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

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

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

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