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Before AIDS

Gay Health Politics in the 1970s

Katie Batza

$96.95   $82.11

Hardback

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English
University of Pennsylvania Press
20 March 2018
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.
By:  
Imprint:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
ISBN:   9780812250138
ISBN 10:   0812250133
Series:   Politics and Culture in Modern America
Pages:   192
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Primary
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
List of Abbreviations Preface Introduction. Fighting Epidemics and Ignorance Chapter 1. Reimagining Gay Liberation Chapter 2. Beyond Gay Liberation Chapter 3. Gay Health Harnesses the State Chapter 4. Redefining Gay Health Chapter 5. The Gay Health Network Meets AIDS Epilogue. AIDS and the State Enmeshed Notes Index Acknowledgments

Katie Batza teaches in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Kansas.

Reviews 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."" * <i>Journal of the History of Sexuality</i> * ""Batza charts new ground in an accomplished debut monograph by tracking the diverse paths that gay health activism followed in the United States during the 1970s. Building up from three case studies of community-based clinics in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, she succeeds in painting a nuanced picture of the development and trajectory of gay health activism—and American gay liberation more generally—during a decade more commonly cast as an era of easy 'promiscuity.'"" * Journal of Social History * ""Before AIDS makes significant contributions to our understanding of the social construction of health and medicine, medical homophobia, health care activism, sex and sexuality, the history of medicine and health care, and the history of HIV/AIDS. The astute examination of relationships between social movements, health activism, and the state is relevant to numerous academic disciplines. Finally, the book is so accessible and engaging that it’s perfect for undergraduate and graduate courses as well as laypeople, particularly those working for health care justice."" * Bulletin of the History of Medicine * ""Before AIDS is the first book to chart the development of a national gay health network in the 1970s. Katie Batza's insightful and compelling analysis makes valuable contributions to the history of sexuality, LGBTQ studies, the history of medicine, and American political history."" * Tamar Carroll, Rochester Institute of Technology * ""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 *


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