HIV: A major health issue for women and girls

by Mary Turner
HIV Education Columnist

Many years have passed since HIV first became a media topic in the late twentieth century. The topic seems passé to many in 2015. There are treatment protocols today and a wealth of knowledge about safer sex and fewer headlines about people dying from AIDS, so popular media focuses on some of the sweeping gains that same sex couples have made in many states (or on the tireless efforts of uber-conservative moralists to find ways around the rights that the LGBTQ community has gained).

What is still painfully obvious, though, is that HIV infection is still viewed strictly as a gay disease, and more specifically, a gay male disease. Whether it’s more comfortable for our collective psyches to imagine that only men who have sex with other men, and especially those really bad men who have sex with lots of other men, contract HIV, or we’re still really ignorant about HIV and how it’s spread, women are usually left out of discussions about infection and treatment. However, HIV is a major health issue for women and girls aged 13 and older.

Unlike the stereotypical male route of infection, infections among women are overwhelmingly (87 percent) due to heterosexual contact. The rate of infection among black women is 19 times higher than it is for their white counterparts and about four times higher than that of Hispanic women.

What puts women at such great risk? While it’s true that there are non-sexual ways to contract the infection, most of these women engaged in risky sexual behaviors with men who may have used them, abused them, or lied to them. If substance abuse or addiction is an issue, women often trade sex (or sex with their daughters) for their drug of choice. This can lead them into a downward spiral of needing the drugs, hating themselves for what they must do to get the drugs, and ultimately needing more drugs to cover that pain and shame.

Black women are at a greater risk of engaging in risky sexual behaviors because of self-esteem issues and their desire to have a black male partner. Portrayals of black women on TV, in the movies, in literature, and on social media sites depict them as loud, overweight, less refined, and less attractive than their white peers. Black women are portrayed as being desperate for love, which for women in general, often equates to sex.

If we can be sexual enough and submissive enough, we can get a man to love us. He may or may not love us, but he will have sex with us - on his terms. That means it’s unlikely he’ll agree to a condom, no matter the sexual activity. To object might mean losing the man.

Women who have a history of domestic abuse often have a more difficult time setting boundaries and saying no to men who may harm them or their children. Tough economic situations lead some women to sell themselves to survive. Other women may believe they are in a monogamous heterosexual relationship. They don’t know that they men they share their lives with has a past that involved sharing needles or having sex with other men. In fact, those men may be living a double life even as they reassure the women in their lives that they are faithful. Even more damaging to these women is the fact that they may be reluctant to get tested, and if they do, fewer than half of them will receive treatment.

One woman working to educate people about HIV infections in women is Michelle Anderson, Ms. Plus America 2011. She openly shares her story of feeling unloved when a younger sibling was born and received her dad’s attention, of being sexually abused and learning to equate sex with love, and of her substance use and the failed relationships in her life. Michelle now participates in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) campaign, “Let’s Stop HIV Together.” Michelle and others like her give a face to an infection that continues to claim too many victims.

HIV/AIDS are not a gay plague. HIV is no respecter of people no matter what their sexual orientation, race, socioeconomic status, or other demarcation. Protect yourself by loving yourself enough to practice safer sex, to get tested often, and to seek treatment quickly if you are HIV+.

The Gayly – April 18, 2015 @ 1:40pm.