Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s
Details
Professor Batza will be presenting as part of "51 Years OUT!" on October 22 at 2 p.m. at the KU Commons - More information is available at the event website
Before Aids: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s (Part of Politics and Culture in Modern America Series)
By: Katie Batza
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s looms large in recent histories of sexuality, medicine, and politics, and justly so--an unknown virus without a cure ravages an already persecuted minority, medical professionals are unprepared and sometimes unwilling to care for the sick, and a national health bureaucracy is slow to invest resources in finding a cure.
Yet this widely accepted narrative, while accurate, creates the impression that the gay community lacked any capacity to address AIDS.
In fact, as Katie Batza demonstrates in this path-breaking book, there was already a well-developed network of gay-health clinics in American cities when the epidemic struck, and these clinics served as the first responders to the disease.
Before AIDS explores this heretofore unrecognized story, chronicling the development of a national gay health network by highlighting the origins of longstanding gay health institutions in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, placing them in a larger political context, and following them into the first five years of the AIDS crisis.
Like many other minority communities in the 1970s, gay men faced public health challenges that resulted as much from their political marginalization and social stigmatization as from any disease.
Gay men mistrusted mainstream health institutions, fearing outing, ostracism, misdiagnosis, and the possibility that their sexuality itself would be treated as a medical condition.
In response to these problems, a colorful cast of doctors and activists built a largely self-sufficient gay medical system that challenged, collaborated with, and educated mainstream health practitioners.
Taking inspiration from rhetoric employed by the Black Panther, feminist, and anti-urban renewal movements, and putting government funding to new and often unintended uses, gay health activists of the 1970s changed the medical and political understandings of sexuality and health to reflect the new realities of their own sexual revolution.
Hardcover; 192 pages
ISBN: 978-0812250138
About the Author
Katie Batza teaches in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Kansas.
Batza earned her doctorate in United States History from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 along with a graduate concentration in Work, Race, Gender, and the Urban World and a graduate certificate in Gender and Women's Studies.
Her research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States.
She is currently engaged with several research projects: a book project that explores the experiences of the early AIDS crisis in the Heartland, a walking tour and podcast project on reproductive justice in Boston, and a cross-disciplinary analysis of access to healthcare for gender non-conforming and disabled individuals.
Before AIDS was her first book. She also has published on the history of lesbians and the fertility industry, mapping queer health history, and neoliberalism.
She played an active role in the National Park Service’s LGBTQ initiative, contributing a chapter to the National Park Services LGBTQ theme study and co-founding a non-profit, Rainbow Heritage Network, that aids in identifying, preserving, and interpreting historic sites of particular meaning to the LGBTQ communities.
Praise for Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics In The 1970s...
"[A] highly compelling, important book . . .
Katie Batza's Before AIDS dramatically expands our portrait of the gay 1970s and of the relationships between gay liberation, the US state, and the politics of health.
Through three case studies and a tightly argued, absorbingly written analysis, Batza shows that health activism was central to gay politics well before the beginning of the AIDS epidemic."
—Journal of the History of Sexuality
"Well-conceived, deftly argued, and based on an impressive range of primary materials, oral interviews, and a good command of the secondary literature, Before AIDS brings fresh light and perspective to the wider field of the history of sexuality in the United States."
—Jonathan Bell, University College London
Before Aids: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s (Part of Politics and Culture in Modern America Series)
By: Katie Batza
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s looms large in recent histories of sexuality, medicine, and politics, and justly so--an unknown virus without a cure ravages an already persecuted minority, medical professionals are unprepared and sometimes unwilling to care for the sick, and a national health bureaucracy is slow to invest resources in finding a cure.
Yet this widely accepted narrative, while accurate, creates the impression that the gay community lacked any capacity to address AIDS.
In fact, as Katie Batza demonstrates in this path-breaking book, there was already a well-developed network of gay-health clinics in American cities when the epidemic struck, and these clinics served as the first responders to the disease.
Before AIDS explores this heretofore unrecognized story, chronicling the development of a national gay health network by highlighting the origins of longstanding gay health institutions in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, placing them in a larger political context, and following them into the first five years of the AIDS crisis.
Like many other minority communities in the 1970s, gay men faced public health challenges that resulted as much from their political marginalization and social stigmatization as from any disease.
Gay men mistrusted mainstream health institutions, fearing outing, ostracism, misdiagnosis, and the possibility that their sexuality itself would be treated as a medical condition.
In response to these problems, a colorful cast of doctors and activists built a largely self-sufficient gay medical system that challenged, collaborated with, and educated mainstream health practitioners.
Taking inspiration from rhetoric employed by the Black Panther, feminist, and anti-urban renewal movements, and putting government funding to new and often unintended uses, gay health activists of the 1970s changed the medical and political understandings of sexuality and health to reflect the new realities of their own sexual revolution.
Hardcover; 192 pages
ISBN: 978-0812250138
About the Author
Katie Batza teaches in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Kansas.
Batza earned her doctorate in United States History from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 along with a graduate concentration in Work, Race, Gender, and the Urban World and a graduate certificate in Gender and Women's Studies.
Her research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States.
She is currently engaged with several research projects: a book project that explores the experiences of the early AIDS crisis in the Heartland, a walking tour and podcast project on reproductive justice in Boston, and a cross-disciplinary analysis of access to healthcare for gender non-conforming and disabled individuals.
Before AIDS was her first book. She also has published on the history of lesbians and the fertility industry, mapping queer health history, and neoliberalism.
She played an active role in the National Park Service’s LGBTQ initiative, contributing a chapter to the National Park Services LGBTQ theme study and co-founding a non-profit, Rainbow Heritage Network, that aids in identifying, preserving, and interpreting historic sites of particular meaning to the LGBTQ communities.
Praise for Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics In The 1970s...
"[A] highly compelling, important book . . .
Katie Batza's Before AIDS dramatically expands our portrait of the gay 1970s and of the relationships between gay liberation, the US state, and the politics of health.
Through three case studies and a tightly argued, absorbingly written analysis, Batza shows that health activism was central to gay politics well before the beginning of the AIDS epidemic."
—Journal of the History of Sexuality
"Well-conceived, deftly argued, and based on an impressive range of primary materials, oral interviews, and a good command of the secondary literature, Before AIDS brings fresh light and perspective to the wider field of the history of sexuality in the United States."
—Jonathan Bell, University College London