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Abstract
This essay examines the significance of the work of three black lesbian feminist intellectuals--Cathy Cohen, Evelynn Hammonds, Linda Villarosa--to intellectual genealogies of HIV/AIDS. Since the early era of the AIDS epidemic, these scholars have challenged dominant and indigenous discourses of HIV/AIDS through traditional and public forms of scholarship. Working across an array of disciplines, they have helped us to understand the disproportionate effects of AIDS on black communities not as a matter of “risk” and inherent “deviance,” but as an effect of multiple marginalization. Moreover, these black lesbian feminist intellectuals have challenged some of the prevailing epistemological assumptions about the epidemic: examining how racial, class, gender, and sexual biases shape state and community responses to the epidemic, and the erasure and othering of black women in state and media discourses. Foregrounding the significance of black lesbian feminist identity and politics to their knowledge production, the essay demonstrates how the work of black lesbian feminist intellectuals extends the long history of black health activism into the late 20th and 21st centuries, while stressing the importance of lesbian sexuality to historical examinations of black (women's) intellectual traditions.
Notes
1 Linda Villarosa, “America’s Hidden HIV Epidemic,” New York Times Magazine, June 6, 2017.
2 Ibid.
3 Author Interview, 2017.
4 Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007); Jennifer Brier, “Interchange: HIV/AIDS and U.S. History,” Journal of American History 104, no. 2 (2017): 439.
5 In 1977, Boston-based black feminist group Combahee River Collective wrote, “The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of an integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” WSQ:Women’s Studies Quarterly 42 (1981): 210–18.
6 Mia E. Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage, eds. Towards An Intellectual History of Black Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 5.
7 At that time the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not include several disease manifestations common to women in their AIDS case definition, including invasive cervical cancer and recurrent vaginal yeast infections. Following pressure from women's groups, a wealth of international data, and in conjunction with Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CTSE), the AIDS case definition was formally expanded in 1993. However, Shari Dworkin argues that surveillance categories do not currently rely on the intersection of several identities or behaviors and therefore do not facilitate easy analysis of the contextual factors that shape risk. Shari Dworkin, “Who is epidemiologically fathomable in the HIV/AIDS epidemic?: Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality in Public Health,” Culture, Health, and Sexuality 7, no. 6 (2005): 618.
8 Author Interview, 2017.
9 Ibid.
10 Evelyn Hammonds, “Missing Persons: African American Women, AIDS, and the History of Disease,” Radical America 24, no. 2 (1990): 8.
11 Hammonds, “Missing Persons,” 22.
12 Ibid, 22.
13 Patricia Hill Collins argues, “Black lesbian theorizing about sexuality has been marginalized, albeit in different ways, both within Black intellectual communities and women’s studies scholarship,” Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2008), 136; For more on the marginalization of black lesbian feminists in the academy in the 1980s and 90s, see Doris Davenport, “Black Lesbians in Academia: Visible Invisibility” in Toni H. McNaron and Bonnie Zimmerman, eds. The New Lesbian Studies: Into the 21st Century (New York: The Feminist Press, 1996), 9–12; see also, Angela Davis, “Black Women and the Academy,” Callaloo 17, no. 2 (1994): 426–427.
14 Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape in the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West,” Signs 14, no. 4 (1989): 912–920; Evelyn Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence,” J. Alexander and C. T. Mohanty, eds. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, New York: Routledge, 1997,
15 Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality,” 100.
16 Ibid, 100.
17 Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality,” 101. For more on the life of Ida B. Wells, see Mia Bay, To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells, New York: Hill and Wang, 2010; Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, New York: Harper, 2009.
18 Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality,” 101–102.
19 Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality,” 102.
20 Ibid, 102.
21 Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality,” 101.
22 Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul, 96.
23 David McBride, From TB to AIDS: Epidemics Among Blacks Since 1900 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 156–157.
24 Ula Taylor, “The Historical Evolution of Black Feminist Theory and Praxis,” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (1998): 39.
25 Taylor includes the work of DiAna DiAna and Bambi Sumpter, who created the South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN) in Columbia, SC, in 1986. Sumpter, who completed a Ph.D. in public health at the University of South Carolina, partnered with DiAna to develop community-based programming out of DiAna’s hair salon, DiAna’s Hair Ego. Together they created culturally competent programming to fight against the disproportionate impact of AIDS on black people, and black women in particular, in the urban South. In her reflection on the development of this organization, Sumpter identified their problems garnering state support and funding due to their credentials, “Let us say there is ‘grave’ concern over the ‘credentials’ of those who are delivering the AIDS message. . .We have realized that, be it conscious or unconscious, the ‘overseers’ attempt to dictate who will deliver the message and, of course, it will be by their rules and directions. Ignorance to cultural difference abounds.” Her struggle to be seen as a knower in relation to state expertise, regardless of her training, reveals the devaluation of black women’s knowledge production, and how that devaluation shaped the distribution of state resources in ways that detrimentally impacted black communities. Bambi Sumpter, “We Have A Job to Do,” Women, AIDS, and Activism (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 223.
