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Hey, It's AIDS Day
Dec. 1st, 2010 12:00 pmToday is AIDS Awareness Day.
And looking through my other AIDS Awareness posts, I figured that talking about it a little differently was warranted.
It's a matter of fact that everyday is AIDS awareness day, because every day we need to talk and practice safe sex, practice safe use of needles and remember those who lost their lives and continue to lose their lives due to stigma and negligence.
Because it is due to stigma and negligence that HIV/AIDS was not treated like the health crisis it was and is and is instead still treated like a physical punishment brought upon the immorality of certain people's existence.
I was born in the age of HIV/AIDS. By the time I was child in the 90's various movies and PSA's were produced and shown across the world regarding AIDS.
Two incidences of popular culture remain ingrained in me regarding HIV/AIDS and I'm pretty sure they're not the ones that most people thing about when they recall how they were introduced to AIDS via popular culture.
The first time I heard about HIV/AIDS was when I was about seven or eight I think, yes at the time that Philadelphia was around. It was during that time that Degrassi High was syndicated in the afternoons on the Israel Broadcast Channel (one of the two Israeli channels available at the time as we did not have cable services yet) and Degrassi (both Junior and High) dealt with issues that to this day would spark controversy - I don't know about the Next Gen, but I have clear memories of that show (I'm kind of proud of my mother for allowing me to watch it unsupervised).
One of the sagas in Degrassi was to do with a boy who had unprotected sex with a girl and at the start of the season he got a phone call informing him that she has HIV and he should get tested. I don't remember how I felt when I watched it, but I remember how that boy looked - petrified. That episode (should Wiki be believed) was first aired in Canada in 1990 - I saw it two or three years later.
The second time was quite a few years later. HIV/AIDS in the context that I lived in, was something that happened to "other people", to "those people". I had no idea who these "people" were. When I was 11 or 12, I had my first sex-ed class, in which periods and nocturnal emissions were explained. I really couldn't fathom why that was important at this point in my life - I already knew all that, the perks of having two older sisters, a no-nonsense mother and pharmacist for a dad.
At the time, I was very much into the show (please don't mock, this was pre-Buffy!) Touched by an Angel, so this was about 1996 - Philadelphia had come and gone (which I never saw at the time, the first time I saw it had to be when I was about 14 or 15) and Gia hadn't been made yet (which is one of the first movies I saw that had explicit lesbian sexuality in it - yeah, I know! - which I also saw on an AIDS special broadcast on a movie channel of some kind).
Touched by an Angel also had an AIDS special and I remember it very clearly. It was about a father who disapproved of his son, because the son did not follow the path the father had wanted for him.
I remember crying when the son died and thinking about it now, it's fairly clear that the son was supposed to be gay, but of course, this is never stated explicitly.
But the metaphor that runs through the plot moved me, despite it's heavy handedness. You see, the father was a violin maker and he's been tasked to make a violin o the day his son was born, but woe, the wood had a flaw in the grain and so the violin was never completed. At the time, I didn't get it, but obviously the unfinished violin that is flawed is the son and the flaw is AIDS and by proxy, his gayness, because AIDS is what happens when you're gay.
By the time I was 13, I knew that "those people" who had AIDS were gay men.
Despite the fact that more than 20 years have gone by and statistics show that HIV/AIDS is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and that those who have HIV/AIDS are people of every age, sex and gender (68% of all people with AIDS live in that region). South Africa has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other country.
In Israel there is an increase in HIV infections among gay men:
To conclude. One of my peeves is that HIV/AIDS is stigmatized, the fact that whenever I donate blood that section regarding unsafe sex with a man who has had sex with a man after 1979 enrages me every time, though my blood pressure remains superb.
And it is stigmatized because the it broke out and took hold of a population that was already disenfranchised and marginalized. The fact that it was framed as a "Gay disease" continued to haunt and continues to create disinformation regarding the risks of HIV and how it is actually transmitted.
Remove the stigma. Find a vaccine. Stop the unnecessary body count and educate ourselves on what HIV/AIDS actually is, does and how we can reduce risk to ourselves and others.
And looking through my other AIDS Awareness posts, I figured that talking about it a little differently was warranted.
It's a matter of fact that everyday is AIDS awareness day, because every day we need to talk and practice safe sex, practice safe use of needles and remember those who lost their lives and continue to lose their lives due to stigma and negligence.
Because it is due to stigma and negligence that HIV/AIDS was not treated like the health crisis it was and is and is instead still treated like a physical punishment brought upon the immorality of certain people's existence.
