This post is delivering on that request – I got several of our mixed gender team on board, so you can see some of our feet here rocking various shapes and styles of red shoe from the subtle to the spaceboot. (Yeah, those are mine. I have no taste and proudly revel in it.)

But I also wanted to scribble a few notes about HIV as a feminist issue and our own battle to save our National Health Service. I have much less know-how about HIV in the USA, so I’ve bolted on some UK-based rambling to go with my more general cheerleading.

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

On the most basic symbolic level, shoes are about Going Places. Michele Roberts’ short story Your Shoes, so beloved of GCSE anthologies nationwide, is about a missing girl who has flown the nest, leaving behind an unworn pair of shoes which seem to speak of unspent potential. Waiting For Godot – a play where no one goes anywhere – opens with a lonely visual of a worn-out pair of boots that no longer fit. Nancy Sinatra’s had enough; her boots are gonna walk all over you.

The red-shoed woman, too, is a woman who dares, who takes the bull by the horns, from Hans Christian Anderson’s thoroughly judgey tale of woe to Dorothy’s ruby slippers. So for me the visual of all our shoes on show is a good way to put the question: where from here? whilst also adding god damn it, somewhere, though. Somewhere good. Somewhere better.)

But I want this post to be more than just flag-waving – after all, since we are not in the US and cannot fully participate in the project at large, it surely doesn’t change much about HIV stigma for us to simply photograph our feet. The arresting visual of the shoes – and the Red Pump Project are running a full fashion show at the end of the month – is a starting point or conduit, like wearing the World AIDS Day red ribbon, to having a conversation. So I’m gonna put a lot of UK links in here too.

Across the Pond

In that post I made I talked about the importance of awareness/prevention campaigns not using a kind of shock tactic to alienate and stigmatise people living with HIV. Without going too deeply into UK/USA healthcare provision comparisons, initiatives like the RPP (excepting the NAT-spearheaded fundraising drives pre-World AIDS Day) don’t feel so common over here. Perhaps because we assume the NHS will carry our HIV testing and awareness needs, but also because services who do take a non-discriminatory approach, like Positive East and the Terrence Higgins Trust are very much up against Tory cuts just now. Unfortunately, this dovetails with the fact that the NHS is facing “reforms” that threaten to stitch it up like a free market kipper, so in drumming up awareness for the RPP I guess I’d also like to talk briefly about the importance of trying, in the UK, to both appreciate the gravity of our own situation, and the commonalities between the areas the RPP is concentrating on – urban districts where people just aren’t talking or thinking openly or inclusively about HIV – and UK equivalents. HIV affects so many people that a lot of UK feminists simply don’t see it as a specific enough issue, but the thing is, it often interacts with more commonly accepted feminist issues such as contraception, sexual assault, and so on in complex and – as far as the feminist blogosphere is concerned – markedly under-analysed ways.

HIV transmission rates, access to support services, and the level of stigma faced by people living with it, all intersect with, and are influenced by, cuts to advocacy, disability benefits, education and healthcare services. And when the latter are in play to the level they currently are in Britain, they mean that existing social inequalities get very heavily underscored. Stigma around living with HIV then gets worse, and this underscores inequalities even further, and you get a snake-chew-tail plughole situation. Stigma is very often doled out in inherently gendered terms, with a load of harmful assumptions about what kind of woman or man would be likely to contract or transmit the virus, so not engaging with it feeds more general problems of racism, homophobia and gendered prejudice. As far as I’m concerned this makes it very much a feminist issue in the same way that issues of poverty, class and race are, and indeed these areas are all affected by HIV in complex ways which keep people in disadvantaged groups one step removed from the care they need, and have a right to access.

In the UK at least, I don’t think enough women, feminists or otherwise, are receiving the information and discussion they need and deserve on this issue, so I’ll always come out loudly shouting for a project like the RPP which encourages a discussion which takes into account the intersections of gender, race and class and their impact on HIV issues.

