dan glass: Rage, Resistance, Reconnection

Summarydan glass was born in 1983, the year HIV was first identified as HIV rather than the gay plague. They grew up under Thatcher's Section 28 with only EastEnders' Mark Fowler and tombstone adverts for reference. Death, isolation, internalised stigma - that was all HIV meant. When dan was diagnosed in their early twenties, they got drunk, went to a friend's house, cried, and she helped them to the toilet. The next morning, they told their boss it wasn't flu after all.For five years, dan refused treatment. The fear was too deep, the conditioning too absolute. Section 28 had taught them they were wrong, that whatever happened was their fault, that no one would help. The gravity of that silence was lethal. When dan finally saw a doctor in Berlin who told them their CD4 count meant they had AIDS, they collapsed in the shower the next day.What followed was transformation through community. A friend in Berlin, Juliana, threw a party where everyone screamed in each other's faces and painted their feet white to pre-empt the side effects dan feared most. The next morning, in Tempelhof park, dan took their first pills. A lover named Terry introduced them to ACT UP. dan went down the rabbit hole and never came back.Since then, dan has co-founded the reformed ACT UP London, organised die-ins in Trafalgar Square, helped secure PrEP access through spectacular direct action, written two books on queer radical history, co-founded Bender Defenders for queer self-defence, and is about to open London's first community-run LGBTQ+ space at the Joiners Arms. According to Nigel Farage, they're scum. dan takes that as a compliment.This is the final episode of series two, and it's a fitting end: grief alchemised into action, silence challenged at every turn, and friendship held up as political resistance.Timestamped Takeaways00:02:43 - Section 28 meant death. Growing up under Thatcher, HIV meant death, isolation, internalised stigma, your own fault. Mark Fowler on EastEnders was the only reference. There were no queer friends, no ropes to hang on to.00:04:22 - Missing stories. What was missing from those messages was the brilliance of the community. People weren't told the true human stories. Section 28 silenced homosexuality in schools, libraries, public institutions. dan grew up in a religious, conservative environment where being gay was an abomination. Silence layered on silence.00:06:27 - Seroconversion. dan had what seemed like flu but wasn't. A doctor in Brighton said those three letters. It struck deep. dan didn't know what it meant scientifically or socially—just death. They got drunk, went to a friend's house, cried, and she helped them to the toilet.00:08:23 - Telling friends one by one. It was emotionally exhausting. So dan decided to do it all at once: a show called Shafted, based on Stars in Their Eyes, on the 25th anniversary of ACT UP. At the end, they were fired from a 12-foot cock-shaped human cannon across the audience, announcing: "Tonight everyone, I'm living with HIV."00:10:47 - Five years without treatment. dan refused medication despite it being available. Living with HIV is more than pills into bodies. Fear, internalised stigma, the conditioning that you were doomed—Section 28's pathology was hyper-individualism. You had to parent yourself because you were told you were wrong.00:12:08 - Shingles in Glasgow. dan's nurse called it "the red roses from hell." Their immune system was in a bad way. Stress correlated with sickness. White things on the tongue, red rashes—signs the body was failing. Still, dan was rigid with fear.00:13:44 - Berlin and the truth. A doctor in Berlin, smoking fags in a tight white shirt, gave dan the statistics. They went home, looked up what it meant, and realised they had AIDS. They collapsed in the shower the next day.00:15:09 - Juliana's party. dan was terrified of the side effects—nightmares, white feet. Juliana threw a party where everyone screamed in each other's faces and painted their feet white. You face fear by facing it.00:17:03 - First pills in Tempelhof. The next morning, in dan's favourite park, they swallowed the pills. Game changer. Choice made. The physiological symptoms cleared rapidly.00:17:51 - Terry's challenge. A lover named Terry, an ACT UP Paris activist, challenged dan's shame. "It's not your shame. It's society's." They went to bed. The next morning, Terry told dan about ACT UP. dan went down the rabbit hole.00:19:13 - The second silence. Around 2014, HIV was in what activists called "the second silence": rising transmissions among certain populations without access, cuts to education and support due to austerity, and a general belief that HIV was a thing of the 80s and 90s.00:20:28 - Peter Staley and reformation. dan contacted Peter Staley, protagonist of How to Survive a Plague, organised a screening in London, and met Andrea Morden, a lifelong ACT UP activist whose partner John had died of AIDS. That meeting led to the reformation of ACT UP...