Abstract
In November 1982, the first case of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) was diagnosed in Australia.1 The first reported death was in July 1983.2 It took medical researchers in the West until 1984 to determine that the disease was caused by a retrovirus that attacked the body’s immune system, the Human Immuno-deficiency virus (HIV). Rates of HIV infection peaked in Australia in the mid-1980s, rising from fewer than 500 diagnoses in 1984 to approximately 1,800 in 1985 and 1,600 in 1986, and then again in 1987, after which there was a gradual decline, until in 2000 the annual number of new HIV diagnoses was around 763.3 The overwhelming majority of deaths from AIDS in Australia has been among gay men.4
‘Dad was a bit cool when I came out but it didn’t change anything.’ Travis, 38.
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Notes
G. W. Dowsett Practicing Desire: homosexual sex in the era of AIDS (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press 1996), p. 61.
R. Shilts And the band played on: politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 342. According to Shilts, on 8 July 1983 a 43-year-old man died in Prince Henry’s Hospital, Melbourne. The hospital was demolished in the 1990s and has been replaced by a block of luxury flats.
National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research [NCHECR]. HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis and sexually transmissible infections in Australia Annual Surveillance Report 2005, (NCHECR, The University of New South Wales, Sydney; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, 2005), pp. 5 & 7,
see also National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research. HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis and sexually transmissible infections in Australia Annual Surveillance Report 2007 (NCHECR, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW; Australian Institute of Health and Weifare, Canberra, ACT, 2007), p. 9. By 31 December 2006, there had been 26,267 HIV diagnoses in Australia, see NCHECR Annual Surveillance Report 2007, p. 7.
According to the NCHECR, by 31 December 2006, 6,723 people had died from AIDS in Australia: NCHECR Annual Surveillance Report2007, p. 38. Paul Sendziuk estimates that since the start of the epidemic in Australia, homo-sexually-active men comprise more than 80 per cent of HIV infections and AIDS deaths: P. Sendziuk Learning to trust: Australian responses to AIDS (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2003), p. 8.
A. McLaren Twentieth Century Sexuality: a history (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999), p. 220.
J. D’Emilio and E. B. Freedman Intimate Matters: a history of sexuality in America, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 355.
J. Foster Take Me to Paris, Johnny, with a foreword by P. Craven and an afterword by J. Rickard (Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing, 2003), p. 188.
McLaren Twentieth Century Sexuality, p. 196. For additional discussion of AIDS and the rise of homophobia, see D. Altman ‘AIDS and the discourses of sexuality’ in R. W. Connell and G. W. Dowsett (eds) Rethinking Sex: social theory and sexuality research (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992), pp. 43–4.
J. Weeks Sexuality and its Discontents: meanings, myths & modern sexualities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 49.
D. Altman ‘AIDS and the reconceptualization of homosexuality’ in D. Altman et al. Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? Essays from the international conference on gay and lesbian studies (London: GMP Publishers, 1989), p. 35.
McLaren Twentieth Century, p. 213. See also K. Plummer ‘Lesbian and gay youth in England’ in G. Herdt (ed.) Gay and Lesbian Youth (New York: The Haworth Press, 1989), pp. 212–13.
G. Wotherspoon City of the Plain: history of a gay sub-culture (Sydney: Hale St Iremonger, 1991), p. 226.
More recently, however, rates of HIV infection have been increasing in Australia, rising from 763 cases nationally in 2000 to 998 in 2006. For the vast majority of these cases, transmission was through sexual contact between men. See NCHECR Annual Surveillance Report2007, pp. 9–13. Similar increases in rates of HIV inlection have been recorded in the USA—for more discussion of these, see D. M. Halperin What do gay men want? An essay on sex, risk, and subjectivity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp. 11–36.
For discussion of the effects of HIV-AIDS on gay men’s communities, see Dowsett Practicing Desire, pp. 64–5 and J. Weeks ‘Living with uncertainty’ in A. Elliott (ed.) The Blackwell reader in contemporary social theory (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1999), p. 277.
