Women everywhere, rejoice! Not only have we have been legally absolved of all responsibility, we now hold a Damoclean sword over the heads of all HIV positive men who have the audacity to take what is offered so freely, and then spurn us for their wives and children. Now ladies, even if we are duped in the relationship by professions of love (because we all know no man invokes the L word to keep a good thing going), no matter, the boys in blue can arrest him later. Oh, and if we can claim we were not aware that he was married, even better. Apparently this will have some bearing on any criminal charges eventually filed (at least in Canada).
Whoa! Let's back this train up a little before heading straight into patriarchal Hell. We have already passed through too many dehumanizing stations for the comfort of any thinking being - male or female. For starters: The choice of pregnant women to decide what they put into their bodies was taken away with the advent HIV/AIDS. This was quickly followed by the portrayal of women as helpless victims, waiting to be rescued by the white knights of the pharmaceutical industry with such empowering items as the microbicidal vaginal ring.
No matter that repeated microbicide use as a prophylactic against an essentially untransmissible (and harmless) microbe leads to increased irritation and susceptibility to real infections. Meddle away in our reproductive tracts Sir Galahad and we will continue to swoon at the newly bestowed level of independence. That independence, within the Canadian context, now includes filing the most grievous of sexual assault charges. Case in point: The contemporary legal debacles of former CFL linebacker, Trevis Smith.
The "ex"-Saskatchewan Roughrider star was arrested in October 2005, and the Canadian legal system will attempt to convict him of aggravated sexual assault in January of 2007. The sole basis of these charges is Smith's HIV antibody diagnosis. Canadian legal officials are contending Smith knowingly had unprotected sex with a woman, who was unaware of his HIV status. The officials claim, even though this woman is HIV antibody negative, that this put her in danger of dying - a situation that fits the legal definition of aggravated sexual assault in Canada.
Ignoring the fact that Trevis did not put anyone's life in danger, this case is a frightening example of how the "HIV hypothesis" has lacerated many of the gains made by women's rights groups. As politically incorrect as it may be to put the “victim” on trial, where does the responsibility lay? Perhaps it should be divided equally by the number of people in the bed.
Following conventional wisdom, the surest way to protect oneself from most STD's is condom use. According to this Ottawa Citizen article (typical of the yellow journalism that has followed this case at every turn) Smith had the incredible kismet to hook up with four women who maintained more rational condom use discussions with their partner than any real people I know. That the author of this libelous article believed any of the statements of the anonymous accusers enough to print them, itself defies belief. Unfortunately, this same article made its way from Canada to Alabama, where the families of Trevis and his wife Tamika were subjected to the humiliation and libel.
I recently held a conversation with Tamika to get her perspective on this medieval ordeal. Not only does she live with the specter of a husband awaiting trial, a pending deportation order as her visitor's visa expires in days, and a Canadian media feeding frenzy to rival any in the US, she has also been subjected by her husband's accusers no less, to everything from condescension to outright derision as the naïve girl determined to stand by her man. The irony of the other woman counseling the wife on how to be an independent woman deserves no further comment.
A few minutes with Tamika shatters any illusions of her passivity. She is outspoken about the insidious and increasingly distorted and cruel pictures that have been painted of what is essentially an ordinary family.
They are both youngsters. Trevis is 30, Tamika just 28, and they have two daughters, 5 and 3. They met at a basketball game while students at the University of Alabama, fell in love, and lived most of their brief married life apart, since the groom signed a contract (for life evidently -- more on this in part 2) shortly after the nuptuals.
But she is even more angry at the distortion of truth that has followed her family and turned their lives into Kafka nightmares.
Both she and Trevis quickly became educated about HIV "truth" following his "diagnosis" in 2003. After a few weeks on the "meds", he grew so ill that he gave them up and began reading alternative literature. Since rejecting the "official AIDS" line and belief systems, he has of course remained completely healthy, and even played football for two seasons! I will have more to write about this gigantic incongruity in the next installment.
And there is one other issue that fuels her anger, and it is not the infidelity. Regarding the youthful, football star on the road in a foreign country with sexual favors offered almost at every turn, she jokes, “Trevis is in a safe place right now.”
No, the other, source of constant anger is the message this whole sordid affair sends. Shifting responsibility for our own decisions is as despicable as blaming the woman when an unwanted pregnancy occurs. "It still takes two to tango, fox trot or boogey."
Including HIV antibody status as a deadly weapon, and treating consensual sex as sexual assault only increases stigmatization and discrimination, while diminishing the impact of real assault. Take this example from my own part of Canada, that is described by the Crown as “a brutal attack”, in which a young woman, after refusing a man's unwanted advances fled, was pursued into the street, kicked, beaten and dragged by the hair into a residence, where she was brutally attacked for several hours. The three men involved were convicted of aggravated sexual assault and received sentences ranging from 9 to 13 months.
Contrast this to another case involving a Newfoundland male who failed to disclose his HIV status to his girlfriend. They subsequently broke up and began dating other people. In the end he was sentenced to 5 ½ years for aggravated assault, as well as 18 months for common nuisance (potential harm to the general public) to be served concurrently.
[To be continued.]
Shelley McNeil is a single mother of three, and a final year student in the environmental studies program at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
At what point of madness will the believers begin to lose their nerve? Another harrowing, heartbreaking story. And more silence. I lifted my fingers reactively to forward that piece written by Shelley McNeil to the press, the world's conscience, to anybody. Something kept catching me at the elbows: It was the realization that I could think of few who would respond, other than possibly by writing me back and saying: "How terrible."