‘Girlhood in the time of AIDS’

For an illustration of how a lot of ‘western’ mainstream “girl culture” – like teen magazines – has historically displayed an unfortunately privilege-waving “us and them” attitude to the prevalence of HIV, along with some harmfully obtuse ideas about who contracts it, where, why and how, I would recommend the essay Girlhood in the time of AIDS by Nancy Lesko and Elisabeth Johnson, from the book Girl Culture. Reading it – it’s pretty US-focussed – just makes me that much more relieved there are initiatives like the RPP going strong.

As founder Karyn put it in her comment on that earlier post:

One of the main goals of our nonprofit and the campaign is to promote open dialogue, to fight the stigma around the disease, and to share knowledge around the issues so that women are EMPOWERED to advocate for their health and the health of the women in their lives.

I couldn’t agree more.

Back on the UK Front…

It’s important to recognise the power of grassroots projects like this whilst also refuting David Cameron’s position that community-based initiatives are a “Big Society alternative” or in any way an oppositional model to a free national health service. Some NHS Trusts in the UK work in partnership with community-specific schemes such as, for example, the Terrence Higgins Lighthouse projects – a fact this article, for example, which contains a great example of a grassroots HIV activism project, fails in my view to take account of. There are lighthouses and there are ports. Having both is generally not a bad idea. I would not be optimistic about the storm of social inequalities facing either in the event this bill passes uncontested.

Tonight the TUC are declaring a rally at Westminster to make this point again. In the week a doctor was caught on film openly challenging Lansley’s bloody-minded assault on our services in the hospital in which he works, in the week June Hautot cried “Codswallop!”, and as an NHS employee myself, I would invite anyone who is in the area to swing by and raise your voice.

Boots, after all, were made for walking.

Have some bonus daleks on us.

The “Rock the Red Pump” campaign is our annual initiative to commemorate National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. It has become our biggest initiative, and is what started The Red Pump Project. Since 2009, when we had over 100 bloggers “Rock the Red Pump,” we have started the “Rock the Red Pump – 500 in 50” to get 500 blogs to participate in the 50 days leading up to NWGHAAD.

The blog network we have is unique in that they are women who acknowledge the severity of the issue and understand the importance of conversation. The power and influence of these bloggers has driven The Red Pump Project to where it is today.

– The Red Pump Project

Hey now, I thought. Why isn’t this more well-known? Why didn’t I know about this day? I only know about World AIDS Day. Maybe it is more widely known, but only in the US? I hear about lots of other US-y things with a tedious regularity from Black Friday¹ to the Superb Owl². Either way, even though the Red Pump Project isn’t UK-based, I thought it was way cool.

If you’re US-based (and maybe even if you’re not; does it matter?) you can sign your blog up and download a Red Pump badge. There are excellent reasons to get involved here. One reason I would add: I believe, with a strength that leads me to shout unbecomingly in pubs, that HIV awareness campaigns should always be designed and conducted in a way that is inclusive and above all non-stigmatising of people living with HIV. The Hitler campaign? The Scorpion campaign? Ugh. It doesn’t help if you raise awareness of HIV transmission risks by presenting HIV positive people as dangerous monsters. It leads to more concealment, less disclosure, less openness generally about HIV, and people being actively ostracised and in many cases places in actual physical danger. It’s disgusting. I could rant a while about stigma and the vicious circle of ignorance and erasure it feeds. Or, y’know, go read The Body. Actually, that’s a better idea. Do that instead. Preferable campaigns in my book: examples such as Act Aware, which actually engages with the concept of stigma, or THT’s Stand Up, Stand Out.

So, yeah: I get very excited when I see a well-designed awareness project. On a broader political level I think there are limits to the efficacy of consumerism-inspired charity initiatives in the West – (RED), for example, relies not solely on donations but on people shopping for expensive products and in some cases wearing their awareness as a fashion item, which only goes so far. (RED)’s ‘use global capitalism for good’ approach was groundbreaking to a point, but the level to which large sections of its site will simply redirect you to the Converse store can be quite grating. Its campaigning focus is primarily on funding initiatives in subsaharan Africa, which is great – but not the whole story.

