Almost a fifth of transgender women worldwide are infected with HIV, results of a meta-analysis published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows. A total of 39 studies involving over 11,000 transgender women in 15 different countries were included in the study, which…
I'm From Driftwood
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“Together we can end HIV stigma, but we need to be able to TALK ABOUT IT. Share this graphic to continue the conversation and encourage your network of friends to speak up!” :D
(via fyqueerlatinxs)
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Courtesy of The Stigma Project.
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Invisible Women: Why Transgender Women Are Hit So Hard By HIV Transgender women are the fastest-growing population of HIV-positive people in the country, according to Miss Major, a 70-year-old transgender woman of color and the executive director of TGI Justice Project, a San Francisco–based advocacy organization that fights for the rights of transgender, intersex, and gender-variant people who are in prison or have served jail time. Most experts agree with Major’s assertion, but hard data backing up that reality is hard to come by since HIV data collection methods often either mistakenly categorize transgender women as men who have sex with men, or don’t distinguish between transgender and non-transgender women.
Click the header link to read the full article.
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In my research today i’ve learned that a lot of organizations who do any kind of HIV/AIDS education tend to promote and idea called the “ABC’s of HIV”, and then usually involve Abstinence, Being Monogamous and Condom use. Which is all well and good for people who want to be abstinent, or monogamous. Realistically, something like this completely erases a whole range of sexual identities not limited to the queer community and generally promotes slut-shaming ideals as in “If you have sex you will get AIDS” or “All sexually active people will get an STI” or “If you’re sexually active you’re probably going to have an STI if you don’t have one already”. I think we can all pretty much agree this is bullshit, so I’m proposing this revision to the “ABC’s of HIV”.
(via celestethebest)
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Knowing a MtF Trans* Woman: Meta-analysis shows the massive global burden of HIV among transgender women -
Fighting HIV stigma in the Honduran Garifuna community.
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HIV Infection Is Most Concentrated In The South, Where Students Don’t Learn About It In School
The CDC’s most recent HIV Surveillance Report contains the first-ever comprehensive data set allowing researchers to map HIV infections across the entire country. As the agency explains, their new data paints a “complete picture of diagnosed HIV infection in the U.S.,” revealing potential trends in infections across different regions. At least one clear trend emerges among Southern states, where the concentration of HIV infections tend to be higher.
It’s likely no coincidence that many of those same states lack the comprehensive sexual education requirements that would help educate their residents about HIV transmission from an early age. Health classes in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana aren’t required to provide any kind of medically accurate information about HIV. And in two of those states — Texas and Florida — public schools don’t have to offer any type of sexual health education whatsoever.
In fact, just 20 states across the country mandate both sex education and HIV education, while the rest of country’s youth are growing up with significant gaps in their knowledge about sexual health. That’s especially troubling amid reports that, even though new cases of HIV in the U.S. are beginning to stabilize, young people still continue to put themselves at risk for the virus.
The HIV epidemic continues to take a disproportionate toll on men who have sex with men (MSM) — 62 percent of all HIV diagnoses are attributed to male-to-male sexual behavior, even though MSM represent just two percent of the U.S. population — yet the nation’s sexual health requirements also lag behind when it comes to sexual orientation. None of the southern states with the highest rates of HIV infection require public schools to provide LGBT-inclusive information in their health classes — and Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas actually stipulate that teachers must impart negative, shame-based information about homosexuality.
(via fyqueerlatinxs)
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The Plague Years, in Film and Memory
” ‘Remember when they burnt those people’s house down?’ Spencer Cox asks.
We are at a reunion dinner for about half a dozen people at a restaurant on the edge of Soho. I haven’t seen him since the mid-1990s. He looks unwell. It’s late September, 2012. On Nov. 30 we’re on a panel together for World AIDS Day at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. By Dec. 18 he is dead.
I don’t remember, so I look it up when I get back to D.C. In 1987, in Arcadia, Florida, Clifford and Louise Ray’s house mysteriously burned to the ground after a court ordered the local schools had to admit their HIV-positive hemopheliac sons, despite community objections. Other families had already been pulling their kids out of the school, which also faced multiple phoned-in bomb threats. The family decided their only option was to give up and leave town…”
read more at The Atlantic
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I finally got around watching this documentary.
I have learned that the reason I can live with HIV/AIDS now is due to the sacrifices of the HIV/AIDS activists.
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Mass Incarceration, Homelessness and HIV Vulnerability By Paul Kawata
“Among its many positive characteristics, the United States holds two unfortunate and reciprocal distinctions. America has the largest incarcerated population of any other nation in the world and has the highest rate of AIDS diagnosis (second highest rate of HIV infection) of any other industrialized nation. While the annual rate of new HIV infections in the United States has remained stubbornly high — approximately 50,000 per year — the number of adults under federal, state or local supervision has more than quadrupled since 1980 from 1.8 million to 7.1 million in 2010. Despite comprising only 5 percent of the global population, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of all the world’s incarcerations.
To mark National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, the National Minority AIDS Council has released a new report with Housing Works titled “Mass Incarceration, Housing Instability and HIV/AIDS.” Over the last three decades the epidemics of mass incarceration and HIV/AIDS have become increasingly concentrated among economically disadvantaged people of color, especially African Americans. African Americans make up only 13 percent of America’s population, but account for 44 percent of new HIV infections and almost half of all AIDS diagnoses, with Black gay men facing the heaviest HIV burden of any population in the country. At the same time, despite similar rates of criminal conduct, African American males are more than six times as likely to be incarcerated as their White counterparts.
These disturbing trends are inextricably linked, with mass incarceration playing a major role in driving the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
(via fyqueerlatinxs)
