Lingual Tremors

Carnival of Pozitivities

Head on over to the Creampuff Revolution for the HIV/AIDS Pozitivity Carnival.  It's a great read!!!

Condom Amulets: Attention Knitters!

Please visit A Little Red Hen for great directions on how to knit a condom amulet.  (And to see great pictures!).  Naomi also gives a wonderful commentary on the dangers of contracting HIV after 50...  What a wonderful post for raising awareness.

You can also visit the condom amulet site directly (but really, stop by A Little Red Hen first!).

Meh. Late Again. NYC & Abstinence: Richard Daines is AWESOME!

Glad to live in a state that actually thinks about what accepting money from the feds means.  Via a little red hen:

"New York is rejecting millions of dollars for federal grants for abstinence-only sex education, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, announced..." New York Times, September 21, 2007.

Daines called it a "failed...policy...based on ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence..." 

Of course this is going to put a strain on programs that have accepted that money in the past.  However, excising abstinence only from our sexual education training can only help.  Hurray!  Hurray!  Hurray! 

Hidden AIDS Crisis: Rural America and HIV

I was a little taken aback by this one.  Just when you think we've come a long way comes this latest AIDSphobic incident.  I first saw this at Pandagon.  Here's the original news item at NBC 15:

A couple who checked into a recreational vehicle park with their 2-year-old foster son were told the boy couldn't use the showers, pool or other common areas because he has the HIV virus.

The couple said that in the future, they will not discuss their foster son's condition to avoid this kind of prejudice.  The owner of the RV park was concerned that the child might spread the disease by using the common areas or the pool.  In rural Alabama, it seems, there's still a lot of work to be done in HIV/AIDS education. 

"Most people know you can swim in the same pool or use the same bathroom without the danger of contracting the virus. Definitely, we still need education efforts out there, especially in rural areas," said David Little, executive director of Mobile-based South Alabama CARES, an AIDS education and outreach organization that serves 12 counties in south Alabama.

There are more than 8,252 AIDS cases in Alabama (those are AIDS cases, not HIV cases based on the 2005 CDC surveillance report).  Clearly HIV/AIDS is an issue in Alabama, but education efforts need to go a lot further.  We hear a lot about HIV/AIDS in urban areas;  the subways and billboards often carry educational messages about HIV/AIDS.  In rural areas, however, where car culture dominates, I'm not sure where people would get this education.  There may be some PSAs on the television or radio, but they don't dominate in the same way visual rhetoric speaks to urban culture.  Coupled with increasingly conservative abstinence-only sexual education programs and science curriculum dominated by creationist rhetoric, it seems like rural areas, particularly in the South, have some amazing challenges ahead because medically accurate information is hard to sell. 

Kathy Hiers, CEO of AIDS Alabama says:

"Unfortunately the South has the top ten cities for STDs in the country, it's been that way for as long as I can remember. And by the same token the South is absolutely exploding with HIV disease. We are seeing the disease move along socio-economic lines into poor communities, rural communities, women and certainly minorities and young people.

Hiers is the CEO of AIDS Alabama. AIDS workers have known for years the virus was moving to rural areas. To try to stem the tide of infection Alabama launched a rural outreach program called the Alabama Rural AIDS Project. Hiers says launching the project was no easy thing.

Read the entire 2006 article on AIDS in Alabama.  It has some very interesting thoughts about HIV/AIDS and rural America.

Novartis Targets Indian Patent Law

Doctors Without Borders is reporting that pharmaceutical giant Novartis is taking the Indian government to court over the World Trade Organization's rules about patents.  This could seriously endanger cheaper medicines that developing countries rely on:

India is a major source of affordable medicines, such as antiretrovirals to treat HIV/AIDS. Until 2005, the country did not grant patents on medicines, allowing Indian companies to freely produce inexpensive generic versions of medicines patented in other countries. These were used both domestically and in other developing countries. Over half the medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing countries come from India and such medicines are used to treat over 80 percent of the 80,000 people living with HIV/AIDS who are enrolled in Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières projects.

Read more at MSF.

Q & A on patent law in India.

Sign the petition.

Gardasil: The New Oreo

So.  2 blogs are a little tough to manage.  But I shall persevere!  Over at LX Project 365, I'm really enjoying exploring a different medium.  During the academic year, as I go to and from school, I have largely the same daily routine and follow the same route (isn't this true for all of us?).  So, I'm really finding myself challenged, in a good way, to find something to snap a picture of.  It reminds me a little bit of Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things.  A shower curtain shot?  Who knew?

But now, what you really came for:  grab a cuppa and settle in for a little politics, Lingual style.  So, them Texans are up to no good again, eh?  (With all due apologies to my darling best friend...)

