Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Disease, death and killing 217
blue, with sensational press reports of young homosexual men dying from
rare conditions. All at once, dentists started to wear masks and rubber gloves,
and there were ‘blood rules’ on the sports field to protect players from the
blood of the injured. People knew AIDS was catching and yet, because its
onset is asymptomatic, its onslaught was invisible. The projected deaths were
apocalyptic. And, as with leprosy and syphilis in earlier times, AIDS was
linked in the minds of many with sin and depravity – with intravenous drug
users and unnatural, ungodly sexual practices. The fact that it was unwittingly
communicable intensified the fear of contagion. Genteel euphemisms
warning against exchanging bodily fluids did nothing to stem the fears of a
public terrified that the disease could spread via all manner of effluvia,
including saliva, sweat and tears. There are many, especially on the powerful
Religious Right, who genuinely believe that AIDS has been sent as awful
retribution for an epoch of excesses and impiety; hence the acronym WOGS
(wrath of god syndrome). But even the non-religious believed that AIDS was
contracted not by ordinary folk, but by people on the margins of society. Gays
and drug users got AIDS because of their perverse and dangerous behaviour.
The polluting nature of the disease meant those afflicted were hidden away by
their families or even expelled from the community. The social disgrace
destroyed the possibility of normal social interaction for AIDS sufferers
who, fearing the withdrawal of others, found themselves retreating from
contact. Like leprosy and syphilis, AIDS was an accusation.
Before it received the name AIDS, the disease went by a number of
different labels: Gay Cancer, Gay Plague (it was doubtless felt appropriate
that it should be associated with such deadly diseases) and GRID (gay related
immuno-deficiency). These were perhaps abandoned because they linked the
disease too specifically with the gay community, thus upsetting heterosexual
haemophiliacs and other AIDS-afflicted non-gays. However, there was a
notional distinction between those ‘who brought it on themselves’ and the
‘blameless’, who acquired it through blood transfusion. The acronym AIDS
was eventually chosen, presumably because of its optimistic ring – as though
it were ‘a disease that wanted to help, not hurt. Just a plague whose intentions
were good.’ 34 In general usage the word aids denotes a material means of
help, as in hearing/visual/legal aids. AIDS also fits in with other s-final
disease names such as measles, mumps, rabies and shingles.
There were also a number of examples of dysphemism or verbal flippancy
in reference to AIDS; for example, Anally Inserted Death Sentence or Toxic
Cock Syndrome. Here, the motivation was as much fear as it was the facetious
down-playing of death and the hospitalized. But like so many colloquial
expressions for serious illness, there was also a real cruelty. Such labels
smack of homophobic antagonism and the rampant moralizing and fingerwagging
that went on when AIDS first appeared on the scene. There was also