Surviving AIDS: Cultural Trauma among middle-aged Gay Men in New York City

Hundreds of thousands of gay men fell died of AIDS-related causes in the last decades. Especially before effective medication became available in the mid-1990s the suffering and death rates were tremendous and society hostile, tearing up the gay community as it existed pre-AIDS. Focus of this article are now the gay men who survived this time while countless others around them died. Based on interviews and ethnographic research conducted in 2013 and 2014 it uses the concept of syndemics to show how the AIDS experience is still influential in the lives of these gay men until today and argues that recently the construction of a new cultural trauma can be observed, which functions as a way to process their unique experience.