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the weight of crappily pieced-together assumptions, often even kind of creepily bigoted, or just plain fifteen years out of date.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.