I'm going to CRY.

From the moment AIDS hit the news, both the straight and gay/lesbian communities have continually erased its impact on the bi+ community, and the absolutely incredible activism in response.

First to pass the blame. Then to strip the resources. https://twitter.com/BiFuriosa/status/1319429338740162562

The history of HIV/AIDS and the bi+ community is the history of bi+ oppression in miniature. Everything that the community faced there, and still faces, is something that has -- has, not had -- a huge, intense impact on the community in a larger way.

For the gay community, this is less true. There are things that the gay community faced, around HIV/AIDS, that are not still happening, or that have gotten significantly better. Coming out doesn't mean people assume you'll die. Gay male characters aren't exclusively HIV stories.

Some of the biggest things that the bi+ community faced:

-A lack of appropriate public health resources. If you wanted information on safer sex with more than one gender, you had to go to more than one source -- and choose to either be closeted, or risk bigoted attitudes, twice.

- A lack of research, data, and funding. At first, nobody was tracking bi+ deaths. Even now, bi-specific statistics on HIV/AIDS are INCREDIBLY difficult to find.

- Stigma. So much stigma. Coupled with a lack of positive representation. Even now, as @glaad will tell you, bi+ men are drastically underrepresented in the media. And bi+ characters in general are the one LGBTQIPA+ category that is still full of negative stereotypes.

- Just plain erasure. Nobody knows what the bi+ community's activism around HIV/AIDS looked like, or looks like now. Nobody knows what impact it had on the bi+ community. Nobody seems to know that there is a bi+ community and culture.

If you've read my threads before, you will not be surprised that that was just the intro.

I'm going to give you everything I know or can google about BI+ ACTIVISM IN A BI+ PANDEMIC.

(If your reaction to that was to be offended because this was really a gay pandemic that primarily affected the gay male community, I would challenge you to tell me what the numbers were. Do you actually know which group had more deaths? More PWA? What those numbers are now?)

This photo is from the Lourea Papers in @SFPublicLibrary's archives.

Dr. Maggi Rubenstein and Dr. Harriet Leve co-founded SF's Bisexual Center in 1976.

It would be forced to shut down 8 years later, as AIDS activism took over, and as HIV/AIDS took many community members.

Here's their Lourea Papers post, btw; specifically, it's at the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the @SFPublicLibrary. https://queerestlibraryever.blogspot.com/2013/01/archives-david-lourea-and-bisexual.html

And a little of that local bi+ history: https://www.babpn.org/about.html 

Dr. Maggi Rubenstein had founded @SFSI (still going strong!) in 1973, training sex educators and providing "free, confidential, accurate, non-judgmental information about sex and reproductive health." Lourea got involved with SFSI, and later joined the Bi Center as a co-director.

In 1981, "Gay-Related Immune Disorder" begins to hit the news.

David Lourea and Cynthia Slater immediately paired up to start presenting safer sex information at bathhouses and sex clubs.

This is a Mapplethorpe photo of Slater, who you've probably never heard of either.

That was, as far as I know, the first bi+ activist response to HIV/AIDS: start educating people about how to stay safe, and start with the groups who are having a lot of sex and are already ignored or demonized for it.

Slater was an old hand at this.

Cynthia Slater was "a bisexual woman who created pansexual space before there was such a word."

http://web.archive.org/web/20160313000911/http://www.weareleatherwomen.com/history-of-cynthia-slater

She and her partner Larry Olsen founded the @societyofjanus in 1974 (again, still exists!) - as this bronze bootprint in SF's historic Leather District says.