However, the Red Pump Project, unlike (RED), is a grassroots initiative that has taken off in the US, with an emphasis on women and women of colour which I can only applaud. I like that the project takes elements of the (RED) approach and focuses less on the idea that “luxury goods over here will generate aid over there” and more on, say, testing a thousand people in an inner city community. I like that the graphic – which has trainers on it too! – places non-white wearers of the pumps front and centre and in the majority. It makes a nice change. Rae Lewis-Thornton, who speaks eloquently about stigma here, has also endorsed it. While fighting stigma is an implicit rather than explicit aim in the approach the project has taken, they are talking about the issues, and via their blog badge campaign, helping make sure anyone can get involved, rather than those who shop for luxury goods. Most of all, they’re effectively marketing a breakout in HIV activism from simply focussing on World AIDS Day in December, instead broadening the approach to include dedicated action throughout the year on behalf of women and girls (March 10), Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (February 7) and so on.

Good stuff.

• @RockTheRedPump
• @RedPumpProj
• The Red Pump Project site
• Our World AIDS Day Mythbusting rampage last December – featuring Markgraf in the reddest boots he could find
• More on HIV and feminism from us

1. in my world this is not about shopping but about suffragettes being murdered. Look it up.
2. I refuse to spell this twitterfeed-nuking parade of strange noises any other way.

What about stigma? As we tweeted yesterday, Act Aware isn’t, and should never be, about judging and othering people who are living with HIV. It should never be about erasure.

Unfortunately for all of us, the majority of mainstream media approaches to HIV issues in the UK are either woefully ill-informed, groaning under the weight of crappily pieced-together assumptions, often even kind of creepily bigoted, or just plain fifteen years out of date. Even with NAT’s helpful press guide freely available. Hooray.

But here’s a thing: if you’re reading this, you’re in luck. For lo, the internet is as full of glory as it is full of shit. And with very little effort on your part it basically becomes your own PERSONAL BULLSHIT ESCAPE TUNNEL. And we’re about to make it even easier.

So here are some World AIDS Day links you might or might not have seen before, which we’ve been reading at BadRep Towers. Beyond Acting Aware and reading myths and facts, are real people. So go and read about them. Make it so!

• The Body: this is a really, really valuable resource. It’s also a blogging platform for a large team of people living with and/or campaigning about HIV and AIDS, featuring personal stories from a wide range of backgrounds and age groups (though we have not found any trans* men’s stories on there as yet). It’s been going for years and has tons of pop culture analysis. Our picks: ‘I Agree, We Are Not A F***ing Scorpion’, ‘HIV, AIDS and Latinas: What Does Gender Have To Do With It?’, ‘The Trials of Transition’, and ‘Wanted: Feminist Warriors To Fight HIV and AIDS’,
• The Poz: like The Body, this magazine is also a giant resource with tons of interesting blogs. Our picks: ‘Game, the Down-Low and AIDS’ and ‘Wearing The Red Ribbon’.
• Twitter: @NAT_AIDS_Trust (they run HIVAware) are enthusiastic, friendly, ready to engage with and @-reply to as many people as they can and eager to arm you with facts and stories from around the UK. Through them, we found UKPositiveLad: diagnosed a few months ago at 25, he’s tweeting his experiences, and blogging them too.
• QueerTransMen: a Canada-based sexual health site for queer trans* men with research, mythbusting and Primed, a sexual health guide written by and for. Not worksafe!
• A Girl Like Me: this is a resource “where women of all ages can share their stories and promote understanding of HIV through online storytelling”. It hasn’t been very active recently, and in many ways it’s not as ‘off the ground’ as it could be… but we think it’s a great idea anyway.
• Womankind Worldwide: one of their areas of work is around supporting effective responses to HIV in women around the world. Our picks: World AIDS Day 2011 post, ‘I was so glad of how interested people were of what is happening in Ghana’, and ‘The Long Walk Home’.

So, hey. You have all this stuff at your fingertips! Connect. Discover. Find stuff out. What’s the point of being on a feminist pop culture adventure if you don’t, you know, go forth and read? Exactly.

