blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah now youve opened me up to a rant i was hoping to avoid making
ok this is the thing. hiv is the boogie monster in the black community. we have been taught and indoctrinated to be hyper aware of and afraid of hiv like it's going to strike us down at any moment. the campaigns and the statistics are skewed so that it is over-represented amongst black women, when the fact of the matter is, black women's hiv status is pretty much in direct proportion and correlation to black men's hiv status, AND black men's hiv status is the only one that continues to grow, because young MSM black men are contracting at higher rates than anyone else.
so that's first of all - hiv is not an easy disease to transmit, and despite all the best efforts of the media campaigns, it is not that prevalent in this country as a whole. i know this argument is not going to work on everyone, because we have had it so repeatedly drilled in our heads that it's a lot more prevalent than it really is. but the fact of the matter is, less than 1% of the american population has hiv. to put that in perspective,
here is a list of the most common causes of death in the us; compare that to almost 30% of the american population dying from heart disease. i'm not saying you should not practice safe sex, and get tested with your partner, and do everything you can to ward against a disease like hiv. i'm saying that we are taught that its prevalence is greater than it is, and that it's a bigger danger than it is in reality. there are over 340 million people in this country, which might whittle down to 100 million available male partners... it is possible to never ever come into contact with hiv based on the sheer amount of potential partners in this country that do not have it.
please let me emphasize, i know this is not an easy argument for most people to swallow - we are too in fear of hiv, and a reasonable amount of caution to protect yourself IS necessary. but, to me the fear of hiv for black women borders on phobic, and i will not live my life in constant fear of a disease that i CAN protect myself from, and that i CAN avoid ever being in contact with. it is not an inevitability, and frankly, i think that we are being taught that it is.
soooooo, circling back around to the "monogamy in marriage" argument. to say that you are continually on the watch for stds even after marriage - what is, to most people, supposed to be a relationship only between two people - to me says that there is no such thing as a monogamous committed relationship where no one strays. or, that such a thing as discussing infidelity in an open and honest way so that no one is being deceived is possible. and i don't think that's true. and frankly, all i can say is that for myself, the best i can do is choose partners that are honest and trustworthy, because that sort of deceptive behavior is NOT something that everyone has hidden down inside them. hard to believe?
as far as excluding some diseases and not others - i don't think i said that. what i said was that i wouldnt get a regular std screening at all, which would exclude all stds. but, for the sake of argument, something like hpv, which is incredibly prevalent amongst anyone whos ever had any sort of sexual contact, to me that would be something i could think of more as an inevitability. because it is not something that is difficult to contract at all. so that would still necessitate the need of regular pap smears to screen for cancer.
i can completely understand why some women would feel like continuing to ward themselves against stds in an allegedly "committed" relationship is necessary. i completely understand the "better safe than sorry" argument. and i completely understand the viewpoint that cheating is a "reality" of some people's relationships.
but, i govern my life differently... i choose my partners differently... and i manage my relationships differently... so, for me, the inevitability of std transmission is in direct correlation with my choice of partner, and i plan to choose a partner, and have a relationship, where yep, i can trust him with my life.
