homophobia

Though times are starting to change, machismo still reins in Mexico as firmly as the tortilla staple diet and devotion to la Virgen de Guadalupe.

Threaded into the national identity of modern Mexico is a strong tradition of sexism, homophobia, and adherence to strict gender roles.

This is the country after all that embraces its bravado breakfast of "huevos rancheros" and its male-dominated cowboy traditions.

Whether and how this predominantly Catholic country of 109 million people moves past such institutional and cultural biases promises important lessons for the rest of Latin America and, indeed, the world.

Slowly, progress is being made. Speaking at the International AIDS Conference's opening plenary, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa mentioned the word homofobia for the first time. The national government sponsored a groundbreaking campaign to mitigate homophobia in targeted neighborhoods of Mexico City. And a longstanding legal prohibition against a woman's right to choose was recently, and narrowly, repealed in Mexico City, though anti-choice laws prevail in most regions of the country.
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Click for Video I have just gotten a chance to upload a some awesome video from the march against Homophopbia on Sunday. I will be uploading some other stuff this afternoon. ENJOY!

The remainder of an 8 hour work day

My day ended today playing the role of "mama-san" in Empower's newest intereactive presentation, a game really, about the realities (fun and challenging) of sex work in Thailand, 7:55, or what sex work is when you're not having sex

    Sex! Sex! Sex!

    Libraries are about to burst open... they're overflowing with information about sex and sex workers! AIDS researcher centers drowning in data about us and sex... thesis after thesis on how we do it, why we do it, how to do it safely with us. Seems about sex workers is covered again and again... everyong in the whole world seems to know and have an expert opinion, paper or presentation about us to put forward at any conference whether local, national regional or itnernational.

    ...but maybe you never considered that the part of our work that has filled the academic halls with mountains of data, statistics and tehaories... is a tiny tiny part of out work... just like a small 5 minutes of our working shift!

So began our latest adventure with Empower, one of the strongest most inspiring sex worker groups in the world. It's important for people to understand that sex workers, like all people, have many other things besides how/why we have sex that affect our ability to be safe, in all manners of the term including from HIV.  read more »

Nearly every speaker at last night's opening ceremony condemned homophobia, discrimination against sex workers and IDUs and stigma toward people living with HIV/AIDS. Speakers repeatedly hammered the point that we cannot break out of stalled prevention efforts and move to end the epidemic without attacking these root causes (along with oppression of women). It was no surprise to hear this from Peter Piot of UNAIDS and the President of the International AIDS Society, but from UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, the first vice-president of Spain and Mexican President Felipe Calderon ????? A Mexican journalist watching with me was muttering about Calderon's hypocrisy and cynicism, saying "that's the first time in his life he has ever spoken the word homophobia out loud!" And a head of state and of the UN saying that the rights of sex workers and drug injectors must be defended and that these persons must be cared for and respected as full members of society???  read more »

While I love that Barak Obama mentioned homophobia in his statement about the CDC’s misreporting of HIV infections in the US I do question why he did not mention how HIV/ AIDS disproportionately affects America’s black community and other racial, class and cultural communities. Let us not forget unacceptable facts like HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among African American women. I wish his statement could have been further reaching, creating a greater discourse on human rights in general. 

Peter Piot, the tireless outgoing founding director of UNAIDS, put it bluntly in an address to the pre-conference MSM Global Forum on August 1:

"Homophobia - in all its forms - is one of the top five barriers to ending this epidemic, worldwide. The fight against the epidemic is entering a new phase, and if governments and NGOs and international organizations like my own do not take up the fight for gay rights, and the rights of all people with diverse sexuality, we will not end AIDS."

He went on to say that in nearly every country (including the USA) the resources devoted to prevention, research and care among MSM are vastly smaller than their numerical weight in the epidemic would compel as a matter of fairness and effectiveness.

Earlier presentations at the MSM forum had reviewed in detail what we know, and what we don't know, about the epidemic among MSM in various countries and about how the disproporionate impact on MSM everywhere is a general drive of the epidemic.

In Latin America, MSM are the major affected population throughout, and in much of the Caribbean as well. In Asia, MSM are a significant part iof the epidemic in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China.

In most Asian countries, MSM are the third part of the "triumvirate of concentrated epidemics," including commercial sex workers and injection drug users (and, of course, some MSM belong to all three groups).  read more »

Click for Video Meet David Jenkins. Watch his testimony in church.

Faith-based involvement in the HIV epidemic continues to be critical. The courageous acts of people living with HIV/AIDS, like David, that speak truth to power where it counts need to be supported.

What do these support structure look like? Are they reports? Are they policies? How do you get people to tell the truth?

These are the questions I am thinking about as I prepare to meet the world in Mexico. I am a physician/filmmaker that is using media as a movement-building tool to bridge the silos of HIV prevention work. The questions posed are about the culture work that falls in between silos of HIV prevention and treatment. This missing dialogue and language is an obstacle to action and support.

Support is about solidarity and bridging pieces together. Media can serve as this congealing force in our interconnected cyber-world. This requires two things: listening and creating new forums for the resulting lessons to grow. I film community-based participant driven narratives on the frontlines of HIV prevention work in hopes of uniting a fragmented movement towards human rights.

As a physician, I have taken care of HIV infected and affected communities in the South Bronx, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Listening to the patients in all these settings has been a humbling lesson in solidarity and the profound obligation that comes with listening.

Those on the frontlines have been telling it like it is for a long time.
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