Norris, AdeleWilliams, Mitchell2024-11-282024-11-282024https://hdl.handle.net/10289/17071Throughout the AIDS crisis, mainstream media depicted queer populations, specifically queer men, through a lens of deviance. These depictions, in concert with political homophobia, slowed AIDS research, limited media coverage of the crisis, and created barriers for marginalised people to access healthcare. To oppose this queer disenfranchisement from dominating medical, scientific, and political establishments, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) emerged—promoting a more forceful, equitable, and humane response to a disease killing the most vulnerable members of society. By advocating for queer rights and facing challenges brought on by the AIDS crisis, ACT UP ruptured the invisibility of queer oppression and brought queerness from the fringes of society into mainstream cultural awareness. Since ACT UP, there has been some progression in queer rights and many of the challenges faced in the early days of the AIDS crisis have come to be (perceived as) resolved. However, queer people continue to face discrimination via increasing amounts of anti-queer policy and extreme-Right hostilities. Yet, the radical voices that once brought such issues to the forefront have since dispersed. Therefore, this study argues that queer oppression made visible during the AIDS crisis has continued to the present day but it is no longer as salient nor as apparent to mainstream society as it was during the time of ACT UP. A key reason for this argument is that queer visibility in mainstream media gives the illusion that traditional forms of queer discrimination have been resolved when in actuality, the consumption of queer culture by non-queer audiences obscures a continuity of queer oppression. These processes of obscuration may, in part, be driven by the lack of attention historical forms of queer resistance have received. To provide theoretical insights into ways the mainstream consumption of queer culture has perpetuated and obscured a continuity of queer oppression, this study employed an exploratory case study evaluation of ACT UP. This case study was guided by the sociological and Black feminist frameworks of intersectionality and the matrix of domination, with a particular focus on controlling images. Special interest was also devoted to exploring the ways contemporary masculinities can be used to understand configurations of power in the queer community. This study found that mainstream media perpetuated and obscured queer oppression throughout the AIDS crisis by spreading misinformation surrounding AIDS and the AIDS crisis, misrepresenting people with AIDS, and mis-historicising ACT UP. Additionally, this study found that masculinities influenced how men in ACT UP navigated and accessed power, most notably by leveraging their maleness and whiteness. This study concludes by framing this contemporary phenomenon as a form of epistemic violence. This study also expands upon the concept of queer blindfolding as an investigative tool for understanding how queer voices are silenced. This research is important because it draws on historical accounts to expand present-day understandings of an under-researched, contemporary queer issue, as well as honours the people who put their bodies on the line for queer rights.enAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.ACT UPhybrid masculinityqueer culturegoldilocks masculinityhegemonic masculinityqueer blindfoldingmatrix of dominationqueer oppressionThesis