In This Broadcast

How a community built its own lifelines when the world looked away.

In the penultimate installment of our four-part HIV Awareness Month miniseries, Dany and Claire explore how queer communities became caregivers, researchers, pharmacists, smugglers, lawyers, activists, and even nuns to survive a global plague in an era of political apathy and moral condemnation.

This inspiring episode highlights the mutual aid networks that held up a generation.

The episode explores:

• How we continue to honor lesbians today for being caregivers and clinicians.
• How the community took medical research into their own hands.
• Buyers’ Clubs that became life-saving drug smugglers at a time when governments were happy to ignore the crisis.
• Gender-fucking nuns that stepped in to fill a spiritual gap for the sick and dying.
• Support and advocacy groups that paved the way for the needed social change that was coming.

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Content Warnings:

This episode discusses illness, death, medical neglect, homophobia, transphobia, and the AIDS crisis. Listener discretion advised.