Merck is selling Gardasil like it's the new Oreo.  Every time you turn on prime time television (or daytime television, for that matter), you're bombarded by ads for Gardasil.  And, in theory Gardasil is a good thing:  cervical cancer is a nasty, horrible form of cancer that really makes women suffer.  All cancers raise the collective alarms.  I think cancer is the secret fear of many in our society.  So, a vaccine for cancer seems like a good idea.  I was an early recipient of the Hepatitis B vaccine and I'm glad for it;  coming of age sexually during the HIV/AIDS boom, anything that made sex just a little less scary was a good thing.

Now, there have already been a lot of great pieces on Gardasil.  I'll direct you to 10 Things You Might Not Know About Gardasil.  It's well written and has some good research. 

What I'd like to focus on is Texas' inconsistent policy.  First, McGraw Hill created a special textbook JUST FOR TEXAS.  (You can read more about that here.)  The Texas "health" textbook  redefined marriage as only between a man and a woman;  it also takes an abstinence only position on sex. So, here's the thing:  if their schools emphasize heteronormative sexual relations, within the confines of marraige only, then why do 11 year olds need to be vaccinated against HPV?  In a state that privileges, in its educational policies and in its censorship of educational materials, the principals of abstinence only education until marraige, how are 11 year old girls going to get a sexually transmitted cancer?  In the era of the pre-pregnant body, the physical body is capable of having sex, but as a society, we won't offer any information about sex until it's too late.  The philosophy driving this seems to be:  let's close our eyes and pretend that girls don't have sex but vaccinate them just in case they do.  The pre-pregnant body is now being chased at all times by the spector of the almost-baby.  What's next?  Mandatory folic acid for all women from ages 10 and up?

The fact of the matter is:  if I had an 11 year old, I would have her vaccinated, despite some of the excellent questions raised by researchers, writers, and bloggers around the country.  I'd do it because preventing cancer seems like a good thing.  But, that decision would also be complimented by age-appropriate information about sex and sexuality.  It would be part of a larger family discussion about sex.  And that would be my decision to make as a parent. 

Instead, Texas is barreling forward with this policy--making it tough for parents to easily opt out--with what motivation?  The glaring contradiction makes me wonder:  from the state that inspired No Child Left Behind (and McGraw Hill's huge profit from increased standardized testing), comes Merck's estimated cash cow ($70 million in sales and rising--Vioxx anyone?).  So, is it about our girls' health or the bottom line?   This vaccine is terribly expensive at $360.00.  Add to the concerns about parental rights the obvious issues of class--what about low income families without medical insurance?  How are they going to pay for this?

Gardasil vaccinations should not be mandatory, especially not from a state that has proven that it's less than progressive about reproductive health choices.  Instead, there should be a state-sponsored educational campaign aimed at informing parents about the benefits and risks of vaccination.  And parents should get to choose to opt in.   

What's Cervical Cancer? from the American Cancer Society
About HPV Vaccines from the National Cancer Institute
Texas Abstinence Only Textbooks
Merck's Profits

Subverting Good HIV/AIDS Work: Harrassing Dr. Wan

How to honor World AIDS Day without acknowledging AIDS?  China decided to detain AIDS activist Wan Yanhai.  According to Yahoo and the BBC, the central issue seemed to be a forum on blood safety that Dr. Wan's group was hosting on December 1st.  China has been very slow to acknowledge its AIDS epidemic and its programs and policies are way behind other countries;  China first came to terms with its growing epidemic in 2001, well after infection rates had begun to climb.  Today, 650,000 people are infected, although some organizations posit that these numbers represent significant under-reporting in rural areas and among sex workers, IV drug users, and men who have sex with men. 

More significantly, however, Dr. Wan's detention (a previous one in 2002 was equally chilling) is indicative of China's continuing unease with HIV/AIDS.  They continue to make some small steps towards a comprehensive HIV/AIDS plan.  But, the detention of activists like Dr. Wan, a consistent advocate trying to implement better treatment and care, shows, on the other hand, a real struggle towards acknowledging and accepting the AIDS epidemic in China. 

Read More:

Via Yahoo

From the BBC

Seed Magazine's interview with Dr. Wan

Avert.org's history of HIV/AIDS in China

The WHO's report on new HIV data

Dr. Wan's 2002 Detention:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2002/09/20/china4300.htm

Overview from The Body

Ever-Abstinence

No, it's not anything like Everclear.  Forget your swinging single's life.  The federal government's new message is:  ever abstinent.  If you thought abstinence-only programs for teens were bad, the government is now targeting unmarried adults with an abstinence-only program for people from 12-29.  So, if you're a woman, you are perpetually pre-pregnant at the same time you're ever-abstinent.  Sharon Jayson at USA Today reports:

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

The problem spurring on this new program?  Women who have children "out-of-wedlock."  Well, buy me some pearls and a vacuum cleaner and call me June Cleaver. 

