Ian Young
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Biography
Young was born in London, England, during a World War II air raid. As his parents emigrated not once but three times, he grew up moving between South Africa, Canada and England, eventually settling in Toronto in the late 1950's. He currently holds joint Canadian/UK citizenship.
Young attended the University of Toronto in the days when Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan were holding court. At the same time, he was active in movements for peace and racial integration and part of the hippie and coffee-house scene that arose in Yorkville. His writing was first published in the American homophile magazine One.
When his ambition to be a teacher collided with his determination not to live his life in the closet, Young abandoned the academic life. He was a co-founder of the first Canadian gay liberation group in 1969 and started the first gay literary press, Catalyst, the following year. He became a travelling activist and ended up in New York in the mid-Seventies.
Over the years, Young has been a frequent contributor to the gay press and has published various books of poetry, essays, reference works (including bibliographies of gay literature and dissident AIDS literature) and several literary anthologies.
Young first became interested in investigating AIDS in 1988 when Jamie Perry was diagnosed HIV positive after a catastrophic illness. His first published piece on AIDS appeared that year, a report on an AIDS forum in Toronto attended by Michael Culbert, Dr. Lawrence Badgley, and other dissidents. He wrote then about the “strong desire to reach out to more PWAs and to work on the media to better present the whole truth about the AIDS crisis, not just the official story.”
Some years later, he co-founded (with Carl Strygg and Rob Johnson) the Toronto chapter of the independent AIDS group HEAL. Young describes his current viewpoint on the effect of AIDS dissenters:
HEAL and the AIDS dissident movement set out to examine the official orthodoxies about AIDS, particularly the single virus hypothesis, the safety and utility of prescribed treatments and the effectiveness of prophylactic 'safe sex' campaigns. Though many of the points we made are now generally conceded, the HIV/AIDS ideology remains dominant. Beliefs, whether cosmological, political or medical, are seldom overcome by merely pointing out their errors and contradictions. Only a new, more compelling, understanding can displace the old mind-set. This the dissidents have failed to provide, partly because we have been an army of mavericks with divergent approaches, partly because the orthodox HIV theorists, backed by a powerful pharmaceutical lobby, won the political game and maintained their hold on both scientific research and media coverage. Nevertheless, many people diagnosed with HIV or AIDS have quietly dropped out of the system, dealt with their own health in their own way, and survived. (Brown 2006)
While writing The Stonewall Experiment, Young got to know the psychiatrist Dr. Casper Schmidt and became interested in his psychohistorical approach to AIDS. Having lost two lovers and countless friends to AIDS, he sees the syndrome as a consequence of society’s defensive response to the questions and demands posed by gay liberation:
The invisible wall thrown around the ghetto provided not liberation or protection but rather a stifling moral vacuum encouraging self-destruction and disease. This is, I think, a conservative conclusion, though not one many conservatives will be comfortable with. (Brown 2006)
Young currently runs Ian Young Books, an on-line bookshop, from Toronto where he lives with his partner Wulf, a theater props maker, and friend John S. Gray, a composer. Currently, his projects include a book of short stories, editions of works by Daniel Diamond and Mikhail Itkin, and a study of gay imagery. His most recent work is Out in Print: A Visual History of Gay Pulps.
Quotes
- "Betrayal and apparent failure are the fate of all revolutions; if only in that compromises are inevitable and expectations frustrated. Success comes too of course, for the degree and details of every failure also shape history. The emergence of gay people over the past 125 years constitutes a revolution whose successes have yet to be fully felt. Its failures are recorded every day in the obituaries." (Young 1995)
- "Society has never made the well-being of gay men a priority. On the other hand, if you have AIDS or are HIV Positive, a range of social services, support groups, medical benefits and other perks becomes immediately available. Suddenly, attention is paid. Variations of the same phrase crop up again and again in the sentimental AIDS literature: 'I never knew how much I was loved until I got AIDS.' It makes a great ad slogan, if AIDS is what you're selling." (Young 1997)
- "The PWA is the modern equivalent of the leper: like what was called leprosy in the premodern world, AIDS is a term that covers many different afflictions. This modern sexual leprosy is imagined to be healed by the cleansing scourge of teratogenic – and often anaphrodisiac – toxins. And the homosexual rises from his death bed – to play tennis. This is the much talked about 'Lazarus effect,' the Biblical Lazarus being associated with resurrection and leprosy." (Young 1998)
Documents
- Book reviews
- Introduction to The Stonewall Experiment
- Prologue to The Stonewall Experiment
- Epilogue to The Stonewall Experiment
- Introduction to The AIDS Cult
- The Psychohistorical Origins of AIDS (interview with Casper Schmidt)
- The AIDS Cult and its Seroconverts
- Testing, Testing: A Look at Our Most Popular Ritual
External links
References
- ↑ Brown, Darin, 2006. Personal communication with Ian Young, May 2006.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Young, Ian, 1995. Epilogue to The Stonewall Experiment.
- ↑ Young, Ian, 1997. "The AIDS Cult and its Seroconverts", Continuum Nov/Dec 1996, Feb/March 1997, reprinted in The AIDS Cult.
- ↑ Young, Ian, 1998. "Cocktails for One: AIDS Treatment as a Social Sanction", HIV Realist, December 1998.
General references
- Brown, Darin, Personal communication with Ian Young, May 2006.
