Have you heard me today?

[Guest guest]

Have you heard me today?

(World AIDS Campaign slogan for 2004)

Many women and girls are vulnerable to HIV because of the high-risk

behavior of others. This year's World AIDS Campaign, with the

strapline `Have you heard me today?,' seeks to raise awareness

about, and help address, the many issues affecting women and girls

around HIV and AIDS.

Globally, young women and girls are more susceptible to HIV than men

and boys, with studies showing they can be 2.5 times more likely to

be HIV-infected as their male counterparts. Their vulnerability is

primarily due to inadequate knowledge about AIDS, insufficient

access to HIV prevention services, inability to negotiate safer sex,

and a lack of female-controlled HIV prevention methods, such as

microbicides.

At the same time, all over the world women do not enjoy the same

rights and access to employment, property and education as men.

Women and girls are also more likely to face sexual violence, which

can accelerate the spread of HIV.

Around half of all people living with HIV in the world are female.

This is why HIV-positive women have a unique and valuable role to

play, both in society and in fighting HIV and AIDS. Women hold

families and communities together and they are a source of great

strength in the face of HIV and AIDS.

This year's World AIDS Campaign, which culminates on World AIDS Day –

1 December 2004, explores how gender inequality fuels the AIDS

epidemic, and is conceived to help accelerate the global response to

HIV and AIDS by encouraging people to address female vulnerability

to HIV.

http://www.unaids.org/wac2004/index_en.htm

[Guest guest]

To the editor,

It is good to recognise women's and girls vulnerability. Of course, their

vulnerability is due to inadequate knowledge about AIDS, insufficient access to

HIV prevention services, inability to negotiate safer sex etc. How women can

hold families and commununiities together and be a source of great strength in

this situation? Now after a history of two decades of HIV, we need to go to

deeper issues. Still safer sex discourses other than penetrative sex with

condoms/microbicides is in the peripheries. But it is actively going on within

the community of married PLHAs and it is very genuine. But it is not yet brought

into the mainstream debates. It is possible only by challenging the norms of

sexuality and gender roles.

Sexuality has always been visualized from the 'male view'. Now number of

sexualities are being unleashed by women, marginalised women, lesbians, gays,

transgenders, and men who do not fit into the 'normal definition' of men. Many

of these groups are actively engaged in HIV prevention activities too. They have

struggled to find a space within the field of HIV activism and in the mainstream

world.

Emerging new identities are bringing new sexualities, sensualities and erotic

modes. Erotics is not something fixed and we do not have to follow the hetero

sexual, male dominant female submissive model. Destablizing masculinity provide

space for the emergence and discovery of diverse forms of erotics and

sexualities. The process itself is erotic which do not transmit any pathogenic

germs. This may not be conforming to the existing norms of families and

communities which provide a false sense of power and protection to women.

Construction of " safer sex practice " in this context is possible only through

engagement with diverse sexuality identities which interrogate the conventional

family norms as well. If we are talking of addressing vulnerabilities of girls

and women, these issues have to be taken into consideration.

This does not reducce the value of using condoms and microbicides, but add to it

and take it further. Hope that this year which is dedicated for womens and girls

vulnerability will highlight these issues

Regards

Jayasree. A. K

E-mail: <jayasree@...>