Crowe, Julie Homchick http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6005-6178
Article History
Accepted: 20 October 2021
First Online: 10 March 2022
Change Date: 13 June 2022
Change Type: Correction
Change Details: A Correction to this paper has been published:
Change Details: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-022-09744-3
Declarations
:
: None.
: N/A
: N/A
: This research project did not receive any funding, poses no conflict of interest, and given that the project did not include human subjects, did not need to go through IRB approval or ask for informed consent. In summary, the project is in compliance with the journal’s ethical rules:
: <sup>1</sup> While the term victim has been rejected in some health-centered communities (including those diagnosed with cancer or HIV) given how it conjures suggestions of weakness and powerlessness, it nonetheless encapsulates the messaging we see in the following case studies that attempts to position listeners into the identity of having potential to contract a disease. We might describe this identity similarly as the vulnerable, the at-risk, or carriers, but all such terms carry similar suggestions. Even the term survivor, which is sometimes preferred among those who have a disease, is embedded with assumptions about battle and fighting disease. And, in the cases below, we don’t see moments where the identities of potential victims are framed as potential survivors – such framing would, in a sense, reduce the perceived urgency and risk for the listener. As such, I use the term victim here as a description of how this identity was articulated in public discourse.<sup>2</sup> It is important to note here that in 1992 Elizabeth Glaser – a well-off white woman who is similar in some ways to Fisher – spoke at the Democratic National Convention as well. At the time, Glaser had been living with HIV for eleven years after a blood transfusion and had unknowingly passed the virus to her children (one through breastmilk and one while in utero before her diagnosis). Her daughter had already died of HIV and Glaser would die two years later in 1994. While Glaser’s role in effecting policy change for HIV funding was important, her audience of Democrats is a much different one than Fisher’s – signs in her audience read things like “Lesbian and Gay Rights Now,” “Keep Abortion Legal,” and “What about AIDS,” signaling that Glaser’s audience already saw the urgency of the issue and that, as Glaser spoke, HIV was “everyone’s problem” (Glaser 1992). While Glaser’s speech does exemplify some similar moments as Fisher’s (with words like “This is not about being a Republican or an Independent or a Democrat, it’s about the future – for each and every one of us.”), Fisher’s aim of reframing the audience of her audience better shows us the constitutive rhetoric present in the HIV epidemic.
Free to read: This content has been made available to all.