Guinea Pig Kids: AIDS Denialism and the Politics of Motherhood
Thursday, Nov. 19, 2026 | 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. | 413 Fayerweather
No registration required. Only open to campus affiliates.
Lindsay Zafir, City College
In the late 1990s, HIV-positive mothers across North America began refusing antiretrovirals for themselves and their children. They argued that doctors and scientists did not know better than they did how to take care of their children’s health—that their innate knowledge as mothers mattered just as much as expert knowledge. This talk examines the reasons for their rebellion against state and medical authority, using it as a window into understanding the politics of the natural parenting movement from the perspective of a group of straight women who felt tainted by their association with a “gay disease.”
Lindsay Zafir is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The City College of New York and the author of the forthcoming State of Denial: AIDS and the Rise of the Disinformation Age. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the ACORN Oral History Project, which documents the history of the community organizing group ACORN.
Sponsored by the Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
