Lesbian AIDS Activism

Women giving blood at a Lesbian Blood Drive (Lambda Archives)

In 1983, two years after the start of the AIDS crisis, “men who have sex with men” were banned from donating blood in an effort to keep HIV out of America’s blood supply. HIV patients, often anemic as a result of the virus, needed frequent blood transfusions: the result was a critical shortage of blood. Groups of lesbians, most famously the San Diego Blood Sisters, began to hold blood drives, working with local blood banks to ensure that their donations went directly to HIV/AIDS patients. These blood drives are why lesbians are frequently figured as the caretakers of the AIDS pandemic: when doctors and scientists refused to care for HIV patients, lesbians stepped in.

Activism didn’t just happen through protests. Activism happened in art. Artwork advertised political campaigns to change the AIDS definition to include women. This 1990 ACT UP poster, with stark, stoic graphic design, urged community members to show up at a demonstration at the Atlanta CDC because “THE CDC AIDS DEFINITION KILLS WOMEN.”

Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries

Artwork fought public homophobia—the photograph below was part of Gran Fury’s 1989 photo campaign Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do, which was mounted on dozens of New York City buses.

Finally, artwork advertised resources meant to raise awareness about safer sex practices within the lesbian community. In the poster below, the Switchboard Institute coins the phrase: “low risk isn’t no risk.”