement with any possible candidates.

Despite the ambiguity he felt about his sexuality, Williams supported the Albany Trust, which aimed to decriminalize sexual relationships between consenting male adults, a reform that was not adopted until 1967.

On April 15, 1988, he was found dead in his London flat. He had taken an overdose of barbiturate washed down with alcohol. The coroner recorded an open verdict on Williams' death.

1932 – Senator and longtime Gay rights ally Ted Kennedy was born on this date. (d.2009) Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in November 1962, he was elected nine times and served for 46 years in the U.S. Senate. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate, and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy was not only one of the biggest advocates of LGBT rights in the U.S. Senate, (he received ratings of 100 percent from the Human Rights Campaign indicating that he voted in support of equality for LGBT persons) Kennedy was also one of the earliest. In 1971, two years after Stonewall, Kennedy stated his support of laws banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Kennedy was also a supporter of same-sex marriage and was one of the fourteen senators to vote against the anti-Gay "Defense of Marriage Act" in 1996. He also voted against the proposed "Federal Marriage Amendment" in 2004 and 2006.

1966 – Aiden Shaw (born Aiden Finbar Brady) is a British author, musician, model and former gay porn star.

Shaw was born in Harrow, London, on 22 February 1966, the sixth of seven children in an Irish Catholic family. At 14, he began dressing in an "alternative" way, taking an interest in the New Romantic, Punk, & Goth fashion/youth culture scenes that were prominent at that time. At 16 he enrolled on a two-year Creative Arts foundation course at Nelson and Colne College. Then he spent two years at Manchester Youth Theatre. Afterwards he embarked on an Expressive Arts degree at the then Brighton Polytechnic (now University of Brighton), but after only a year he transferred to Harrow College of Higher Education to study Film, Television, Photography & Video. After leaving college he worked for a time directing and art-directing music videos for bands such as Peter Hook's (bass player of New Order) off-shoot project Dead Beat.

Changing his last name, Shaw began working in gay porn in the early 1990s. Since then he has appeared in over 50 films, often working with director Chi-Chi LaRue. In 1991, he won the award for Best Newcomer at the Adult Erotic Gay Video Awards. He retired from the porn industry in 1999 though made a brief reappearance in 2003-04.

In 1991, Shaw collaborated with the New York artist Mark Beard to produce a limited edition publication named Aiden. Beard had been sharing a London flat with Shaw at the time. The book included several portraits (mainly nude and semi-nude) of Shaw, with text written by Beard and Shaw (who at that time was still known by his birth name of Aiden Brady).

The book documents Mark Beard’s experience of living with Aiden, a male prostitute he met while working in London as a set designer. It consists of Beard’s text, his intimate—sometimes explicit—photographs of Aiden, and Aiden’s own words, interwoven Rashomon-like to reveal the coinciding ties and disconnects between sex and desire.

However, it was not until 1996 that Shaw wrote his first novel, Brutal. Also in 1996, The Bad Press published a collection of his poems, If Language at the Same Time Shapes and Distorts our Ideas and Emotions, How do we Communicate Love? He wrote two more novels; Boundaries (1997) and Wasted (2001), and an autobiography, My Undoing (2006) in which he openly discusses his life in the sex industry as a porn star and as a prostitute, his drug addiction (particularly crystal meth), and his HIV status (Shaw was diagnosed HIV positive in 1997). In 2007, Shaw completed an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University of London, following which he completed a second autobiography, Sordid Truths (2009).

Shaw wrote and produced two albums of music, performing lead vocals on "Whatever" with his band of the same name. He also produced performance artist Nina Silvert on "Nina Silvert does Aiden Shaw".

In 2011, Shaw trained to become a qualified English teacher. He also modelled for GQ magazine in Berlin. It was in this publication that he was spotted by and signed to Success Models in Paris. He currently resides in Barcelona.

1981 – Daniel Choi is a former American infantry officer in the United States Army who served in combat in the Iraq war during 2006-2007. He became an LGBT rights activist following his coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show in March 2009 and publicly challenged America's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which forbade lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) service members from serving openly.

Choi is a native of Orange County, California, the son of a Korean-American Baptist minister. Choi was very active with extracurriculars during his high school years. He served as student body president, was on the varsity swim team, and was the marching band drum major. During his senior year, after watching Saving Private Ryan, he decided to attend West Point.

