Choices choices?

"HIV/AIDS can be prevented with the proper lifestyle"
"If you are faithful or abstinent, you won't get HIV"

Do these messages sound familiar? Pop culture-- funded and abetted by USAID's so called ABC funding criteria that only gives money to organisations that encourage Abstinence, Being faithful and Condoms (in that order)-- puppet these sayings again and again as if they have legitimacy for women's lives across incredeibly diverse cultures and countries all over the world.

When I heard Dr. Carr asking us at the OHTN conference if people from various cultures really have the choices this kind of message implies, I immediately thought of some of my friends in South Africa. My friend "Karabo," as we'll call her, confided in me that she wasn't certain if her fiance was being faithful to her.

"Karabo!" I said, immediately concerned, "If you're not sure that he's being faithful to you, you have to use condoms."

"Girl," she sighed, "I can't. I've dated him since we were both in high school. If I start asking him to use condoms now he will wonder why. He'll think I'm not being faithful."

This kind of situation is exactly what Dr. Carr is referring to.

The spread of the HIV/AIDS virus is more than a series of bad "lifestyle choices" by people across the globe. Rather, HIV/AIDS reveals people's vulnerability and their lack of power much more than it does their personal choices.

Take the example of the countless women who are victims of rape in conflict zones. HIV/AIDS in this situation can hardly be seen as a consequence of lifestyle. Instead, it shows the lack of respect for women's rights that soldiers and indeed the entire institution of revolutionary groups have. The spread of HIV/AIDS through rape also highlights the vulnerability of certain women more than others; those women that can not escape conflict zones when war breaks out often have less money, and most certainly lack the protection of a strong state system that could protect them.

The issues surrounding HIV/AIDS are complex. It is not fair to blame people who have the virus with poor lifestyle choices. More relevant is to examine the factors that have created such a vulnerability to contracting the virus, and to work on destroying these disempowering structures.

Uganda's anti homosexuality bill

It's hard to describe to people who have never lived anywhere other than Canada what it means not to have human rights. It's hard to describe what it means when I say "I liked living in Africa, but I'm glad to be back in Canada because I really appreciate having rights as a woman." It's hard for others to understand what I mean when I say "the laws were there but the culture was against women's and LGBTQ rights."

Maybe it isn't fair to refer to these things as cultural. After all, lesbian woman in South Africa before colonisation used to be able to pay dowry and marry a woman, so long as they did so inside of certain specific cultural norms. It was assumed these marriages weren't sexual in nature-- but looking back can we really be sure of that?

Maybe instead of culture, I have to pin the blame on homophobia squarely on the history of colonisation and Christianity.

Living under a colonial dictatorship for more than a hundred years has given many places in the world a complex relationship to authority and power that is less apparent in Canadian society. When I asked one of my friends if South Africa would ever have a woman president he laughed and said,
“No. I can’t have a woman above me. No man in this country wants to have a woman above him!”

This viewpoint on power and relationships between people as essentially unequal- either you have it and I don't, or I have it and you don't- fuels the continuing lack of women's empowerment in countries suffering from a history of colonisation and dictatorship.

A more recent and stinging trend is taking place in the halls of religion, particularly Christianity. Right wing advocacy groups, having been discredited in Canada (less so in the United States) find themselves turning to other countries in the world to try and shape political policies. This, according to Dr. Robert Carr, are the highly funded powers behind Uganda's so called anti-homosexuality bill; not traditional cultures or beliefs, but powerful Christian groups from Canada and the United States.

This bill would imprison LGBTQ people for life, or kill them. It would send parents to prison for not reporting their children for three years; and the same to teachers. A landlord who gives housing to suspected LGBTQ people could face 7 years of imprisonment.

These are the laws that right wing groups from Canada and the United States have imposed on other soverign countries. While human rights are seen as a Western imposition on other cultures, in this case isn’t lack of human rights an imposition as well?

People, if you feel the way I do about these proposals you will support the movement against these laws in Uganda.

.....
Contacts to protest... (from facebook group)

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=198541255168&v=info

Read the bill: http://wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/anti-homosexuality-bill-2009.pdf


President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
State House Nakasero
email: info@statehouse.go.ug

Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi
email: ps@opm.go.ug

Speaker of the Parliament
Edward Ssekandi Kiwanuka
email: speaker@parliament.go.ug

Minister of Gender, Labour, and Social Affairs Honorable Opio Gabriel
email: ps@mglsd.go.ug

Chair of the Uganda Human Rights Commission
Med Kaggwa
email: uhrc@uhrc.ug

Directorate for Ethics and Integrity
email: info@dei.go.ug

Chair of the Uganda Diplomatic Human Rights Working Groups
Mathisen Gørild
email: gorild.mathisen@mfa.no

Please also send a copy to:
Ambassador to the Republic of Uganda Embassy of the United States of America
Jerry P. Lanier
email: kampalawebcontact@state.gov

Christian pastors in Uganda:
Martin Ssempa
ssempam@gmail.com

Stephen Langa
stephenlanga@yahoo.com

You may contact Watato Church (formerly Kampala Pentecostal Church and closely associated with both Ssempa and Langa) at connect@watotochurch.com.