You cannot exclude gay men from the story of ACT UP

We read with interest your comment piece about the origins of ACT UP (What ACT UP’s successes can teach today’s protest movements, 8 June).

But having spent decades working on behalf of people with HIV (and this year marks the 30th anniversary of one of us being diagnosed with HIV), we were left dumbfounded and angry.

The article doesn’t once mention gay men, a deeply hurtful oversight given the 40 years of devastation that HIV has caused gay communities across the globe and the important role that gay men have taken and continue to take in the fight against HIV.

The author has previously made the rather odd comment that ACT UP “has been incorrectly represented as exclusively white and male”, but her failure to mention gay men at all in her comment piece offered a distorted, highly selective and deeply offensive retelling of the history of HIV, ACT UP and Aids activism (the disdainful reference to “an LGBT-only context” added insult to injury), one that fatally undermines any lessons she purports to offer to today’s generation of activists.
Dr Michael Carter
London
Dr José Catalan
London

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