AIDS has clambered back into the headlines over the last few weeks. But the coincidence with World Aids Day was rang by tho ce.
was dragged into the limelight again by its involve ment with famous individuals than the needs of the millions around the world who are, and will be, affected by the disease The announcement of the US basketball megastar Magic Glad tested HIV positive has had a particular impact in putting heterosexually transmitted HiV back on the Immediately after Johnson's ress conference the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, anc the San Francisco AIDS Foundation reported a tenfold increase in calls.
Free condoms
His strong advocacy of condoms thought to provided the fina push in getfree throughout the New York public high school system.
Martina Navratilova's comments that Johneon has been categorised among innocent victims of AiDS are particularly poignant. He has received very different response to his revelations than she would have had.
The British media's reaction to the death of 'self-confessed bisexual', but nevertheless talented and famous, Freddie Mercury bears this out. Why There's Nothing About Dying of AIDS' the Eveming Standard was at pains to explain. Others simply ignored the less palatable aspects Johnson has repeated in all his interviews that he is 'as straight as they come He says he caught the virus cuous bachelorhood. from a woman in his promis She has been portrayed as the guilty party. Despite the fact that it is much casier for a woman to be infected through heterosexual contact with a man than vice versa. There are no completely confirmed cases of female-male sexual transmis sion.
Triple standard
Johnson has not wrought his magic on the sexual triple tandard, but reinforced it. The promiscuous heterosexual man is an envied stud, while the sexually active woman is a depraved slut, a notorious spreader of disease, and the rampant homosexual' - of either sex - is even worse and probubly emotionally crippled.
This one-way transmission significantly contributes to women being the group society with the fastest increas ing incidence of HIV. In New York AIDS is the number one killer of women between the ages of 24-29, and the majority of fatalities are black or latino.
Poverty
Poverty is the driving force behind these shocking figures.
The poverty which underlies much prostitution and drug use, which makes being willing to accept punters that refuse to use condoms a much more immediate question of survival than the risk of HIV infection, and which puts adequate healthcare out of reach.
Discrimination against people consistently against women and black people - no women or black people were included in early test programmes of drugs such as AZT There is also a refusal to sec HIV and AIDS as a gendered issue. To do so would involve an exploration of the difficult and dangerous arena women's sexuality.
Male sexuality, including in relation to other men, seems easier to deal with in some quarters than any form of active female sexuality. The fact that dental dams have only just begun to be available amply emonstrates the poir he threat of HIV and AID: to children rather than to women, has been used to cir cumscribe still further women's sexual and bodily self-determination.
Sterilised
Particularly in thi Third World, are being forcibl sterilised under the pretext of the risk of infection to any babies they might have In East Timor this strategy is being consciously used to continuethe government'sstrategy of genocide against the indigenous populations. In the West, the far right haveused the issue in their moral crusade against the gains of the vomen's and lesbian and gay The fact that in Britain we have not witnessed as many deaths as in the US is no reason for complacency. Rather the reverse, it means an added responsibility to act noev.
produces the drug Retrovir (AZT) has