Choi graduated from West Point in 2003 with degrees in Arabic and environmental engineering. Choi served as an infantry officer in Iraq with the 10th Mountain Division in 2006 and 2007. In June 2008, he transferred from active duty Army to the New York National Guard. He served as a National Guardsman with the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry, based in Manhattan.

Choi received a discharge letter following his coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show. In response, Choi penned an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama and the United States Congress. In the letter, Choi challenged the morality and wisdom of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, writing that the policy is "a slap in the face to me. It is a slap in the face to my soldiers, peers and leaders who have demonstrated that an infantry unit can be professional enough to accept diversity, to accept capable leaders, to accept skilled soldiers."

Despite his appeal and a Courage Campaign petition signed by almost 162,000 people, on June 30, 2009, a panel of New York National Guard officers recommended that Choi be discharged from the military. As of February 2010, Choi was serving again in his National Guard reserve unit, the discharge having not yet been "finalized". On June 29, 2010, Choi's discharge was finalized.

Since Choi's coming out, 38 West Point alumni also came out and announced the formation of Knights Out, an organization of West Point alumni who support the rights of LGBT soldiers to serve openly. Choi was one of the founding members and is the spokesperson for the group. The organization offers "to help their alma mater educate future Army leaders on the need to accept and honor the sacrifices of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender troops."

Choi has also spoken at numerous gay rights events, including a march in Los Angeles following the California Supreme Court's affirmation of Proposition 8. On May 27, 2009, he addressed a demonstration of gay activists outside the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where President Barack Obama was speaking at a Democratic National Committee fund raising event. In addition, Choi spoke at the 2009 Pride Rally in New York City and served as a Grand Marshal alongside Knights Out in San Francisco's 2009 Gay Pride Parade.

In February 2010 Choi was selected to be a Grand Marshal of the 41st Annual New York LGBT Pride March by its producers, Heritage of Pride. At the event, Choi led the Pledge of Allegiance at the New York City Council Chambers.

On March 18, 2010, Choi and another ousted military officer, Capt. Jim Pietrangelo, handcuffed themselves to the fence of the White House. They were eventually removed with the use of a master handcuff key and arrested. Choi and Pietrangelo were initially set to be tried for "failure to obey a lawful order" on April 26, 2010. Trial was postponed until July 14, at which time the charges against both men were dropped.

On April 20, 2010, Choi and Pietrangelo again participated in a self-chaining protest on the White House fence with Petty Officer Larry Whitt, Petty Officer (Rtd.) Autumn Sandeen, Cadet Mara Boyd and Cpl. Evelyn Thomas. All six were removed with a master hand-cuff key and arrested

On October 12, 2010, U.S. federal judge Virginia Phillips ordered the Department of Defense to stop enforcing "don't ask, don't tell". On October 19, Judge Phillips further refused a federal government request to stay the order pending appeal. That same day, Dan Choi went to the Times Square recruiting station in New York to rejoin the U.S. Army. His request is "in process."

Following the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" by Congress, Choi was present at the U.S. Interior Department to attend President Obama's signing of the bill on December 22, 2010.

On May 28, 2011, Choi was among a number of both Russian and foreign activists who were arrested by Moscow police when Moscow Pride was held in spite of a ban by city authorities.

1982 – Kimball Allen is an American writer, journalist, playwright, and actor. He is the author of two autobiographical one-man plays: Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon (2012) and Be Happy Be Mormon (2014). The latter premiered at Theatre Row in Manhattan on September 24 and 27, 2014, as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival. Allen also hosts the recurring Triple Threat w/ Kimball Allen, a 90-minute variety talk show at The Triple Door in Seattle.

Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon is an autobiographical one-man play written and performed by Kimball Allen. In it, Allen reenacts the circumstances of his life that led him from a Mormon childhood through a life of addiction and, eventually, arrest.

Allen was born and grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho, a religious, conservative region, and he was one of eight children in an orthodox Mormon family. Even when he was small, Allen's strict Mormon parents were concerned by what they perceived as unusual behavior and mannerisms on his part, and his mother preemptively warned him, "Boys don't kiss boys."

At the age of 13, Allen was raped by an older man who befriended him at a mall. To cope with this trauma, which he could not tell anyone about, he surreptitiously turned to alcohol, and eventually drugs. He began living a double life – a devout Mormon on the surface, and underneath a teen struggling with his sexual orientation, the rape trauma, and his growing addictions.

