wad – Bad Reputation A feminist pop culture adventure Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:00:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.6 37601771 World AIDS Day: Violence against women and HIV /2011/11/29/world-aids-day-violence-against-women-and-hiv/ /2011/11/29/world-aids-day-violence-against-women-and-hiv/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:00:29 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=8628 World AIDS Day is coming up, and loyal readers will remember Miranda’s shoutout last year about why HIV and AIDS is a feminist issue. I’m not going to try and tour all the issues around women and HIV and AIDS, partly because that’s WAY too big for a blog post, but also because I’m not an expert. If that’s what you’re after, this fantastic resource on women, HIV and AIDS from Avert has lots of great information and clear explanations.

Ghanaian women walking along a road outside, wearing patterned clothes and carrying babies. Picture CC Terriem, 2011

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.

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Pre-December Linkpost /2011/11/25/pre-december-linkpost/ /2011/11/25/pre-december-linkpost/#respond Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:00:38 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=8667
  • World AIDS Day is 1 December. Click that link and contact your MP to get better HIV education into classrooms. And do what you can to fight HIV stigma, because a) stigma is a load of oppressive shit; b) it’s a problem that encompasses a load of feminist issues (for more on this tune in next week – several of us work in related sectors and will be blogging some WAD-related musings), and c) if you think simply knowing some basic facts about how HIV is contracted is all you can do to “act aware”, you’re wrong. Especially when the media so often fail enormously at reporting either sensitively or accurately on it.
  • Ryanair, Stop Selling Your Staff – female cabin crew staff speak out against the latest round of Page 3-style ads.
  • A thorough and thoughtful post on transphobic humour tropes, cinema and pop culture in general.
  • NASA’s added a new webpage to its site to encourage women and girls to get into science and tech! Hooray! We’re not quite sure about all the PINK FOR LAYDEEZ font, mind, but it’s great to see.
  • Two contrasting views on Twilight, both thought-provoking: the Hairpin points out the parallels with romantic literature in the Western canon, while i09 is transfixed by ‘body panic’ and nightmarishness.
  • “We have to trick the consumers of boobsplat into buying books they wouldn’t normally buy”: how did we miss this?! Comics Alliance takes the women-comics debate to some creators, with Kieron Gillen, Greg Rucka, Kurt Busiek, G. Willow Wilson, Jeff Parker, Jess Fink, Brandon Graham, Sana Amanat, Jamie McKelvie, Erika Moen and Rachel Edidin sharing ideas.
  • Finally, here’s Mary Wollstonecraft’s face being projected on the side of the Houses of Parliament. NOTHING ABOUT THIS ISN’T BADASS.
  • Have a great weekend! The next linkpost will be in December, meaning we will waste no time in being horrendously cheesy, flinging mince pies around, and singing The Waitresses (IT IS OFFICIALLY ALLOWED FROM 1 DECEMBER ONWARDS. YES) but nonetheless continuing the feminist pop culture adventure amid the silliness. :)

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    World AIDS Day Shoutout /2010/12/01/world-aids-day-shoutout/ /2010/12/01/world-aids-day-shoutout/#respond Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:58:31 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=1519 It mindboggles me beyond words when I read opinions along the lines of “HIV/AIDS is not a feminist issue”. I could go into this at some length, but I’m posting this from work, where my department and I are in the middle of running a World AIDS Day stall, so this is a fly-by post.

    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.

    photo - world AIDS day cupcakes on stall

    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. photo of tin of World AIDS Day "act aware" badges 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.

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