For discussion of similar social developments in North America, see J. H. Gagnon An Interpretation of Desire: essays in the study of sexuality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 123.
R. Reynolds From Camp to Queer: re-making the Australian homosexual (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), p. 158.
Reynolds Camp to Queer, p. 158. M. Bartos ‘The queer excess of public health policy’ Meanjin, 55, 1 (1996) 126.
J. Weeks Making Sexual History (Cambridge: Polity Press 2000), p. 83.
D. Altman The Homosexualization of America, the Americanization of the Homosexual (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1982), p. 22.
G. Herdt ‘“Coming out” as a rite of passage: a Chicago study’ in G. Herdt (ed.) Gay Culture in America: essays from the field (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 35.
In heteronormative societies, gay men, lesbians and other sexual minorities are forced to declare their difference—to come out—in order to assert their identity and existence as ‘non-heterosexuals’. See, for example, L. Duggan ‘Queering the state’ in P. M. Nardi and B. E. Schneider (eds) Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies: a reader (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 565–72. In her article, Lisa Duggan acknowledges Michael Warner as author of the term ‘heteronormative’ in his Tear of a Queer Planet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Dank interviewed 182 gay men. See B. M. Dank ‘Coming out in the gay world’ Psychiatry, 34 (1971) 180–3.
K. Plummer ‘Going gay: identities lifecycles and life-styles in the male gay world’ in J. Hart and D. Richardson (eds) The Theory and Practice of Homosexuality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 101. Michael Poliak agrees with Plummer and says that coming out most frequently occurs between 16 and 30;
see M. Poliak ‘Male homosexuality — or happiness in the ghetto’ in P. Ariès and A. Béjin (eds) Western Sexuality: practice and precept in past and present times, trans. A. Forster (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 44.
G. Herdt Same sex, different cultures: exploring gay and lesbian lives (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), p. 158.
Herdt and Boxer interviewed 202 young males and females between the ages of 14 and 20. The average age of the sample was 18. The young people were members of Horizons Community Services in Chicago, a ‘drop-in’ centre for young gays and lesbians. See Herdt Same sex, p. 127. For details of the Chicago research, see G. Herdt and A. Boxer Children of Horizons: how gay and lesbian teens are leading a new way out of the closet (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
See, for example, K. Plummer Sexual Stigma: an interactionist account (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); Hart and Richardson Theory and Practice of Homosexuality; Herdt and Boxer Children of Horizons; and Plummer Sexual Stories.
See G. Herdt 1989 ‘Introduction: gay and lesbian youth, emergent identities, and cultural scenes at home and abroad’ in Herdt Gay and Lesbian Youth, pp. 1–42, and also Altman Homosexualization, ch. 1;
D. Eribon Insult and the making of the gay self, trans. M. Lucey, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), ch. 13; Plummer Sexual Stories, ch. 6; and, Weeks Discontents, ch. 8.
G. Wotherspoon (ed.) Being Different: nine gay men remember (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1986), p. 122.
Herdt Same sex, pp. 127–8. A report prepared in 2003 for the Attorney General’s department of New South Wales on homophobic violence found, for example, that gay men and lesbians in New South Wales ‘continue to experience high levels of homophobic abuse, harassment or violence’. New South Wales Government ‘You shouldn’t have to hide to be safe’: a report on homophobic hostilities and violence against gay men and lesbians in New South Wales (Sydney: Attorney General’s department, 2003), p. 8.
For example of young gay men’s experience in United States, see: R. M. Berger Gay and gray: the older homosexual man, 2nd edn (Binghamton, New York: The Haworth Press, 1996), p. 178.
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© 2008 Peter Robinson
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Robinson, P. (2008). The Coming-out Stories of the Young Cohort. In: The Changing World of Gay Men. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584310_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584310_4
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