ple with HIV and AIDS often cannot meet their occupational, family and social obligations as fully as they did before they were infected. Many tire easily, must work less for medical reasons and during later stages of the disease require assistance from other people (Derlega 18). Whether physical limitations are real or imagined by others, people who are HIV positive may be viewed as peripheral social contributors who drain more emotional, financial, and practical resources from others than they contribute.4. People also disassociate from those who lead them to experience adverse emotions. “From a simple operant perspective we are punished for interacting with people who regularly make us feel afraid, angry, repulsed, depressed, or otherwise uncomfortable” (Derlega 19). Such a reaction is understandable but it leads us to avoid and exclude people through no fault of their own. Some writers have also suggested that dealing with the terminally ill makes people uncomfortable because it forces them to confront their own mortality. A person with obvious signs of AIDS such as: Kaposi’s sarcoma, emaciation, hair loss, or disfigurement is more likely to evoke negative reactions and is more likely to be stigmatized (Derlega 19).“But AIDS in America more than every other Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD), has seemed to select its victims from among previously defined groups” such as minority groups stigmatized by AIDS (Nelkin 21). Those groups are described in detail in the following paragraphs to further illustrate the exclusion from the general populace by this connection. The gay portion of our population is predominantly affected by the disease and is most frequently stereotyped as associated with the disease. “Living with HIV or AIDS may be especially challenging for gay-identified men but they also have some unique coping advantages as a result of their group membership” (Derlega 31)....