COLD HARD FACTS ON IRRITATINGLY FLIMSY PAPER

ARE YOU READY FOR THE FACTS?  Of course you are.  Everyone should be ready for facts about HIV transmission and statistics, because it’s ignorance that fuels prejudice, and prejudice that shits on people’s lives.

Fun fact: there’s effective treatments for both HIV and hideous misinformation and ignorance!

…So hug away! :D

Can we stop assuming things about people’s lifestyles, now?  Please?

HIV can be spread regardless of anyone’s background or immigration status.  And you can’t seek out treatment for free for a virus you don’t know you have.  Get yourself screened regularly.

I mean, the fish don’t even get anywhere near your bloodstream. And if they do, YOU HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN HIV TRANSMISSION TO WORRY ABOUT AS YOU ARE PRESUMABLY RECEIVING A SHARK PEDICURE.¹

AND THAT’S A WRAP, FOLKS.  Pop over to HIVAware for more.

Spread facts, not fear.  Wear a ribbon.  Get screened.

1. Ed’s note: For those made curious by the fish pedicure placard, this is a misconception that’s currently so widespread, it has its OWN SECTION on the HIVAware Mythbusting FAQ. Yeah.

Innocence and Sexualisation

The vigour with which some people are prepared to attack moves towards more open, honest and comprehensive sex and relationships education is baffling. What are they so afraid of? Educating young people about safer sex doesn’t lead to an increased sexual activity (that’s from this great Avert resource, by the way). Two words that pop up fairly regularly in the fog of general objection are ‘innocence’ and ‘sexualisation’. I think they’re masking other, simpler causes for so much reactionary guff, but let’s have a look at them anyway.

The idea that the ‘innocence’ of children must be protected at all costs is absurd. Innocence in the criminal sense is a good thing to hold on to, of course. But innocence in the wafty Victorian lamblike sense (aka “freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil”)?.  I fail to see the value of being ‘unacquainted with evil’. Knowing about sex isn’t the same as having sex. And also: SEX ISN’T EVIL, GUYS. Besides, it’s a bit of a risk, if you ask me, turning someone loose in the world if they have no concept of evil. They’re in for a nasty shock and quite possibly some dangerous or exploitative situations. Likewise someone who has been kept in the dark about pregnancy, STIs or abuse. Even if you’re working with some kind of arcane points-based system of morality, how can you get your approval for being without sin just because you don’t know what sin is? That’s like congratulating someone on not eating the cookies they didn’t know were there.

Anyway, that’s enough poptheology. Next: ‘sexualisation’, on which I basically agree with Laurie Penny that the word is a “troubling piece of cultural shorthand” which

suggests that sexuality is something that is done to young women, rather than something that they can own and control: that they can never be sexual, only sexualised. This is not a helpful message to send to girls as they begin to explore their sexuality.

The moral panic over “sexualisation” assumes instead that sex is only ever damaging to young women, and that having sex or behaving sexually must be resisted for as long as possible. The problem is not, however, that young women are “growing up too fast” – rather it is that they are growing up to understand that they are erotic commodities, there to be used and abused, shamed if they express legitimate desires of their own, and taught to fear their own bodies.

Child sexual behaviour is complex and difficult to discuss, but it exists. Children have this weird habit of growing up. And it doesn’t work the way the Sun would have it – every girl is an innocent princess until a few moments past midnight on her 16^th birthday, at which point it’s A-OK to start slavering over her. Seriously, until 2004 plenty of Page Three girls were 16. There were even 16^th birthday specials in some other tabloids. Your, er… your double standard is poking out, by the way.

Ewwww Isn’t Good Enough

Critics of broader sex education have done a pretty good job of cosying up to some quarters of the feminist movement, and I’d love to believe that concern over women or children’s wellbeing lay at the heart of the Bailey Review and the media outrage. But it doesn’t. Sexual conservatism is shorthand for a certain kind of morality, and this is a holier-than-thou contest fuelled by the crippling shame and squeamishness about sex that is our shared cultural inheritance. That’s why we feel the need to keep any notion of sex away from children for as long as possible, because on some level, we do think there’s something bad about sex. What other explanation can there be? An otherwise sensible, right-on and feminist former manager of mine once insisted we end a teabreak conversation about how often you should have a sexual health checkup, saying “Can you just stop talking about it please? It makes me feel all ewwww.”

