World AIDS Day with PATS

Photo of a mural that says “ACT UP! Bi Queer!” over an anarchist circle-A with a pink triangle. Floating around the image are Keith Haring-esque characters and pink triangles with lightning bolts indicating that this probably came from a squatted space.

We’ve crossposted our annual World AIDS Day post to Instagram. This year is a look at some pages from the queer anarchist zine PATS. PATS ran for 28 issues from the summer of 1992 through December of 1999. Published by Frankie, Christine and Oscar in Utrecht, The Netherlands, the majority of the zine is in Dutch with some English and French smatterings.

ID1: From PATS No.3 (Summer 1993), an illustration of a priest nailing Christ to the cross, the word Queer over his head, and the text “AIDS, Unlike Homophobia, Cannot Be Spread Through Casual Contact”

ID2: From PATS No.7 (August 1994), a flyer from ACT UP New York in Spanish for a demonstration during the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Text in English reads “STONEWALL DESPERATE TIMES. DESPERATE ACTIONS. AIDS ON THE STREET! SUN JUNE 26 ’94 10AM: SHERIDAN SQ—>CENTRAL PK”

ID3: A review of Pansy Division’s album Deflowered and the printed lyrics to their song Denny, about a man who’s sick with opportunistic infections as a result of having AIDS.

ID4: From PATS No.9 (March 1995) – A fundraising appeal for ACT UP – Amsterdam – Image depicts a person screaming and the translated text reads “STILL AIDS! SEE, HEAR and SCREAM! ACT UP!”

ID5: From PATS No.12 (December 1995) – An blurb about ACT UP/SF storming the San Francisco offices of the Republican Party and burning Senator Jesse Helms in effigy next to a sticker that says The AIDS Crisis is Not Over. On the lower half is a piece about the 8th annual World AIDS day event happening in Utrecht.

ID6: A photo postcard of a colorful banner that says ACT UP – Utrecht

ID7: From PATS No.8 (December 1994) – An article about an action that ACT UP – Utrecht members participated in at the Forbidden Fruits of Civil Society Festival from Sept. 8-18, 1994 in Slovenia teaching safer sex practices.

ID8: From PATS No.8 (December 1994) – A continuation of the previous page and some graphic propaganda including images of unrolled condoms.

ID9: From PATS No.20 (December 1997) – Making Dams for Beavers – illustrated instructions on how to make barriers for performing safer oral sex on orifices using latex gloves.

ID10: Photo of a mural that says “ACT UP! Bi Queer!” over an anarchist circle-A with a pink triangle. Floating around the image are Keith Haring-esque characters and pink triangles with lightning bolts indicating that this probably came from a squatted space.

Sex Panic! At the Disco – World AIDS Day, 2022

Cover of the zine Sex Panic! circa 1997Today is World AIDS Day, and while we’re not “celebrating”, per se, we are acknowledging the day, and the incredible impact this stupid fucking virus has had on our lives, our friends, our communities, and the whole damn world. In this vein, we present Sex Panic! – The Zine by the fine activists of Sex Panic!

This 40 page, digest size zine from 1997 is a collection of essays about how the anti-sex policies and politics of the 1980s and 1990s (and into the current millennium) have had a huge negative impact on queer communities. While the zine’s focus, at least initially, is on New York City, it’s contents is applicable much more broadly.

This is an incredible document, up there with Diseased Pariah News and How to Have Sex in An Epidemic in terms of DIY community-based communication about AIDS. Essayists include Douglas Crimp*, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Allan Bérubé, Lisa Duggan, Alison Redick, and Jim Eigo, among others.

We’ll be bringing this, along with a bunch of other AIDS activist ephemera, to the panel talk that we’re participating in with our friends from Gerber/Hart and Chicago Public Library on Monday, Dec. 5th, 2022.


*Doug Crimp was also one of the authors of AIDS Demo Graphics, which documents the first couple of years of ACT UP visuals, and has been a huge influence on us and scores of queer zine makers around the world.

Get QZAP Swag!!