Responding to Homophobia: HIV/AIDS, Homosexual Community Formation and Identity in Queensland, 1983–1990

This essay pursues how HIV/AIDS and digital media transform one another’s historiographies. Working with the archive of activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943–2000), the essay considers the role of AIDS organizing in the history of the Internet, and in establishing recursive relations between media formats. Kuromiya’s early adoption of Internet technology centered the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, incarcerated people, and people of color to access vital information for community formation and survival. Tracing the unlikely collaboration between Kuromiya and techno-futurist architect R. Buckminster Fuller (1885–1983), which culminated in Kuromiya’s founding of the Critical Path AIDS Project, this essay interrogates the term “adjuvant,” which Fuller borrowed from immunological discourse to describe their co-authorship. Anchored in a critical engagement with the metaphor of the adjuvant — an agent aiding immunological response — this essay elaborates the digital infrastructures underwriting a blueprint for community building, offering a prehistory of digital queer care networks. In conclusion, the essay meditates on the role of curation in theorizing the temporality of AIDS and its ongoing histories.

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Amyl Nitrites and Sexual Behavior

Journal of Student Research ◽

10.47611/jsr.v2i1.120 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 29-35

Author(s):

David Tian En Cheng

Keyword(s):

Sexual Behavior ◽

Sexually Transmitted Diseases ◽

Sexual Practices ◽

Inhalant Abuse ◽

Sexually Transmitted ◽

Aids Epidemic ◽

Unsafe Sexual Practices ◽

Homosexual Community ◽

Hiv Aids

This paper looked into the abuse of inhalable nitrites, mainly amyl nitrites, commonly known by the street name of poppers. This paper compiled several studies of nitrite inhalant abuse and the risk associated with the sexual practices that may concur. The paper explores first, the history and true intentions of nitrite inhalants, then the increasing abuse mainly within the homosexual community, and the legitimacy of the link of nitrites and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Various studies discussed in the paper will show that there is no legitimate link between poppers increasing the chance of HIV/AIDS but it is the unsafe sexual practices that occur with poppers that lead to various sexually transmitted diseases. The dangers of inhalable nitrites come from legal loopholes, use with other drugs such as Viagra, and the nature of unsafe sexual practices mostly within the homosexual community.

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