Well, feeling ‘ewwww’ has created a dangerous situation. Without giving children and teenagers a safe space in which to discuss and learn about sex, relationships and sexuality we are creating a vacuum that will be filled by three things: a) whatever their parents choose to tell them; b) all the shit teenagers talk to each other; and c) ideas about sex derived solely from cultural representations of it. Advertising and porn are the big guns here. The version of sex in most porn and advertising isn’t particularly safe, consensual, varied, respectful or even likely to be that much fun (good luck to any women planning on having an orgasm) and the additional messages it peddles about gender identity, power, race and sexual orientation are pretty unhelpful.

Some Scary Numbers

As well as the great Tory terror of teenage pregnancy *cue Hammer Horror evil laughter and lightning strike* this is a public health issue. Although last year there was a small decrease in the total number of STIs diagnosed in England, 2010 still clocked up 418,598 new diagnoses, and the under-25s experience the highest rates of STIs overall. In 2008, the UN reported that globally only 40% of young people aged 15-24 had accurate knowledge about HIV and transmission, while the same group accounted for 45% of all new HIV infections. SRE also presents an opportunity to undermine the stigma faced by people living with HIV through education about transmission without moral judgement. (Stats from here.)

This is important, big picture, long term stuff. It’s very hard to unlearn attitudes and prejudices formed in your early life, and not everyone has an Usborne Guide To Growing Up at hand (even that magnificent volume had its blind spots – Miranda reminded me of the ‘kthanxbai!’ box-out on homosexuality…² ) But there are excellent people fighting the good fight who deserve your support. Here’s a linklist – go show them some well-informed, safe and respectful love.

Campaigns, Organisations and Events

• Education for Choice
• A rallying cry by Zoe Margolis on Comment is Free
• Petition for 21^st C sex and relationships education
• Sex Appeal comedy fundraiser
• National AIDS Trust campaign to get HIV education into classrooms
• Brook
• FPA
• HIVAware
• Avert

Resources and Badass Sex Educators

• Vagina Pagina
• Bish
• Scarleteen
• UNESCO International technical guidance on sexuality education: an evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers and health educators
• Sexedukation
• SRE Project
• Contraception Education
• Dr Petra Boynton
• Dr Petra’s Twitter list of sex educators

1. Ed’s note: I can’t bear linking the Mail and am still in mourning for IstyOsty, but search and ye shall find; it’s titled “Casual Sex and ‘Bad Touching’: Guess What Your Eight Year Old Is Learning At School These Days”. *facepalm*
2. Ed butting in again: has this been expanded yet? Anyone seen if they’ve revised it to be even slightly less heteronormative? *shuts up*

Picture CC Terriem, 2011

So why am I writing this at all? Over the last nine months I’ve gotten interested in the interactions between violence against women, gender roles and HIV, which I confess is mostly down to my job at Womankind Worldwide.

It struck me that even though I’ve been working with different organisations tackling violence against women in the UK for years, I don’t remember HIV ever being mentioned. It’s just not something I’d ever really thought about. But then, I had also failed to really think about, you know, the rest of the world. This job has been an eye-opener, and I heartily encourage other feminists in the UK, the US, and Western Europe to look up and see what’s happening in the places you don’t see on TV.

“This epidemic unfortunately remains an epidemic of women,” Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS said in 2010. At the end of 2009, women accounted for just over half of all adults living with HIV worldwide. In some areas of the world the proportion is much higher, for example in sub-Saharan Africa it is 60%. High levels of HIV among women in these areas are both caused by and causes of violence against women.

