I think this poem by Clayton Valli illustrates how communities resist oppression, coming back stronger when society tries to ‘weed’ them out.
AIDS disproportionally affected the deaf gay community during the 80’s. Whilst there was a distinct lack of information and horrendous attitudes directed towards the gay community in general, this was only exacerbated for deaf people because the information that was available was not accessible. For example, the term AIDS, many deaf people thought that referred to hearing aids. In addition, TV adverts were rarely captioned or interpreted into sign, and the language used in leaflets was often difficult for deaf people to understand-they needed more visual information.
Lack of interpreters in hospital settings was also a major problem of the time. Howard Beck gives one particular example of the dangers of miscommunication during the time. When one of his friends visited a sexual health clinic and was informed he was HIV positive- he thought that meant that he was fine, due to his understanding of the connotation positive. It took many, many attempts by the hospital to get the man to return (he was confused as he thought there was nothing wrong with him). This lead to a change in the sign used to denote HIV positive (as shown below) to make the context clearer (Mead, 2019).
References:
Window Image and Figure 1e: Soreson (2016) Dandelions by Clayton Valli. 10 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ1LTInEQbk&t=53s [Accessed 12 May 2022].
Figure 2e and 3e: Mead, M. (2019) Howard Beck: Full Interview, West Yorkshire Queer Stories. 11 September. Available at: https://wyqs.co.uk/stories/aids-and-the-deaf-community/full-interview/ [Accessed 12 May 2022].
