world-of-whit:

Yea, my invite got repealed due to “security issues:”

“Because we are an organization of women, it is more difficult to explain membership of someone who is not a naturally born woman. We run the risk of being sued as an organization if we start to make exceptions.”

So much for being inclusive. Fucking bigots. 

Signal boost.

I’ve noticed that conversations about transphobia tend to be mostly theoretical or hypothetical on this website, but here’s a little reminder that physical bars, speedbumps, annoyances, and insults exist every day in the real world for the vast majority of trans*people.

Can your genitals exclude you from an extracurricular activity? Are they ever a “security threat”? Do your genitals even come up in conversation without your consent? 

Step back and think about that, check your privilege, count your blessings, whatever you wanna call it, and remember that we are a demographic, we do exist, and we’re not just a letter in an acronym or a subset of gender/queer theory.

*As [redacted] is a national organization and does not need to comply by state-defined discrimination laws, don’t start a witch hunt because it’ll probably do more harm than good.

Hey y’all, just wanted to share a couple new things that have been going on on our end!

First off, we got refunded! Yay! 

Secondly, our wonderful program director Jacquel Clemons just left us for the greener, more familiar, hot hot hot pastures of the ATL. Jacquel has done an incredible amount of work for our organization and for HIV intervention/education in general. Thanks to her invaluable work we set the standard for adolescent HIV outreach and care in NYC! Best of luck to her in all future endeavors!

Thirdly, soon we’ll be starting year 2 of our unique Young Men’s Initiative program in Long Island City. This time around we hope to involve the young men in inter-gender conversations with a focus on arts and documenting their educational process.

Last, but coiiitenly not least, if you’ve noticed there’s occasionally been a -G popping up in the by-lines of our blogs! Say hello to Giselle, Peer Advocate numero dos, who has been picking up my slack in social media land while I get a ton of data entered and filed. Giselle is awesome, she’s an amazing illustrator/graphic artist as well as a fierce advocate, so look forward to her posts!

Love and good juju,
M 

emilyunderscoremarie:

^that right there.

This is not true. This is medical misinformation.

Though their level of risk is not equal to that of their heterosexual counterparts, lesbians, bisexuals, and other women who have sex with women (WSW) are still at risk for HIV and should still be practicing safe sex.

The CDC released this statement in 2006, but in the same study they also acknowledged that there have been several documented cases of WSW being infected with HIV.  Many times this is because of high-risk behaviors such as unprotected sex with men or previous sexual histories with HIV+ men and intravenous drug use. There are also socioeconomic and heterosexist factors, such as an inability to access queer-friendly health care which can lead to less comfort discussing safe sex with health care providers.

Plus one must remember that sexual identity or “orientation” does not always line up with sexual activity. The definition of “lesbian” differs from person to person, and from culture to culture. A woman can identify as a lesbian but still have casual sex or polyamorous sex with a male partner. And where does this leave women who identify as lesbians whose female partners might not necessarily be female-bodied???

The fact of the matter is that women, especially women of color, are the most at-risk group for contracting HIV.  The other fact of the matter is that vaginal fluids do transmit HIV, as does menstrual blood. Though it is much easier to contract HIV via semen/precum and penetrative sex, safe sex is of paramount importance to all communities, be it the MSM community, the WSW community, or just among straight people.

What’s sad is that safer sex techniques for lesbians, bisexual women, and the WSW community are almost never addressed. This is heterosexist. There are many ways that a woman who has sex with women can reduce her contact with fluids that transmit HIV. Using barrier protection when sharing sex toys, not sharing sex toys, using dental dams during menstruation, etc.

One also has to keep in mind that HIV is not the only STI out there. WSW are still very much at-risk for infections such as HPV/genital warts, genital herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, etc.

The bottom line is that HIV is a virus. It neither privileges nor discriminates based on gender or sexual orientation.

For more information about HIV risk among WSW, click through!!

acmesalesrep:

…but after sleeping on it, I realize that it calls for a more detailed response.

This picture came across my dash:

with the following comments from Coke Talk:

This may be a campaign about HIV/AIDS awareness, but that’s no excuse. This is blatant misogyny, really sinister stuff that conveys a much more profound message about the female body.

Take another look at it. She’s got a killer smile, but still, you can’t see her eyes. The model is cropped so that she’s essentially headless. What makes her human is gone. What makes her a woman is on display. That’s a very deliberate creative choice.

She is an object to be fucked without a brain or an identity. Worse still, her vagina is a fully indexed destination on a Google map. The visual metaphor is so potent (and porn is so ubiquitous) that this image is more jarring than one in which she shows us her actual pussy.

It’s not about the fact that she’s had sex with Bill Johnson and 19 others. Who gives a fuck? What’s toxic is the idea that they checked into her vagina on Foursquare. It’s saying is that a her private parts aren’t private at all. They’re public. That’s the implicit message in this image, and it’s degrading as hell.

It’s not slut-shaming so much as it’s female-shaming, and it reinforces the age-old cultural narrative that women’s bodies aren’t their own.

The claim of misogyny fails on its face when one realizes that these also exist:

(Unless, of course, you also claim that the Finnish HIV Foundation and AIDS Council is also misandrist and homophobic in which case: carry on.) The claim of misogyny itself doesn’t bother me because, yes, a lot of advertising is, if not openly misogynist, at least disrespectful towards women. What bothers me is the laziness. It took me all of thirty seconds to find the other two posters from the campaign, the ones treating the male body in exactly the same manner. That information was available to the author had she chosen to avail herself of it. She simply didn’t make the effort, and that’s the most charitable assessment; the alternative is that she was aware of the other posters but chose to ignore them.

What bothers me more is the complaint that the model has been reduced to an object. Yes, the models—all three of them—are objectified. Why?

Because that’s the fucking point of the campaign.

It isn’t about who you sleep with. It’s about the actual act of having sex. If the models are recognizable, the people viewing the ad can dismiss them on the grounds that they’re not sleeping with that person, or that they don’t hang out with people like those ones, or that the people they know wouldn’t have that many partners (and I should not that the use of social-media cues to represent sexual histories is about as non-judgmental a way of doing so as possible, unless you think that having a number of partners is, in and of itself, something of which one should be ashamed). It’s only if the models are identifiable that the person viewing the ad can engage in slut-shaming. By rendering them anonymous, by reducing them to objects, the viewer is forced to confront the act itself, and to recognize that it’s the act of having sex that carries risk regardless of the partner.

Objectification in popular culture is generally sexist and degrading, but like any narrative device it can also be used send a clear message—or at least to remove a conflicting one.

emphasis mine :)

I still think these ads are problematic and judgmental, albeit not misogynist.  It should just say “13 people checked in here” because hey, women don’t just sleep with the Bill Johnsons of the world and a guy might wanna sleep with a “John Williams” not a “Jane Williams.”  

The one that makes me mad is the third one, because a) just because you’re a gay man doesn’t mean you automatically have or enjoy receptive anal sex and b) straight guys like anal, too. 

I mean, I understand that the ad campaign is catering towards an image that the viewer/consumer will automatically recognize as “oh that’s a gay guy,” but I would like to think that an HIV/AIDS coalition in the 21st century would see an ad campaign as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and challenge stereotypes about the MSM community while at the same time promoting condom use.

Just some thought food!

-Meaghan :)