Allen's family moved to Utah, the most heavily Mormon state in the U.S., when he was in his junior year of high school. Allen came out to his parents as gay when he was 19. His parents responded that they couldn't support him in that capacity and that they were repulsed by him. According to Allen, coming out as gay in the Mormon community was "committing social suicide", and he has also written that "I grew up gay in a loving, supportive Mormon family. When I came out, that love and support disappeared."

In adulthood, Allen's drug addictions spiraled further into cocaine, acid, and E, and eventually into a shopping addiction which led him to crave the high of larger and larger purchases. Given responsibility for a corporate credit card, he accidentally used it for a small expense of his own in 2010, and then started addictively embezzling the company's funds for luxuries via the card. The missing funds, totalling around $70,000, were noticed in 2011, and Allen landed in jail awaiting trial. He went through detox in the jail cell, and out of desperation began journal writing to make sense of how he ended up in that situation.

After admitting to his crimes and making reparations, coming to terms with his addictions, and realizing he needed help, Allen continued his journaling during his recovery process. A coherent narrative eventually took shape, and the self-examination eventually became a script, with the additional help of many hours viewing home videos of himself as a child.

The completed play, Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon, premiered in Kansas City in the summer of 2012. It has also run in Honolulu and San Diego.

Allen's second one-man play, the one-hour Be Happy Be Mormon, premiered at Theatre Row in Manhattan on September 24, 2014, as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival, and due to the sold-out premiere it had a second performance on September 27. It previewed on September 4 and 5, 2014 in Seattle. It is described as "A voyeuristic look into the childhood of a Bambi-loving vegetarian, ballet slipper-wearing, Diet Coke-drinking gay Mormon Boy Scout." The play relates his upbringing "as a fabulous black sheep" in a Mormon family he doesn't relate to, through "colorful narration, private home movies, songs, dance and the occasional acrobatics".

Allen lived for many years in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. In addition to his writing, performing, and gay activism, he is a media and PR representative specializing in arts and entertainment. Until March 2015, he was also the aquatics director of Seattle's Meredith Mathews East Madison YMCA. He married Scott Wells in October 2016. As of late 2017, they live in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is an Eagle Scout.

2000 – James Chukwueze Obialor, popularly known as James Brown, is a Nigerian internet personality, dancer and cross dresser who was noted in 2018 following a viral video in which he said the phrase "They did not caught me" following an arrest by the police. He was arrested alongside 46 others for being allegedly gay and spent a month at the Ikoyi Correctional Facility. The case against him was later dismissed by a court.

James Brown released a single titled "Hey Dulings" in 2021 after a catchphrase he uses to address his fans on social media.

He claims to have been infected with HIV at birth.

2009 – On this date Dustin Lance Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his work on "Milk."

On accepting the award Black said:

"I want to thank my mom who has always loved me for who I am, even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the Gay and Lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches or by the government or by their families that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours." (Wild applause from the audience.)

[gothicprep]

feels so strange to be somewhat defensive of james somerton (insofar as i don’t think there’s a meaningful difference between youtube plagiarism and content aggregation) when, frankly, i find many of the positions he holds about gay life to be wrongheaded and bordering on offensive. bit of a strange bedfellows moment for me.

like, personally, i think he was completely wrong to call marriage a “bourgeois value” in his bad gays video. even if he didn’t write this argument himself, he certainly co-signs it. and I might just being saying this because I’m a bit matrimony-pilled, but the tax breaks are nice, and it’s valuable that your partner has power of attorney if, god forbid, something happens to one of you. marriage was a very pragmatic thing for gay activists to focus on, because you can easily make a conservative argument in favor of it. you know how conservatives are, they love their institutions.

I’ve sort of lost the plot and have just started to ramble now, but if you’re interested in a case study of intra-gay politics, I’d recommend randy shilts’s “and the band played on”. maybe recommend is the wrong word because it’s kind of. um. a scary book. it’s a piece of investigative journalism and one of the main contentions is nascent HIV researchers saying “this is sexually transmitted. we need to shut down the bathhouses” and gay leadership dismissing this as a baseless moral panic. it’s a cautionary tale about how taking the most progressive position isn’t always the correct move. it’s a lot of things. all tethered to my distaste for the “bad gays” video.

[jennamacaroni]

By the time President Reagan had delivered his first speech on the epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease; 20,849 had died.

