Comments on: African women speak out against Bush’s abstinence-promoting HIV/AIDS policies

By: Some food for thought | GWOG

Some food for thought | GWOG — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:22:43 +0000

[...] Hanging Gardens of Babylon! They’re still kind of here…somewhere…” African women speak out [...]

By: Flowers

Flowers — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:31:23 +0000

There is a great article in the Economist about how the “Men are adulterous bastards” approach to fighting AIDS doesn’t work. It turns out that (depending on the country) between 30-60% of the spouses who have HIV and are married to HIV negative people are women. Women sleep around too. We are just more likely to lie about it. The women most likely to have sex outside of marriage are in polygymous marriages.

So it looks like the condoms need to go to the women and the men. Getting husbands to not cheat will never solve the AIDS problem, even if the abstinence-only people (and everyone else with their “women are faithful!” fantasies) think it will.

By: pumpkin

pumpkin — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:30:25 +0000

Having done a teeny (and I mean teeny – I am seriously not an expert) bit of work on HIV in Africa, people there are buying into abstinence for the same reasons they do here – not just religion, but because they don’t trust children with sexuality, and I cannot tell you how many times I heard people say “Abstinence is the only solution because if you teach children about condoms, they will want to use them.” Yes, because kids and teens have no interest in their genitalia otherwise… It was extremely frustrating.

Epstein is fantastic – we read a lot of her work in preparation and I seriously recommend the book to anyone and everyone.

By: Blunderbuss

Blunderbuss — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:02:08 +0000

Basically, they kill people. And I just can’t fathom the mindset of people who are willing to let people DIE rather then take the risk that those people might have sex.

Basically, they’re placing their ‘eternal salvation’ above their health and wellbeing. If they stop them from ’sinning’, they’ll die, but they’ll go to heaven! But if they help them ’sin’ to save their lives, they’ll go to hell.

Kinda like the people who spend so much money smuggling bibles into third world countries to ’save their souls’, instead of smuggling, y’know, food and medicine and things they kinda NEED.

By: Chesna

Chesna — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:27:06 +0000

“We are expected to abstain when we are young girls and to be faithful when we are married to men who rape us, who are not necessarily faithful to us, who batter us.”

that’s a really powerful testimony. just heartbreaking.

By: Hector B.

Hector B. — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:49:57 +0000

I really, REALLY don’t get the abstinence only people…Basically, they kill people. And I just can’t fathom the mindset of people who are willing to let people DIE rather then take the risk that those people might have sex.

The judgmental attitude that “It’s your own damn fault” is widespread. When my sister was dying of lung cancer — a cancer that kills more women than breast cancer btw — I tried to find out why there was no early detection mechanism — basically once you have symptoms death follows within a few months. The medical establishment’s view at that time was that resources were better spent trying to get smokers to quit than trying to develop screens to catch it at a curable stage. Luckily a few brave researchers worked on early detection methods anyways, resulting in viable screens today.
Another melancholy factoid I remember from that time is that lung cancer kills women at much younger ages than men.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:51:13 +0000

I really, REALLY don’t get the abstinence only people.

I mean, none of this is new; we’ve known about the severe deficiencies in abstinence only AIDS prevention programs for years.

Basically, they kill people. And I just can’t fathom the mindset of people who are willing to let people DIE rather then take the risk that those people might have sex.

By: trifecta

trifecta — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:09:49 +0000

I for one am sick of people dying because we have people in this administration who want to take us back on a bridge to the 12th century.

By: The Unapologetic Mexican

The Unapologetic Mexican — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:27:41 +0000

The Context of Corruption; A Backdrop of Oppression

THERE IS A CONTEXT AND A BACKGROUND to many of today’s events that those in power would not have us access. They forcefeed us fistfuls of pseudo-truth shards and a flurry of information-flakes; just enough to fetch the fear and loathing to the surface…