Follow Up on Mandatory HIV/AIDS Testing

I've gotten some flack about my previous posting on HIV/AIDS.  So, I thought I'd take a moment to clarify it just a little.  I am not, in principle, opposed to mandatory HIV/AIDS testing.  I think destigmatizing HIV/AIDS by making it a regular part of one's medical care has distinct advantages.  It will also go a long way towards assisting people who do not know that they are positive, ensuring that they have early access to life-saving drugs.  All of this is a given.  And, as an AIDS activist, all of these are advantages I applaud. 

What gives me pause, however, is what I read as the increasing surveillance and restrictions on sexuality in the United States.  We've left a very brief window of time where sexuality was unfettered and we seem to be returning to a period of very heteronormative, "sex for procreation" kinds of rhetoric.

If the current mandatory HIV/AIDS testing policy existed in conjunction with a liberated HIV/AIDS policy that included things like:  access to anonymous testing, condoms in the schools, and safe sex education programs that worked, I would see this latest move as part of a comprehensive & effective HIV/AIDS policy.  But our current HIV/AIDS policy doesn't work--on too many levels to ennumerate here.

Instead, it seems like we're moving backwards to a period of regressive social policy around sexuality.  Anyone having anything other than heterosexual sex for the purposes of procreation is suspect. This is seen in the battles over funding for progressive HIV/AIDS programs, for international programs wanting U.S. funding for family planning, and the battle lines over abortion.  All of this echoes the very real controversies over the bathhouse closures in New York City and San Francisco in the 1980s--on the one hand a necessary public health move and on the other hand a very totalitarian approach to policing sex. 

If you're interested in issues like this, exploring the philosophical framework against which one might read current social policy, a good place to start is Simon Watney's Policing Desire or Denis Altman's Global Sex.

Mandatory HIV/AIDS Testing

On Thursday, the CDC released new guidelines that say that HIV/AIDS tests should be as regular as cholesterol tests for people between 13 and 64 (this presupposes that all adolescents are sexually active and that after 64, you're not in danger;  both dangerous presuppositions).

As HIV/AIDS rates begin their perilous re-rise in the U.S., many people are living with HIV and they don't even know it.  Against this backdrop, the CDC is recommending mandatory HIV testing to get an accurate accounting of HIV in the United States and to begin treatment for those who don't know that they are positive.

On the one hand, this recommendation acknowledges the extent of the problem in the U.S.  On the other hand, however, yet again, HIV/AIDS policy in the United States doesn't exist in a vacuum.  When you put the new guidelines up against other recent "health" guidelines, here's what you get:

• You must get an HIV/AIDS test
• Sex ed programs must teach abstinence-only curriculum
• You can't have access to EC
• You have increasingly limited access to abortion
• You may or may not be able to have your birth control pills filled
• If you're on public assistance, you will be encouraged to get married
• If you are between the ages of 13 and 60 (give or take), you are "pre-pregnant"
• Idiots like Jerry Thacker and Tom Coburn are "leading" the fight against HIV/AIDS on PACHA (President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS)--Coburn resigned in 2004, but his time on PACHA did serious damage to HIV/AIDS efforts nationally and internationally; Thacker didn't end up on PACHA after the flack over his appointment.  Thank God for small favors.
  

Tripoli Six

I ran across a horrifying article about 5 Bulgarian nurses and 1 Palestinian doctor who have been detailed since 1999 in Libya on false charges of infecting 400 children with HIV/AIDS.  The detainees are: Christiana Malinova Valcheva, Valia Georgieva Cherveniashka, Nasia Stoitcheva Nenova, Valentina Manolova Siropulo, Snezhana Ivanova Dimitrova and Ashraf Ahmad Jum’a.

Declan Butler wrote up the case in Nature (2 excerpts from the longer article appear below):

1.  Lawyers defending six medical workers who risk execution by firing squad in Libya have called for the international scientific community to support a bid to prove the medics' innocence. The six are charged with deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV at the al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi in 1998, so far causing the deaths of at least 40 of them.

and later:

2. If international pressure isn't stronger before the appeal, the risk is large that they will be condemned to death," predicts Michel Taube, co-founder of Together Against the Death Penalty, a French non-governmental organization. "To avoid that outcome, diplomacy is not enough. We need international mobilization."

(photo from CBS news here)
Declan Butler also covered the issue in detail on his blog.

Other info:
Physicians for Human Rights (excellent history/overview, including testimony by Luc Montagnier about the medics' innocence)
Lawyers Without Borders (in French)
Firedoglake

Action Steps:
From DailyKos:  letter writing campaign info

Good AIDS Post

Visit Ron Hudson's piece on "21 Years of AIDS Medicine."  Good stuff.

Condom Dresses... Cool! Just don't deconstruct them for sex...

And now, in a little-seen feature on Lingual Tremors, from Bananahole comes a FASHION feature on Condom Dresses.  Just call me Lingual Wears Prada (ha ha ha):

Let's just not try and do double duty.  That's to say:  wear your condoms and enjoy them!  This is a runway trend I could get behind!  Just don't take the condoms off the dress and use them for sex.  I'm assuming they are FASTENED in some way that might make their efficacy compromised....

