(no subject)

[rivka]

I'm so angry about this I don't know what to do.

AIDS, which while a horrible thing that we should all be political about, is not by and large a female sexuality problem? (I think this is why we're so loathe to include it--by and large, and my deepest sympathy to anyone who is an exception to this, this is not our problem.

One of my female patients died this week. It's a good thing HIV isn't a women's problem, isn't it?

I'm just sitting here shaking.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Not everyone is required to be clueful to post on LJ, sadly. :/

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

That IS an ignorant statement, but in gossip with some women who I've known in the past, not an uncommon one. Women genuinely believe that it's something that doesn't usually happen to them - that blows me away. If you exchange bodily fluids, you're at risk - why is this so hard for some people to wrap their heads around??

Your response was fantastic, btw - more people need to be given a clue-by-four in this department, and you did so eloquently.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I am in awe of the clarity and strength of your reply. In your place I'd have been *much* harsher - and probably not as likely to educate.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I considered and discarded many, many other possible responses, most of them profane. I knew I could get the factual stuff out without losing it, so that's where I began and ended.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

One of these days I'll find an aproriate and useful response to the anger that that sort of idiocy generates in me.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Human suffering is always trumped by $GROUP's suffering, doncha know?

Jeeze, what a fuckwit.d

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Women like this give feminism a bad name.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I think, upon more sober reflection, that she's probably falling into the same trap that many have, and thinks that "feminist issues" are synonymous with "white middle-class women's issues." Because AIDS primarily affects poor minority women in North America, and African and Asian women worldwide, it's not really a feminist issue.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Sadly, that makes sense, too (I don't think your response-in-anger makes any less sense for having been angry, btw).

The following is screamingly anecdotal, but I recall when I was talking with black, female co-workers in the mid- to late-80s a lot of them didn't seem supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment. Mostly because (if my memory serves) they saw it presented as something by and for white women.
a

What to do

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

is to politely point out the error in the poster's argument, which you did.

Also remember that ignorance and bigotry isn't necessarily a permanent condition. The person who made that original post will hopefully learn. I get the impression that she is very young, and perhaps will grow wiser as she grows older. I say this from my own experience. I am ashamed to say that I was an unthinking bigot, for example, about gays when I was eighteen--not because anyone who was gay had ever hurt me in any way, but I had somehow absorbed the culture's toxic view of "those people." But life experience
led me reexamine my assumptions--as well as a few people who took the trouble to (somewhat tartly) point out the fallacies in my uncritical and unsophisticated thinking.

If it's any comfort, I think you did the right thing.

Peg

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

It's a shame that her actual point got smothered in her ignorance.

[geminigirl]

I replied.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

On another note (since everything I could possibly have said about HIV in this context has been said better by others), I'm quite boggled at the equation of slash and feminism. The majority of the slash writers I know are men, and as far as I can tell, they're motivated by lust and/or kink rather than feminism or any other kind of -ism. More power to them, I say.