Violence, HIV and Women’s Health

Violence against women (you remember, that really prevalent thing that occurs in all countries in the world) interacts with the HIV epidemic in several cheery ways. This paraphrased from a World Health Organisation briefing:

• Sexual abuse in childhood is associated with risk-taking behaviour later in life, increasing an individual’s lifetime risk of contracting HIV.
• Rape exposes women to HIV, and the chances of a woman contracting HIV via a forced sexual encounter are probably increased due to the physical trauma.
• Violence and fear of violence can stop a woman insisting on condom use or refusing unwanted sex, leaving her with no means of protecting themselves.
• Fear of violence, abandonment or stigma can dissuade women from learning their status or from sharing it with their partners, and can also effect HIV control, treatment, and programmes aiming to prevent mother to child transmission.

Women’s health has been the subject of more discussion in development circles in recent years, thanks in large part to the Millennium Development Goals, one of which (MDG5) is focused on maternal health. Women’s health doesn’t begin and end with children though, so I’ve been pleased to see greater recognition of the impact of gender-based violence appearing under MDG6, which is dedicated to ending the spread of diseases including HIV infection and the associated illnesses it can cause. Next step, an MDG which is focused on reducing levels of violence against women? Something which has a pretty damaging effect on women’s health in its own right.

Ghana

Through work recently I was lucky enough to meet some of the women and men fighting to reduce violence against women and women’s vulnerability to HIV infection in rural Ghana. Although Ghana isn’t the country worst affected by the HIV epidemic, of the 240,000 HIV+ adults living in Ghana, almost 60% are women. Women in Ghana also experience high levels of violence: 1 in 3 women has experienced some form of physical violence in their lifetime, and 20% of women report that they first experienced sex against their will. (Stats)

In addition there are a number of harmful traditional practices that contribute to the spread of HIV among women, as well as the cultural acceptability of men having several partners and the right to demand sex. Traditional practices, such as widow inheritance (where a widow is forced to marry her dead husband’s relative), or polygyny (22% of married women are in polygynous unions) increase the likelihood of contracting HIV.

Women living with HIV or AIDS in Ghana also face enormous stigma and go to extraordinary lengths to find support and keep their status secret. One reason is that belief in witchcraft is widespread, and HIV infection or death from AIDS-defining illnesses is sometimes blamed on the malign influence of a witch. Incidentally if you’re interested to know more about what happens to women accused of witchcraft in Ghana I recommend watching The Witches of Gambaga:

‘Witch’ persecution is also alarmingly common in Nepal.

Reading about all this every day at work would get a bit depressing if it wasn’t for our amazing partners – health workers, educators, lawyers and activists – who are working for change for individuals, and local and global communities. Part of that change is recognition of the complex interactions between HIV and AIDS and violence against women, and the need for targeted, local, gender-sensitive interventions and support. UK feminists can help by looking up, and recognising that HIV is a feminist issue on a global scale.

I’ve got ribbons, button badges, and a massive pile of red and white iced cupcakes.  “No ribbon for me, thanks” is a surprisingly common response, though people seem happy to take a cake without publicising their interest in WAD too openly – but almost equally prevalent are the people like the woman who murmurs, “I wear one of these every year, for my aunt”. HIV carries an incredible amount of stigma even in this country, and it is hugely important that we do everything we can to move the public consciousness on from this.

Abstinence-only sex-ed programs aren’t just ineffective on a basic level – they’re no good for helping people understand the need to be aware of the risks around HIV prevention. Check out this article for an interesting spotlight on how actually, yes, this is your problem too.

I told an otherwise-pretty-liberally-minded acquaintance of mine this year that I would be working on this stall. He burst into nervous, playground lurgy-fear laughter. Many countries around the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, have limited or negligible access to up-to-date antiretroviral medication for the management of HIV infection, which Europe and the US have a monopoly on. This needs to change. And you know what? Properly managed, with people properly informed and risk-aware, the infection is, you see, comparable in its day-to-day living impact with diabetes. But you don’t see people being suspended from their jobs, bullied by their neighbours, and ostracised at work for being diabetic.

Stephen Fry may have pissed a load of feminists off the other month, but I’ve never been so pleased to see someone so heavily retweeted.

Let’s get the record straight. Wear a ribbon, and wear it with pride and solidarity.

For more info, please GO HERE.