AR: Yeah. It seems like the message a lot of younger people are getting about activism is a finger wagging you-should-do-this-because-it’s-your-responsibility. Is guilt or shame a part of what compels you to do the activist work you do?

SS: No, no, it’s not that at all.

AR: And do you feel like there’s an emotional toll from doing what you do?

SS: But who knows what the emotional toll would have been like if I didn’t do it? There was an emotional toll in watching all my friends drop dead. Now a lot of them are alive, so it was worth it.

AR: Can I ask you about discomfort? Especially in The Gentrification of the Mind, you wrote about the importance of generating discomfort in others as a way to force change during an era of widespread indifference towards those with AIDS. Do you think that’s still a very useful tactic?

SS: Definitely. I don’t know why people are so afraid of causing discomfort.