Voldemort and the AIDS Epidemic.

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Title:	Voldemort and the AIDS Epidemic.
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Date(s):	July 30, 2004
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Fandom:	Harry Potter
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External Links:	Voldemort and the AIDS epidemic.
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Voldemort and the AIDS Epidemic. is a 2004 Harry Potter essay by Aja.

It is part of a 2002-04 series of essays. See About Writing.

Excerpts

A friend and I were discussing the disparity between the gay sex culture of the 70's and the way sex culture is presented in most Marauder-era slash fics--that is, the hedonistic, free-love mentality is rarely dealt with. My friend remarked that this culture was perhaps drastically different for the wizard culture than it was for muggles, which got me thinking in turn about the drastic changes forced upon the gay community in the 80's by the rise of AIDS, changes motivated primarily by fear and confusion, and the sheer catastrophic numbers of people dying.

Then it struck me that by the late 60's and 70's, a number of parallel changes might have been self-imposed upon wizarding culture due to Voldemort's reign of terror.

Then I started thinking about Voldemort's reign as a parallel to the AIDS epidemic.

Immediately there are 4 key points that leap out at me when you look at Voldemort's reign from this perspective:

: 1) The same mass paranoia, fear, and confusion seems to characterize both "reigns of terror" [snipped] : 2) The ineffectiveness of the government [snipped] : 3) The silence [snipped]

: 4) The denial [snipped]

The parallels between the gay community's refusal to close the bathhouses for years into the epidemic, and the refusal of New York and San Francisco's health commissioners to voluntarily shut them down, is chillingly like the ministry's refusal to take action against Voldemort's rise to power until after the breakin at the Department of Mysteries. By waiting until the outcry and fear became so intense that the bathhouses were virtually out of business anyway, their stance caused thousands and perhaps millions of people to become infected. Likewise, the sheer indifference of the blood bank industries to the disease, and their refusal to test their blood doners for Hepatitis B, the disease that most closely paralleled the AIDS infection at the time, meant that hundreds of people received the disease through blood transfusions that were supposed to cure them. What is perhaps most disturbing of all, though, is the reaction of gay civil liberties groups to the possibility of mandatory blood testing for all donors: they were so worried about being discriminated against that they refused to support action which could have saved lives.

As in the AIDs epidemic, concerns about the politics of associating with societal outcasts in order to more effectively fight the threat stymie the Ministry's effectiveness in fighting that threat from the outset. The fear that AIDS would spread to "the general population" reminds one strongly of the fear that Voldemort would attack Muggles once he had gained full control over the wizarding world--which if gone unchallenged he certainly would, just as the specter of the AIDS epidemic dictated nearly every aspect of gay life in the mid-to-late 80's.

Obviously, Rowling has set the stage for a coming-together, a forming of alliances that supercede cultural prejudice in order to defeat Voldemort: the wizards, giants, and house elves must join together to fight. Likewise, until the muggles and the wizarding world come together--until muggles learn to accept wizards without burning them at the stake and wizards learn to give muggles respect and equality, they will never be able to defeat the prejudices that allowed Voldemort to come to power. The wizarding community has a daunting challenge ahead of it: both to serve as a warning to and work with a much larger, intimidating culture that has ostracized it for centuries.

By the same token, the gay community in the 80's served as a warning to the larger populace and is still seeking both to teach its lessons and learn to work with it to fight the disease. Fudge, throughout his tenure as Minister, sees Voldemort as a problem that affects others--be it those of the past, or those of the immediate present with whom he would rather not choose to associate. Dumbledore's message to him is simply that evil cannot be contained: Voldemort is a universal problem, not a local one. JKR's message to us is unmistakeably [sic] clear in this context: if we are to win our fight, we must lay our prejudices aside, and depend on each other. Until gay men and women have legitimacy, until their lifestyle choices aren't looked at with prejudice, until AIDs can be spoken of and thought of as a universal disease, rather than one which picks and chooses who it would like to kill off based on their lifestyle habits, AIDS will continue to be a misunderstood epidemic that kills people through ignorance, prejudice, and fear.

Unlike the wizarding world, we have no Harry Potter to sacrifice himself for us--but we can certainly take the lessons he teaches to heart.