HIV/AIDS
Blogging Positively: A Citizen Media 101 on HIV/AIDS
Published August 27, 2009 @ 03:09PM PT
What do you get when you combine a network of bloggers seeking to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in a meaningful way online? The answer is Blogging Positively, a collection of case studies, interviews, and tips about citizen media related to HIV/AIDS.
Blogging Positively links together over 200 different bloggers from around the world - from India to Argentina to Burma, the United States, Australia and Canada - blogging about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the role that online writers and netroots activists can play in mobilizing around public health efforts to combat the disease.
Brian Finch from Canada's "Acid Reflux" blog/blog reality show sums up the significance of Blogging Positively pretty concisely.
"The Internet facilitates technological activism. It gives control and voice to the individual, to express onself in the way he or she deems fit. It is taking back power, creating a voice that is not defined by others. Personally, it is a way to define myself outside of the small box of HIV, to exist outside of the disease paradigm," writes Finch. "The more people are writing openly about their status, the more other people will see that they too can take risks. An online, 'open' presence serves as a role model for others."
Blogging Positively is a role model. It's a unique capacity building resource that draws together blogs, podcasts, and online photo and video sites to create new powerful opportunities for activists aiming to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS, and end the social stigma all too often associated with the disease.
Activism, Art, and the HIV/AIDS Crisis
Published August 20, 2009 @ 05:23PM PT
How do you commemorate the fear, anger, hope, challenges, activism, and organizing that occurred at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. more than twenty years ago? If you're the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, you host a whole semester's worth of programming and exhibits looking at the impact that groups like ACT UP had, and the vivid images that captured the country's attention and changed the way that HIV/AIDS was viewed.
Before there was social networking, there was guerilla marketing. And as the Carpenter Center points out, that tactic was deployed quite effectively by ACT UP, as well as artist collectives like Gran Fury, the Silence = Death Project, and Fierce Pussy (to name a few). These groups used the power of art to fight against HIV/AIDS, and specifically to fight against government inaction and stereotypes that made up the early history of the disease in this country. Whether it was explaining that kissing doesn't cause HIV/AIDS, or whether it was telling the Catholic Church that condoms protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, these orgs put their artwork where their politics were, so to speak.
"ACT UP’s demonstrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s reflected the group’s outrage against a governing establishment that ignored HIV/AIDS as a national health crisis; that failed to secure funding for medical research, treatment, and education; that profited from inflated costs for therapeutic drugs; and that perpetuated homophobic misrepresentations of HIV and AIDS," writes the Carpenter Center.
The exhibit itself? Well, it'll feature classic ACT UP advertising campaign posters, as well as a suite of over 100 video interviews with surviving members of ACT UP New York. Those interviews form the crux of an oral history project that captures a diverse movement birthed during the darkest days of HIV/AIDS. These are the organizers and activists who "transformed entrenched cultural ideas about homosexuality, sexuality, illness, health care, civil rights, art, media, and the rights of patients," and made the world a little - scratch that, a lot - better for everyone fighting against the disease.
In other words, the exhibit at the Carpenter Center will pull together some of the best social artwork of the last thirty years: the artwork and ad campaigns that helped end misinformation about HIV/AIDS, that brought about new strategies of political organizing, and that helped give voice to those living with HIV/AIDS. Better yet, it should help draw the connections between the organizing and activism at the height of the 1980s, and how lessons learned during that movement can be applicable now.
Transgender Rights on the Local Level
Published August 14, 2009 @ 11:23AM PT
History has been made in West Hollywood, with the city voting to create the first ever municipal advisory body focusing on the rights of transgender people. The goal? To provide a resource for the city to deal with the unique political issues - from discrimination to public health to housing equality - faced by transgender people in the city.
Bold step. Refreshing vision. Smart political decision. Yup, those are just a few adjectives to describe this move. Here's what West Hollywood City Council member Jeffrey Prang had to say about the city's decision to create the Advisory Board.
As one of the nation’s leaders, focused on fighting discrimination of any kind, the City of West Hollywood recognizes the issues and concerns facing our transgender community.
We created the first Transgender Task Force to provide valuable insight to our City’s leaders and our community. In formalizing our Transgender Task Force into a permanent board in our government structure, we are leading what I hope will be a national model advocating for the rights of transgender Americans.
As mentioned, the Advisory Board will deal with a range of issues facing transgender folks in West Hollywood. Primary concerns will be increasing employment opportunities in the transgender community; HIV/AIDS prevention; housing equality and community education of City resources available to the transgender community.