I was born in the age of HIV/AIDS. By the time I was child in the 90's various movies and PSA's were produced and shown across the world regarding AIDS.
Two incidences of popular culture remain ingrained in me regarding HIV/AIDS and I'm pretty sure they're not the ones that most people thing about when they recall how they were introduced to AIDS via popular culture.
The first time I heard about HIV/AIDS was when I was about seven or eight I think, yes at the time that Philadelphia was around. It was during that time that Degrassi High was syndicated in the afternoons on the Israel Broadcast Channel (one of the two Israeli channels available at the time as we did not have cable services yet) and Degrassi (both Junior and High) dealt with issues that to this day would spark controversy - I don't know about the Next Gen, but I have clear memories of that show (I'm kind of proud of my mother for allowing me to watch it unsupervised).
One of the sagas in Degrassi was to do with a boy who had unprotected sex with a girl and at the start of the season he got a phone call informing him that she has HIV and he should get tested. I don't remember how I felt when I watched it, but I remember how that boy looked - petrified. That episode (should Wiki be believed) was first aired in Canada in 1990 - I saw it two or three years later.
The second time was quite a few years later. HIV/AIDS in the context that I lived in, was something that happened to "other people", to "those people". I had no idea who these "people" were. When I was 11 or 12, I had my first sex-ed class, in which periods and nocturnal emissions were explained. I really couldn't fathom why that was important at this point in my life - I already knew all that, the perks of having two older sisters, a no-nonsense mother and pharmacist for a dad.
At the time, I was very much into the show (please don't mock, this was pre-Buffy!) Touched by an Angel, so this was about 1996 - Philadelphia had come and gone (which I never saw at the time, the first time I saw it had to be when I was about 14 or 15) and Gia hadn't been made yet (which is one of the first movies I saw that had explicit lesbian sexuality in it - yeah, I know! - which I also saw on an AIDS special broadcast on a movie channel of some kind).
Touched by an Angel also had an AIDS special and I remember it very clearly. It was about a father who disapproved of his son, because the son did not follow the path the father had wanted for him.
I remember crying when the son died and thinking about it now, it's fairly clear that the son was supposed to be gay, but of course, this is never stated explicitly.
But the metaphor that runs through the plot moved me, despite it's heavy handedness. You see, the father was a violin maker and he's been tasked to make a violin o the day his son was born, but woe, the wood had a flaw in the grain and so the violin was never completed. At the time, I didn't get it, but obviously the unfinished violin that is flawed is the son and the flaw is AIDS and by proxy, his gayness, because AIDS is what happens when you're gay.
By the time I was 13, I knew that "those people" who had AIDS were gay men.
Despite the fact that more than 20 years have gone by and statistics show that HIV/AIDS is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and that those who have HIV/AIDS are people of every age, sex and gender (68% of all people with AIDS live in that region). South Africa has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other country.
In Israel there is an increase in HIV infections among gay men:
Cases of HIV increasing among gay men
Israel's health care system plans to address the trend by introducing streamlined HIV examinations next year.
By Dan Even
The number of gay men in Israel with HIV is on the rise, according to data released this week ahead of World AIDS Day, which is observed today. Israel's health care system plans to address the trend by introducing streamlined HIV examinations next year.
In 2009, 382 new cases of HIV infection among gay men were reported in Israel. In 2008, 390 new cases among gay men were reported. Both figures are higher than the average annual figure for HIV incidence among homosexual males in Israel between 2005-2009, which stood at 360.
[...]
Between 1981 and the end of 2009, a total of 6,147 new cases of HIV were recorded in Israel. Of this total, 1,104 died of AIDS and 173 left the country.
Up through the end of 2009, 4,870 persons were known to be living with the HIV virus in Israel. Estimates hold that there are 7,000 such persons today.
To conclude. One of my peeves is that HIV/AIDS is stigmatized, the fact that whenever I donate blood that section regarding unsafe sex with a man who has had sex with a man after 1979 enrages me every time, though my blood pressure remains superb.
And it is stigmatized because the it broke out and took hold of a population that was already disenfranchised and marginalized. The fact that it was framed as a "Gay disease" continued to haunt and continues to create disinformation regarding the risks of HIV and how it is actually transmitted.
Remove the stigma. Find a vaccine. Stop the unnecessary body count and educate ourselves on what HIV/AIDS actually is, does and how we can reduce risk to ourselves and others.
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