Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

218 Forbidden Words
a new acronym GAY ‘got AIDS yet’, which is a sick joke. The high risk
groups were also labelled the 4-H Club. The pun was a triple-whammy: first,
it recognized the fact that AIDS sufferers were HIV positive, where the
alphabetism for ‘human immuno-deficiency virus’ is reinterpreted as ‘H-four’
(roman IV). Second, it alluded to the four groups at greatest risk in those early
days – homosexuals, Haitians, haemophiliacs and heroin-users. Moreover, the
expression ironically played on the fact that 4-H Clubs in North America are
organizations of wholesome young farmers. 35
In the 1980s, there appeared a new euphemistic vocabulary for AIDS that
became known as ‘AIDSpeak’. The following is the opening statement of the
principles articulated (in 1983) in Denver by the first AIDS activists. They
became known as The Denver Principles. 36
We condemn attempts to label us as ‘victims’, which implies defeat, and we are only
occasionally ‘patients’, which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon
the care of others. We are ‘People With AIDS’. (The advisory committee of People
with AIDS)
In some places, the abbreviation PWA was later replaced by PLWA or PLA
(person living with AIDS), and also PWArcs (person with AIDS-related
complex). 37 Although no cure or vaccine had been discovered, advances in
medical research meant that AIDS could be managed by drugs, and those with
the disease now could expect many years of a relatively healthy life. Promoters
of such vocabulary emphasized that healing could be achieved by
developing perceptions of well-being; the new names avoided the negativity
of patient, sufferer and victim, and stressed positive aspects to do with
survival and hope. Other fighting acronyms in the AIDSpeak lexicon include
PISD (people with immune system disorder), PLUS (positive living for us)
and ACT UP (AIDS coalition to unleash power). As is always the case with
renaming initiatives, such labels were, and still are, controversial. As we saw
in Chapter 4, the battle is often as much about who has the power to name as
the naming itself; who decides the identity of a group and its desires and
interests. 38 Labels like victim and patient persist in the media and are still the
preferred terms of politicians, health care workers and others involved in
campaigning for ‘victim rights’.
Recent progress in AIDS research has brought some optimism, but also
worries, because AIDS is spreading like wildfire in Africa, and more recently
in India and East Asia. Initiatives like the AIDS Memorial Quilt gave the
disease positive media coverage, as did the late Diana Princess of Wales’
glad-handing of AIDS sufferers. On the down side is the behaviour of people
like President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who pointedly ignores the AIDS
epidemic in his country and discourages practical disease management. And
there are still many people (like United States President George W. Bush)