This is terrible!
The biggest chunk of our third-world AIDS prevention money (about 1/3, it seems) goes to abstinence education programs.
Okay, kinda sorta debatably a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to domestic AIDS prevention money.
But in the third world, at least as far as one gender is concerned, 80% of the new AIDS cases already are practicing abstinence till marriage and remaining monogamous within that marriage!
For many women, marriage is a risk factor for AIDS because of their husbands' dangerous behavior. Worldwide, 80 percent of women newly infected with HIV are practicing monogamy within a marriage or a long-term relationship. This shatters the myth that marriage is a natural refuge from AIDS. And it shows that, more than two decades into the epidemic, our fight against AIDS has failed to address the unique circumstances of women—especially women in the developing world.
So here's how the biggest chunk of our AIDS prevention funding is being spent:
"Lady, would you like to not get AIDS?"
"Yes, please!"
"Okay. Don't have sex till you're married, and when you're married, have sex only with your husband."
"But I already do that. And 16 out of my 20 friends who got AIDS last year were doing that, too."
"Impossible. Anyway, do you want to avoid getting AIDS or not?"
"Yes!"
"Then don't have sex till you're married, and when you're married, have sex only with your husband."
"But what about my high chances of that not working? What else can I do?"
"Nothing. Or, well, I'm not allowed to tell you about anything else."
"Are you kidding?"
"Nope."
I think it's very important to write all our Congressmen, perhaps including this little dialogue I just made up just to make sure they can't miss our point and think we're advocating a change because of ideology rather than logic, and ask them to change the allocation of international AIDS funds back to something more condom-oriented and drastically less abstinence-and-monogamy-oriented.
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5 comments:
If feministe didn't have a policy of deleting comments that demolish their story line you'd know this was an ignorant post on her part. Read the story and do the math. Only something like 7% of the funds went to abstinence education.
They also have a policy of closing comment threads when they are loosing an argument.
As to your post. Isn't it obvious that someone is not practicing abstinence from extramarital affairs with married women are getting AIDs. They aren't getting it from toilet seats.
I guess they are just running an echo chamber.
I'm sad to hear that Feministe deleted a correction to math & statistics. :-(
However, as to your refutation that obviously someone isn't practicing "monogamy after abstinence" if women are getting AIDS while practicing "monogamy after abstinence"--yeah, I'm aware of that.
Perhaps I should have elaborated that the reason I oppose funding for such education is that on the ground, you aren't going to see, say, 10 organizations, 1-3 of which are abstinence-only and 7-9 of which are inclusive of other ideas. You're going to get one of each in 10 different geographical locations.
Which means that women somewhere are being forced by our funding scheme to have access only to people who aren't allowed to tell them about things they themselves can do in addition to what they're already doing to keep from getting AIDS. In those areas, they're going to have to hope & pray that abstinence-only education will affect their husbands.
And that's just not cool.
As to your post. Isn't it obvious that someone is not practicing abstinence from extramarital affairs with married women are getting AIDs. They aren't getting it from toilet seats.
I can't tell you how many women I know who got STD's of one type or another, and that's how they discovered their husband's infidelity. Too bad no one seems concerned about teaching men the importance of fidelity.
But that sad reality about no one caring to drill it into men's heads, combined with the geographical problem I mentioned in comment #2, are why I strongly oppose significant funding abstinence-and-monogamy-only education--especially abroad.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
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