Yeah.  Condom fashion.  Miranda Priestly (i.e. Meryl Streep) would look great in the red...

Sexy Title, But I'm Not Buying It...

Stephenson Jacobs of AP News wrote yesterday that in Latin America, AIDS is no longer taboo.  Well Mr. Jacobs, Latin America is an awfully big geographic region for such an assumption...

He writes, "25 years after the pandemic began, a new spirit of openness is emerging, spurred by education and by a growing awareness that AIDS touches every sector of society."  Jacobs focuses the beginning of his report on Haiti where:

Standing beneath a towering crucifix, the Rev. Andre Pierre thundered at the faithful crowded elbow-to-elbow in the Sacred Heart Church to show mercy for the poor and the elderly.

Then he did something that until recently would have been close to heresy: He urged his flock to pray for people with  AIDS.

"Today, we stand in solidarity with them," Pierre intoned, lighting a candle in remembrance of AIDS victims and passing it through the crowd, which spilled onto the church steps.

Such sentiment was virtually unheard of a few years ago in socially conservative Latin American and Caribbean countries, where open debate about sex is rare and many still consider AIDS a punishment for deviant behavior.

While things are getting better, having recently returned from a trip to Mexico, I think this report is a little too pollyannaish.  Among other things, while touring a cathedral in Mexico, I was given a pamphlet, rather randomly by a nun walking around the cathedral, entitled "SIDA--el castigo de Dios."  And, in my very own subway station here in New York, over an advertisement for Adam Sandler's Click, someone wrote:  "Faggots give AIDS."  I think globally there is significant progress in raising awareness about HIV/AIDS, but I don't think it yet rises to the level of "no longer taboo" in Latin America, or even here in the United States.  We have a long way to go.

Every Corner of the World: What We Mean When We Say "Pandemic"

In a new report released yesterday by UNAIDS, Dr. Peter Piot painted a grim picture of global AIDS.  While the world has been consumed by the news of African AIDS, few people outside of the medical and activist communities have paid attention to the rising infections elsewhere.  Dr. Piot announced yesterday (via the Guardian) that:

India has overtaken South Africa as the country with the most Aids infections, it was revealed today, as the head of the UN programme against the disease warned that the epidemic would "spread to every corner of the world".

The south Asian country has around 5.7million people infected with the disease, an annual report by UNAIDS found, compared to South Africa's 5.4 million sufferers. Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, said the rise of the disease in the Asia-Pacific was a concern.

While Africa is still hardest hit by the disease, with a staggering number of cases, Dr. Piot's comments, and the release of a new report by UNAIDS offers a grim picture of the future where AIDS touches every corner of the globe. 

What remains so frustrating about HIV/AIDS is that unlike the current panic over avian flu, this disease is entirely preventable.  But this disease, unlike avian flu, touches at the pressure points of civilizations everywhere.  The intimacy of the disease coupled with the social mores (different everywhere) about sex and sexuality continue, after 25 years, to make this seem like a sisyphean task.  This all brings to mind those Salt'n' Pepa lyrics "Let's talk about sex baby..."

Dr. Piot continued (as he has before) to challenge the global community saying,

"We know what needs to be done to stop Aids," says the report. "What we need now is the will to get it done." It calls for "active and visible leadership" from heads of state and governments.

"Ultimately, it depends on how the leadership reacts, how the international community will continue to respond and how ready communities are to face the problem," Dr Piot said.

Of course, the problem continues to be a decided lack of global leadership.

HIV Policies that Make Good Sense!

While the U.S. continue to perpetuate HIV/AIDS policies that defy logic, other countries continue to take the lead in providing sensible, aggressive HIV health care.  Here's an excerpt from the Scientific American's "The Prostitutes' Union" piece written by Madhusree Mukerjee:

Following the survey, Jana undertook to ensure that the women protected themselves against HIV. He trained a few sex workers to go around the brothels talking about the virus and distributing condoms, and he sent researchers along to take notes on everything. It transpired that if a prostitute insisted on condom use, her customer just went to someone else. Unlike AIDS, starvation posed an immediate threat, and the program seemed doomed. "Counseling, educating--it just doesn't work," Jana states. "Higher up in the social hierarchy, people are able to act on the information given to them. Not so in the lower levels."

Thinking of HIV as an occupational hazard gave him the solution: a workers' collective. "The outcome of a negotiation depends on the relative power between the two parties," Jana explains. "When an individual sex worker deals with a client, she is weak. To change the power equation, she needs the support of other sex workers."