26 Audre Lorde discussed the physical, social, and psychological impact of breast cancer in The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light (1988). June Jordan discussed her battle with breast cancer in many speeches and poems written during her ten-year battle with breast cancer from 1992-2002. Valerie Kinloch, June Jordan: Her Life and Letters (Westport: Praeger, 2006), 146–151; Jewelle Gomez and Barbara Smith, “Taking the Home Out of Homophobia: Black Lesbian Health” in Evelyn C. White, ed. The Black Women’s Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves, (Seattle: Seal Press, 1994), 198–213; Black women’s novels centered HIV-positive black women’s experiences. Charlotte Watson Sherman, Touch (New York: Harpercollins, 1995); Sapphire, Push (New York: Vintage, 1996); Pearl Cleage, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (New York: Avon, 1997). Hammonds’ and Cohen’s analyses of black women’s and black lesbian and gay cultural production, and Villarosa’s later publication of a novel demonstrate how the cultural arts informed their production of AIDS knowledge.
27 Brier, Infectious Ideas: US Political Responses to AIDS (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2009), 14.
28 Deborah Gould, Moving Politics:Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, 66.
29 Author Interview, 2017.
30 Kimberly Springer notes that the Combahee River Collective Statement was the first time readers “were forced to recognize publicly black lesbian existence, the daily oppression black lesbians face, and the considerable sexual diversity within black communities.” Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 130.
31 Springer, Living for the Revolution, 9.
32 Brier, “Interchange: AIDS and US History,” Journal of American History 104.2 (2017): 439; Boston Women’s Health Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Boston: New England Free Press, 1971.
33 Author Interview, 2019
34 “About Me,” Lindavillarosa.com.
35 Linda Villarosa, “Revelations,” Catherine E. McKinley, ed. Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing. New York: Anchor, 1995.
36 Author Interview, 2017.
37 Ibid, 2017.
38 Daniel Kissingler and Damon Williams, Interview with Cathy Cohen, AirGo, Episode 183, April 11, 2019.
39 For more on University of Michigan’s Anti-Apartheid Movement, see “Divestment for Humanity: The Anti-Apartheid Movement at the University of Michigan.” http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/exhibit; AIDS impacted the University of Michigan’s campus after law professor James Martin became Washtenow County’s first AIDS death in December 1985; ACT UP also targeted University of Michigan regent Deane Baker for his anti-gay stance and held a kiss-in on campus in July 1990. Tim Retzloff, Julie Herrada, Matthew Bietz, and Anthony Hand," Artifacts & Disclosures: Michigan's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Heritage," 1999, https://www.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/lgbtheritage/1980#1980activism. “Campus Life; Michigan; Gay Rights Group Protests Remarks By an Official,” New York Times, Aug 19, 1990, Page 1001041
40 Elizabeth Cole, “Transcript of Cathy Cohen,” Global Feminisms: Comparative Case Studies of Women’s Activism and Scholarship, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, April 16, 2004, 5-6.
41 Roderick Keith Linzie, “Analysis of the Anti-Racist Student Movement at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor,” Dissertation. University of Michigan, 1993, p. 30.
42 For more on the history of the formation of the Audre Lorde Project, see “About: The Audre Lorde Project, https://alp.org/about
43 Daniel Kissingler and Damon Williams, Interview with Cathy Cohen, AirGo, Episode 183, April 11, 2019.
44 Barbara Smith, “A Press of Our Own,” Frontiers 10, no. 3 (1989): 12.
45 Author Interview, 2017. For more on BAM, see “Bam and Borough Watch,” AIDS Disease-New York: Clippings Folder, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
46 Cohen, Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queen: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? GLQ 3, no. 4 (1997): 459.
47 Cohen, Boundaries of Blackness, 111.
48 McBride notes that, “though there was incredibly fast progress in establishing the microbiological workings of AIDS, its pathogenesis and modes of transmission, suggested that racialism would not be a factor in the sociomedical response to AIDS. However theses about the epidemiological origins of AIDS in Africa and the frequent practice of employing racial (biogenetic) variables in explaining higher AIDS rates for black Americans ensured the return of racialist paradigms. From TB to AIDS, 162-163.
49 Gretchen Gavett, “Timeline: 30 Years of AIDS in Black America,” Frontline, July 10, 2012, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/timeline-30-years-of-aids-in-black-america/
50 Kai Wright, “AIDS in Blackface,” 11.
51 CDC. Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Update on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections in Previously Healthy Persons – United States. MMWR Weekly. June 11, 1982.
52 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “30 Years of HIV in African American Communities: A Timeline,” 2011.
53 CDC. Current Trends Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Precautions for Clinical and Laboratory Staffs. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. November 5, 1982.
54 CDC. Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Immunodeficiency among Female Sexual Partners of Males with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)—New York. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. January 7, 1983.
55 Gretchen Gavett, Timeline: 30 Years of AIDS in Black America, Frontline, July 10, 2012; CDC. Update on acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)–United States. MMWR 1982; 31: 507–8, 513–4.