Randy Shilts, “And the Band Played On:  Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic”

#randy shilts #quotes #what i’m reading #and the band played on #fuck reagan forever

[eltonjohndenver]

thats right im back (hopefully i will remember to that im back)

because i know everyone is dying to have updates i will list my current interests (i know that everyone who would care about this already knows bcs discord but whatever) also wtf tumblr interface all whack now

Musac

City of New Orleans- johnny denny

Space Oddity

TV

ive been watching a probably unhealthy amount of Air Disasters recently which has resulted in me havign terrible dreams

rewatch of Detectorists

random Friends eps

I finally watched The Bear

Movies (Letterboxd: amloth)

Watched the Celluloid Closet last night (finally)

I have so many on my watchlist but AD calls to me in the twilight hours

Books (Storygraph: amloth)

Conduct Unbecoming: A History of Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts (incredible)

i also read a bunch of older stephen king books in december

slay bye

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

The Stonewall Reader edited by The New York Public Library

goodreads

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, presented by The Publishing TriangleTor.com , Best Books of 2019 (So Far)Harper’s Bazaar , The 20 Best LGBTQ Books of 2019The Advocate , The Best Queer(ish) Non-Fiction Tomes We Read in 2019June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.

Mod opinion: I haven't heard of this collection before, but it sounds like an interesting look at queer history.

#the stonewall reader #new york public library #polls #trans books #trans lit #trans literature #lgbt books #lgbt lit #lgbt literature #anthology #essays #nonfiction #history #politics

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

Among the writers who took non-"politically correct" positions on AIDS was the late Randy Shilts, whose best-selling book 'And the Band Played On' is a chilling exploration of the political irresponsibility, based on fears of offending the organized gay lobby, that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths before the most elementary public health measures were taken to reduce the spread of AIDS. No doubt he too would have been called "homophobic" if he were not himself an avowed homosexual who later died of AIDS.

Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed

#- HK #history #Thomas Sowell #respublica #sexuality #x #Haiqueue!!

[likehephaestionwhodied]

I'm still so upset about "Trans women of color throwing bricks at cops gave me my right to marry other men"

The conflation of Queer Liberation and the gay rights movement is so fucking annoying and it's mostly done by "know your history" assholes who don't know their history.

Stonewall was the catalyst for Queer Liberation. Over simplified queer lib is very "we're here, we're queer fuck you." Which is not to say that the queer liberation movement didn't care about the rights of queer folks. But in the 70s it was a lot of "gay people have the right to not be fired from their school teacher job." (that's history y'all need to know, Anita Bryant and the campaign to kick out gay people from schools) I'm not saying no one was floating the idea of gay marriage but it wasn't at the top of the docket.

And then the AIDS Crisis starts.

You'll see lots of people say that the fight for gay marriage came from the fact that people were dying and their life partners did not have the same legal rights granted to heterosexual couples. This is only part of the truth.

Being gay in the 70s was by no means easy. But if you're an upper middle class cis white gay man, it's doable, especially if you have a job that might not care as much. That means that these men essentially have all the rights and privileges of other upper middle class white guys, the world is built of them. Their whiteness and their maleness protects them.

But then when a bunch of them start dying, and the risk of death is linked to their being gay? They lose the protection of their white maleness. For the first time these men had to fight for themselves. And you get a very specific breed of gay men. Men who had not been involved in Queer Liberation are suddenly becoming activists. And they're VERY loud. Larry Kramer is one of these men.

Men like Larry Kramer and Randy Shilts blame gay men for AIDS, suggesting they should be more monogamous. They should be more like heterosexuals, and they should have spent less time fucking each other (they REALLY hated folks into fisting) and should have fought for their rights, things like gay marriage. Again these are men who were NOT activists before.

Some of the strongest and loudest activists for gay marriage early on were heteronormative gay men who were scared because their white privilege couldn't save them from AIDS. These men, along with the ongoing AIDS Crisis help put an end to the Queer Liberation movement. Instead of "you must accept us as we are" we see a shift in activism to "let us prove we are just like you" Randy Shilts goes on to push really hard for allowing gay folks in the armed forces.

I'm not saying gay marriage is a bad thing. I'm saying it's fucking telling that white gay men will point to trans women of color and say "they did the work" when in fact much of the work was done to distance white gay men from trans women of color.

#I don't think anyone will read this all #but I had to tell someone #bc i spent all day at work thinking abou tit #not letting anyone reblog bc I don't wanna deal with all that