That was not enough, however: Jana also had to loosen several layers of coercion that perpetuated unsafe sex. He persuaded the brothel madams that keeping HIV down was in their interest. To reduce the depredations of gangsters, he invited their bosses--often local politicians--to tour the area and converted them to the cause. He lobbied the police to stop raiding brothels, because if a prostitute lost a day's earnings she was less likely to insist on condom use. He argued with syndicate leaders who controlled the pimps and who ultimately conceded to his economic logic. And finally, because society's revulsion left the sex workers feeling worthless and therefore less able to protect themselves, Jana pitted them against Kolkata's intellectuals in impassioned, face-to-face debates about morality. As the women grew in confidence, he removed himself from the scene: Jana's greatest achievement is his planned obsolescence.

Jana has added community empowerment to the known spectrum of structural interventions--that is, programs that seek to alter the forces that maintain harmful behavior, explains public health scientist Michael Merson of Yale University. The United Nations's AIDS effort holds the Sonagachi project up as a "best practice" model. Still, how well it can be reproduced remains to be seen. Meanwhile the collective has hosted three conferences, attended by sex workers from around the world (including the U.S.) who hope to learn its secret. And while I interview Jana during one of his visits to Kolkata, hundreds of women wait patiently outside, each for her turn to meet him. In their eyes, this man who reached down to help them up wears the halo of a modern-day savior.

Read the whole piece here.

HIV Policies that Make Sense: Yay New York!

AP News reports:

A U.S. policy that forces groups fighting AIDS overseas to denounce prostitution in order to receive federal funding violates free speech rights, a judge ruled Tuesday.

The Supreme Court "has repeatedly found that speech, or an agreement not to speak, cannot be compelled or coerced as a condition of participation in a government program," said U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero.

Marrero asked both sides to propose a preliminary injunction within two weeks that conforms with his findings, which temporarily blocked the government from demanding the pledge while the legal case continues.

The case stems from legislation passed by Congress in 2003 that required AIDS groups to pledge their opposition to sex trafficking and prostitution or do without federal funding. The pledge was immediately applied to foreign aid recipients, and now also affects private U.S. groups conducting AIDS programs overseas.

The government says it formed the policy to reduce behavioral risks associated with HIV and AIDS.

Those policies, ahem, would be not working with sex workers and proselytizing that condoms are bad.  Yay to Judge Victor Marrero for a sensible decision.  I'm sure it's going to be challenged in court, but hurray for the momentary victory!

Planned Parenthood: The Right Tools for the Job

Check out Amanda's (Pandagon) great analysis of a new Planned Parenthood ad:

Planned Parenthood has a new ad that I’m sure most of you’ll enjoy where a young woman is working construction and a voiceover says something like, “My father always told me to use the right tool for the right job,” and she goes home and strips down, jumps in bed with her boyfriend and reaches for a condom. In the space of a short commercial, you therefore have these elements:

• A suggestion that women can and should do “men’s” work if they want to
• The notion that some fathers actually support and aren’t threatened by having daughters who do “men’s” work
• The fact that there’s no conflict between women having ambition and having a healthy appetite for sex
• The idea that women can enjoy sex for reasons other than a pious need to make a baby

Women's Health: Lies and Drawing the Line

There is nothing more frightening than illness.  I think that many of us live on the edge of worry about interacting with the medical system during an extended illness.  But this comes from the individual's confrontation of mortality.  More recently, I think, women have begun to fear the medical system because of its inconsistent ability to provide reliable and truthful information.  The era of liberated women's health care was brief--and today, we find ourselves ensconced deeply in Foucault's idea of the hospital as an institution of power.  The medical establishment is an extension of the state.

Bitch, Ph.D. pointed me to Brian Alexander's "The New Lies About Women's Health."  As a self-avowed feminist, I wouldn't normally be caught dead reading Glamour.  But Alexander's article is a fantastic discussion of the current crisis in women's health care as the Bush administration (although, as my friend frequently reminds me, it's important to remember that the "abstinence only" educational programs began with Clinton) seeks to narrow definitions and treatments available to women.  You should read Alexander's entire article, but here are some chilling excerpts:

• ...this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, "I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]. Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don't feel comfortable giving it to my patients."
• "People believe that religiously based social conservatives have direct lines to the powers that be within the U.S. government, the administration, Congress, and are influencing public-health policy, practice and research in ways that are unprecedented and very dangerous," says Judith Auerbach, Ph.D., a former NIH official who is now a vice president at the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research.
• ...several states, including Louisiana, Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina, have online abstinence programs that link to a site called abstinencedu.com, which warns that HIV might be able to penetrate a latex condom (patently false), that "condoms offer no protection against HPV infection" (not true) and that "there is no scientific evidence that condoms reduce the risk of becoming infected with the other 23 major STDs" (also false).
• Outside of the halls of science, who are the real victims of this political maneuvering? "The American public, particularly American women," says Trussell. "Who's hurt when you can't get EC over the counter? When there is a suggestion that abortion causes breast cancer—something that is entirely made up? When it's suggested that condoms are not effective against STDs, when in reality they are effective against HIV and even HPV? Women."

