Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2006 The ABC's of HIV: When "Just Say No" Is Not Enough-Queer Critique of AIDS Policy Lisa Laura Ladwig Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ladwig, Lisa Laura, "The ABC's of HIV: When "Just Say No" Is Not Enough-Queer Critique of AIDS Policy" (2006). LSU Master's Theses. 1863. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/1863 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ABC’s OF HIV: WHEN “JUST SAY NO” IS NOT ENOUGH- QUEER CRITIQUE OF AIDS POLICY A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of English by Lisa Ladwig B.A., University of Florida, 2002 December, 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................iii INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 POLICY IGNORES THE BIOMEDICAL REALITY OF HIV/AIDS TRANSMISSION………………………………………………………………...............4 AN INTRODUCTION TO THEORIZING AIDS.................................................….........8 QUEER TAKES A CRITICAL EDGE FROM LACAN’S NOTION OF SUBJECTIVITY ......................................................................13 QUEER EXTENDS FROM, YET ULTIMATELY UNRAVELS “GAY”.................……………………………………………………………………….16 THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF EVANGELICAL SEXUAL MORALITY AS PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY………………………………………………………………………………..…20 ATTEMPTS TO RESIGNIFY BOTH AIDS AND HOMOSEXUALITY……...………………………………………………………....…...24 STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL LEGITIMACY……………………………………………………………………............27 PSYCHOANALYTIC INTERPRETATION OF AIDS……………………………………………………………………………….….…32 UNCONSCIOUS DESIRE……………………………………………………………...36 JOUISSANCE? NOT “I!”……………………………………………...……………....49 CONCLUSION: IS QUEER THEORY A WORTHWILE ENTERPRISE IN COMBATING AIDS?..................................................................................................55 WORKS CITED................................................................................................................61 VITA..................................................................................................................................69 ii ABSTRACT This paper will critique the United States’ AIDS policy, both domestic and international. I demonstrate how queer theorists have used Jacques Lacan’s concepts of “jouissance” and the “unconscious desire” to suggests ways in which the current policy has dangerous implications for real people, for public health, and human rights. I reveal how the problem of rising HIV infection is not due to the lack of availability of safer-sex information, but rather it is a problem of execution: the Religious Right’s ideology inscribed in our public health policy. Finally, I wish to expose how people in this country and others are increasingly denied the necessary information and services to prevent HIV transmission. These people are not even given the choice of execution because they are sheltered from the information necessary to make that choice to prevent one’s self from HIV/AIDS. I hope to demonstrate how our ultra, socially conservative administration and its constituency preclude effective HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. iii INTRODUCTION The A B C's of HIV: When “Just Say No” B E O Isn’t Enough S F N T O D Queer Critique of AIDS Policy I R O N E M E S N C E "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly" (Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” 1963). The future of AIDS policy in the United States will be complicated because the conservative groups in power have different tactical priorities than their liberal counterparts and the broader medical establishment. Conservatives have traditionally been hostile to some important, reliable, HIV/AIDS-prevention strategies, such as comprehensive sex education and condom distribution. They are also much more enthusiastic about policies such as the promotion of abstinence and restricting medically accurate sex education in public schools. Our executive and legislative political leadership, however, cannot be accused of the years of complacency and denial that characterized Reagan-era AIDS policy. Instead, contemporary conservatives have done something conservatives of that era never considered: they made AIDS their own cause. 1 President Bush and Senators Jesse Helms and Bill Frist rewrote the AIDS epidemic as a story about orphans, faith, and abstinence. They were spared the uncomfortable talks about condoms, gay men, and drug needles. Instead, they chose to undermine the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, preferring their own evangelical, unilateral, $15 billion global AIDS initiative. Since fiscal years 2004 and 2005, President's Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, herein referred to by the acronym PEPFAR, has increasingly replaced funding for comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention programs, such as medically accurate safe(r) sex education and condom distribution, in favor of increased spending in new faith-based prevention campaigns that emphasize abstinence and marital fidelity. This new strategy, commonly referred to as the “ABC’s” of AIDS prevention ( Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condom use--as a last resort!) is controversial because it prioritizes A and B over C (President's Emergency Plan 11). For instance, PEPFAR does not stipulate the promotion of condoms to young people in general (29). However, it does stipulate that its funds may be used to support programs that stress abstinence and “education” about the failure rates of condoms, provided the programs do not appear to present abstinence and condom use as equally viable alternative choices ("Report to Congress" 5). PEPFAR’S prioritization of A and B over C goes against the broad medical establishment’s recommendation for HIV/AIDS prevention. That is, according to the American Medical Association, the Center for Disease Control, World Health Organization, and UNAIDS, condom distribution to the general public and safe(r) sex education constitute the best existing defense against the spread of HIV (Wise 1216; CDC "How Effective?"). 2 The institutionalization of evangelical sexual morality as public health policy—against the medical establishment’s recommendations—is egregious considering the fact that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized in 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history and shows no signs of abating (UNAIDS/WHO – 2005 2). The total number of people living with HIV is currently at its highest level ever: an estimated 40.3 million people are now living with HIV (UNAIDS/WHO – 2005 1). Last year, documented HIV diagnoses actually rose (UNAIDS/WHO – 2005 2). Could this be the consequence of our government’s disinvestment in effective strategies of HIV/AIDS prevention? 3 POLICY IGNORES THE BIOMEDICAL REALITY OF HIV/AIDS TRANSMISSION The biomedical reality of AIDS is described as a severe immunological disorder caused by the retrovirus HIV, resulting in a defect in cell-mediated immune response that is manifested by increased susceptibility to opportunistic infections and to certain rare cancers, especially Kaposi's sarcoma (Kahn and Walker 33). The medical establishment also unanimously accepts that HIV is transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid or breast milk (CDC "HIV and Its Transmission"; American Red Cross "AIDS Facts"; and UNAIDS, "2006 Report" 127). Yet policy decisions that address the epidemic are contingent upon how AIDS registers within a specific hermeneutical context. Queer theorists have exposed and interrogated the discourse through which AIDS policy is made. Queer theorists have always acknowledged that AIDS constitutes a distinct biomedical reality. However, they also recognize that "AIDS," or how this condition is conceptualized and responded to, is a highly contested signifier. Queer theorists, such as Douglas Crimp, Tim Dean, Michael Warner, and Judith Butler, for example, argue that at exactly the most crucial and horrific moment of the AIDS epidemic—now—the government, media, and even some AIDS activist factions, have failed the public by continuing to indulge in representations of persons with AIDS as perverse, culpable, murderous, and, in other ways deserving of their fate. The AIDS crisis, then, from a queer theoretical point of view, represents more than just a medical crisis. AIDS is also a crisis in signification. Many queer theorists have argued that in our sociopolitical context, namely one of 4 increasing cultural conservatism, the official response to AIDS falls prey to latent ideological error: PEPFAR, the program currently in place to curb HIV/AIDS transmissions,