Just finished "it's a sin"

[ThatFraggle]

Sobbing. I don't have anyone to tell in real life but I just wanted to say how much it moved me.

Yes he was irritating. Ollie Alexander seems very similar to the character he played if you watch interviews etc.

The thing is with a new virus when so much is unknown people do panic and overreact, as you've said we've just had it with Covid. The reaction in the 80s is often pushed as a homophobic thing when imo it wasn't. It was mass panic to an unknown virus and we'll have the hospital isolation and no visiting allowed at the next virus outbreak too.

Completely agree with everything in your post. The same thing will happen with the next virus epidemic.
Yes, Ollie is very like his character Ritchie. I feel the same way about Ollie as I do about the actor Alan Cumming, Alan’s persona is putting me off watching Traitors USA. Colin I think was meant to be RTD but with an unhappy ending. I used to love RTD’s writing, but having recently watched Queer as Folk UK and realising that one of the main characters is a 15 year old schoolboy hanging around with some older promiscuous guys, I feel much more uncomfortable about his writing. I also wasn’t impressed with RTD’s drunken monologue at an awards ceremony last year (think it was last year?) heavily criticising LGB Alliance for having a trans free organisation. Would he be sexually interested in a trans man? I think not.
Then there was the John Barrowman scenario while Dr Who was being filmed, where was Russell when this pervy nonsense was going on?

I know people were isolated during Covid but I don't think anyone was actually blamed for getting it. Apart from general Social Distancing no particular groups were picked out as potential carriers like gay men and Africans were.

There might not been specific groups blamed, but there was people blaming going on.

People were blamed if they went out for 2 walks a day, if they went to the shops for "non essential" items. Lovely phrases such as granny killer were often used. If you got covid, especially in 2020, some people did blame the ill person. You must have broken a rule etc.

Many people were blamed. If you didn't wear masks, if you didn't adhere to guidelines. We had neighbours reporting neighbours to the police.

My point was the overreaction in the 80s was not because it was affecting gay men it was because it was a new disease, the mechanism of spread wasn't absolutely clear initially. Just like covid.

I don't think it was the same. Covid was rampant among the population generally. Everyone was subject to the same rules. Most people weren't ever going to get AIDS and it was labelled as a Gay Disease.

No it wasn't the same, but the fear panic and blame were quite similar.

You'll be very disappointed then.
I work in Sexual Health - STI rates are rising every year. Syphilis rates increased by 15% in 2022, gonorrhoea by 50% since 2021, chlamydia is just rampant frankly.

Not just in MSM groups - it's heterosexual also and within all age groups.

Condom use seems to be an afterthought tbh, which is very frustrating. Also contraception use. Termination of pregnancies have risen by 20% in the past year. Difficulty in accessing contraception is a factor, but frankly a big part of it seems to be the rise in the use of "cycle tracker apps" and a reluctance to use hormonal contraception (fuelled by a significant increase in misinformation & disinformation on SM).

I feel we've gone backwards over the past few years.

Yes I do. As I've said a few times we've all witnessed first hand a new virus. The hysteria, the blame, the friends reporting friends, people aggressively confronting those without masks on.

If there had been a STD killing promsicuous straight men and women in equal amounts the hysteria would have been exactly the same.

I liked it so much I bought the t-shirt
https://philipnormal.shop/products/la-t-shirt

Colin broke me. I saw Callum Scott Howells in Cabaret a few months ago, along with Janine from The Handmaids Tale so it was a double fangirl moment.

I don't think the hysteria would have been the same if it was straight people...the judgemental finger-pointing calmed down a lot when they realised that straight people could get it too. The people who got it from blood-transfusions, for example were treated very differently. They were 'innocent' victims.
Homophobia was appalling back then. Even now you hear people say GAY stands for 'Got AIDS yet'.

i do think though, that the promiscuity from gay men is because it's men. I think straight men would behave in exactly the same way if they could, but they have women to deal with.

If there had been a STD killing promsicuous straight men and women in equal amounts the hysteria would have been exactly the same.

I think you’re incredibly naive to think this.

Putting aside the fact that it didn’t just kill ‘promiscuous’ gay men - which RTD deliberately made of point of with the Colin storyline, not to mention Henry Coltrane and his very long-term partner….

….why was there so much hysteria, shunning and scapegoating, among people who were never even going to catch it (once it was understood how it spread)? If you weren’t gay (or having blood transfusions / sharing dirty needles), it was safe to say you were low-risk.

It was very much utilised as a way of othering gay men, at a time when being gay was seen as, at best an aberration; at worst - just wrong.

Whether you like it or not, the reason AIDS spread among gay men of the 80s so much is because they were promiscuous. It would have been impossible for AIDS to become "an epidemic" among the gay community at the time if they had not been. That's just a fact and not an insult. Some life styles (like sharing needles or promiscuity) led to it spreading

'Despite your determination to shoehorn covid into this and act like anti-maskers faced the same level of discrimination and hate as gay men did in the 80s, they're really not analogous.'

I'm not shoehorning anything, I'm comparing. We've been told for decades men were locked away from their loved ones, there was fear and hysteria all allegedly because they were gay yet we've have a very similar situation with the same levels of fear panic and folk confronting people. Nothing to do with homosexuality.

Ia with you. I think it's vastly overrated.

'The aids crisis and reaction to it had nothing to do with homsoexuality? Pull the other one.'

No, HIV had everything to do with homosexuals <and drug users>. I didn’t say it wasn't, so I'm sure what you want me to 'pull'.

My point, yet again, is to say the hysterical reaction is similar to one we've all just experienced.

The only Tv I've audibly helped at (when the mum told Gill on the pier). Sobbed

He’s actually a very shy, socially awkward, bookworm crazy cat man.

I throughly enjoyed it. So sad.

I have a Chinese friend who felt very uncomfortable leaving her home due to looks and comments during the pandemic.

i thought the programme was fantastic, couldn’t stop thinking about the Scottish characters treatment by his family. So so sad.

One of the best pieces of TV I have ever seen. I watched it twice and it was just as good second time. I was born in 81 so was aware of it - mostly through Mark Fowler in Eastenders but really had no grasp of the reality of it all. I learned so much and was so moved by IAS.

I think it’s insensitive to compare it to Covid, especially in the context of the show that is heavy on the impact of homophobia etc.

I can’t imagine many people were disowned by their family for catching Covid, then when they died of it their family simply pretended they didn’t exist etc. Not to mention there was much more help and prevention for people with Covid.

And while isolation in the hospital was similar, at least Covid was actually a contagious air borne virus and coming close to someone with it could put you at risk. For HIV/AIDS that wasn’t the case so no reason to be isolated.

I was in hospital for Covid and would pick that any day of the week over being a gay man with AIDS in the 80s!

I thought Ollie was absolutely brilliant and so realistic. He was such a silly kid and that’s what was so depressing, they were all kids. Got to love a fallible character.