May 2, 2016 • 44 mins
Ever since the 1980s epidemic, HIV and AIDS have been misunderstood as exclusively affecting men who have sex with men. Cristen and Caroline discuss the lesbians on the front lines of the AIDS crisis, women and AIDS today and the HIV myths that reinforce its stigma.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you looking for brand new episodes of a short
How Stuff Works podcast that explains the everyday world around us,
then check out brain Stuff with me Christian Sager. New
episodes hit every Monday and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,
or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Welcome to stuff
(00:22):
Mom Never told you from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
And this episode on women and HIV and AIDS goes
out to Brent. Let up, Brent. Brent has been requesting
(00:44):
this topic for so long. He has emailed us, he
has facebooked us, and Brent, we have listened and we
have research and we're so glad that you were so
persistent in asking us to talk about this issue because
it is very true. Then when it comes to HIV,
women are often a footnote. Yeah, um, and Caroline, can
(01:08):
we start things off on a on a pop culture note,
which as always yes please Okay. So, as I was
reading about these, uh, these issues and thinking about the
stigma surrounding HIV and just STDs in general, Um, it
reminded me of an episode of Sex in the City
(01:29):
and it's the episode titled Running with Scissors, and I
know that because yes, I have seen sex in the
City a zillion times. And it's the one where Samantha
meets her alleged like sexual match, Tom Raymie, and so
he also, you know, has had a bazilion sexual partners,
(01:50):
but before they can have sex, he's like, Samantha, you
have to get tested because I have to know that
it's safe. And Samantha is like, oh, Tom, that's so terrifying.
And there's this scene of Samantha getting her HIV test results,
and on the one hand, it's kind of comical because
(02:11):
you know, there there's the thing where the nurse asks
her like how many sexual partners have you had? And
Samanth is like, I can't even count that high. But
then there's the waiting period when it's like, if this
happens to Samantha, this is the worst possible thing that
could ever happen to her. This means that she is
like sexually off the market. She is a marked woman.
(02:34):
And to me, that's just one glaring example of the
remaining stigma and misinformation around HIV, not the need to
get std and HIV tested, but around the fallout from that.
Sure well, I mean, it is scary and and and
it made me think of reality Bites to nine Garofoli's
character who also has had multiple sexual partners and keeps
(02:57):
a little black book listing all the names of the
and she's had sex with. And she finally goes and
gets tested at a clinic and it's it's really emotional
and and watching her, you know, be so afraid in
the waiting room, feeling like, oh my god, you know,
my life could fall apart at any moment. I you know,
(03:18):
my lifestyle has been uh, you know, a terrible thing
leading me to this terrible point. And it is really emotional,
and I mean I I I think it appropriately highlights
the importance of getting tested. But similarly, it does depict
HIV and AIDS as the worst possible death sentence that
(03:42):
one could receive well and the shame surrounding it too.
And I wonder if the effect of those kinds of
portrayals is to encourage other people like, you know what,
I need to go out and I need to get
tested as well, or if it's like I don't want
to experience that that is terrifying. I'm just not going
to do it and pretend that everything's totally vol Well,
(04:05):
I mean they could also be products of their time.
I mean reality bites came out in what so that's
not at the start of the AIDS crisis, which emerged
in the very early eighties. That would be more in
the era. If you're looking at the different periods of
time in people learning about and dealing with AIDS and HIV,
(04:29):
would be right around the time that people start really
talking about it and advocating for the health and safety
of really everyone and to try to get more attention
to possible treatments. And it is good that there were
portrayals of women going to get tested because, like we said,
in the US, HIV and AIDS have long been portrayed
(04:53):
as health issues pretty much exclusive to white gay men,
but in fact, HIV positive people around the world are women.
And because we keep saying HIV slash AIDS, let's also
take a moment to explain exactly what these two things
are and differentiate between the two. Well, first of all,
(05:16):
your symptoms can differ both from person to person and
gender to gender. Uh so that's worth noting. And yes,
you can be asymptomatic. So what happens when the HIV
virus enters the bloodstream, so your immune system gets to
work producing HIV antibodies, and then within the first forty
(05:39):
five days that process is referred to as saroh conversion.
And after the antibodies get to work, you actually feel better.
I mean you can feel better for up to like
ten years, feel better because keep in mind this can
also be asymptomatic. But all the while, kind of the
way that you get chickenpox that can hang around and
(06:01):
later turn into shingles, the HIV virus is actually replicating
and slowly destroying your immune system because what it does
is actually integrate into infected cells genomes. And because immune
systems then become so weakend because of HIV, we're far
(06:22):
more susceptible to bacterial infections and fungal diseases that your
body could normally fight. These are called opportunistic infections. So
when that happens, when your immune system essentially collapses, that
is when HIV transitions to being labeled as AIDS. And
because in the United States, the AIDS crisis predominantly affected
(06:45):
gay mail communities, and because of the extreme homophobia at
the time, AIDS was very much stigmatized and its patients
were dehumanized because already because due to the homophobia, these
gay men had been dehumanized and stigmatized just on their own.
So Ashley Fetters over the at The Atlantic traced how
(07:09):
our perceptions and portrayals of HIV and AIDS as developed
through pop culture, because pop culture has been used to
destigmatize and humanize illnesses, although when it comes to AIDS
it's also been highly gendered. So if we go back
to like the nineteenth century, you have authors like Charles
(07:32):
Dickens and Victor Hugo who actually humanized tuberculosis patients who
otherwise we're just seen as this, you know, horrible group
of people that you should just stay away from because
they're contagious and you'll die. And Fetters points out that
Mark Twain and Harriet Beaster so did similar things in
terms of humanizing people of color and drawing attention to
(07:56):
racism and slavery. So pop culture has done that also
over time with HIV and AIDS. Yeah, and so when
in one the AIDS virus first starts to gain widespread attention,
there's a lot of confusion at first as to what
(08:16):
it is. A New York Times article, for instance, was
headlined rare cancer seen in forty one homosexuals. They called
it composes sarcoma, and CDC spokesman Dr James Current said,
the best evidence against contagion is that no cases have
been reported to date outside the homosexual community or in women.
(08:41):
So right off the bat, we have health professionals establishing
that this is a gay man thing. Well, and then
that also, of course fuels more conservative bigotry, saying like, oh,
here's proof that being gay is such a sin, because
now there's actually being smited for that. Yeah, and writing
(09:04):
about this crisis which left behind so many friends, family members,
and particular romantic partners. Um, it was interesting to see
the way that the media started to cover those partners
who were left behind. For instance, the New York Times
would also refer to gay men who survived their partners
(09:26):
as longtime companions. Rather than dignifying them as saying boyfriend
or partner or anything like that, they opted to go
the longtime companion route very euphemistically, to the point where
there was even a movie made in the eighties called
Longtime Companion about a couple dealing with this issue. So
it was first reported, like you said, in one and
(09:50):
by the time we get to nineteen nine one, the
year that Magic Johnson Um came out publicly as being
HIV positive, which I still remember seeing that press conference
that happened that year. Anita Hill happened that year was
a doozy UM. But by the end of that year,
in the US alone, there had been over two hundred
(10:12):
and six thousand cases of AIDS reported to date, and
of those one hundred fifty six thousand, one hundred forty
three people, mostly gay men, had died. So I mean,
this was a full blown epidemic and it was concentrated
in the gay community. And Caroline, we should probably go
back at some point and do an episode focusing in
(10:35):
on the AIDS crisis in the nineteen eighties, but we're
really focusing today obviously on women in HIV and AIDS,
because it really took over a decade for AIDS related
pop culture and even art to recognize the diseases reached
(10:56):
beyond gay men. So I guess maybe one of the
earliest UM instances would have been that reality bite scene.
Well yeah, and even so, though that character was still
a straight white woman, So still in this conversation, we're
lacking women of color, who we will discuss as being
disproportionately affected by AIDS in hiv UM and lesbians, and
(11:21):
the erasure of the roles that many lesbians played during
the AIDS crisis of the nineteen eighties is partially attributed
to the fact that we are only recently in our
mainstream pay more attention to and researching more and learning
more about our lgbt Q history in the United States. UM.
(11:41):
But even still, as Marcia Bianco writes about Indie Wire,
the longstanding pop cultural portrayal of it as a gay
cancer um has perpetuated this idea that it was only
white gay men not only affected, but also who were
the activists protesting, you know, the lack of healthcare around it, well,
(12:05):
activists and also people who were just there helping exactly
I mean. And we even see that in more recent
on screen portrayals as well. Yeah, there's this movie The
Normal Heart on HBO that was about this crisis and
about gay men suffering in the midst of the AIDS crisis,
and it contained only one lesbian character and briefly contained
(12:29):
that lesbian character who tells these guys she's I believe
her friend had just died and she tells these guys
that she wants to help in any way quote even
though all my lesbian friends say, what have you guys
done for us, which, of course paints lesbians across the
board amid this AIDS crisis of the eighties and nineties
(12:51):
as bitter and resentful and not wanting to even help
those who were affected and dying. And Lilian Faderman, who
is a lesbian scholar and author of The Gay Revolution,
points out how in the nineteen seventies, Yeah, there was
some legit acrimony between the gay and lesbian communities. I mean,
(13:14):
we've talked before, like in our Lavender Menace episode, in
our episode about radical feminism, there were separatists lesbians who
really wanted nothing to do with any men, regardless of
sexual orientation. Um. And in fact, there were plenty of
lesbian feminists who didn't consider gay men any less chauvinistic
(13:35):
than straight men. However, as Faderman underscores, in the eighties,
when the AIDS epidemic hits, that rancor really dissolved because
there simply wasn't time for it. These men were dying
so quickly. Yeah, so you had lesbians who were doing
everything from starting food banks to working in hospitals weather
(13:58):
as nurses. So you had women who there are stories
of women quitting higher paying jobs to go work in
hospitals as nurses, or they were simply there as visitors
to hold hands. Uh. They worked to clean up men's
houses that had essentially been abandoned since they'd been hospitalized.
And these men themselves had been abandoned by friends and
families in a lot of cases, and they provided comfort
(14:22):
in hospice and a lot of these women, these lesbian
women had to take on a lot of misdirected rage
and bitterness at the time from men who were, you know,
in dire straits. They were in despair, they were sick,
scared and alone. And gay men and lesbians at this
(14:44):
time had a history of gender based division. Yeah, and
those nuances um to what was going on at the
time is something that producer Sarah Shulman, who produced documentary
United An Anger a History of act UP and that's
act UP all caps because the act UP is or
(15:07):
was a AIDS activism group. Um Shulman has critiqued the
recent documentary How to Survive a Plague for really overlooking
or glossing over that kind of coalition activism that was happening,
and um, really focusing on this group of five men
(15:29):
that it's sort of uplifts as the exclusive heroes, whereas
in reality, Shulman points out, and as the documentary United
in Anger demonstrates, there was much more bridge building happening.
I mean, speaking of that coalition building, I mean, these
narratives of it's all a gay man's problem, particularly a
(15:53):
white gay man's problem, ignores the fact, the very real
fact that there were not only women there helping and
comforting and caring for gay men, but also men who
were stepping up and saying, we need to count women,
We need to test women for AIDS in HIV. They
need to be included in this research, in these numbers,
(16:16):
and in any discussion of health and safety. Yeah. So,
I mean you you had gay men also protesting for
the CDC to expand its definition of HIV and AIDS,
which was limited only two men, because really, up until then,
there was a complete unawareness of HIV transmission rates via
(16:39):
lesbian sex or female female sex because the medical community
just wasn't concerned about it. They assumed that it just
didn't exist. Wasn't a possibility, and in fact, it's only
been in the past few years that the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that yes, indeed, HIV
(16:59):
can be transmitted through same sex sex between women. Yeah.
And this whole medical marginalization reflected a broader misunderstanding of
lesbian lifestyles and sexuality that could include ivy, drug use, imprisonment, rape,
(17:22):
and in some cases consensual sex with male partners. That
there are so many different ways that people can be infected.
And until the early nineties, the CDCs definition of AIDS
was based off of its pathology in the male immune system.
And I already mentioned that AIDS and HIV functions differently
in women. These infections that were showing up in men
(17:46):
didn't always happen in women, and so that means it's
the same thing that we see nowadays with heart disease,
that heart heart attacks manifest differently in women than men.
If you don't know you have it, or you don't
know what to look for, or you don't know what
safety practices to take suetra, that equates to no treatment,
that equates to not being counted, and that equates then
to fewer resources and the cycle continues of medical marginalization.
(18:10):
So Act Up that activists organization that Sarah Shulman documented
in United and Anger. Its slogan was women don't get AIDS,
they just die from it. And again this was something
too that activists not only had to protest and push
forar with the medical community, but also fought back and
(18:33):
forth within the lgbt Q community at large, because you
did have some lesbian AIDS activists who were frustrated by
some lingering misogyny that some gay men would exhibit toward
them to ignore the fact that lesbians were part of
(18:55):
this issue too, and the fact too that the women
were often shoved to the side in some of these
AIDS activism groups. So intersectionality was not exactly top of mind,
but also kind of understandable considering the cultural climate and
also just the level of crisis. So now that we've
(19:16):
had thirty years of AIDS research and we understand far
more about it now than we did in the eighties,
we want to talk about the situation with women in
HIV and AIDS today, and we'll get into that when
we come right back from a quick break. Every mom
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(21:28):
women in HIV is something Caroline that we have absolutely
needed to address. Brent was right, Brent, I really hope
you're listening to this episode, um, because data from the
Kaiser Foundation and c d C show that of new
HIV diagnoses in the US are women, four of whom
(21:52):
are women who contract HIV from sex with a man. Yeah,
and just of those infections were attributed to IVY drug use,
which is sort of a flip flop of statistics from
thirty years earlier. And they found that these diagnoses are
mostly occurring with women in the tent to thirty four
year old age range, and this translates that figure to
(22:18):
new cases among women in alone. And it is interesting
that and important to note that women are most likely
to contract it through sex with a man because the
risk of getting HIV during vaginal sex is way higher
for women than it is for men, but regardless, anal
(22:39):
sex is still riskier overall for contracting the virus. And
the thing is of women living in the US, eleven
percent of those with HIV don't know they have it,
and this is so common for STDs in general. I mean,
herpes can be asymptomatic for a long time. Um, it's
it's HIV. Similarly, it can be asymptomatic. And speaking of herpes,
(23:03):
contracting other STDs and s t I S also increases
your likelihood of contracting HIV and when that happens. Women
also tend to face steeper challenges accessing care due to
factors like socio economics, family responsibilities, cultural inequalities, sexual violence,
(23:24):
um and clinical symptoms and complications that again differ from
male epidemiology. It's also worth noting that yes, STDs increase
your likelihood of contracting HIV, but HIV also increases your
chances of getting HPV, which goes back to what Christian
was saying at the top of the podcast as far
(23:44):
as this virus leaving you open to more infections and
because of those healthcare challenges that women tend to face,
just fort of HIV positive women in the US receive
regular healthcare. So clearly this is something that needs more
(24:05):
attention and focus, not just on the individual level, but
also from the healthcare community. And if we then drill
down and talk about stigma, it is very real. Um.
A two thousand four study in the Journal of Nursing
Scholarship found that gender intensifies that HIV stigma, considering how
(24:28):
it has been painted in the US as again a
white gay man's disease. So it's like this idea that, oh,
if you're an HIV positive woman, like what's wrong with you?
Like double what's wrong with you? And I mean women
do internalize that stigma. I mean, these things don't exist
in a vacuum. There was a twenty study in Social
Work Healthcare that found that among pregnant women that stigma
(24:53):
intensified when seeking perinatal care. So these women you're almost
pregnant or not, you're almost afraid to even asked to
even broach the subject and ask your doctor baut getting tested.
And a study on HIV positive women from ninety four
countries around the world found that eighty four reported depression
(25:13):
and seventy percent reported rejection and their rate of mental
health problems is three and a half times higher after
HIV diagnosis, and all of those factors are compounded by
socially disadvantaged identities. So this is the part where we
talk about how women of color are disproportionately affected by
(25:35):
HIV and AIDS um and this data is coming from
AMPHAR and the CDC, which finds that Black women are
twenty three times likelier to be diagnosed with HIV and
Latina women are five times likelier to be diagnosed with
HIV compared to white women, and this is a disproportionate
(25:58):
representation compared to their population proportions. So, for instance, women
of color in the US represent of the U S
female population but account for eighty four percent of female
AIDS cases. Yeah and six of women living with HIV
(26:19):
in this country are black, and according to the Black
Women's Health Imperative, HIV and age related illnesses are the
number one cause of death among Black women ages twenty
five to forty four. And there's also a regional concentration
of these HIV cases because seventy of women newly diagnosed
(26:41):
with HIV live in the South, likely due to socioeconomic
issues of high poverty, low public health access, and low education.
Compounding that, you also have communities with high incarceration rates,
economic instability, low marriage rates, and sexual violence, all of
(27:02):
which correlate to hire HIV transmission rates. So these racial
disparities in a lot of ways are very much a
civil rights issue. Yeah, And I mean it highlights, among
many things, the fact that our education and health care
systems are failing these women and failing all of us.
I mean, this is why, I mean, this is one
(27:24):
of the many reasons why when I hear about either
abstinence only sex ad or I hear about the fact
that there are so many states in this country where
educators aren't even legally required to give accurate and truthful information,
it just makes me cringe on my deepest, deepest core level,
(27:46):
because I mean, look, look at these numbers that we've
just read to you. Women are dying. Women are dying,
and women especially in communities that don't have the same
level of access to education and healthcare and who are
suffering from socio economic related issues. These women are dying
in a disproportionate in disproportionate numbers, and it makes me
(28:07):
sick well, and it also goes to show to an
often hidden layer to UH sexual violence and domestic abuse,
which again is correlated to that higher transmission rate as well. Um,
if we look at the Latino population, UM, seventeen percent
of women in the US living with HIV our Latina
(28:31):
and in fact, five point five percent of HIV positive
Latinas are over fifty five, which is um an outlier
versus the general HIV plus population, which tends to be
in their twenties and early thirties. And the higher rate
though of HIV among Latina's is attributed to lower condom usage. Again,
(28:54):
when you don't have that, say says, save sex education
and save sex culture happening, this can increase the likelihood
of transmission. And you also too, I mean this is
a tangent, but you also to have the thing of
well he doesn't like wearing condoms, yeah, which which is
not limited to the Latino community. Oh yeah No. Um,
(29:18):
but if we look at new diagnoses, they are fastest
growing among Native Americans. Between new HIV diagnoses were up
eight hundred percent among them. Insane, that's insane. We need
we need education around this. And when you add gender
(29:41):
identity on top of this, that is also a huge
factor in HIV rates and diagnoses. In the United States,
there was a two thousand nine National Institutes of Health
report that found that nearly a third of Transamericans are
HIV positive, and that number could be higher because as
a lot of people in general, but a lot of
(30:02):
people in the trans community too, don't know their status.
And in fact, trans women have the highest HIV rates
in the US um and again trans women of color
even more affected. Of black transgender women are HIV positive,
and six of Latina trans women are HIV positive. And
(30:23):
one thing that might hold trans women back from taking
anti retrovirals are fears of interfering with hormone therapy. Not
to mention, HIV medications are expensive, and when you weigh
out that cost in the context of the extreme poverty
(30:46):
and homelessness that many trans women face, these transmission rates
start to unfortunately make sense. And this was something that
transgender woman named miss Major talked to out to Son
of the britom over at HIV Plus magazine. Yeah, Major,
who's an advocate in her community, says, we have to
(31:08):
scrounge for housing and it puts us in the street
at night to cover what we need to cover during
the day. It's kind of like a merry go round
that we're on, and it's difficult to stay HIV negative.
And there's also the issue of sex work. So there's
a four times higher rate of contracting HIV through sex
work for trans sex workers compared to sis gender sex workers.
(31:31):
And you know, I feel like a lot of people
get reaction to that is to be like, well, don't
be a sex worker. But one thing that this major
among others addressed in this article was that a lot
of times sex work is the avenue that is open
to not only trans women, but to marginalized people who
(31:53):
have no other way to make a living. They maybe
don't have the same avenues to a job that can
give them a living wage. And if a trans woman
is incarcerated, there's a good chance that she will also
be locked up with cis gender men, which could put
(32:13):
her at a higher risk for rape and sexual violence,
which again increases the likelihood of HIV transmission. Um but
HIV outreach often leaves transgender patients out, targeting instead gay
and bisexual cis gender men. So there's obviously more activism
(32:35):
that needs to keep happening because this isn't just something
that is the relic of a bygone era in the eighties.
But we gotta bust some myths. Yeah, because this is
how you keep the conversation going, and this is how
you push advocacy and activism is educating people and also
(32:57):
putting the facts out there too. Maybe may s CD
testing less scary. So first let's talk about how HIV
is not transmitted um insect bites, toilet seats, kissing, sharing cutlery,
and simply touching does not put you at risk for
contracting HIV. Yeah, HIV can't survive outside the body, in water,
(33:22):
on surfaces, on musical instruments, so if there is a
tuba lying around, don't worry. And the education and Outreach
group AVERT, which by the way, was founded in n
so it's one of the first AIDS in HIV awareness
groups out there. They explain the five main ways that
HIV infected bodily fluids can pass from person to person,
(33:45):
and those body fluids, by the way, include blood, semen,
vaginal or anal secretions, and breast milk. Those fluids do
not include sweat, tears, urine, or feces, but they can
asked from person to person through unprotected sex, pregnancy and breastfeeding,
intravenous drug use, infected blood donation, or organ transplant. That
(34:10):
organ transplant thing was an issue for Arthur Ash that's
how he contracted HIV and accidental contact in a healthcare setting.
So things like mutual masturbation and digital penetration is totally safe,
but it is recommended to use condoms on sex toys
if you have multiple partners. And the thing that we've
(34:33):
probably honestly waited too long to emphasize in this podcast
because there's a lot of stigma around this is the
fact that it is not a death sentence UM. Getting
infected fluid first of all from an HIV positive person
doesn't guarantee that you will get HIV thanks to medication
(34:53):
and past exposure prophylaxis UM, and even if both partners
are HIV positive, they should still practice safe sex to
limit the risk of reinfection. And of course disclosure is
extremely important. If you are HIV positive and it's highly highly,
(35:16):
highly manageable UM. Thanks to anti retroviral medications, the risks
of passing HIV to a sexual partner are dramatically lower,
and ditto that for reinfecting an HIV positive partner. And
further good news about those anti anti retroviral medications is
(35:36):
that women on those medications who get pregnant, they lower
the risk of the baby being born with HIV to
two percent. But some physicians still urge women to opt
for formula instead of breastfeeding just to be safe. And
if you are dating someone who's HIV positive, there are
(35:58):
medications that at also drastically lower your risk of contracting
HIV and this is called pre exposure prophylaxis or PREP.
And if you have ever listened to Dan Savage's podcast
Savage Love or read any of his columns, you've probably
heard about prep UM and basically UM, an HIV negative
(36:21):
partner would take this every day, and an HIV negative
single person you don't have to be in a relationship
to take prep UM, but you take it every day
and it lowers that HIV risk by cent and it's
probably closer to and in fact, independent studies confirm its effectiveness.
(36:44):
But there's still slut shaming stigma around PREP even within
the gay mail community. This whole thing of like, oh
are you single and taking PREP? Okay, you must uh
he must really be pretty pretty loose in the boots.
I don't know that anyone says loosen the boots by
the way, losten the boots. Um well, but I also
(37:05):
just saw a headline that said that people there is
an alarming, alarmingly low rate of condom use among people
who are taking PREP. So it's almost like PREP is
is obviously important, and I would encourage people to use it.
Obviously you don't need me to encourage you. Um. But
(37:25):
it's another one of those things where when you increase
people's comfort level, they're more I guess quick to let
their guard down, and in this case literally so I
would please use condoms. What I have to say, well,
put on condoms and leave off the stigma, because I
think that the one of the biggest upsides to the
(37:47):
pre and post exposure prophylaxis is the manageability of living
with HIV and being healthy and having a literally healthy
relationship with a partner. But if you're taking any kind
of PREP medication, that's I think that should be okay too.
That's that's part of a safe sex arsenal, and there
(38:10):
shouldn't be any shame in that. In the same way
that we have moralized s t I S in general,
so that if you contract one, you're automatically a dirty, shameful,
wrong and broken person. You take an HIV diagnosis and
that stigma and just like explode it by ten thousand,
(38:33):
you know. And that's one of the biggest takeaways that
I hope people listening will grasp is that AIDS is
not a death sentence, that people who are HIV positive
are not just walking contagions, and that they aren't bad people.
(38:55):
That having HIV or AIDS does not make you a
bad person. So while of course we will always advocate
for using condoms and getting regularly tested and being smart
and safe and consensual with our sex, whether you're having
it monogamously or with so many people you can't even
(39:18):
keep can't like Samantha on sex in the City, we
need to destigmatize these viruses and infections and diseases. Yeah,
because the less stigma, the less afraid people will be
to get tested, and probably the more funding and medical
(39:39):
research it will get as well. So folks, Brent especially,
we want to know your thoughts about this. And if
you are someone living with HIV or living with a
partner who has HIV and you want to talk to
us about it. We will absolutely respect your anonymity so
you don't have to worry out that at all, um,
(40:01):
but we really want to know your thoughts about this,
and also fare are older listeners who lived through that
AIDS crisis in the eighties, UM and witnessed everything that
was going on and all of the death that was happening.
We'd love to hear your insights as well. Mom Stuff
at House Stuff work dot com is our email address.
(40:23):
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you when we come right back from
a quick break. Going to the post office is so
old school, Kristen. Why would you ever leave your house
when you can just use your new fangled computer machine.
And that, my friends, is why more than six thousand
small businesses are already using the fancy and high tech
(40:46):
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(41:08):
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(41:29):
to stamps dot com before you do anything else. Click
on the microphone at the top of the homepage and
type in stuff that's stamps dot com. Enter stuff and
now back to the show. Well, I have a letter
here from Christina in response to our tanning episode. Uh,
(41:49):
she says, love your podcast. I really enjoyed your episode
on tanning. I'm originally from the U S but I
live in the Middle East now and here we have
a different scene entirely tanning is not in You guys
mentioned that at one point in the US, whitening substances
were added to skin products to make skin lighter. Well,
in much of the world that custom is still alive
(42:10):
and well here in the Middle East, Ladies are wise
to double check the label of any lotion or even
deodorant because many of them contain skin lightners. From what
I've seen in my travels, the same is true in
many countries. White skin and much of Asia is still
seen as the ideal of beauty. Check out almost any
Bollywood movie for evidence. The actors are usually much lighter
(42:30):
skin than most of the population in India, which goes
back to your discussion of pop culture and its effects
on beauty ideals or is it the beauty ideals that
reflect in the pop culture. Thanks so much for your
time and keep the awesomeness coming. Thank you, Christina. So
I've got to let her here from Nicole, who is
a spray tan business owner, and she writes, I just
(42:50):
finished your great podcast on spray tans, and as a
spray tans specialist and owner of a mobile spray tanning business,
I can assure you that I've seen all And she
says she's been doing it for four years and she
always gets the same reaction when she tells people what
she does. You see naked people all day? My answer
(43:11):
is yes, I do, but I no longer look at
the human body as a naked being, but more of
a canvas I'm trying to perfectly paint. With this job
comes lots of funny and entertaining stories, but making people
feel more comfortable with their bodies really is what makes
my day. I also find it hard to get the
younger generation to believe the facts on skin cancer and
(43:34):
aging skin. So thank you ladies for educating the public
on skin health and sun protection. Well, thank you Nicole
for giving us the inside scoop on spray channing and listeners.
If you want to email us as well, Mom stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
and for links to all of our social media as
(43:55):
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with
our sources. So you can learn more about HIV, head
on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com
Are you looking for brand new episodes of a short
How Stuff Works podcast that explains the everyday world around us,
then check out brain Stuff with me Christian Sager. New
episodes hit every Monday and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,
or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Welcome to stuff
(00:22):
Mom Never told you from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
And this episode on women and HIV and AIDS goes
out to Brent. Let up, Brent. Brent has been requesting
(00:44):
this topic for so long. He has emailed us, he
has facebooked us, and Brent, we have listened and we
have research and we're so glad that you were so
persistent in asking us to talk about this issue because
it is very true. Then when it comes to HIV,
women are often a footnote. Yeah, um, and Caroline, can
(01:08):
we start things off on a on a pop culture note,
which as always yes please Okay. So, as I was
reading about these, uh, these issues and thinking about the
stigma surrounding HIV and just STDs in general, Um, it
reminded me of an episode of Sex in the City
(01:29):
and it's the episode titled Running with Scissors, and I
know that because yes, I have seen sex in the
City a zillion times. And it's the one where Samantha
meets her alleged like sexual match, Tom Raymie, and so
he also, you know, has had a bazilion sexual partners,
(01:50):
but before they can have sex, he's like, Samantha, you
have to get tested because I have to know that
it's safe. And Samantha is like, oh, Tom, that's so terrifying.
And there's this scene of Samantha getting her HIV test results,
and on the one hand, it's kind of comical because
(02:11):
you know, there there's the thing where the nurse asks
her like how many sexual partners have you had? And
Samanth is like, I can't even count that high. But
then there's the waiting period when it's like, if this
happens to Samantha, this is the worst possible thing that
could ever happen to her. This means that she is
like sexually off the market. She is a marked woman.
(02:34):
And to me, that's just one glaring example of the
remaining stigma and misinformation around HIV, not the need to
get std and HIV tested, but around the fallout from that.
Sure well, I mean, it is scary and and and
it made me think of reality Bites to nine Garofoli's
character who also has had multiple sexual partners and keeps
(02:57):
a little black book listing all the names of the
and she's had sex with. And she finally goes and
gets tested at a clinic and it's it's really emotional
and and watching her, you know, be so afraid in
the waiting room, feeling like, oh my god, you know,
my life could fall apart at any moment. I you know,
(03:18):
my lifestyle has been uh, you know, a terrible thing
leading me to this terrible point. And it is really emotional,
and I mean I I I think it appropriately highlights
the importance of getting tested. But similarly, it does depict
HIV and AIDS as the worst possible death sentence that
(03:42):
one could receive well and the shame surrounding it too.
And I wonder if the effect of those kinds of
portrayals is to encourage other people like, you know what,
I need to go out and I need to get
tested as well, or if it's like I don't want
to experience that that is terrifying. I'm just not going
to do it and pretend that everything's totally vol Well,
(04:05):
I mean they could also be products of their time.
I mean reality bites came out in what so that's
not at the start of the AIDS crisis, which emerged
in the very early eighties. That would be more in
the era. If you're looking at the different periods of
time in people learning about and dealing with AIDS and HIV,
(04:29):
would be right around the time that people start really
talking about it and advocating for the health and safety
of really everyone and to try to get more attention
to possible treatments. And it is good that there were
portrayals of women going to get tested because, like we said,
in the US, HIV and AIDS have long been portrayed
(04:53):
as health issues pretty much exclusive to white gay men,
but in fact, HIV positive people around the world are women.
And because we keep saying HIV slash AIDS, let's also
take a moment to explain exactly what these two things
are and differentiate between the two. Well, first of all,
(05:16):
your symptoms can differ both from person to person and
gender to gender. Uh so that's worth noting. And yes,
you can be asymptomatic. So what happens when the HIV
virus enters the bloodstream, so your immune system gets to
work producing HIV antibodies, and then within the first forty
(05:39):
five days that process is referred to as saroh conversion.
And after the antibodies get to work, you actually feel better.
I mean you can feel better for up to like
ten years, feel better because keep in mind this can
also be asymptomatic. But all the while, kind of the
way that you get chickenpox that can hang around and
(06:01):
later turn into shingles, the HIV virus is actually replicating
and slowly destroying your immune system because what it does
is actually integrate into infected cells genomes. And because immune
systems then become so weakend because of HIV, we're far
(06:22):
more susceptible to bacterial infections and fungal diseases that your
body could normally fight. These are called opportunistic infections. So
when that happens, when your immune system essentially collapses, that
is when HIV transitions to being labeled as AIDS. And
because in the United States, the AIDS crisis predominantly affected
(06:45):
gay mail communities, and because of the extreme homophobia at
the time, AIDS was very much stigmatized and its patients
were dehumanized because already because due to the homophobia, these
gay men had been dehumanized and stigmatized just on their own.
So Ashley Fetters over the at The Atlantic traced how
(07:09):
our perceptions and portrayals of HIV and AIDS as developed
through pop culture, because pop culture has been used to
destigmatize and humanize illnesses, although when it comes to AIDS
it's also been highly gendered. So if we go back
to like the nineteenth century, you have authors like Charles
(07:32):
Dickens and Victor Hugo who actually humanized tuberculosis patients who
otherwise we're just seen as this, you know, horrible group
of people that you should just stay away from because
they're contagious and you'll die. And Fetters points out that
Mark Twain and Harriet Beaster so did similar things in
terms of humanizing people of color and drawing attention to
(07:56):
racism and slavery. So pop culture has done that also
over time with HIV and AIDS. Yeah, and so when
in one the AIDS virus first starts to gain widespread attention,
there's a lot of confusion at first as to what
(08:16):
it is. A New York Times article, for instance, was
headlined rare cancer seen in forty one homosexuals. They called
it composes sarcoma, and CDC spokesman Dr James Current said,
the best evidence against contagion is that no cases have
been reported to date outside the homosexual community or in women.
(08:41):
So right off the bat, we have health professionals establishing
that this is a gay man thing. Well, and then
that also, of course fuels more conservative bigotry, saying like, oh,
here's proof that being gay is such a sin, because
now there's actually being smited for that. Yeah, and writing
(09:04):
about this crisis which left behind so many friends, family members,
and particular romantic partners. Um, it was interesting to see
the way that the media started to cover those partners
who were left behind. For instance, the New York Times
would also refer to gay men who survived their partners
(09:26):
as longtime companions. Rather than dignifying them as saying boyfriend
or partner or anything like that, they opted to go
the longtime companion route very euphemistically, to the point where
there was even a movie made in the eighties called
Longtime Companion about a couple dealing with this issue. So
it was first reported, like you said, in one and
(09:50):
by the time we get to nineteen nine one, the
year that Magic Johnson Um came out publicly as being
HIV positive, which I still remember seeing that press conference
that happened that year. Anita Hill happened that year was
a doozy UM. But by the end of that year,
in the US alone, there had been over two hundred
(10:12):
and six thousand cases of AIDS reported to date, and
of those one hundred fifty six thousand, one hundred forty
three people, mostly gay men, had died. So I mean,
this was a full blown epidemic and it was concentrated
in the gay community. And Caroline, we should probably go
back at some point and do an episode focusing in
(10:35):
on the AIDS crisis in the nineteen eighties, but we're
really focusing today obviously on women in HIV and AIDS,
because it really took over a decade for AIDS related
pop culture and even art to recognize the diseases reached
(10:56):
beyond gay men. So I guess maybe one of the
earliest UM instances would have been that reality bite scene.
Well yeah, and even so, though that character was still
a straight white woman, So still in this conversation, we're
lacking women of color, who we will discuss as being
disproportionately affected by AIDS in hiv UM and lesbians, and
(11:21):
the erasure of the roles that many lesbians played during
the AIDS crisis of the nineteen eighties is partially attributed
to the fact that we are only recently in our
mainstream pay more attention to and researching more and learning
more about our lgbt Q history in the United States. UM.
(11:41):
But even still, as Marcia Bianco writes about Indie Wire,
the longstanding pop cultural portrayal of it as a gay
cancer um has perpetuated this idea that it was only
white gay men not only affected, but also who were
the activists protesting, you know, the lack of healthcare around it, well,
(12:05):
activists and also people who were just there helping exactly
I mean. And we even see that in more recent
on screen portrayals as well. Yeah, there's this movie The
Normal Heart on HBO that was about this crisis and
about gay men suffering in the midst of the AIDS crisis,
and it contained only one lesbian character and briefly contained
(12:29):
that lesbian character who tells these guys she's I believe
her friend had just died and she tells these guys
that she wants to help in any way quote even
though all my lesbian friends say, what have you guys
done for us, which, of course paints lesbians across the
board amid this AIDS crisis of the eighties and nineties
(12:51):
as bitter and resentful and not wanting to even help
those who were affected and dying. And Lilian Faderman, who
is a lesbian scholar and author of The Gay Revolution,
points out how in the nineteen seventies, Yeah, there was
some legit acrimony between the gay and lesbian communities. I mean,
(13:14):
we've talked before, like in our Lavender Menace episode, in
our episode about radical feminism, there were separatists lesbians who
really wanted nothing to do with any men, regardless of
sexual orientation. Um. And in fact, there were plenty of
lesbian feminists who didn't consider gay men any less chauvinistic
(13:35):
than straight men. However, as Faderman underscores, in the eighties,
when the AIDS epidemic hits, that rancor really dissolved because
there simply wasn't time for it. These men were dying
so quickly. Yeah, so you had lesbians who were doing
everything from starting food banks to working in hospitals weather
(13:58):
as nurses. So you had women who there are stories
of women quitting higher paying jobs to go work in
hospitals as nurses, or they were simply there as visitors
to hold hands. Uh. They worked to clean up men's
houses that had essentially been abandoned since they'd been hospitalized.
And these men themselves had been abandoned by friends and
families in a lot of cases, and they provided comfort
(14:22):
in hospice and a lot of these women, these lesbian
women had to take on a lot of misdirected rage
and bitterness at the time from men who were, you know,
in dire straits. They were in despair, they were sick,
scared and alone. And gay men and lesbians at this
(14:44):
time had a history of gender based division. Yeah, and
those nuances um to what was going on at the
time is something that producer Sarah Shulman, who produced documentary
United An Anger a History of act UP and that's
act UP all caps because the act UP is or
(15:07):
was a AIDS activism group. Um Shulman has critiqued the
recent documentary How to Survive a Plague for really overlooking
or glossing over that kind of coalition activism that was happening,
and um, really focusing on this group of five men
(15:29):
that it's sort of uplifts as the exclusive heroes, whereas
in reality, Shulman points out, and as the documentary United
in Anger demonstrates, there was much more bridge building happening.
I mean, speaking of that coalition building, I mean, these
narratives of it's all a gay man's problem, particularly a
(15:53):
white gay man's problem, ignores the fact, the very real
fact that there were not only women there helping and
comforting and caring for gay men, but also men who
were stepping up and saying, we need to count women,
We need to test women for AIDS in HIV. They
need to be included in this research, in these numbers,
(16:16):
and in any discussion of health and safety. Yeah. So,
I mean you you had gay men also protesting for
the CDC to expand its definition of HIV and AIDS,
which was limited only two men, because really, up until then,
there was a complete unawareness of HIV transmission rates via
(16:39):
lesbian sex or female female sex because the medical community
just wasn't concerned about it. They assumed that it just
didn't exist. Wasn't a possibility, and in fact, it's only
been in the past few years that the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that yes, indeed, HIV
(16:59):
can be transmitted through same sex sex between women. Yeah.
And this whole medical marginalization reflected a broader misunderstanding of
lesbian lifestyles and sexuality that could include ivy, drug use, imprisonment, rape,
(17:22):
and in some cases consensual sex with male partners. That
there are so many different ways that people can be infected.
And until the early nineties, the CDCs definition of AIDS
was based off of its pathology in the male immune system.
And I already mentioned that AIDS and HIV functions differently
in women. These infections that were showing up in men
(17:46):
didn't always happen in women, and so that means it's
the same thing that we see nowadays with heart disease,
that heart heart attacks manifest differently in women than men.
If you don't know you have it, or you don't
know what to look for, or you don't know what
safety practices to take suetra, that equates to no treatment,
that equates to not being counted, and that equates then
to fewer resources and the cycle continues of medical marginalization.
(18:10):
So Act Up that activists organization that Sarah Shulman documented
in United and Anger. Its slogan was women don't get AIDS,
they just die from it. And again this was something
too that activists not only had to protest and push
forar with the medical community, but also fought back and
(18:33):
forth within the lgbt Q community at large, because you
did have some lesbian AIDS activists who were frustrated by
some lingering misogyny that some gay men would exhibit toward
them to ignore the fact that lesbians were part of
(18:55):
this issue too, and the fact too that the women
were often shoved to the side in some of these
AIDS activism groups. So intersectionality was not exactly top of mind,
but also kind of understandable considering the cultural climate and
also just the level of crisis. So now that we've
(19:16):
had thirty years of AIDS research and we understand far
more about it now than we did in the eighties,
we want to talk about the situation with women in
HIV and AIDS today, and we'll get into that when
we come right back from a quick break. Every mom
(19:39):
is unique, and we would not want to change a
single thing about them. And I know, with Mother's Day
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This is a limited time offer and Mother's Day is
around the corner, so make sure to order now. So,
(21:28):
women in HIV is something Caroline that we have absolutely
needed to address. Brent was right, Brent, I really hope
you're listening to this episode, um, because data from the
Kaiser Foundation and c d C show that of new
HIV diagnoses in the US are women, four of whom
(21:52):
are women who contract HIV from sex with a man. Yeah,
and just of those infections were attributed to IVY drug use,
which is sort of a flip flop of statistics from
thirty years earlier. And they found that these diagnoses are
mostly occurring with women in the tent to thirty four
year old age range, and this translates that figure to
(22:18):
new cases among women in alone. And it is interesting
that and important to note that women are most likely
to contract it through sex with a man because the
risk of getting HIV during vaginal sex is way higher
for women than it is for men, but regardless, anal
(22:39):
sex is still riskier overall for contracting the virus. And
the thing is of women living in the US, eleven
percent of those with HIV don't know they have it,
and this is so common for STDs in general. I mean,
herpes can be asymptomatic for a long time. Um, it's
it's HIV. Similarly, it can be asymptomatic. And speaking of herpes,
(23:03):
contracting other STDs and s t I S also increases
your likelihood of contracting HIV and when that happens. Women
also tend to face steeper challenges accessing care due to
factors like socio economics, family responsibilities, cultural inequalities, sexual violence,
(23:24):
um and clinical symptoms and complications that again differ from
male epidemiology. It's also worth noting that yes, STDs increase
your likelihood of contracting HIV, but HIV also increases your
chances of getting HPV, which goes back to what Christian
was saying at the top of the podcast as far
(23:44):
as this virus leaving you open to more infections and
because of those healthcare challenges that women tend to face,
just fort of HIV positive women in the US receive
regular healthcare. So clearly this is something that needs more
(24:05):
attention and focus, not just on the individual level, but
also from the healthcare community. And if we then drill
down and talk about stigma, it is very real. Um.
A two thousand four study in the Journal of Nursing
Scholarship found that gender intensifies that HIV stigma, considering how
(24:28):
it has been painted in the US as again a
white gay man's disease. So it's like this idea that, oh,
if you're an HIV positive woman, like what's wrong with you?
Like double what's wrong with you? And I mean women
do internalize that stigma. I mean, these things don't exist
in a vacuum. There was a twenty study in Social
Work Healthcare that found that among pregnant women that stigma
(24:53):
intensified when seeking perinatal care. So these women you're almost
pregnant or not, you're almost afraid to even asked to
even broach the subject and ask your doctor baut getting tested.
And a study on HIV positive women from ninety four
countries around the world found that eighty four reported depression
(25:13):
and seventy percent reported rejection and their rate of mental
health problems is three and a half times higher after
HIV diagnosis, and all of those factors are compounded by
socially disadvantaged identities. So this is the part where we
talk about how women of color are disproportionately affected by
(25:35):
HIV and AIDS um and this data is coming from
AMPHAR and the CDC, which finds that Black women are
twenty three times likelier to be diagnosed with HIV and
Latina women are five times likelier to be diagnosed with
HIV compared to white women, and this is a disproportionate
(25:58):
representation compared to their population proportions. So, for instance, women
of color in the US represent of the U S
female population but account for eighty four percent of female
AIDS cases. Yeah and six of women living with HIV
(26:19):
in this country are black, and according to the Black
Women's Health Imperative, HIV and age related illnesses are the
number one cause of death among Black women ages twenty
five to forty four. And there's also a regional concentration
of these HIV cases because seventy of women newly diagnosed
(26:41):
with HIV live in the South, likely due to socioeconomic
issues of high poverty, low public health access, and low education.
Compounding that, you also have communities with high incarceration rates,
economic instability, low marriage rates, and sexual violence, all of
(27:02):
which correlate to hire HIV transmission rates. So these racial
disparities in a lot of ways are very much a
civil rights issue. Yeah, And I mean it highlights, among
many things, the fact that our education and health care
systems are failing these women and failing all of us.
I mean, this is why, I mean, this is one
(27:24):
of the many reasons why when I hear about either
abstinence only sex ad or I hear about the fact
that there are so many states in this country where
educators aren't even legally required to give accurate and truthful information,
it just makes me cringe on my deepest, deepest core level,
(27:46):
because I mean, look, look at these numbers that we've
just read to you. Women are dying. Women are dying,
and women especially in communities that don't have the same
level of access to education and healthcare and who are
suffering from socio economic related issues. These women are dying
in a disproportionate in disproportionate numbers, and it makes me
(28:07):
sick well, and it also goes to show to an
often hidden layer to UH sexual violence and domestic abuse,
which again is correlated to that higher transmission rate as well. Um,
if we look at the Latino population, UM, seventeen percent
of women in the US living with HIV our Latina
(28:31):
and in fact, five point five percent of HIV positive
Latinas are over fifty five, which is um an outlier
versus the general HIV plus population, which tends to be
in their twenties and early thirties. And the higher rate
though of HIV among Latina's is attributed to lower condom usage. Again,
(28:54):
when you don't have that, say says, save sex education
and save sex culture happening, this can increase the likelihood
of transmission. And you also too, I mean this is
a tangent, but you also to have the thing of
well he doesn't like wearing condoms, yeah, which which is
not limited to the Latino community. Oh yeah No. Um,
(29:18):
but if we look at new diagnoses, they are fastest
growing among Native Americans. Between new HIV diagnoses were up
eight hundred percent among them. Insane, that's insane. We need
we need education around this. And when you add gender
(29:41):
identity on top of this, that is also a huge
factor in HIV rates and diagnoses. In the United States,
there was a two thousand nine National Institutes of Health
report that found that nearly a third of Transamericans are
HIV positive, and that number could be higher because as
a lot of people in general, but a lot of
(30:02):
people in the trans community too, don't know their status.
And in fact, trans women have the highest HIV rates
in the US um and again trans women of color
even more affected. Of black transgender women are HIV positive,
and six of Latina trans women are HIV positive. And
(30:23):
one thing that might hold trans women back from taking
anti retrovirals are fears of interfering with hormone therapy. Not
to mention, HIV medications are expensive, and when you weigh
out that cost in the context of the extreme poverty
(30:46):
and homelessness that many trans women face, these transmission rates
start to unfortunately make sense. And this was something that
transgender woman named miss Major talked to out to Son
of the britom over at HIV Plus magazine. Yeah, Major,
who's an advocate in her community, says, we have to
(31:08):
scrounge for housing and it puts us in the street
at night to cover what we need to cover during
the day. It's kind of like a merry go round
that we're on, and it's difficult to stay HIV negative.
And there's also the issue of sex work. So there's
a four times higher rate of contracting HIV through sex
work for trans sex workers compared to sis gender sex workers.
(31:31):
And you know, I feel like a lot of people
get reaction to that is to be like, well, don't
be a sex worker. But one thing that this major
among others addressed in this article was that a lot
of times sex work is the avenue that is open
to not only trans women, but to marginalized people who
(31:53):
have no other way to make a living. They maybe
don't have the same avenues to a job that can
give them a living wage. And if a trans woman
is incarcerated, there's a good chance that she will also
be locked up with cis gender men, which could put
(32:13):
her at a higher risk for rape and sexual violence,
which again increases the likelihood of HIV transmission. Um but
HIV outreach often leaves transgender patients out, targeting instead gay
and bisexual cis gender men. So there's obviously more activism
(32:35):
that needs to keep happening because this isn't just something
that is the relic of a bygone era in the eighties.
But we gotta bust some myths. Yeah, because this is
how you keep the conversation going, and this is how
you push advocacy and activism is educating people and also
(32:57):
putting the facts out there too. Maybe may s CD
testing less scary. So first let's talk about how HIV
is not transmitted um insect bites, toilet seats, kissing, sharing cutlery,
and simply touching does not put you at risk for
contracting HIV. Yeah, HIV can't survive outside the body, in water,
(33:22):
on surfaces, on musical instruments, so if there is a
tuba lying around, don't worry. And the education and Outreach
group AVERT, which by the way, was founded in n
so it's one of the first AIDS in HIV awareness
groups out there. They explain the five main ways that
HIV infected bodily fluids can pass from person to person,
(33:45):
and those body fluids, by the way, include blood, semen,
vaginal or anal secretions, and breast milk. Those fluids do
not include sweat, tears, urine, or feces, but they can
asked from person to person through unprotected sex, pregnancy and breastfeeding,
intravenous drug use, infected blood donation, or organ transplant. That
(34:10):
organ transplant thing was an issue for Arthur Ash that's
how he contracted HIV and accidental contact in a healthcare setting.
So things like mutual masturbation and digital penetration is totally safe,
but it is recommended to use condoms on sex toys
if you have multiple partners. And the thing that we've
(34:33):
probably honestly waited too long to emphasize in this podcast
because there's a lot of stigma around this is the
fact that it is not a death sentence UM. Getting
infected fluid first of all from an HIV positive person
doesn't guarantee that you will get HIV thanks to medication
(34:53):
and past exposure prophylaxis UM, and even if both partners
are HIV positive, they should still practice safe sex to
limit the risk of reinfection. And of course disclosure is
extremely important. If you are HIV positive and it's highly highly,
(35:16):
highly manageable UM. Thanks to anti retroviral medications, the risks
of passing HIV to a sexual partner are dramatically lower,
and ditto that for reinfecting an HIV positive partner. And
further good news about those anti anti retroviral medications is
(35:36):
that women on those medications who get pregnant, they lower
the risk of the baby being born with HIV to
two percent. But some physicians still urge women to opt
for formula instead of breastfeeding just to be safe. And
if you are dating someone who's HIV positive, there are
(35:58):
medications that at also drastically lower your risk of contracting
HIV and this is called pre exposure prophylaxis or PREP.
And if you have ever listened to Dan Savage's podcast
Savage Love or read any of his columns, you've probably
heard about prep UM and basically UM, an HIV negative
(36:21):
partner would take this every day, and an HIV negative
single person you don't have to be in a relationship
to take prep UM, but you take it every day
and it lowers that HIV risk by cent and it's
probably closer to and in fact, independent studies confirm its effectiveness.
(36:44):
But there's still slut shaming stigma around PREP even within
the gay mail community. This whole thing of like, oh
are you single and taking PREP? Okay, you must uh
he must really be pretty pretty loose in the boots.
I don't know that anyone says loosen the boots by
the way, losten the boots. Um well, but I also
(37:05):
just saw a headline that said that people there is
an alarming, alarmingly low rate of condom use among people
who are taking PREP. So it's almost like PREP is
is obviously important, and I would encourage people to use it.
Obviously you don't need me to encourage you. Um. But
(37:25):
it's another one of those things where when you increase
people's comfort level, they're more I guess quick to let
their guard down, and in this case literally so I
would please use condoms. What I have to say, well,
put on condoms and leave off the stigma, because I
think that the one of the biggest upsides to the
(37:47):
pre and post exposure prophylaxis is the manageability of living
with HIV and being healthy and having a literally healthy
relationship with a partner. But if you're taking any kind
of PREP medication, that's I think that should be okay too.
That's that's part of a safe sex arsenal, and there
(38:10):
shouldn't be any shame in that. In the same way
that we have moralized s t I S in general,
so that if you contract one, you're automatically a dirty, shameful,
wrong and broken person. You take an HIV diagnosis and
that stigma and just like explode it by ten thousand,
(38:33):
you know. And that's one of the biggest takeaways that
I hope people listening will grasp is that AIDS is
not a death sentence, that people who are HIV positive
are not just walking contagions, and that they aren't bad people.
(38:55):
That having HIV or AIDS does not make you a
bad person. So while of course we will always advocate
for using condoms and getting regularly tested and being smart
and safe and consensual with our sex, whether you're having
it monogamously or with so many people you can't even
(39:18):
keep can't like Samantha on sex in the City, we
need to destigmatize these viruses and infections and diseases. Yeah,
because the less stigma, the less afraid people will be
to get tested, and probably the more funding and medical
(39:39):
research it will get as well. So folks, Brent especially,
we want to know your thoughts about this. And if
you are someone living with HIV or living with a
partner who has HIV and you want to talk to
us about it. We will absolutely respect your anonymity so
you don't have to worry out that at all, um,
(40:01):
but we really want to know your thoughts about this,
and also fare are older listeners who lived through that
AIDS crisis in the eighties, UM and witnessed everything that
was going on and all of the death that was happening.
We'd love to hear your insights as well. Mom Stuff
at House Stuff work dot com is our email address.
(40:23):
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you when we come right back from
a quick break. Going to the post office is so
old school, Kristen. Why would you ever leave your house
when you can just use your new fangled computer machine.
And that, my friends, is why more than six thousand
small businesses are already using the fancy and high tech
(40:46):
stamps dot com. You can get posted drive from your
desk whenever you need it, twenty four hours a day
because stamps dot com is like a space machine that
turns your computer and printer into a virtual post office.
And stamps dot com, come on, it's the our way
to do all of your mailing and shipping. It's so
easy to use and so convenient, and that lets you
focus your time where you want it. I'm building a spaceship,
(41:08):
I mean, on growing up business. No wonder. Two point
six billion dollars in postage was printed just last year
alone using stamps dot com. And right now, if you
sign up for stamps dot com, you can use our
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to stamps dot com before you do anything else. Click
on the microphone at the top of the homepage and
type in stuff that's stamps dot com. Enter stuff and
now back to the show. Well, I have a letter
here from Christina in response to our tanning episode. Uh,
(41:49):
she says, love your podcast. I really enjoyed your episode
on tanning. I'm originally from the U S but I
live in the Middle East now and here we have
a different scene entirely tanning is not in You guys
mentioned that at one point in the US, whitening substances
were added to skin products to make skin lighter. Well,
in much of the world that custom is still alive
(42:10):
and well here in the Middle East, Ladies are wise
to double check the label of any lotion or even
deodorant because many of them contain skin lightners. From what
I've seen in my travels, the same is true in
many countries. White skin and much of Asia is still
seen as the ideal of beauty. Check out almost any
Bollywood movie for evidence. The actors are usually much lighter
(42:30):
skin than most of the population in India, which goes
back to your discussion of pop culture and its effects
on beauty ideals or is it the beauty ideals that
reflect in the pop culture. Thanks so much for your
time and keep the awesomeness coming. Thank you, Christina. So
I've got to let her here from Nicole, who is
a spray tan business owner, and she writes, I just
(42:50):
finished your great podcast on spray tans, and as a
spray tans specialist and owner of a mobile spray tanning business,
I can assure you that I've seen all And she
says she's been doing it for four years and she
always gets the same reaction when she tells people what
she does. You see naked people all day? My answer
(43:11):
is yes, I do, but I no longer look at
the human body as a naked being, but more of
a canvas I'm trying to perfectly paint. With this job
comes lots of funny and entertaining stories, but making people
feel more comfortable with their bodies really is what makes
my day. I also find it hard to get the
younger generation to believe the facts on skin cancer and
(43:34):
aging skin. So thank you ladies for educating the public
on skin health and sun protection. Well, thank you Nicole
for giving us the inside scoop on spray channing and listeners.
If you want to email us as well, Mom stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
and for links to all of our social media as
(43:55):
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with
our sources. So you can learn more about HIV, head
on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com
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