HIV]...don't matter."
There's a deeper problem about combating stigma too. Here's
an HIV positive mother in a piece we'll run next issue about how HIV prejudice
impacts on the family:
"When I was diagnosed (ten years ago) I wanted to tell everyone about
my HIV. Now I think it's much more of a private thing. It doesn't have
to affect your life in such overwhelming ways any more."
Is it 'stigma' that is shutting up the speaker? Hardly. She's editor of
a well-established HIV newsletter. What she says exposes a paradox at
the very heart of tackling 'HIV prejudice'.
Do you do it by normalising HIV - trying to make it a condition so unremarkable
that you don't think of mentioning it to anyone but your doctor and your
spouse?
Or is that 'complacency'?
Or do you do it by banging on about it to everyone, and run the risk of
glamorising it? As Ruth Webb says on page 18, confident, healthy peer
educators who 'care' can inadvertently make having HIV seem rather cool.
It's like Boy George's story of being approached by a fan who said: "I
want to be an ex-junkie like you!"
So the themes do interrelate, but unpredictably. In a world where some
people are trying hard to regard their HIV as No Big Deal, while others
are still dying of Aids, it's hard to mobilise people round a single theme.
Hence the confusion.
page 2 of 3
/ 2 / 3
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