The Like-Me Theory

Critical to understanding the function of gay writers and activists during the AIDS crisis is acknowledging the actions of the media during that time. The ways in which society perceives an event is often dictated by the media’s coverage of that event; additionally, large-scale awareness of an event is engendered by whether or not mainstream media is bringing it to the attention of the majority. The attitude of news sources toward an event as well as the ways in which it is covered affect how it is perceived by society. Subtle rhetoric choices, sensationalizing issues, and point of view are all tools of the media that can shift and mold how issues are nationally viewed and received. At the onset of the AIDS crisis it became clear what the
This idea that others are like ourselves and are therefore relatable is a driving force in human interaction and perception of other humans. The study goes on to assert that “work on human empathy shows that adults react differently to the injury of an entity as a function of the like-me-ness of that entity” (cite). AIDS struck mainly society’s most marginalized: gay people, drug users, poor people, and nonwhite people. Even as AIDS spread to hemophiliacs and people who had received blood transfusions, it continued to be viewed as a gay disease; AIDS was so entrenched in stigma that linked it to marginalized groups that it continued to be viewed as a disease that only affected those groups. The media views the world through a largely white and heterosexual lense, with influence from the values of the Moral Majority; this sociopolitical context that defines the 1980s led to the inability to view high-risk groups as “like-me” and stopped the media from employing genuine empathy in its AIDS
Therefore, the popularization of viewing AIDS in the context of who was and was not a part of this conceived “general public” is a testament to what Sarah Schulman argues is the “centerpiece of supremacy ideology, the idea that one person’s life is more important than another’s” (The Gentrification of the Mind 47). The “general public” mentality victimized AIDS patients and held them at the mercy of culturally powerful groups, because those groups warranted action and widespread concern. In his speech at an ACT UP demonstration in 1988 activist Vito Russo bluntly addresses the lack of investigation by the media on behalf of people with AIDS : “Reporters all over the country are busy printing government press releases. They don’t give a shit, it isn’t happened to them - the real people, the world famous general public we all hear