Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ItsASin

Adam Shanley

@Adlers1

#ItsASin has shone an important light on HIV and AIDS over the last couple of weeks.

If you’re watching it tonight - please know so much has changed.

These are a couple of things I think are important to know.

A thread 🧵1/

HIV and AIDS are not the same thing.

HIV is a virus - the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. AIDS is a collection of illnesses caused when HIV weakens the immune system.

Little was known about #HIV during the time #ItsASin is set and many died of AIDS. That’s changed!

🧵2/

Undetectable = Untransmittable #UequalsU

Treatment for HIV suppresses the virus to a point that it becomes undetectable. This means a person living w/HIV stays healthy and cannot pass on HIV through sex.

Treatments weren’t available when #ItsASin was set. That’s changed!

🧵3/

Read 8 tweets

Dr Hannah J Elizabeth

@sexhistorian

If you've watched #ItsASin & are wondering about some of the other lives touched by #HIV in the 1980s, let me tell you a little about my research on HIV-affected women & children from the 1980-1990s. #thread #lgbtq #HIV

My PhD was on representing #HIV to children & adolescents. I looked at school education, TV, leaflets, teenage magazines, basically any children's media that engaged directly with the subject of #AIDS. #histsex

My article on HIV in Grange Hill is here:

academic.oup.com/tcbh/advance-a…

Because children were basically assumed to be heterosexual in the 1980s/1990s🙄, my work often looked at educational materials created for heterosexual teens who adults assumed wouldn't get #HIV if told about safer-sex...

My article on Brook's campaign: academic.oup.com/shm/advance-ar…

Read 8 tweets

Prof Jackie Cassell

@jackiecassell

I am shocked by the damaging #10yearsjail move by @MattHancock @10DowningStreet It goes against our excellent traditions of #publichealth by consent. Look at how we handled AIDS - no coercion! @FPH @acmedsci @RCPLondon @rcgp @ADPHUK must tell govt how damaging this is. #ItsASin

https://twitter.com/sunilbhop/status/1359557435309096961

@jimmcmanusph @felly500

As you watch #ItsASin, remember the #UK did really well in the early #AIDS #pandemic (terrible though it was, and mistakes were made) by choosing #NoCoercion #NoNewBorders and through #communityorganisation. This was #publichealth at its best. @10DowningStreet must think again

Read 4 tweets

Tom Doran

@portraitinflesh

Speaking up for middle aged white women is an unglamorous task, but I'm glad @HadleyFreeman does it, because someone has to.

I don't happen to agree with @HadleyFreeman's critique of #ItsASin, it was clear to me that in the scene in question, the mother was a stand-in for the whole edifice of shame that turned HIV/AIDS into a disaster. But I suppose you could still say, why cast a woman in that part?

I don't mean to suggest that middle-aged white women have it harder than other kinds of middle-aged women, far from it. But there are specific ways in which they've become scapegoats, as opposed to, to pull an example out of thin air, middle-aged white men. @HadleyFreeman

Read 5 tweets

Sarah 🍓

@SarahJ_Berry

Colin is so pure we do not deserve him #itsasin

OH NO #itsasin

Jesus I was not prepared for that even in the slightest nothing bad can happen to Colin I couldn’t bare it

Read 4 tweets

Adam Wagner

@AdamWagner1

Halfway through #ItsASin which is really extraordinary. But have to admit I got a little thrill when they name checked the 'Public Health Act of 1984'

Idiotically I hadn't twigged that 1984 was right during the first wave of HIV. Is it too late to start reading Hansard from the debates over the Bill?

