Posts Tagged: Stigma
Don’t Let One Positive Make Everything Negative
There are a lot of reasons I personally don’t like Charlie Sheen. He cheated on his wife. Assault charges. Domestic violence. Drug abuse. He’s an anti-vaxxer. The list goes on. And like most people, he has a few redeeming qualities as well. Major League is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think it would’ve been the same with someone else playing Wild Thing. He was also in Eight Men Out, which is my second favorite baseball movie of all time. Even with that to his credit, I am not a fan of him overall. But you know what isn’t one of my reasons? As he announced Tuesday morning and had been rumored prior to this, Charlie Sheen is HIV-positive. Because it’s 2015 and not 1985, I… Read more »
TED Talks and Eliminating Abortion Stigma
Recently the folks who do TED Talks announced that they did not do talks on abortion, claiming that it is more of a “topical issue” similar to a “state tax bill” rather than the issues covered by TED, which include “justice, inequality and human rights.” This falls under this silly guise that abortion is far too political, even amongst other issues that apparently aren’t as “topical,” such as contraception access and feminist theory. This “abortion is too political” attitude reminds me about an incident I had last semester in a class about human sexuality. This particular lecture had over 250 students, and it provided an opportunity for me to announce events on campus. While I had made announcements about the kick-off meeting and Take Back the Night rally from the… Read more »
An Infectious Silence: Stigma and the Persistence of HIV Among Young People
Yesterday was World AIDS Day, and there were a great deal of new coverage documenting it—reports of how we’ve progressed since AIDS became a full-fledged epidemic in the 80s, how we’re still at risk, and how young people are still incredibly at risk. Forty percent of all global HIV transmissions are spread by those between the ages of 15 to 24, according the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and while some parts of the world are seeing decreases in the number of HIV infections every year, others are actually seeing an increase.
