Goal: Stigma-free HIV

I recently read about a survey that found some sexually active women cited “embarrassment” as a reason they haven’t had a recent Pap smear.  Add to those respondents young women who don’t think they’re at risk for HIV and would be embarrassed to be caught carrying a condom.  Oh my. If women are too embarrassed to go for a simple Pap test, is it any wonder that HIV is a tough conversation topic?

Presenting at conferences, I’ve seen my share of uncomfortable attendees when I start to talk about women and HIV. HIV is still a bugaboo, taboo, stigma-loaded reality. It’s such a stigma that people will avoid HIV tests. My aunt once told me that people with cancer used to be similarly stigmatized. Out of curiousity, I googled “HIV stigma” and came up with 277, 000 hits. I googled “cancer stigma” and came up with 1,200,000 hits. Sad to say, it seems the cancer stigma hasn’t disappeared either. 

At the top of the stigma list for cancer was lung cancer. People report that they feel they have to justify their behaviour, explaining whether or not they were smokers. A study found that primary care doctors were less likely to refer lung cancer patients to oncologists, compromising care and perpetuating the notion that lung cancer is their “fault.” Lung cancer patients were asked how they got it. Sound familiar?

So what are humans to do with these vulnerable flesh suits AKA our bodies? Everyone who is born will inevitably experience illnesses and death. We may or may not get diseases of one kind or another. As children, the ideal scenario has us cared for by adults who look after our physical health and teach us how to care for ourselves, but this doesn’t always happen. Once we reach adulthood, caring for our bodies is our responsiblity. Many factors of health are within our control, and some are not. Life events can affect how we look after our bodies- sometimes for the better, and sometimes the worse. Social beliefs and myths influence our behaviours, which can have consequences for the body. Sometimes we make an unwise choice, or months, even years of  unwise choices. And sometimes bad things happen even when we’ve made the best and healthiest choices we can.  Throughout our lives we have cycles of better and worse health. Ideally, circumstances are in our favour and we are healthy. But it’s  not always so. If we do end up with HIV/cancer/ diabetes/ (fill in the blank), it doesn’t mean it’s time for punishment- it means it’s time for care, support, and education. 

HIV is transmitted primarily through sex and injection drug use- not topics of "polite" conversation. But we’ve got to talk about sex, sexuality, and all kinds of variations of sexual behaviour that people have. We’ve got to talk about different kinds of drug use, because humans have sex and do drugs, and we are vulnerable to infection and disease if we aren’t providing the education, care and support that is needed. In the interest of education and not alarm, somewhere along the line of your sexual experiences, there will be a risk, even if it’s related to a person you never met who connected with your partner’s ex-partner…. . How to be fully aware of it and minimize it? Education and removing stigma is a start. The more we talk, the more we can talk about the range of things that people do, how to do it safely, have fun, be healthy, explore and move towards being stigma free for being human.     

- Janet

This was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Body Health, HIV Prevention . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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