So, what's a girl to do?  What's frightening about this report is that we're not just talking about abortion alone.  This is more troubling because it touches on all aspects of women's health care.

First, interview your doctor.  Have a little heart to heart.  Bring in the Glamour article.  Bring in an article on condoms and their reliability.  Test the waters.  If you don't like the answers you get, find a new physician.  If you have trouble locating a feminist or woman-friendly physician, contact groups like Planned Parenthood, NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation for recommendations. 

Be wary of any information that seems contradictory to you.  Do your own research--the informed patient is a powerful patient.  Do not accept information or treatment that you do not agree with.  Always get a second opinion!

Also, fight back.  If you have an encounter with a doctor or health care worker that is unacceptable, report him or her to your state Department of Health, the local Department of Health (if you have one), your state Attorney General, the American Medical Association.  If you are in an area with a Planned Parenthood, contact them for information about how to make a complaint.  Create a paper trail and let others in your area know how they can create a paper trail too.  (See Tennessee Guerrilla Women for their state-related women's choice project). 

Also, consider having your health care needs met by a local Planned Parenthood.  Mad Melancholic Feminista has a great piece on her choice to return to her local Planned Parenthood to support their mission.

Good Information At:
Feminist Women's Health Center
Links (from FWHC)
Our Bodies Ourselves

Mandatory HIV Testing

Head on over to The Concoction for a fantastic post about mandatory HIV testing in Africa.  Good stuff!

Dr. Mardge Cohen & We-ACTx: Heroes of the Week

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

People will be judged by how they respond to the AIDS epidemic. ~Nelson Mandela

(Photo via Joshua Trevino on Flickr)

In my own work, I find it rare to be truly inspired by an individual's HIV/AIDS work.  Like many others, I am tired of HIV/AIDS.  I am tired of fighting the same battles over and over and over again. I want to be inspired, but too often, I don't see the "path" to prevention and a cure.  Instead, I see a government's uninformed approach leading us back into a crisis.   Often, I find myself working with people who are truly committed to the cause, but who are making the very best of the system that we have.  We can't walk away from the imperfections of the system because that would abandon those who need us;  at the same time, many activists, in particular, always see the limitations of the political and the medical systems.   I've written often here about my concern for the direction of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in the United States.  I believe that activists and primary health care workers and AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) across the country share my concerns as we continue to advocate for change.

About a week, ago, however, I had the opportunity to hear someone I would like to nominate as a true hero in Lingual Tremor's sporadic acknowledgment of good works:  Dr. Mardge Cohen of Stroger Hospital (Cook County) in Chicago, founder and former director of the Women and Children HIV program at Cook County Hospital (since 1988) and more recently, Medical Director of the We-ACTx program. 

Every once in a while, it's important for activists to see their work in a larger context.  And, boy, did Dr. Cohen take me by surprise with her fierce feminist approach to HIV/AIDS in Chicago and Rwanda as she discussed her personal contributions to HIV/AIDS.  Despite my own critiques of the medical establishment, I believe that we would all live in a better world if hospitals and health care clinics were dominated by people with the intelligence, grace, humility, fierceness, and humanity of doctors like Dr. Cohen.  She was, in short, a wonder to behold.

Yes, Virginia, You Should Learn about AIDS in School

The hullabaloo in New York at the moment is over the new HIV/AIDS curriculum for K-12 schools which debuted this week.  This revamped curriculum updated the old HIV/AIDS unit which was 10 years out-of-date.  While the new curriculum is better, it still follows the largely conservative rhetoric of the Bush doctrine on HIV/AIDS.  Condom demonstrations for youth in older grades, for example, will not be part of the package;  discussions of abstinence will. 

The local news has been filled with lots of the usual hysteria over sex education, particularly because the curriculum begins in kindergarten.  Here's a quick look at some of the "controversy" via NY1:

Parents can pull their kids from the lessons about AIDS prevention, but only if they agree to teach them about it at home.

In fact, some parent groups, including the Catholic League, are urging parents to defy the system in hope of laying the ground for a court battle. A statement released by the Catholic League said:

"This is the time for Catholic parents who send their kids to the public schools to put their foot down; pull their kids from these classes, refuse to teach them about AIDS and then inform their principal of their refusal to cooperate."

What I find particularly interesting, of an age where HIV/AIDS was not taught in schools, is the way that culturally, many people believe that sexual ignorance is a good thing to teach our children.  These kids are assaulted by sex everywhere, from television to advertisements to the often highly sexualized clothing created for young kids, all starting at a very young age. 

In this ad, from Nordstrom's, the young girl almost winks at the camera, her sassy stance and short skirt reinforcing her nubile young body.  This isn't the pose of an innocent young girl heading off for a tennis game;  it's a precursor to her sexual identity.  But we're not going to talk to her about that.  (We're also not going to talk about the virgin/whore split of sexualizing this young woman and then not offering her comprehensive, medically accurate, and safe reproductive choices!).