Now that sounds like a national model that other cities should eagerly get behind.
Pushing for LGBT Equality in Zimbabwe
Published August 10, 2009 @ 04:59AM PT
Zimbabwe has hardly been a beacon of hope for human rights activists over the past few decades, as their current President, Robert Mugabe, has allowed the country to spiral into a cycle of poverty and decay unlike many other places in the world. But Zimbabwe is getting ready to rewrite its constitution, and social justice advocates are pushing hard to enshrine equal rights for Zimbabwe's LGBT population into it. And it's a step that couldn't come too soon, given the brutality and "hysterical homophobia" that has been unleashed under the Mugabe regime.
To be sure, Mugabe has called homosexuality a western import to his country, and has presided over state laws that have criminalized homosexuality in the country. Mugabe's opponents, however - the Movement for Democratic Change - are much more supportive of LGBT rights. It's unclear just how that support will translate into the new Constitution writing process, but one thing is clear: LGBT activists have hope.
That's the message that members of the organization Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GLAZ) are sticking to, telling the Guardian newspaper that they feel they have a 50:50 chance of getting LGBT rights enshrined into the Constitution. "We live in hope," one of their members said.
HIV/AIDS activists in the country are also calling for homosexuality to be criminalized, which they see as an effort to help combat a disease that has ravished the country. More than 140,000 people died of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe in 2007, and there's a more than 15% rate of HIV/AIDS in adults. Criminalizing homosexuality only adds fuel to the fire of those kinds of statistics.
So now it's wait and see. But during a weekend that saw marches for marriage equality in Dublin, between 25,000-75,000 Israelis come out to condemn anti-LGBT violence, hundreds of people in Poland turning up to protest an LGBT hate crime, and now activists working hard for LGBT equality in Zimbabwe, it's safe to say that this was quite the weekend in international LGBT rights. Here's forecasting that the "hope" with which some members of Zimbabwe's LGBT community are living bears fruit, and the country takes a dramatic step forward (both for its own history, but also for Africa's) in the struggle for equal rights.
The Malaysian Government Thinks that Homosexuality Causes Swine Flu
Published August 09, 2009 @ 06:05AM PT
Every so often there's a story on the global health circuit that is so absurd, it causes our proverbial record to scratch. Like the time that South Africa's former Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said that ingesting lemon juice and potatoes could help treat HIV. Or when evangelical groups like Word Relief, who received millions of U.S. federal dollars in PEPFAR funding under President George W. Bush, told people in countries like Mozambique, Kenya and Haiti that condoms don't work to prevent STDs.
Well, now it's time to count Malaysia's government-run news service as part of the global health lie factory. Today they're out with an article from a physician that says homosexuality and masturbation make the body an easy target for Swine Flu (otherwise known as H1N1). The scary part is that the news service in question, Bernama, runs their stories in nearly every part of the country. Lies and misinformation, get ready to spread.
The doctor at the center of the article, V. M. Palaniappan, used to teach ecology at the University of Malaysia. Maybe he should have stuck with ecology instead of wading into the waters of global health. Here's his rationalization behind his theory, which almost reads like a non-sequitor from Alaska's former governor. Check it out:
Dr. V. M. Palaniappan said that homosexuality and masturbation caused the body to develop friction heat which in turn, produced acid and made the body hyperacidised.
"Thus, the body becomes an easy target for H1N1 infection," he told Bernama, emphasising however, that normal sexual union between members of the opposite sex was absolutely safe....
Ah, yes. It's only the homosexual sex that causes friction heat. Must be all that dance music we listen to while getting it on...
Two words come to mind. Medical crackpot. Yet the government of Malaysia gives this guy a voice with which to reach people across the country, and offer medical advice. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Malaysia criminalizes homosexuality with penalties ranging from twenty years in prison to whippings and beatings. Or that Malaysia's ruling political party is so vehemently anti-LGBT, that they even have a sub-section of the party known as the "People's Anti-Homosexual Voluntary Movement."
Anyone else thinking that we could start a reality show under the title of, "When Countries Attack Global Health"?
The Ad Campaign that Says AIDS is Washington, D.C.'s "Katrina"
Published August 04, 2009 @ 12:31PM PT
The D.C.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is taking the staggering statistics about Washington, D.C.'s HIV/AIDS rate, and turning them into an ad campaign that shows how devastating the disease is inside the Beltway. The ad campaign, "AIDS is D.C.'s Katrina," is up and running on dozens of bus shelters throughout the D.C. area, and depicts an image of former President George W. Bush surveying the damage from Hurricane Katrina from the windows of Air Force One. In the foreground, however, a cardboard sign vividly says, "AIDS is D.C.'s Katrina."
