by Deniz ERDOGAN
In his article titled Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies [1], Robert McRuer quotes the anecdote of Paula Treicher that people living with HIV and AIDS have faced not only “an epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease” but also “an epidemic of signification” for the last two decades. The fact that this epidemic of signification has suppressed and controlled mostly the people with HIV/AIDS also leads to a segregation among these people on the basis of their sexual identities. According to McRuer, queer activism/theory has not centrally dealt with AIDS; however, the cultural theory about AIDS, which has been shaped by academicians and activists in the last 20 years, reflects the queer theory in its best form.
In his study, McRuer mentions what was emphasized by the members of ACT UP: AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) – it was also the theme of the film The Normal Heart directed by Ryan Murphy in 2014 [2] –, which was established by Larry Kramer, a playwright and AIDS activist, and his colleagues in 1987, in their protest in front of Trump Tower in New York, and he states that the luxury existence of Trump in the city is directly related to leaving others – people with AIDS – homeless. In the film The Normal Heart, it is shown in a broader framework of AIDS activism that the funds requested for AIDS services and nursing homes are either completely rejected or continuously postponed. In this respect, it can be suggested that in addition to the expelling of the people with AIDS towards AIDS Ghettos, they are either totally ignored and left to their fate by the governments or completely isolated from the society. The quite frequently emphasized aspect of AIDS is primarily homosexuality and then sexuality. The fallacy that AIDS is transmitted through homosexual intercourse has become a social conviction, and this has caused the queer individuals to be directly stigmatized.
The assumption that queer individuals have defective bodies with a potential to carry diseases is a label for the body that is out of “normality(!)” in modern capitalist societies. The practice of ostracizing individuals, who do not have a heterosexual marriage, who are out of the stereotyped gender norms or who do not define themselves within gender binary, as bodies threatening social morality and health is reproduced by the current government and its mechanisms. The freedom of queer individuals, which is hidden behind closed doors, and their sexuality, which they carefully try to hide from the society, have been considered as a disease for a long time, and the bodies, which have been already labeled as diseased, are also conditioned around a policy of epidemics. It can be suggested that what is feared is sometimes the disease that can be potentially transmitted by a queer body (for example AIDS) or the sexual actions of such a body rather than the queer body itself. Queers, who have become objects of fear in the collective consciousness of the society that has internalized heteronormative rules, are reconditioned as objects with diseased-defective bodies by the exaggerated hate speech of the media.
We frequently see news about LGBT individuals victimized by hate crimes in small sizes in a tiny box near the big-sized news about women exposed to rape by their husbands, relatives or boyfriends, which can be unfortunately found every day on the third pages of newspapers. The problems range from newspaper headlines such as “Transvestite sex worker with AIDS arrested by the police” to the lack of legal provisions for individuals violently raped and killed on highways and lack of severe penalty for the crimes committed against them.
Transvestite and transsexual individuals, who are exposed to hate speech in the media, are presented with exaggerated and discriminative expressions such as “Transvestite sex worker and death machine with AIDS [3]”. Transwomen, who are blamed for some kind of massacre due to continuing prostitution despite being HIV+, are exposed to an association – a negative action = prostitution and a negatively perceived identity = being a trans and HIV+ – and to a set of negative conceptions. With such negative associations repetitively and persistently presented in the media, the society develop a judgment that all trans individuals are diseased death machines.
The terms transvestite and transsexual are interchangeably used in the media, and especially the concept of transvestite is associated with a problem, prostitution, aggression and immorality. Both headlines and the content of the news use the concept of transvestite in order to create fear. Due to the categorization of queers as abnormal, they tend to be the targets of the policies of fear and disgust. It should be also noted that a separation of cleanness and dirtiness is made between the heterosexuals and the queers, who are the subjects of the hegemony of dichotomy that always exists in such forms as we-other and normal-abnormal. The sexual actions of queers, which are already disapproved due to their perceived diseased bodies, are attempted to be completely eliminated by being contained by a policy of epidemics. To give another example from the film The Normal Heart; when the AIDS activist Ned Weeks tells the official of the White House that the disease has become very serious and urgent measures are needed, the official asks if the disease has ever been seen among heterosexuals. Ned Weeks cannot answer this question because he does not know any heterosexual cases. Then the official says that he has work to do and sends him out. Actually, the current situation is as bad as this example.
I think detailed works should be done regarding the representation of queer individuals as diseased and defective in the media and their presentation as objects of fear that cause epidemics in the society – in addition to homophobia which I will not address in this essay. I believe that the government and the media, which is the government’s unique mechanism of dissemination, are showing a new type of racism – heterosexual racism – by transforming the queer individuals and the individuals that do not identify themselves with any sexual group into objects of fear. The daytime TV programs that are watched everyday by large masses reproduce the androcentric and exclusive hegemony. The harsh criticism by the audience and the master of ceremonies against the lesbian who called a matchmaking show in order to marry may be the simplest visual example of this marginalizing policy which is also feared and disgusted.
We are quite pessimistic due to the current conjuncture. We are also unaware of how the democracy, of which the meaning and the function we still have not conceived in our country, will take us to a segregating, excluding and chaotic future rather than an emancipatory one. It is also unknown when and how we will achieve our freedom which we have experienced – or we think we have experienced – only through an illusion in our country, in which we have barely caught the spirit of the sexual revolution in the West… So, what is the best thing to do?
We should continue to carry out works, to write, to think and to imagine the moments when we will achieve our freedom which we will paint with the colors of the rainbow. As the saying goes, imagining is half the battle of achieving…
[1] McRuer, Robert. “Eleştirel Yatırımlar: AIDS, Christopher Reeve ve Queer Sakatlık Çalışmaları,” Queer Tahayyül, Sel Yayıncılık /Queer Düşün Serisi, 2013
[2] For more details on the film, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1684226/?ref_=nv_sr_1
[3] For a detailed analysis, see: Çınar, Mahmut. Habercilik Ve Nefret Söylemi, Medya Ve Nefret Söylemi: Kavramlar, Mecralar, Tartışmalar, Hrant Dink Vakfı Yayınları, 2013