 

 

I Wanna Sex You Up... NYC Style

It's a little piece of New York:  in your bedroom (or, wherever...).

New York has announced that it will distribute the first "NYC" themed condoms. 

(I'm voting for Lady Liberty, standing inside of an unrolled condom, with "New York's Finest" underneath.)

Via the New York Times:

City officials said that a "New York condom" was not a part of the broader branding campaign that has been touted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg many times since he was elected. For example, the city receives a royalty from the sale of products that legally use the Police and Fire Department logos.

But, in the end, whatever the design of the package for the condom, it would be uniquely identified with the city, although exactly how — whether it would include a logo or an iconic city image — has yet to be determined.

The statement from the health department seemed to catch many City Hall officials off guard.

"This project is in the very early stages of development," said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor.

Despite assurances that the city does not plan to use the condoms to turn a profit, Joy Linn Alegarbes, 26, an employee at the West Village store Condomania, said she thought they would be wildly popular.

Among other things, this marks significant progress for New York since the 1980s, when the city was slow to ramp up its public health programs to meet the growing HIV/AIDS crisis.  I also think it demonstrates New York's more liberal stance towards HIV/AIDS policies and its willingness, now, to really work to find solutions.

I fully support Bloomberg's unusually good work in extending the free condom distribution campaign.  And, I don't really mind if the condoms are uniquely NYC.  But, I'm interested in the intent behind the branding campaign.  What, exactly, does Bloomberg & co. think will come of this?  Why do it?  Where will it go?

No Sex for You!

Via Bush vs. Pro Choice Action Center comes today's "Handmaiden News" (Original Article in Kansas City News).  Now, girls under 16 won't have to worry about losing their right to have an abortion or getting abstinence only education in schools because Kansas wants to make sex itself illegal!

The lawsuit filed by The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York advocacy group, stems from a 2003 opinion issued by Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline's opinion requiring health care providers and others to tell authorities about consensual sex by underage youths.

The group contends that forced reporting discourages adolescents from seeking counseling and medical treatment and violates their rights to informational privacy.

The Attorney General's Office contends the statute requires mandatory reporting because sex is inherently harmful to underage children. In Kansas, the age of consent is 16.

Fortunately, Federal Judge Marten stopped the "hoo hah" and ruled against Kansas City Attorney General Phill Kline:

A federal judge hearing a constitutional challenge to a Kansas law requiring doctors, teachers and others to report underage sex between consenting youths said the state presented no credible evidence that underage sex is always harmful.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten stopped short of issuing a decision from the bench, but he repeatedly interrupted Thursday's closing arguments by Assistant Attorney General Steve Alexander to challenge his assertions.

"Motives are irrelevant - I want to deal with facts," Marten said. "Where is the clear, credible evidence that underage sex is always injurious? If you tell me because it is illegal - I reject that," Marten said.

Maybe Phill Kline should take a page from Mumbai's morality police:

Nightlife in India's entertainment capital has become deadly dull, youngsters in Mumbai complain, as the authorities continue a crackdown on discos and bars that they accuse of corrupting impressionable young minds.

Live State of the Union Blogging 8

Daddy Bush says for your own good:

• you'll define democracy the way he defines democracy, and you'll like it,
• you'll submit to wire taps,
• you'll be surveilled and you'll like it,
• we'll deny funds to world organizations like UNAIDS, but call our work "progress",
• you can't have Social Security,
• "it's the economy, stupid"--spend more or China will overtake us,
• you can't have Medicare or Medicaide,
• you'll have to decide between "good" immigrants and "bad" immigrants,
• you're losing health care--but you get to pay more for the lousy coverage you will get,
• you are getting more nuclear power plants (because that's not a terrorist target),
• you can't have an abortion,
• you'll embrace any and all wars in the name of terrorism,
• you'll reject any science that isn't religiously based (no cloning, no stem cells),
• you'll submit to the Patriot Act,
• you'll be quiet and not second guess his leadership,
• you will be governed by Alito and Roberts,
• you will be part of a narrowly defined religious hegemony,
• you will be "rich," but who knows how since you have to pay for lots of things you never had to before (and women, you'll be pregnant)

And to conclude:  "In recent years America has become a more hopeful nation." Yes, George, hopeful that your presidency will end soon.

Notable Quotables:

Terrorism:  16
Freedom:  15
History:  10

More Notables:  democracy, future, economy, hope, peace, honor, isolationism

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union

Live State of the Union Blogging 7

HIV can be treated and prevented.  I agree that this would be a good thing.

But it can only happen IF you do something more than ABSTINENCE education.

