HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018593.jpg

schoolchild might sleep with a teacher;

* Facilitating support groups, so members can share tactics for negotiating safer sex (or, if already HIV-positive, help each other cope with obligations and treatment regimens);

* Creating strong communities, so people are quite simply more motivated to live.

***

It's always tempting to see unfamiliar cultures as monolithic, but we must remind ourselves that they never are. Every society in the world contains its own divides, just like America's culture and subcultures. Because HIV/AIDS functions along the very taboo, very culturally-influenced axis of sexuality, it throws taboo cultural sexual divides into high relief.

In America, one thing the disease's advent served to highlight was stigma towards LGBTQ and other radical sexual subcultures. American HIV mitigation has often sought to redress that stigma. Here, one thing it serves to highlight -- one thing mitigation seeks to redress -- is mainstream gender and relationship issues. But these splits existed before HIV came along. Although the prevalence of HIV sheds light on and invokes compassion for these divisions, they're more enduring than we like to think.

Still, I can't help noticing the phoenixes arising from these ashes. Firstly, it turns out that the best way to shut down sex-negative arguments against explicit sex education is to invoke the specter of HIV. One 2008 report from a well-respected local organization argued that AIDS prevention efforts should include straightforward lessons on pleasurable acts, such as oral sex or sex toy usage! (Obviously, I hope to work with this organization.)

A 2004 New York Times Magazine article on HIV in southern Africa made the case that while "many experts contend that sexual-behavior change in Africa is complicated because women's fear of abusive partners inhibits private discussions of sex, condom use and HIV," the crisis also contributes to a better environment for those discussions. One researcher is quoted pointing out that, "young South Africans are much more likely to talk about sex and are developing 'a vocabulary for discussing feelings and desires.'"
Furthermore, southern African movements for women's empowerment invariably cite HIV as a reason change is necessary now. Because gender oppression is acknowledged as a driver of the epidemic, gender equality is an explicit goal of both governments and major HIV organizations. Even admirably reasonable laws about sex work are being discussed -- considerably more reasonable than most Western sex work legislation. The laws probably won't pass, unfortunately, but at least they're on the radar.

I've got a twisted confession to make. On days when I feel particularly flippant, I find myself thinking: Thank God for HIV/AIDS! Without HIV... would women's empowerment be such a given? Aside from bleeding heart feminists like myself, who would care about sex workers' conditions? Aside from sex-positive nuts like myself, who would advocate for explicit sex education?

Here's hoping we can create better social conditions to arrest the pandemic... and keep those conditions going afterwards.

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018593