Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS by Aziza Ahmed

Authors

• Kailey Tam

Document Type

Book Review

Abstract

Book review of : Risk and Resistance: How Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS by Aziza Ahmed

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Citation Information

Tam, Kailey. "Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS by Aziza Ahmed." Osgoode Hall Law Journal 63.1 (2026) : 179-186.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.4209
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol63/iss1/7

References

1. (Cambridge University Press, 2025), DOI: .

2. JD Student (2026), Osgoode Hall Law School.

3. Ahmed, supra note 1 at 1.

4. Ibid. “AIDS” stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. HIV is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system. Although HIV is a manageable chronic condition, if left untreated, it can progress to AIDS, which is the most advanced stage of HIV infection: Government of Canada, “HIV and AIDS: Symptoms and Treatment” (last modified 2 September 2025), online: [perma.cc/5R6Z-9SCC]. In this review, I use “HIV” to refer broadly to the manageable chronic condition, “AIDS” when discussing the most advanced form of the infection, and “HIV/AIDS” when referring to both collectively.

5. The CDC’s publication now stands as the first official reporting of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. See US Department of Health & Human Services, “A Timeline of HIV and AIDS” (last visited 7 January 2026), online: [perma.cc/6G2X-3X9Y].

6. See Lawrence K Altman, “New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials,” New York Times (11 May 1982) C1, online: .

7. As Ahmed notes, this association provided “fertile ground for stigma and homophobia.” Supra note 1 at 25. Indeed, the HIV/AIDS crisis generated much literature, art, and activism by gay men and their allies, largely resisting the Reagan administration’s infamously slow and therefore deadly response to AIDS in the early 1980s and the stigmatization of people living with HIV. See e.g. Robert Sember & David Gere, “‘Let the Record Show…’: Art Activism and the AIDS Epidemic” (2006) 96 American J Public Health 967, DOI: ; Georgia State University Library, “Reagan’s Response” (last visited 12 March 2026), online: [perma.cc/6A8R-NZF8]. See also Ahmed, supra note 1 at 11.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid at 19.

11. Ibid, citing Michael Fumento, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by Media and Partisan Politics (Basic Books, 1990) at 46.

12. UNAIDS, “Fact Sheet 2025” (last visited 7 January 2026), online (pdf): [perma.cc/94Y9-WX2G].

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ahmed comments on this presumption: “In most accounts, AIDS was and is a disease of gay men, one that was bravely fought and won. A reader could be forgiven for walking away from this literature thinking that there were few women involved in AIDS activism and that AIDS was now a thing of the past.” Supra note 1 at xv.

17. Ibid.

18. See e.g. ibid at 59-60.

19. Ibid at 23-26. Ahmed details the process for a woman, unable to secure an HIV/AIDS diagnosis, to receive a disability assessment instead in order to be eligible for welfare benefits and healthcare. However, the disability assessment “took so long that women often died prior to being designated disabled” (ibid at 26).

20. Ibid at 5.

21. Ibid at 19.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid at 19.

24. Ibid at 19, 23.

25. Ibid at 25.

26. Ibid at 112.

27. Ibid at 121.

28. Ibid at 118.

29. Ibid at 120.

30. Ibid at xiv, citing David Garland, “What Is a ‘History of the Present’? On Foucault’s Genealogies and Their Critical Preconditions” (2014) 16 Punishment & Soc’y 365 at 372, DOI: .

31. See Ahmed, supra note 1 at 126-28. The US government implemented the “antiprostitution loyalty oath,” which mandated that funding was contingent on explicit opposition to the promotion or advocacy of prostitution or sex trafficking. The consequences of this would be devastating to sex workers and programs that prioritized harm reduction.

32. Ibid at xiv.

33. Ibid at xv.

34. See US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Fast Facts: HIV and Transgender People” (last visited 12 January 2026), online: [perma.cc/Z2SZ-LMKU]; Che Gossett & Eva Hayward, “Trans in a Time of HIV/AIDS” (2020) 7 Transgender Studies Q 527 at 533, DOI: .

35. See e.g. Marty Fink, Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (Rutgers University Press, 2020), DOI: . Of particular relevance is the chapter “Caregiving Collations and ‘Gender Trash from Hell’” (ibid at ch 2); National AIDS Memorial, “2019 Mini Documentary - Surviving Voices: The Transgender Community and AIDS” (2 December 2019), online (video): .

36. Susan Stryker, Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution, 2nd ed (Seal Press, 2017) at 141.

37. Ibid at 164.

38. See e.g. Gossett & Hayward, supra note 34.

39. Ahmed, supra note 1 at 148-49.

40. Ibid at 151.