The Blowfish Blog

Couple’s Couch: Red Ribbons

December is AIDS awareness month. If you are anything like me, thinking about HIV transmission while shopping for family gifts does not sound like the stuff of ideal, snow-flocked holiday fun.

Why the officials of Worlds AIDS Day chose December 1st for commemorate those that have passed away from AIDS is beyond me (although I’m sure a quick search on the ol’ Internet would likely give me some answers as to the date choice). It sure is untimely when we consider the great lengths Americans go through to put on the annual Christmas consumerist show that has more to do with stringing up the better light arrangement on the front of the house than helping out our communities in need.

As I sat around the breakfast table this morning with a good friend who happens to be infected with HIV, we got to talking about what it is like for her to be one of the millions of people who have contracted this vicious virus.

We dipped gingerbread into lattes and talked about how AIDS continues to feel like a problem that is happening “over there” in other countries, far enough away to feel safde and snug in the arms of our non-infected lovers. The WHO just released information earlier this year that they had overestimated the number of Africans living with HIV by about 7 million people. That seems a grievous error until we learn that 33 million Africans actually ARE infected. Thirty-three million human beings; I can’t even get my head around that number.

And that’s just in Africa! When we talk about 33 million people in Africa, we aren’t talking about the countless other nations that have epidemic levels of HIV swirling throughout their communities. We aren’t thinking about all of the places that testing and treatment are not available to help those in need. We certainly aren’t talking about how the sex trade and money game keep humans enslaved to unsafe practices that put their lives at risk to keep food on the table.

And yet, I don’t see us caring all that much about people dying of AIDS, especially during AIDS awareness month.

Sure, we care; we care to a point. We write a check every now and again to sponsor a friend who is doing an AIDS awareness marathon. We think about those poor children in Africa who contract HIV through breast milk before they even have a chance at life. We think about them over there. But we don’t think about Americans having HIV.

We don’t want to think about the University in Chapel Hill that suffered with an HIV outbreak in 2003. We can’t get our heads around young, white students contracting this virus doing the same kinds of things we did in college, activities some of us still do. We don’t think about what we would say if our children, our parents, our best friends came to us with the news that they are HIV positive. We don’t think about what that would mean if we, ourselves, lived with the virus inside our body.

It doesn’t feel good to mix the idea of sexually transmitted viruses with tinsel and spiked eggnog. I don’t often hear tales of Santa leaving condoms in stocking so the naughty, sexual Americans can ho, ho, ho safely.

When I take time out of my present-wrapping to consider why a quarter of the estimated 1.2 million HIV positive Americans do not know they are infected, I’m left to sit with the paucity of sexual awareness in this country. The fact that 40,000 new Americans contract HIV every year in this country is staggering. While it may be easy to think about “other people” or just “gay people” contracting this, of these 40,000 people, the vast majority are young people (ages 13-24), heterosexual women, and people of color.

We do not talk about sex enough. We are not standing together to teach our children about how to engage in sex safely and how and when to get tested for STIs when they become sexually active. We do not stand united on the right for women to demand protection, to know the STI status of their partners, to consent to all sexual acts they engage in. We still hesitate to ask our lovers if they have been tested or if they mind using a condom because we are not comfortable talking about sex when it is real, when it is happening, or when we stand the most to lose.

We do not talk about sexually transmitted diseases as if they could really happen to us.

But they do happen. They are happening. And people are dying this Holiday season from AIDS whether we choose to think about it or not.

So what if we decided to think about it this year?

What if we though about AIDS this holiday and what if we did something about it? If doing something for you means making a donation, all the power to you. But what if we did something more personal, more private as a way of recognizing this pandemic?

What if we called up a buddy and went and got tested this holiday season? What if we bought a box of condoms for our kids and left them in their bathroom, just in case they ever felt like using one? What if we sat down and had a real talk with our lovers about out sexual histories? What if we took the time to believe that we are not invincible, not safer than other people, not more deserving to be HIV negative than anyone else?

Thinking about the sad reality that engaging in something as beautiful as sex could kill us is terrible. But not thinking about it is contributing to the factors that make this terrible truth a reality. It’s the time of year for generativity, of giving back to the world. What can you give?

— Rebekah Skoor, MA

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This entry was posted on Friday, 21 December 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.