Discrimination Doesn’t Spell Safety

 
A recent newspaper headline shouted out that 25% of Vancouver’s female sex workers have HIV. The article focused on a study from the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, and its gist was that anyone buying sex should presume infection is probable and practice safer sex. I think anyone having sex with a partner of unknown sexual history should practice safer sex, but the emphasis on sex workers being an alarming source of HIV was annoying, to say the least. HIV is a transmissible disease, and it takes two to tango, as they say.  Sex workers are not mere vectors of the virus. They have been infected with HIV by someone – quite possibly from a client who will pay more for sex without a condom, as Dr. Julio Montaner, one of the study authors, notes. So why make the emphasis on sex workers and not their clients? Public safety of johns, of course.

Nowhere in the article was a mention of the unsafe conditions women work under that can make it dangerous to negotiate condom use, but BC Centre for Excellence researchers have  another study that does. Abuse, violence and police harassment all play their parts in women’s ability to negotiate condom use. If you look at where the power lies in a sex trade transaction, the image of women as powerful temptresses will go out of focus.

For those who actually read beyond the headline, Montaner pointed out that the infection rate in sex trade workers could well be as a result of men infecting women, not the other way around. Female to male transmission is not as efficient as male to female, so women are generally at more risk for sexually transmitted infections from their condomless connections than men are.

HIV has often been seen as a moral disease in North America. Infections in gay men gave oomph to the anti-gay proclamations of moral conservatives, and women with HIV have been accused of being promiscuous and deserving of the disease. Anyone whose addiction involves needles is fair game too, cause “addicts” deserve it. Everyone with HIV has to face stigma and discrimination.

HIV is not a moral signal, it’s a virus. Encouraging a moral approach leads to anti-HIV sentiment and judgment, instead of encouraging open discussion about sexual behaviours and the social/ gender structures that enhance HIV transmission. Unfortunately, headlines such as this just perpetuate the idea that HIV only happens to “those” people (pick your target). It just ain’t so.

- Janet

This was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under News . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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