Reviews tagging 'Outing'

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

3 reviews

abelh's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Lesbophobia, Outing, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

pmhandley's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

4.0

Reading this book in the time of COVID is unsurprisingly prescient. So much rings familiar. The unpreparedness, the underreported case counts, the general selfishness where people refuse to change their behavior while the government bungles messaging on public health. This is also one of the few books I've read of this length that actually needed to be this long. It does a great job of portraying its subjects as complicated humans and as people largely doing the best they could without the clarity that comes with hindsight. As bad as I already thought the Reagan administration was around AIDS, somehow, it was even worse. While frustrating to watch people push back on testing and and closing the bathhouses, it's easy to see why an administration so steeped in the Christian right and homophobia was not to be trusted and why even effective public health measures would be suspect. It's sad to think how many lives could have been saved if rampant homophobia had not existed at the time, or stigma around intravenous drug users and sex work. Things like closing bathhouses and starting HIV testing campaigns would have been less controversial. I was also unaware how much stupid scientific infighting had existed and how much it held up research. People were dying and transfusion AIDS was being dismissed as a possibility while countries fought over whose scientists got to claim discovery and the French scientists ultimately got shorted. Admittedly I did cringe a little at some of the dated language. The general tone in which "Africa" is spoken about is ignorant sounding. "Prostitute" is used widely since "sex worker" was obviously not in wide usage in 1987. Generally, the book is is very Western-centered, which makes sense given the time and what information was available.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Terminal illness

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Drug use, Hate crime, Medical content, and Outing

usually_sleep_deprived's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Lesbophobia, Outing, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism