It's another December 1, and so, hooray, it's World AIDS Day 2015! It's been a mixed year so far. There is a major advance in Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and a series of really lovely books on the subject. But there is also a steep rise in infections in China (among other places), and a fundamental lack of education and care for young people. And this is just the beginning of the list...
Something that I would personally like to see in the new year is the end of HIV stigma perpetuated by the media. Earlier in November I applied for a research opportunity, pitching a project about the relationship between HIV/AIDS advocacy and the mass media, worrying that the topic might be somewhat stale and overdone, when I saw this:
This is the Sun (UK) on November 11, chipping in early on Charlie Sheen's HIV story, channeling their best 1985-Rock-Hudson outfit. Leaving us to wonder: Why is the media stuck in the 80s on HIV stigma? In fact, the National AIDS Trust found that media coverage on HIV is twice as likely to be negative than anything else. And that's not because we're talking about a not-even-so-fatal-anymore disease. That's because the stories are about gay men, about unprotected sex, or actually, about sex in general, in which regard the medial opinion still seems to resemble a Southern Republican of the Reagan/Thatcher era. Not cool, you guys.
Echoes of this hate and fear-mongering can be found in this collage assembled by Buzzfeed - a mostly downhearted collection of anonymous (presumably young/gay) confessions à la "I feel like being dead would be better than being HIV+" - or in the latest episode of London Spy on BBC, where an HIV diagnosis is purposefully and unapologetically conducted to discredit the protagonist.
This leaves us with a heap of work until next December. Wouldn't it be lovely if news outlets, for once, offered genuine advice and orientation for people confused and scared by their diagnosis? If people living with HIV (and not dying from it!) weren't facing forced coming-outs and breaking of their private spheres? If people weren't scared to take their test in the first place, thus risking further infections?
It's about time to push those media into a TARDIS and bring them to year 2016, methinks!
Please read also:
We can't go back to the deadly HIV stigma of the 1980s by Owen Jones
and
What Will It Take to End the AIDS Epidemic? by Jon Cohen
and the many, many resources found on Twitter.