I never paid attention to HIV criminalization laws because I felt somehow that these scenarios would not come to pass--not in a stable democracy. Charles Ortleb used to attempt to shake me awake.
My reply to Chuck was always some version of this: The classic HIV 'activist' stance used to be, somewhat paradoxically, to insist upon HIV as both pathogenic and highly transmissible, and also to apply ultra activist fury upon any and all who pushed for contact tracing or criminalization of HIV positives. I thought those people, ACLU and all of em, would hold back this tide. Now I see that even they have lost their grip, and even the bio-medical "community" that created this monster, is begging for the world to listen to what it eats and doesn't eat so it can be lured back into its sprung chains.
Look up the proto-case of Nushawn Williams on Google, as I did today. One of the first hits that came up was a segment from Giraldo Rivera's show in which Ann Coulter was inching toward advocating tattooing the genitalia of the positive, as Buckley had done before her, but stepped back. Rivera feigned horror, but Coulter was as usual making perfect sense: "There are labels on mattresses," she said, "on hamburger meat, on cigarettes..."
Liberals and Conservatives might do well to abandon all hope of human "freedom," here if indeed it offers the only respite from the dreaded critique of the HIV test. Even the Libertarians are as silent as the grave on this. So long as it is always others, those unfortunate others. The HIV dialectic is locked into a single demonic locket which a rare few people on earth have the expertise and courage to finally deconstruct. The Test. The most destructive technology of the century, for it drives us to do things in its name that we couldn't dream of in the absence of its license.
Posted by: Celia Farber | December 12, 2006 at 07:52 PM
Here is a latest and best news about the epidemic, at least according to that fountain of scientific, cultural and deviant sexual wisdom, the NY Times.
Since it can no longer publish editorials from Moore, the editorial board has apparently enlisted YBYL's own Marcel Girodian [I hope they paid him handsomely, as this piece is better than anything he wrote for us for free, Otis].
Maybe the judge who hears the Trevis Smith case will get an idea.
I rest my own.
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SPECIAL TO THE NY TIMES FROM MARCEL GIRODIAN
Editorial
Rare Good News About AIDS
Dec. 14, 2006
The announcement yesterday about the results in two African studies of male circumcision may be the most important development in AIDS research since the debut of antiretroviral drugs more than a decade ago. The National Institutes of Health halted studies in Uganda and Kenya when it became overwhelmingly clear that circumcision significantly reduces men’s chances of catching H.I.V.
The studies recruited men willing to be circumcised and randomly assigned them to immediate surgery or to a control group. In both studies, the circumcised men acquired half the number of H.I.V. infections as their uncircumcised counterparts did. The studies confirm the results of a trial that ended last year in South Africa, in which circumcision prevented 60 to 70 percent of new AIDS infections.
Until now, efforts at AIDS prevention have largely failed. Little wonder. It requires people to resolve — every day — either not to have sex or to use condoms. Circumcision, by ontrast, is a one-time procedure. It is familiar and widely accepted all over the world, even by groups who do not practice it. And safe circumcision does not require a doctor. Community
workers and traditional healers can be trained to do the operation safely and given the correct tools.
Based on the South African results, groups like the United Nations AIDS rogram and the World Health Organization were already discussing how they might promote circumcision in countries around the world. They should now move as quickly as possible.
Governments and international donors should also work urgently to provide new financing to help high-risk countries train community workers to do safe circumcision. News of the South African results has already led to a urge in demand for the procedure across Africa, and clinics that now offer it have long waiting lists.
Any campaign will have to be coupled with warnings that circumcision offers only partial protection against H.I.V. and should not become a license for risky sex. Governments must continue to promote condoms and partner reduction.
For years, the holy grail of AIDS prevention has been a vaccine, even one that is only 50 to 60 percent effective. A real vaccine is years away. But as of yesterday, we know its near equivalent exists. International donors and governments should join together to spread the good news about circumcision and make the procedure available everywhere.
Posted by: Harvey Bialy | December 14, 2006 at 10:04 AM
Having suffered one scientific setback after another in recent months, as documented so thoroughly on these pages, the brain trust of AIDS, Inc. has apparently decided to begin dismantaling themselves in the African American community.
Not even Oprah and her dirty men on the down low mind would touch this one.
Posted by: George | December 14, 2006 at 10:52 AM
I wrote a letter to Dr Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV-AIDS Clinicians Society, about this earlier this year. Check it out!
Posted by: Anthony Brink | December 14, 2006 at 11:04 AM
I had a look at the figs from these 'breakthough' papers:
Kenya trial: out of 1393 circ men 22 became pos and 47 out of 1392 men uncirc.
That is a rate of 1.57% and 3.3% respectively.
Uganda trial: There was 4996 hiv neg men in the trial and 22 circ men and 43 non circ became Hiv pos.
That is .8% and 1.7% respectively.
Some breakthrough!
And do we have here another case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing because these seem like awfully low prevalence rates from what I understand from the same media that brought us this!
The Australian version of the Trevis Smith case, by the way, resumes soon.
I'll be there.
Posted by: Kyle Shields | December 14, 2006 at 02:15 PM
After reading all these articles about Trevis Smith constantly, easily obtained by internet. Only a few know that Mr. Smith has another daughter who is 8 years old and does not know what's going on, but she's at the age now where she searches the web often. The lastest is her figuring out that if she types her father's name in the search engine all these articles pop up about him. I as her mother will someday soon have to explain all of this to her. Tamika, and his other kids aren't the only ones affected here. What about my daughter?
Posted by: Lisa Thompson | December 18, 2006 at 03:07 PM