Changes Brought On By AIDS
Sontag claims that AIDS has created a new concept of illness, where a patient is "ill" as soon as they are infected, whether or not they have shown any symptoms. She talks of tabulating cases of disease, where before the number was based on those with demonstrated symptoms but with AIDS is as almost arbitrary number. In this new vision of illness, one can lose their employment, their housing, and their place in society years before any changes in health.
Also, with modern advances in medicine, society had begun to believe that epidemics and incurable illnesses were a thing of the past. The advent of AIDS proved these conclusions to be wrong. The "plague" notion was revived, but when it had been previously used to conceptualize punishment of a society, it was adapted to be a punishment visited on an individual or small group.
Sontag discusses her views on the male homosexual culture prior to AIDS, saying that they had embraced the 1970s sexual culture of freedom. The view that all sexually transmitted diseases were easily curable had led to a mentality of getting what one wanted whenever one wanted it, and this was completely ended with the emergence of AIDS. Sex was suddenly viewed as a potential suicide or murder.
Read more about this topic: AIDS And Its Metaphors
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