Yes it is too late

Read 4 tweets

The Telegraph

@Telegraph

The pro-independence campaign group @YesCymru's membership has grown from 2,000 to 17,000 members in the last year

telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/2…

Celebrities including @charlottechurch and #ItsASin screenwriter @russelldavies63 have both recently spoken out about Welsh independence

More than 25,000 citizens have pledged to back a referendum on #Wexit

Read 10 tweets

Jonathan Ashworth 😷💙

@JonAshworth

1. Last night I finished #ItsASin @russelldavies63, the director, amazing cast have given us a beautiful gift with #ItsASin. The 80s music, the politics, the friendship. Perfect. Fun but also serious. By episode 3 (no spoilers) I was in bits. Tears continued until the end #La

2. I’ve never worried sex could result in a death sentence. Even as the child of an alcoholic, have never had that sense of loneliness, nor fear of dying alone. Nor had my life stigmatised. While HIV can affect everyone, #ItsASin demonstrates why it lives in the LGBT experience

3. Thankfully the HIV/AIDS of the #ItsASin period is very different to HIV today – it is not a death sentence, those diagnosed early have normal life expectancy, those on treatment CANT PASS IT ON, and we have a HIV prevention drug #PrEP to help people stay negative.

Read 10 tweets

John Cocker

@CockerJon

One of the most important themes in #ItsASin was the fact they were breaking the law.

Age of consent was 21. Gay Threesomes were illegal. Gay sex outside the house was illegal. Having gay sex in a house where someone else was living was illegal.

https://twitter.com/owenjones84/status/1353834288542834688

The fight for gay rights was therefore about achieving equity with straight folk.

We debated anyone, any time , anywhere. We needed to persuade, and for that we needed conversation

Trans rights are enshrined in the Equality Act 2010. So what rights don’t trans people have?

AIDS destroyed an entire generation of gay men.

The only people who cared for us were lesbians, and left wing women.

The same women labelled “bigots” and “transphobes” today.

Read 12 tweets

John Cocker

@CockerJon

I lost 12 lovers in the 80s to AIDS.

To see a beautiful drama weaponised against the lesbians and gays who nursed my lovers makes me feel sick.

I know that sounds like I’m mewling about “literal violence” but I haven’t got through an episode of #ItsASin without crying.

https://twitter.com/mcashmanCBE/status/1353405936166178818

How fucking dare Michael, and Owen “Squealer” Jones use this brilliant drama to propagate their own misogyny rather than take a moment to remember the dead.

How fucking dare you, you utter bastards.

You want to know who is burning books these days?

It's you fuckwits when anyone dares question the faith based belief that TWAW

Read 4 tweets

Will Nutland

@DrWillN

On my first day at university I was given a copy of Don’t Die of Ignorance leaflet.

A few months earlier I’d picked up a copy of @THTorguk booklet telling me not to bum Americans and to wank.

#ItsASin @alexander_olly

🧵 1/11

For the whole time I was at university, I was celibate.

Like many other queer men in the 80s, the shame and fear of sex was deep.

#ItsASin

🧵 2/11

I had a friend who was a priest.

He had separate mugs in his kitchen for the young drug users who used to visit him.

He knew that HIV couldn’t be transmitted through sharing cups, but that segregated crockery was to reassure his other parishioners.

#ItsASin

🧵 3/11

Read 13 tweets

Patrick Strudwick

@PatrickStrud

Most people have no idea what it was like to be young + gay in the 80s/90s. When straight friends were holding hands in the playground I was in gay bars where there were guys in wheelchairs with KS on their faces. The 1st man I fell for had AIDS. That was my adolescence. #ItsASin

And being a child - 12,14 - and knowing you were gay at that time meant knowing you would very probably die of AIDS. I barely have the words to describe how crushing that was. Few straight people get that - and few under 40s. If Covid is your first pandemic you’re lucky. #ItsASin

What’s hard to convey now is the silence: silence in schools because Section 28 meant teachers couldn’t talk about being gay. And silence because most of society turned the other way. We lived in a pandemic and many died - as everyone else carried on as normal. Blackout. #ItsASin

Read 6 tweets

Nicholas Pegg

@NicholasPegg

A short thread about #ItsASin, the new drama serial from Russell T Davies which begins tonight at 9pm on @Channel4.

Hand on heart, I have never been more thrilled or more proud of anything in my career than I am of being a tiny little part of this huge, beautiful, sexy, funny, sad, important, brilliant drama.

#ItsASin is the story of something that boys and girls of my generation lived through, and it’s a story that needs to be told by those of us who were lucky enough to survive. And nobody could tell it better than Russell T Davies.

Read 8 tweets