Positive Nation as usual takes a one-month break now and will appear next on 22 January. A lot will happen between now and then. First there will be the organisational frenzy of World Aids Day (see here for a round-up of events). And then...oh God...Christmas.
Christmas is the time when any isolation, any lack of real good friends and support, can come home to roost. But you don't have to have a Christmas tree, dozens of tinsel-wrapped presents (although there are some bright ideas on our Pamper Yourself and arts pages), and stuff yourself stupid (talking of which there's a scrumptious Christmas pudding on our recipe page), or all the rest of the ho-ho-ho either.
We do suggest, however, if the prospect of Christmas dismays, that you phone
up an old and preferably disreputable friend now and plan to celebrate it in
whatever way you please. Happy New Year!
Gus Cairns, Editor in Chief
One bad apple, to use the cliché, does not spoil the whole barrel. The Mohammed Dica conviction has not labelled everyone with HIV as potential ‘Aids assassins’, even though the tabloids sensationalised it that way. It has labelled one man guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm who, to quote the judge, “coldly and callously infected two women”.
We as a group are not to blame for one man’s deliberate and calculated criminality. But as people whose lives have already been damaged by HIV infection, we must be quite clear about this: Mohammed Dica lied and cheated and didn’t give a f*** about the women he infected. He was 100 per cent responsible for his actions.
That’s not the same as putting all the responsibility for HIV infection on to people already infected, as a lot of HIV organisations, in the wake of this case, are saying. “Criminalising the transmission of HIV simply puts all of the responsibility on people living with the virus”, says George House Trust.
But the fact remains that the person with HIV knows something the other person doesn’t: and Dica made sure his women didn’t get to know it. The fact that this was supposedly consensual sex between adults is negated by the subterfuge Dica used to complete a deliberate plan. It was a one-sided situation.
He didn’t set out to kill his women. He set out to have unprotected sex with them knowing he was HIV positive. Someone was being targeted, if not with the malicious intent of a perpetrator, then by the murderous capabilities of his virus, just as by the bullet of a gun. Should we really support the idea that this should not be defined as GBH in the eyes of the law just because it involves HIV and sex?
Knowing and not telling isn’t the issue. Mohammed Dica’s actions were not an accident in the height of passion, and not a negotiated agreement after an honest discussion of the circumstances. It is knowing and lying, knowing and not caring, that is under debate here.
The case may not do much to help people living with HIV infection feel better about themselves, but we can’t keep on defending non-disclosure.
Disclosure may mean that more than a few people end up saying ‘thanks but no thanks’ to the offer of your body. But if you hadn’t disclosed and deliberately had unprotected sex with them, what then? End up in jail like Dica?
And if you do disclose, and they still want you, then it’s you they want, not whatever fantasy you’re being this week.
As a community of people infected with what is still a potentially lethal
virus, we have to respect ourselves and our partners, rise above possible rejection,
and grow up. Before the law and the tabloids make us grow up by force.
Bernard
Forbes, Chair, UKC
Agree? Disagree? Log on to the Positive Voices forum at www.ukcoalition.org/discus