56 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “30 Years of HIV in African American Communities: A Timeline,” 2011.
57 Phillip, Boffey, “Reagan Defends Financing for AIDS,” New York Times, September 18, 1985, p. B0007. For a detailed account of the Reagan administration’s complex response to the epidemic, see Brier, Infectious Ideas.
58 For more on the pathologization of black women by the Reagan administration, see Ange Marie-Hitchcock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York: New York University Press, 2004).
59 Founded in 1985, BEBASHI is the second-oldest AIDS service organization in the Philadelphia region, and remains one of Philadelphia’s largest community-based minority providers of HIV/AIDS education and services for the urban community, https://www.bebashi.org/about-bebashi/; The San Francisco Chapter of BWMT formed its AIDS Task Force in 1985. The National Task Force on AIDS Prevention (NTFAP), a San Francisco-based advocacy, educational and outreach group that specifically targeted queer men of color, originated in July of 1988 as a program of the National Association of Black and White Men Together (NABWMT), and was expanded to local BWMT branches across the country; For more on formation of Us Helping Us, Inc, see Darius Bost, “At the Club: Locating Early Black Gay AIDS Activism in Washington, D.C.,” Occasion 8 (2015); Sisterlove, Inc., was founded in 1989 as a women-centered AIDS and reproductive justice organization focused on the Southeastern U.S., https://www.sisterlove.org/; For more on SCAEN, see DiAna DiAna, Condoms and Curlers: DiAna Hair Ego—In My Own Words (Bloomington: Authorhouse Publishing, 2003) and Ellen Spiro, director. 1989. “DiAna’s Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front.” New York. Video Databank. DVD; Minority AIDS Project was founded in 1985 by the Reverend Carl Bean as the main outreach ministry of Unity Fellowship Church, a black, LGBT-church he founded in Los Angeles in 1982, http://minorityaidsproject.org/;
60 The National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays received a grant from the U.S. Public Health Services to host the conference, which signaled the federal government’s increasing awareness and concern regarding the AIDS crisis in black communities.
61 Author Interview, 2019.
62 Linda Villarosa, “Sad News: A Reporter’s Notes on an Epidemic,” Gil L. Robertson, ed. Not in My Family: AIDS in the African-American Community (Chicago: Agate Publishing, 2006), 102.
63 Villarosa credits “Nobody’s Safe” as propelling her career toward serious health and medical reporting. Reflecting on whether the story “sounded hysterical” (102), she realized it was “more like the canary in the coal mine,” because there still is no cure for HIV and no comprehensive plan to prevent the spread of the disease. “Sad News,” 102.
64 Ebony magazine published an article in April 1987 titled “The Truth About AIDS.”
65 Joan Roberts and Linda Villarosa, “Nobody’s Safe,” Essence, September 1987, 2.
66 Ibid., 73.
67 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “30 Years of HIV in African American Communities: A Timeline,” 2011.
68 Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness, 137; Ayana Weekley, “Now That’s A Good Girl: Discourses of African American Women, HIV/AIDS, and Respectability.” Dissertation. University of Minnesota, 2010, 64–69.
69 Weekley, Now That’s A Good Girl,” 66.
70 Evelynn Hammonds, “Race, Sex, AIDS,” Radical America, 29.
71 Author Interview, 2017; Elizabeth Fee and Daniel Fox, eds. AIDS: The Burdens of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
72 Evelynn Hammonds, “Black (W) holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6, nos. 2–3 (1994): 126–146.
73 Author Interview, 2017.
74 Cohen, Boundaries of Blackness,ix.
75 Ibid., x.
76 U.S. Census Bureau. Table 33. New York - Race and Hispanic Origin for Selected Large Cities and Other Places: Earliest Census to 1990. https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/NYtab.pdf
77 Ernest Quimby and Samuel R. Friedman, “Dynamics of Black Mobilization against AIDS in New York City.” Social Problems 36, no. 4 (1989): 404.
78 Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness, x.
79 Cohen did not meet Hammonds until much later.
80 Harlon Dalton, “AIDS in Blackface,” Daedalus 118, no. 3 (1989): 205.
81 Cindy Patton, Inventing AIDS (New York: Routledge, 1990); Paula Triechler, “AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification,” Cultural Studies 3 (1987): 263–305; Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
82 Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness, 131.
83 Ibid, ix.
84 For a discussion of the politics of respectability, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); For discussions of the politics of homophobia in black communities, see bell hooks, “Homophobia in Black Communities” in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Cambridge: South End Press, 1989), 120–126; Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1981); Barbara Smith, ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminists Anthology (Albany: Kitchen Table Press, 1983); Joseph Beam, ed. In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1986); Hemphill, ed. Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991).
85 Author Interview, 2017.
86 The Boundaries of Blackness, ix.
87 Toward an Intellectual History, 3.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Darius Bost
Darius Bost is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation at the University of Utah. His book, Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence (Chicago, 2018), is an interdisciplinary study of black gay art and activism during the early era of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S.