Powerful stuff. Especially given the statistics that lie behind the ad. The HIV/AIDS rate in Washington, D.C. is higher than several African countries, at nearly 3% of the total population, and clinics in D.C. have seen a 232% increase in the number of cases they're diagnosing. Those types of statistics certainly deserve and merit a vivid public advertising campaign.
Here's what Michael Weinstein, the head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, had to say about the campaign:
Katrina quickly came to symbolize the Bush administration's neglect and indifference of some of America's most vulnerable citizens. Today, 56,000 new HIV infections each year in the United States, a 40% increase from last year, symbolizing neglect and indifference -- and the failure of our U.S. HIV prevention efforts.
The fact that Washington, D.C.'s HIV prevalence rate is now higher than some hard-hit African countries is an indictment of how the CDC has failed to lead in HIV prevention efforts. When this news about Washington's HIV rate first broke in March, President Obama remained silent. Despite his silence on AIDS to date, we hope this ad will prod President Obama to act forcefully on AIDS, and we remain hopeful he will be the change that we can believe in -- and urgently need -- on AIDS.
Prodding Obama to change domestic policies related to HIV/AIDS care is also the vision behind a related Web site, changeaidsobama.org, which seeks to use the images in the advertising campaign to pressure the Obama administration into adopting serious policy reforms to address high rates of HIV/AIDS, including overturning a ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs (a pledge Obama made during his Presidential campaign, but one that he's backed off of since taking office).
Click here to view an ad for changeaidsobama.org. Check out their message, and if you agree, check out their action section and send a letter to President Obama asking him to be the "change we can believe in" on HIV/AIDS.
The decimation and destruction of Hurricane Katrina is still being felt four years later. For those suffering from HIV/AIDS, it's been 28 years. In both instances, government response was slow, inadequate, and disastrous.
Homophobia Spreads HIV/AIDS in Africa
Published July 21, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
HIV/AIDS in Africa has many faces. One of them that's not terribly well reported - but still nonetheless shocking - is the face of HIV/AIDS in gay male populations. This week, a study in the Lancet sheds light on just how devastating this disease is on gay men throughout the continent. The results, above all else, show the dire effects that homophobia can have in spreading HIV/AIDS.
First, the numbers. Gay men in many African countries are more than 10 times more likely to contract HIV/AIDS than their straight counterparts.
Next, the analysis. Here are just a few of the reasons why researchers believe gay men in Africa are much more likely to contract HIV/AIDS than straight men:
- Prejudice toward gay people leads to isolation and harassment, which results in many gay men engaging in risky, underground sexual practices;
- Within sub-Saharan Africa, HIV/AIDS in gay men is driven by cultural, religious and political unwillingness to accept LGBT people as equal members of society;
- A lack of education: one activist in Burundi told the BBC News that men understand that you can get HIV/AIDS from having sex with a woman, but not from a man. Failing to educate properly about the transmission of HIV/AIDS leads to higher contraction rates; and
- HIV/AIDS rates among gay men are often under-reported by public health officials, leading to very little attention being given to the epidemic among Africa's queer population.
The evidence here is stark: homophobia balloons HIV/AIDS rates. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 30 countries criminalize homosexuality, with a few (including Niger and Sudan) that prosecute homosexuality as an offense worthy of the death penalty. In a climate like this, it's no wonder that it's hard to do HIV/AIDS education work among gay male populations. As Time Magazine writes, "...one reason it has been so difficult to reach gay men with AIDS-prevention messages: most of them don't want to be found."
Finally, the solutions. The researchers who conducted the study, including folks with Oxford University, the Population Council of Ghana, and the Kenya Medical Research Institute, all recognized several steps that should be taken in order to curb HIV/AIDS rates among gay men throughout Africa. Among the ideas?
- Delivering basic HIV/AIDS prevention supplies to at-risk populations, including dispersing condoms;
- Train HIV/AIDS workers in how to work with queer populations; and
- Destigmatize and decriminalize homosexuality.
That last one is certainly going to take some work. But the results of this study, again, can't illuminate the problem any brighter: criminalizing homosexuality, and driving large numbers of queer people underground, only incresaes HIV/AIDS. That's a problem that we can't afford to keep perpetuating any longer.