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union, HIV/AIDS

Live State of the Union Blogging 4

Sorry, you don't get to take money away from UNAIDS and call your own, parallel fund, that denies funding to agencies that do family planning for women progress.

Funding the Fight Against AIDS

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union, HIV/AIDS,Global AIDS Fund

Roberts v. Clinton: AIDS Leadership

What kind of leadership do we want?

I want to revisit David Webber's Nation article, "Roberts's Queer Reasoning on AIDS" from this fall.  In September, Webber reported that Roberts, as an attorney in the White House, recommended the following course of action to then President Ronald Reagan:

Five days before the press conference, he [Roberts] reviewed the presidential briefing materials and recommended deletion of a sentence encapsulating the CDC's conclusion: "As far as our best scientists have been able to determine, AIDS virus is not transmitted through casual or routine contact." In a memorandum, the Assistant Counsel to the President explained, "I do not think we should have the President taking a position on a disputed scientific issue of this sort. There is much to commend the view that we should assume AIDS can be transmitted through casual or routine contact, as is true with many viruses, until it is demonstrated that it cannot be, and no scientist has said AIDS definitely cannot be so transmitted."

In this memo, Roberts relied on the popular, culturally compelling fear of HIV/AIDS, perpetuating serious ignorance.  During his confirmation hearing testimony, Roberts did not disavow, or locate his 1985 decision, historically.  Instead, he relied on the fact that science wasn't 100% sure about modes of transmission attempting to defend his earlier decision as a correct choice, despite its ramifications for children living with HIV at the time.

To extend Roberts' own argument, then, we should not allow agricultural companies to use pesticides or genetically modified food to enter our homes, supermarkets, and restaurants, until we are 100% sure about modes of cancer transmission (as the European Union currently does).

Contrast this HIV/AIDS message, at the highest levels of our government, to Bill Clinton's recent announcement that his foundation has cut a deal with several small drug companies to offer AIDS tests and antiretroviral drugs at a cheaper rate.

My Oscar Nomination for the Year: Rent

AIDS is greatly on my mind these days;  over the holidays, I had the chance to see Rent.  As with any interpretation of a beloved original, I was hesitant about the film, but there was no way I would miss it.  The tag line on the promo was "the musical that defined a generation."  While I generally shun age-related stereotypes, I have to admit that Rent is among the works of art and literature that greatly formed who I am today.  The first time I saw Rent, I knew that was the kind of piece I wanted to write.  And, I'm glad to say, the film was no different. 

Several magazines have chronicled how this year's Oscar race is a race to the political.  With films from The Constant Gardner to Syriana to Munich to Capote to Brokeback Mountain, the race will be tight with lots of "political texts" highlighting issues from big pharma to terrorism to homosexuality.  But a film like Rent was political from the beginning;  it didn't enter this year's Oscar race with a newly discovered political agenda.  Larson's vision was to translate the desperate times before antiretroviral drugs onto the stage, making the everyday political more apparent to the larger public.  Rent is both a great story and a wonderful witness to an important time in American history.   The song, "Will I Lose My Dignity" is as heart-breaking today as it was when Rent first opened on stage.  The translation of life and death issues onto the screen exposes many people's most primal fear:  what is it like to witness your own slow and withering death?  And, in the age of HIV/AIDS, to do so during the prime years of your life.

With the bonus of a set, the film did a beautiful job of situating the story in a beleaguered New York City of the mid-1990s, something the musical only hints at.  The music was great and the story line poignant.   A must see.

Elegy for Tory Dent

Today, like many others in the poetry community, I received the sad news that Tory Dent died last Friday.   At 47, she ended her 17 year struggle with HIV/AIDS leaving behind her a considerable legacy of passion, poetics, elegance, and grace.   But those words are too generic to describe someone who changed her world with every word.  Tonight, I am anything but eloquent;  my profound sadness at this deep hole in the fabric of the world leaves my words--and therefore my tribute--lacking.  But I want you to know this:  Tory Dent was the kind of person we should all want to be.  Poet, activist, and brave warrior, she made language churn, agitating for the changes she sought.  Tory Dent came and found the world lacking, so she disturbed the world with her 3 collections of brilliant work.

I have rarely read or loved a writer whose pen was truly as mighty as Tory's.  Deftly, poignantly, and righteously, Dent chronicled an invisible AIDS, the experiences of women and children and those soon forgotten, even as HIV consumed her own body (In HIV, Mon Amour she writes, "the way the shipwrecked do into the ocean, the way HIV overrides my body as/if overwriting the flesh, the waterline rising above my upturned, gasping face."). 

American AIDS has drifted into the background noise of the larger--and often more palatable--pandemic of African AIDS, but Tory worked eloquently and fearlessly to keep American AIDS as ever-present as possible and to seek changes in legislation, medication, and culture.  She didn't ask for our attention;  she demanded it with a language that inspired, chronicled, philosophized, and  disrupted our expectations.   

We All Have AIDS